Building a Community of Practice: Strategies Developed by Librarians in the SPARC OpenEd Leadership Program

Do you want to know how other universities develop their OER initiatives? This panel of five librarians will discuss their participation in the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, a two-semester professional development experience aimed at building expertise and capacity to advance open education in academic libraries, and how it helped shape the development of OER initiatives at their institutions. Over two semesters, the program blends online, peer-to-peer, and project-based learning opportunities to develop participants into subject matter experts with the practical know-how to advance open education initiatives on their campuses. The panelists will discuss how their participation in the SPARC OpenEd Leadership Program has helped them actualize their visions of an OER initiative at each of their respective institutions. Participants will leave the panel with replicable strategies for effectively communicating with other Open Education coordinators, building an OER knowledge base for their institution, and utilizing methods for developing their own OER initiative. The course content developed for the SPARC program, which is published and shared under a Creative Commons Attribution license, will be shared, as well as strategies for how they can be used by practitioners outside of the program. The SPARC OpenEd Leadership Program started in August 2017 with a pilot cohort of 14 fellows selected from SPARC member libraries. Pilot fellows were both students and creators, helping to evaluate and improve the curriculum along the way. Moving forward, the program will accept a cohort of fellows each year, who upon successful completion will receive a certificate and the title of SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow. Whether you’re interested in applying for the 2018-2019 SPARC Open Education Leadership Program or want to build your own learning community, this panel will provide you with ideas for how you can move forward in your OER project development. Strategies will be scalable for different initiatives, from building small OER outreach efforts to expanding upon an already established program. This panel is intended to support OER Coordinators and librarians, but other individuals are welcome to attend to learn about how programs like the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program could support projects underway at their own institutions

Upcycling of low value end-of-life cathode material into next generation cathode materials

The increase in the use of electric vehicles (EVs) will ultimately lead to an increase in the number of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) that need to be recycled. A particular challenge concerns how to deal with low value cathodes, such as LiMn2O4 (LMO). To this end, this paper investigates recycling cathode material from an end-of-life Gen 1 Nissan Leaf (2011 model, 40 000 miles) which contains a mixture of spinel (LMO) and a Ni-rich layered oxide (LO). Citric acid was employed to selectively leach LMO into solution while leaving the remaining LO as a solid. The citric acid also acts as a delamination agent to remove the remaining LO from the Al current collector. The LMO was then recovered from solution and upcycled to form new cathode materials. Ni-doping of the solution allowed the synthesis of the high voltage cathode LiMn1.5Ni0.5O4 (LMNO) which is attracting commercial interest. Disordered rocksalt compounds Li4Mn2O5 and Li2MnO2.25F were also synthesised and gave high specific discharge capacities of 293 and 279 mA h g−1 respectively. This proof of concept work demonstrates a method to upcycle end-of-life cathode material into next generation cathode materials

Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution and the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in a national English cohort.

OBJECTIVES: The role of outdoor air pollution in the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) remains unclear. We investigated this question using a large, nationally representative cohort based on primary care records linked to hospital admissions. METHODS: A cohort of 812 063 patients aged 40-89 years registered with 205 English general practices in 2002 without a COPD diagnosis was followed from 2003 to 2007. First COPD diagnoses recorded either by a general practitioner (GP) or on admission to hospital were identified. Annual average concentrations in 2002 for particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter <10 µm (PM10) and <2.5 µm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone and sulfur dioxide (SO2) at 1 km(2) resolution were estimated from emission-based dispersion models. Hazard ratios (HRs) per interquartile range change were estimated from Cox models adjusting for age, sex, smoking, body mass index and area-level deprivation. RESULTS: 16 034 participants (1.92%) received a COPD diagnosis from their GP and 2910 participants (0.35%) were admitted to hospital for COPD. After adjustment, HRs for GP recorded COPD and PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 were close to unity, positive for SO2 (HR=1.07 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.11) per 2.2 µg/m(3)) and negative for ozone (HR=0.94 (0.89 to 1.00) per 3 µg/m(3)). For admissions HRs for PM2.5 and NO2 remained positive (HRs=1.05 (0.98 to 1.13) and 1.06 (0.98 to 1.15) per 1.9 µg/m(3) and 10.7 µg/m(3), respectively). CONCLUSIONS: This large population-based cohort study found limited, inconclusive evidence for associations between air pollution and COPD incidence. Further work, utilising improved estimates of air pollution over time and enhanced socioeconomic indicators, is required to clarify the association between air pollution and COPD incidence

Public house patrons' engagement in hypothetical sexual assault: a test of Alcohol Myopia Theory in a field setting

Previous research has found that drinking establishments are often antecedent to sexual aggression outcomes. In the present study, male participants were randomly selected from public houses (i.e., “pubs”) and asked to imagine themselves in a hypothetical intimate encounter in which the female in the scenario stops consenting to sexual contact. Participants were given the option to continue making sexual advances up to and including sexual intercourse against the woman’s will. It was hypothesised based on Alcohol Myopia Theory that participant blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels would be associated with hypothetical sexual aggression when stereotypical cues of a woman’s sexual availability (revealing clothing and alcohol use) were present in the scenario. Men’s engagement in hypothetical sexual aggression was associated with BAC levels, but only when the woman was wearing revealing clothing. The sobriety of the female actor was not associated with sexual aggression. Results indicate that Alcohol Myopia Theory generalises to a field setting

Cellular adaptations to hypoxia and acidosis during somatic evolution of breast cancer

Conceptual models of carcinogenesis typically consist of an evolutionary sequence of heritable changes in genes controlling proliferation, apoptosis, and senescence. We propose that these steps are necessary but not sufficient to produce invasive breast cancer because intraductal tumour growth is also constrained by hypoxia and acidosis that develop as cells proliferate into the lumen and away from the underlying vessels. This requires evolution of glycolytic and acid-resistant phenotypes that, we hypothesise, is critical for emergence of invasive cancer. Mathematical models demonstrate severe hypoxia and acidosis in regions of intraductal tumours more than 100 m from the basement membrane. Subsequent evolution of glycolytic and acid-resistant phenotypes leads to invasive proliferation. Multicellular spheroids recapitulating ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) microenvironmental conditions demonstrate upregulated glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) as adaptation to hypoxia followed by growth into normoxic regions in qualitative agreement with model predictions. Clinical specimens of DCIS exhibit periluminal distribution of GLUT-1 and Na+/H+ exchanger (NHE) indicating transcriptional activation by hypoxia and clusters of the same phenotype in the peripheral, presumably normoxic regions similar to the pattern predicted by the models and observed in spheroids. Upregulated GLUT-1 and NHE-1 were observed in microinvasive foci and adjacent intraductal cells. Adaptation to hypoxia and acidosis may represent key events in transition from in situ to invasive cancer