Affordable Learning Kentucky: Strategies for Affordability and Success

Kentucky Virtual Library’s Affordable Learning Steering Committee, an initiative of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), is a working group of librarians from universities around Kentucky exploring ways to advance Kentucky in the Open Educational Resource (OER) / Affordable Textbook movement. The panel presentation included an overview of their work to date and a discussion with the audience about Kentucky’s needs and strategies related to affordable courseware for students on topics including working with campus bookstores, adding course resources to library collections, using e-reserves dynamically, promoting faculty use and creation of open content, and campus textbook initiatives. Panelists included Ilona Burdette, Executive Director of the Kentucky Virtual Library (KYVL); Kelly Smith, Director of Collections & Discovery at Eastern Kentucky University; Crissy Ross, Scholarly Communications Librarian at Northern Kentucky University; and Lori Werth, Provost, University of Pikeville

The NRF2-mediated oxidative stress response pathway is associated with tumor cell resistance to arsenic trioxide across the NCI-60 panel

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Drinking water contaminated with inorganic arsenic is associated with increased risk for different types of cancer. Paradoxically, arsenic trioxide can also be used to induce remission in patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) with a success rate of approximately 80%. A comprehensive study examining the mechanisms and potential signaling pathways contributing to the anti-tumor properties of arsenic trioxide has not been carried out.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Here we applied a systems biology approach to identify gene biomarkers that underlie tumor cell responses to arsenic-induced cytotoxicity. The baseline gene expression levels of 14,500 well characterized human genes were associated with the GI₅₀ data of the NCI-60 tumor cell line panel from the developmental therapeutics program (DTP) database. Selected biomarkers were tested <it>in vitro</it> for the ability to influence tumor susceptibility to arsenic trioxide.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A significant association was found between the baseline expression levels of 209 human genes and the sensitivity of the tumor cell line panel upon exposure to arsenic trioxide. These genes were overlayed onto protein-protein network maps to identify transcriptional networks that modulate tumor cell responses to arsenic trioxide. The analysis revealed a significant enrichment for the oxidative stress response pathway mediated by nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) with high expression in arsenic resistant tumor cell lines. The role of the NRF2 pathway in protecting cells against arsenic-induced cell killing was validated in tumor cells using shRNA-mediated knock-down.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In this study, we show that the expression level of genes in the NRF2 pathway serve as potential gene biomarkers of tumor cell responses to arsenic trioxide. Importantly, we demonstrate that tumor cells that are deficient for NRF2 display increased sensitivity to arsenic trioxide. The results of our study will be useful in understanding the mechanism of arsenic-induced cytotoxicity in cells, as well as the increased applicability of arsenic trioxide as a chemotherapeutic agent in cancer treatment.</p

From What if? to That Was EZ! Leveraging auth eq in EZproxy to take SAML authentication to scale

What if a every student in a statewide, multi-type consortium could log into consortium databases with their school-issued Google or Microsoft email address? Except the 600,000 student email accounts are administered by 171 different districts, and you\u27re a staff of two, and you\u27re self-hosted, and you don\u27t know your SP from your IDP? Join the Kentucky Virtual Library as we explain how we went from What if? to That Was EZ! with the help of a patient school district IT team, EZproxy support docs, and the generous assistance of EZproxy listserv colleagues from Boston to Australia. We\u27ll focus on nuts-and-bolts implementation steps and provide extensive documentation, including model login page html and JS to seamlessly direct users to the right authentication server, for those who want to try this at home