Considering the environment: An expanded framework for teacher knowledge

The emergence of active learning classrooms (ALCs) on university campuses introduces a need for university teachers to have a knowledge of the pedagogical use of physical space. We consider expanding two well-known frameworks for teacher knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) describes teacher knowledge about teaching discipline-specific content. Technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) recognizes digital technology as part of the knowledge base. With increased attention on learning spaces, we propose redefining technology to include non-digital technologies, (e.g. furniture, whiteboards). Further, we add “environment” to the knowledge base to address rhetorical communications from both the physical space and the classroom climate

From Tutoring to Teaching: Advice I Should Have Taken and Connections I Should Have Made

This article reflects on the author’s transition from communication center tutor to writing studies teacher. In particular, it discusses the author’s failure to apply an essential tutoring best practice–avoiding the scattershot approach–to teaching, and its consequential disaster. By examining this practice in transition (and in non-transition), this article makes the argument that being mindful of transferring tutoring best practices into the world of teaching supports student learning and teacher sanity

Editorial: Behind the Making

Few theses, proposals and books in game studies start without some statement of the importance of video games as a media format. However, despite this emphasis on the industry’s size and importance, very little academic attention goes toward what is behind the process of designing games.Game developer Katharine Neil, writing about the state of the game industry and its relation to academia mounts a call to arms: "We can demand research and development into design support technology — not for more tools for prototyping and production or metrics, but for tools that support design thinking".For Neil, these have led to a palpable stagnation in game design. Judging by the articles selected for this issue of Press Start, young game scholars increasingly seek to ameliorate both the lacking academic reflection on game design; and the lack of communication that Neil diagnoses between academics and game makers

Editorial

Over the past year, we’ve had a change of hands from our founder, Matt Barr, to our new editor-in-chief, Mahli-Ann Butt. We’ve taken some extra time to put together this issue with great pride and care. Through a friendly double-open peer-reviewing process, for this open-call issue we’ve published 7 excellent game studies student articles: Dennis Jansen’s ‘The Environment at Play: Confronting Nature in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the “Frostfall” Mod,’ argues that the natural environment in the base game of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) is devoid of agency and power in the face of the player’s colonialist endeavours to explore, conquer and master that environment. Jansen thus discusses how the “Frostfall” counteracts the destructive and oppositional relationship between the player and nature in Skyrim. Brianna Dym’s ‘The Burden of Queer Love,’ explores attempts by game development studio Bioware to create video games that are inclusive of gay, lesbian, and bisexual players by writing in queer romantic narrative subplots into their games. While Bioware’s attempts are certainly not malicious, they fail time and time again, game after game, to break free of the hypermasculine and heterocentric culture dominant in the gaming industry. Instead, Bioware appropriates queer experiences and construes them as a burden to the player so as not to displace the fantasies of male, heterosexual gamers. Chris Alton’s ‘Aya of the Beholder: An Examination of the Construction of Real-World Locations in Parasite Eve,’ uses the foundational example of Square’s Parasite Eve (1997) to examine the ways in which real-world locations and approximations of such are represented within video game worlds. Alton examines the methods through which videogames can create spaces which evoke the conceptual idea of a given place, both through audio/visual and interactive means, without constructing a one-to-one simulacrum of the location. Thus, the player actively contributes in the transformation of an actionable virtual space into an actualized lived place. Anna Maria Kalinowski’s ‘Silent Halls: P.T., Freud, and Psychological Horror,’ draws from Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny to address how the psychological concepts surface within the never-ending hallway of P.T. (2014) and create a deeply psychologically horrifying experience. Sean Pellegrini’s ‘And How Does That Make You Feel?: A Psychological Approach to a Classic Game Studies Debate – Violent Video Games and Aggression,’ investigates the claim that violent video games can cause aggression. The findings of this study suggest that people highly correlated with the Dark Triad of personality are a high-risk group for aggression, but that this aggression is unrelated to video games. Daniel Odin Shaw’s ‘Ideology in BioShock: A Critical Analysis,’ analyses the Bioshock series, with a particular focus on the treatment of ideology. By examining the games, with a particular reference the use of procedural rhetoric, this paper argues that this series presents a critique of extreme ideology itself. Hayley McCullough’s ‘“Hey! Listen!”: Video Game Dialogue, Integrative Complexity and the Perception of Quality,’ explores potential complexity differences between winning and losing video games at the Spike Video Game Awards. It compared the integrative complexity of a sample of video game dialogue for three categories (Best Shooter, Best RPG and Best Action/Adventure). Across all analyses a consistent mean pattern emerged: The winning games averaged lower complexity scores than the losing games. These findings suggest a general association between simplistic dialogue and high-quality video games, providing keen insight into the underlying psychology of video games, and establishes a strong foundation for future research. As this issue demonstrates, Press Start is always delighted to be publishing the best new work by early career researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary fields. The Press Start Journal team also welcomed many new members to our editorial board. During this transition period, we’ve begun a mentoring program for our senior members to share their knowledge of the editorial process. This spirit of mentorship, guidance, and support is something we hope to continue into our journal’s future as it reflects our larger goal of encouraging game studies students to share their work and take part in a lively, academic community. Once again, we’re seeking new members to replace our outgoing board, who are graduating and moving on to other things. Board members of Press Start serve as key stakeholders and decision-makers for developing the journal and actively work to support student scholarship in game studies. Current students and graduates within one year of their graduation date are eligible to apply. Our deadline to apply to be on the editorial board this year has just past, but if you are interested in working with Press Start in the future, you can find more information on the responsibilities of an editor here. In 2018, we saw some of our editors present on a panel at DiGRA in Turin, Italy. This was an exciting opportunity for our new members to sit down with established members and discuss our hopes, expectations, and advice regarding the publishing process in general, and with Press Start in particular. While everyone has a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, some commonalities emerged. Fostering an open, supportive, caring – in other words, overtly feminist – atmosphere for editors, reviewers, and contributors has been our most important goal. Reaching out to, and encouraging, junior scholars, new graduate students, upper year undergraduate students, and scholars whose first language is not English are also central goals for Press Start. Given the often intimidating, daunting, and confusing process of academic publishing, we hope to make Press Start an appealing home for exciting, innovative, unusual, and social justice-oriented games research. As students and emerging academics, we believe Press Start should embody the kinds of practices that we want to see become standards for academia. Thus, in order to see a greater diversity in game studies scholarship, we have introduced an initiative to translate our calls for papers into as many languages as we can find volunteers: http://tinyurl.com/yblfxkk4. Press Startencourages submissions from ESL writers, especially if they are not yet fully confident of their ability to write academically in English but want to learn and improve. Press Start Journal is a labour of love and we thank you for your continued support of our journal. Best wishes from the Press Start editorial board, Mahli-Ann Butt, Landon Kyle Berry, Sarah Stang, Alicia Copeland, Leandro Augusto Borges Lima, Erin MacLean, Reece Thomson, and Dennis Wilson

