Should We Flip the Script?: A Literature Review of Deficit-Based Perspectives on First-Year Undergraduate Students’ Information Literacy

This mixed method systematic review considers recent literature on the information literacy (IL) skills of first-year undergraduate students. The review uncovers the following themes: faculty and librarians perceive first-year students as lacking IL skills; students have varying perceptions of their IL skills; assessment studies yield conflicting findings on first-year students\u27 IL; communication between high school and college librarians is challenging; and some IL researchers emphasise and leverage first-year students\u27 prior knowledge and experience in IL instruction. These themes emerge from extensive searches in four research databases for scholarly and professional articles written in English within the past ten years. With the exception of a few articles, studies reviewed consistently express their findings in terms of students’ gaps or deficits. We question whether this is the most productive basis for developing effective IL programs. Instead, we call for further investigation of students’ existing knowledge and skills as a basis for implementing constructivist and strengths-based pedagogies

Innovating Peer Research Programs Together

This presentation provides details about two distinctive and unique peer learning programs at Gettysburg College and Millersville University. It also highlights how our collaboration sparked new initiatives to advance each of our peer research programs

Zur Besiedlung begrünter Gebäudedächer durch Araneen

Auf Flachdächern im Stadtgebiet von Osnabrück (Niedersachsen) wurde die Araneenfauna mit Hilfe von Bodenfallen untersucht. Hierbei fanden sowohl der Gradient zunehmender Urbanität von der Peripherie zum Stadtzentrum als auch das Alter der Dächer und ihre Vegetation Berücksichtigung. Auf älteren Dächern mit reicher Spontanvegetation konnten mehr Arten und höhere Aktivitätsdichten der Individuen als auf jüngeren Dächern mit spontanem Aufwuchs nachgewiesen werden. Alle untersuchten Flächen zeichnen sich durch einen hohen Anteil an Aeronauten und häufiger euryöker Species aus. Das Artenspektrum gleicht dem anderer städtischer Habitate. Ein Einfluß des Urbanitätsgradienten auf die Zusammensetzung der Araneenfauna zeigte sich nicht.The colonization of ten overgrown flat roofs in the city of Osnabrück (Lower Saxony, Northwest Germany) by spiders was investigated by means of pitfall traps. The spider fauna was analysed along a gradient of increasing urbanity from the periphery to the town centre under consideration of the age of roofs and the vegetation. On the older roofs with rich spontaneous vegetation more species and higher specimens' activities were found than on more recently built roofs with spontaneous or planted vegetation. On all investigated roofs most of the spiders were aeronauts and common euryecious species. The spectrum of species was similiar to that in other habitats of the city. No influence of the degree of urbanity was found within the spider fauna

Context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks for classification of breast carcinomas in whole-slide histopathology images

Automated classification of histopathological whole-slide images (WSI) of breast tissue requires analysis at very high resolutions with a large contextual area. In this paper, we present context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks (CNN) for classification of breast WSIs into normal/benign, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). We first train a CNN using high pixel resolution patches to capture cellular level information. The feature responses generated by this model are then fed as input to a second CNN, stacked on top of the first. Training of this stacked architecture with large input patches enables learning of fine-grained (cellular) details and global interdependence of tissue structures. Our system is trained and evaluated on a dataset containing 221 WSIs of H&E stained breast tissue specimens. The system achieves an AUC of 0.962 for the binary classification of non-malignant and malignant slides and obtains a three class accuracy of 81.3% for classification of WSIs into normal/benign, DCIS, and IDC, demonstrating its potentials for routine diagnostics

Experimentelle Untersuchungen und Modellierungen von Folgereaktionen der Pyritverwitterung in Braunkohletagebau-Haldensedimenten

