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Most teachers want to learn and improve, and physical education teachers are no exception. Although their teaching field is not subject to standardized testing, physical education teachers seek to find support structures and development opportunities from within their schools and districts so that they feel connected and a part of the professional team (Lynn & Woods, 2010) wholly devoted to relevancy and other forms of positive development for young adolescents. This study investigated a group of middle school physical education teachers/coaches to determine the degree to which their education and experiences in professional development events and professional organizations influence the application of state or national standards, choice of curriculum, and participation in current initiatives as they relate to physical education in middle grades schools. A more specific research question guided the study: How does the middle school physical education teacher utilize available professional development resources in planning, and to what extent does this impact his or her physical education classroom?

The development and application of a methodology for measurement of oxygen within single mammalian cells are presented, which employ novel macromolecular near infrared (NIR) oxygen probes based on new metalloporphyrin dyes. The probes, which display optimal spectral characteristics and sensitivity to oxygen, excellent photostability, and low cytotoxicity and phototoxicity, are loaded into cells by simple transfection procedures and subsequently analyzed by high-resolution fluorescence microscopy. The methodology is demonstrated by sensing intracellular oxygen in different mammalian cell lines, including A549, Jurkat, and HeLa, and monitoring rapid and transient changes in response to mitochondrial uncoupling by valinomycin and inhibition by antimycin A. Furthermore, the effect of ryanodine receptor-mediated [Ca.sup.2+] influx on cellular oxygen uptake is shown by substantial changes in the level of intracellular oxygen. The results demonstrate the ability of this technique to measure small, rapid, and transient changes in intracellular oxygen in response to different biological effectors. Moreover, this technique has wide ranging applicability in cell biology and is particularly useful in the study of low oxygen environments (cellular hypoxia), mitochondrial and cellular (dys)function, and for therapeutic areas, such as cardiovascular and neurological research, metabolic diseases, and cancer. metalloporphyrin; mitochondrial function; uncoupling

The long atomistic molecular dynamics simulations are conducted to investigate the solvation dynamics of DNA bases of a 38 base pair long DNA duplex immersed in an aqueous solution containing counterions and calculated the energy-energy time correlation function (TCF) of the four individual bases to characterize the solvation dynamics. The TCFs exhibit highly nonexponential decay with time and the slow decay commences from the interaction of the nucleotides with the dipolar water molecules and the counterions.

The entropy of water molecules is calculated in the major and minor grooves of a B-DNA duplex and in the bulk using a statistical mechanical scheme developed by Goddard and co-workers. The calculations for the water under equilibrium conditions appropriately shows that the undoubted entropy gain time T is canceled by the energetic effects in the process of transferal of water from the grooves of DNA to the bulk.

The generalized Langevin equation (GLE)-based Grote--Hynes (GH) theory is used to calculate the transmission coefficients for the methyl transfer from S-adenosylmethionine to catecholate both in aqueous solution and in the catechol O-methyltransferase active site. After analyzing the contributions to the transition state friction spectra, the reaction in water presents a larger deviation of the transition state region with low frequency motions, which remain essentially frozen during the barrier crossing.