Editorial

Over the past year, we’ve had a change of hands from our founder, Matt Barr, to our new editor-in-chief, Mahli-Ann Butt. We’ve taken some extra time to put together this issue with great pride and care. Through a friendly double-open peer-reviewing process, for this open-call issue we’ve published 7 excellent game studies student articles: Dennis Jansen’s ‘The Environment at Play: Confronting Nature in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the “Frostfall” Mod,’ argues that the natural environment in the base game of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) is devoid of agency and power in the face of the player’s colonialist endeavours to explore, conquer and master that environment. Jansen thus discusses how the “Frostfall” counteracts the destructive and oppositional relationship between the player and nature in Skyrim. Brianna Dym’s ‘The Burden of Queer Love,’ explores attempts by game development studio Bioware to create video games that are inclusive of gay, lesbian, and bisexual players by writing in queer romantic narrative subplots into their games. While Bioware’s attempts are certainly not malicious, they fail time and time again, game after game, to break free of the hypermasculine and heterocentric culture dominant in the gaming industry. Instead, Bioware appropriates queer experiences and construes them as a burden to the player so as not to displace the fantasies of male, heterosexual gamers. Chris Alton’s ‘Aya of the Beholder: An Examination of the Construction of Real-World Locations in Parasite Eve,’ uses the foundational example of Square’s Parasite Eve (1997) to examine the ways in which real-world locations and approximations of such are represented within video game worlds. Alton examines the methods through which videogames can create spaces which evoke the conceptual idea of a given place, both through audio/visual and interactive means, without constructing a one-to-one simulacrum of the location. Thus, the player actively contributes in the transformation of an actionable virtual space into an actualized lived place. Anna Maria Kalinowski’s ‘Silent Halls: P.T., Freud, and Psychological Horror,’ draws from Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny to address how the psychological concepts surface within the never-ending hallway of P.T. (2014) and create a deeply psychologically horrifying experience. Sean Pellegrini’s ‘And How Does That Make You Feel?: A Psychological Approach to a Classic Game Studies Debate – Violent Video Games and Aggression,’ investigates the claim that violent video games can cause aggression. The findings of this study suggest that people highly correlated with the Dark Triad of personality are a high-risk group for aggression, but that this aggression is unrelated to video games. Daniel Odin Shaw’s ‘Ideology in BioShock: A Critical Analysis,’ analyses the Bioshock series, with a particular focus on the treatment of ideology. By examining the games, with a particular reference the use of procedural rhetoric, this paper argues that this series presents a critique of extreme ideology itself. Hayley McCullough’s ‘“Hey! Listen!”: Video Game Dialogue, Integrative Complexity and the Perception of Quality,’ explores potential complexity differences between winning and losing video games at the Spike Video Game Awards. It compared the integrative complexity of a sample of video game dialogue for three categories (Best Shooter, Best RPG and Best Action/Adventure). Across all analyses a consistent mean pattern emerged: The winning games averaged lower complexity scores than the losing games. These findings suggest a general association between simplistic dialogue and high-quality video games, providing keen insight into the underlying psychology of video games, and establishes a strong foundation for future research. As this issue demonstrates, Press Start is always delighted to be publishing the best new work by early career researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary fields. The Press Start Journal team also welcomed many new members to our editorial board. During this transition period, we’ve begun a mentoring program for our senior members to share their knowledge of the editorial process. This spirit of mentorship, guidance, and support is something we hope to continue into our journal’s future as it reflects our larger goal of encouraging game studies students to share their work and take part in a lively, academic community. Once again, we’re seeking new members to replace our outgoing board, who are graduating and moving on to other things. Board members of Press Start serve as key stakeholders and decision-makers for developing the journal and actively work to support student scholarship in game studies. Current students and graduates within one year of their graduation date are eligible to apply. Our deadline to apply to be on the editorial board this year has just past, but if you are interested in working with Press Start in the future, you can find more information on the responsibilities of an editor here. In 2018, we saw some of our editors present on a panel at DiGRA in Turin, Italy. This was an exciting opportunity for our new members to sit down with established members and discuss our hopes, expectations, and advice regarding the publishing process in general, and with Press Start in particular. While everyone has a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, some commonalities emerged. Fostering an open, supportive, caring – in other words, overtly feminist – atmosphere for editors, reviewers, and contributors has been our most important goal. Reaching out to, and encouraging, junior scholars, new graduate students, upper year undergraduate students, and scholars whose first language is not English are also central goals for Press Start. Given the often intimidating, daunting, and confusing process of academic publishing, we hope to make Press Start an appealing home for exciting, innovative, unusual, and social justice-oriented games research. As students and emerging academics, we believe Press Start should embody the kinds of practices that we want to see become standards for academia. Thus, in order to see a greater diversity in game studies scholarship, we have introduced an initiative to translate our calls for papers into as many languages as we can find volunteers: http://tinyurl.com/yblfxkk4. Press Startencourages submissions from ESL writers, especially if they are not yet fully confident of their ability to write academically in English but want to learn and improve. Press Start Journal is a labour of love and we thank you for your continued support of our journal. Best wishes from the Press Start editorial board, Mahli-Ann Butt, Landon Kyle Berry, Sarah Stang, Alicia Copeland, Leandro Augusto Borges Lima, Erin MacLean, Reece Thomson, and Dennis Wilson