Sekundärreaktionen in pyrithaltigen Sedimenten unter aeroben Bedingungen sind sehr komplex und nicht vollständig aufgeklärt. Untersuchungen der Sekundärmineralbildung durch Röntgendiffraktometrie und Ionenaktivitätsprodukt-Berechnungen an Sedimentproben aus Garzweiler und Zwenkau zeigen für alle Proben im Verlauf der Verwitterung die Bildung großer Mengen Gips sowie bei fortschreitender Oxidation von H-Jarosit an. Eine Verwitterung von Silikaten in Folge der Pyritoxidation führt zu einem Anstieg der Al- und Mg-Gehalte in den Lösungen. Die Kationenaustauschkapazität der Sedimente nimmt im Verwitterungsverlauf um bis zu 60 % ab. Im stark verwitterten Zustand wird der Austauscher durch die Kationen Fe3+, Al3+ und H+ dominiert. Sequentielle Batchversuche ergeben, dass im Verlauf der Verwitterung große Mengen Fe, SO4, Al und Mg mobilisiert und in die Gleichgewichtslösungen abgegeben werden. Die Ca-Sorption ist durch Kationenaustausch und die Fällung und Auflösung von Gips bestimmt. Bei den gering verwitterten Proben bestimmen Pyritverwitterung und Kationenaustausch die Lösungszusammensetzung. In den Sedimenten mit höheren Graden der Pyritoxidation kommt es durch die Fällung von Hydroxiden und Hydroxosulfaten zu nennenswerten Retentionen von Fe, Al und SO4. Die Ergebnisse der sequenziellen Batchversuche lassen sich für die verschiedenen Verwitterungsstufen der Probe aus Garzweiler mit PHREEQC, einem Modell gekoppelter Gleichgewichte, unter Verwendung einer Zugabefunktion für die Pyritoxidation aber ohne Einführung adjustierbarer Parameter darstellen

Should we flip the script?

This mixed method systematic review considers recent literature on the information literacy (IL) skills of first-year undergraduate students. The review uncovers the following themes: faculty and librarians perceive first-year students as lacking IL skills; students have varying perceptions of their IL skills; assessment studies yield conflicting findings on first-year students' IL; communication between high school and college librarians is challenging; and some IL researchers emphasise and leverage first-year students' prior knowledge and experience in IL instruction. These themes emerge from extensive searches in four research databases for scholarly and professional articles written in English within the past ten years. With the exception of a few articles, studies reviewed consistently express their findings in terms of students’ gaps or deficits. We question whether this is the most productive basis for developing effective IL programs. Instead, we call for further investigation of students’ existing knowledge and skills as a basis for implementing constructivist and strengths-based pedagogies

Wild Red Deer Benefit the Conservation of European Semi-Natural Open Habitats

Traditional land use practices have shaped European landscapes for millennia. Agricultural intensification and declining popularity of pastoral farming in the past century have resulted in a tremendous loss of extensively used open landscapes and associated biodiversity. Today, conservation management needs to prevent secondary succession of many open habitats. Large or inaccessible target areas unsuitable for conventional conservation measures might benefit from grazing by wild herbivores, which do not require fencing nor regular welfare monitoring. In a military training area in Germany, we studied the quantitative and qualitative effects of wild red deer in two protected open habitat types (lowland hay meadows and European dry heaths) based on grazing exclusion experiments over three years. Using movable exclusion cages, we showed that the amount of biomass annually removed by red deer was similar to the forage removal in livestock-based conservation grazing systems. Mown grasslands were particularly attractive to red deer owing to enhanced productivity and forage quality, suggesting that red deer grazing activities can be influenced by mowing. In addition, we compared the vegetation development in grasslands and heathlands with and without red deer grazing using open and permanently fenced plots. Grassland plant diversity decreased in fenced plots. In both habitat types, different structural vegetation characteristics, e.g. increasing sward and litter height, indicated successional developments when red deer grazing was excluded. Our results substantiate that allowing red deer access to open landscapes could not only alleviate potential conflicts with forestry, but can also promote open vegetation structure and diversity, thus providing a valuable contribution to the conservation management of semi-natural habitats