Metformin Plus Insulin for Preexisting Diabetes or Gestational Diabetes in Early Pregnancy: The MOMPOD Randomized Clinical Trial

IMPORTANCE: Insulin is recommended for pregnant persons with preexisting type 2 diabetes or diabetes diagnosed early in pregnancy. The addition of metformin to insulin may improve neonatal outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of metformin added to insulin for preexisting type 2 or diabetes diagnosed early in pregnancy on a composite adverse neonatal outcome. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This randomized clinical trial in 17 US centers enrolled pregnant adults aged 18 to 45 years with preexisting type 2 diabetes or diabetes diagnosed prior to 23 weeks\u27 gestation between April 2019 and November 2021. Each participant was treated with insulin and was assigned to add either metformin or placebo. Follow-up was completed in May 2022. INTERVENTION: Metformin 1000 mg or placebo orally twice per day from enrollment (11 weeks -\u3c23 \u3eweeks) through delivery. MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES: The primary outcome was a composite of neonatal complications including perinatal death, preterm birth, large or small for gestational age, and hyperbilirubinemia requiring phototherapy. Prespecified secondary outcomes included maternal hypoglycemia and neonatal fat mass at birth, and prespecified subgroup analyses by maternal body mass index less than 30 vs 30 or greater and those with preexisting vs diabetes early in pregnancy. RESULTS: Of the 831 participants randomized, 794 took at least 1 dose of the study agent and were included in the primary analysis (397 in the placebo group and 397 in the metformin group). Participants\u27 mean (SD) age was 32.9 (5.6) years; 234 (29%) were Black, and 412 (52%) were Hispanic. The composite adverse neonatal outcome occurred in 280 (71%) of the metformin group and in 292 (74%) of the placebo group (adjusted odds ratio, 0.86 [95% CI 0.63-1.19]). The most commonly occurring events in the primary outcome in both groups were preterm birth, neonatal hypoglycemia, and delivery of a large-for-gestational-age infant. The study was halted at 75% accrual for futility in detecting a significant difference in the primary outcome. Prespecified secondary outcomes and subgroup analyses were similar between groups. Of individual components of the composite adverse neonatal outcome, metformin-exposed neonates had lower odds to be large for gestational age (adjusted odds ratio, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.46-0.86]) when compared with the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Using metformin plus insulin to treat preexisting type 2 or gestational diabetes diagnosed early in pregnancy did not reduce a composite neonatal adverse outcome. The effect of reduction in odds of a large-for-gestational-age infant observed after adding metformin to insulin warrants further investigation

Illuminating hydrological processes at the soil-vegetation-atmosphere interface with water stable isotopes

Funded by DFG research project “From Catchments as Organised Systems to Models based on Functional Units” (FOR 1Peer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13