Takings Law—Is Inverse Condemnation an Appropriate Remedy for Due Process Violations?—San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. City of San Diego, 450 U.S. 621 (1981)

This Note first examines the Supreme Court cases that involve fifth amendment taking and fourteenth amendment due process challenges to land use regulations. Next, this Note discusses the meaning of Justice Brennan\u27s proposals and their potential effect on land use planning and zoning. This Note suggests that overly restrictive zoning ordinances should not be viewed as a taking requiring just compensation. Instead these ordinances should be viewed as invalid exercises of the municipality\u27s police power because of their failure to provide substantive due process to the landowner. The landowner\u27s remedy should therefore be the invalidation of the ordinance, not just compensation. If the invalidation of the zoning ordinance is not adequate relief for the landowner, this Note proposes to let landowners sue for a monetary award under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows damages if an individual\u27s constitutional rights are violated

Collaborating With Writing Centers on Interdisciplinary Peer Tutor Training to Improve Writing Support for Engineering Students

Introduction: Faculty members have little time and usually lack expertise to provide writing feedback on lab reports. Sending students to a writing center, an existing resource on virtually all college campuses, could fill that gap. However, the majority of peer writing tutors are in nontechnical majors, and little research exists on training them to provide support for engineering students. Research question: Can peer writing tutors without technical backgrounds be trained to provide effective feedback to engineering students? About the case: Previously, sending students to the writing center was ineffective. The students did not see the value, and the tutors did not feel capable of providing feedback to them. To remedy this situation, an interdisciplinary training method was developed collaboratively by an engineering professor and the writing center director. Situating the case: Researchers have suggested that effective writing center help for engineering students is possible, and the authors have designed an interdisciplinary training method that has produced positive results. Supporting literature includes the use of generalist tutors, writing in the disciplines, genre theory, and knowledge transfer. Methods/approach: This was a three-year experiential project conducted in a junior-level engineering course. The assignment, a lab report, remained the same. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from students and tutors. Results/discussion: Tutor feedback and student satisfaction significantly improved. However, a few students who were satisfied overall still expressed interest in having their reports reviewed by a tutor with a technical background. Conclusions: Interdisciplinary tutor training can improve the feedback of peer writing tutors, providing support for faculty efforts to improve student writing. The method requires minimal faculty time and capitalizes on existing resources

Magnesiate addition/ring-expansion strategy to access the 6-7-6 tricyclic core of hetisine-type C20-diterpenoid alkaloids

A synthetic strategy to access the fused 6–7–6 tricyclic core of hetisine-type C20-diterpenoid alkaloids is reported. This strategy employs a Diels–Alder cycloaddition to assemble a fused bicyclic anhydride intermediate, which is elaborated to a vinyl lactone-acetal bearing an aromatic ring in five steps. Aromatic iodination is followed by magnesium–halogen exchange with a trialkyl magnesiate species, which undergoes intramolecular cyclization. Subsequent oxidation provides the desired 6–7–6 tricyclic diketoaldehyde, with carbonyl groups at all three positions for eventual C–N bond formation and subsequent elaboration

A modular dCas9-SunTag DNMT3A epigenome editing system overcomes pervasive off-target activity of direct fusion dCas9-DNMT3A constructs

Detection of DNA methylation in the genome has been possible for decades; however, the ability to deliberately and specifically manipulate local DNA methylation states in the genome has been extremely limited. Consequently, this has impeded our understanding of the direct effect of DNA methylation on transcriptional regulation and transcription factor binding in the native chromatin context. Thus, highly specific targeted epigenome editing tools are needed to address this. Recent adaptations of genome editing technologies, including fusion of the DNMT3A DNA methyltransferase catalytic domain to catalytically inactive Cas9 (dC9-D3A), have aimed to alter DNA methylation at desired loci. Here, we show that these tools exhibit consistent off-target DNA methylation deposition in the genome, limiting their capabilities to unambiguously assess the functional consequences of DNA methylation. To address this, we developed a modular dCas9-SunTag (dC9Sun-D3A) system that can recruit multiple DNMT3A catalytic domains to a target site for editing DNA methylation. dC9Sun-D3A is tunable, specific, and exhibits much higher induction of DNA methylation at target sites than the dC9-D3A direct fusion protein. Importantly, genome-wide characterization of dC9Sun-D3A binding sites and DNA methylation revealed minimal off-target protein binding and induction of DNA methylation with dC9Sun-D3A, compared to pervasive off-target methylation by dC9-D3A. Furthermore, we used dC9Sun-D3A to demonstrate the binding sensitivity to DNA methylation for CTCF and NRF1 in situ. Overall, this modular dC9Sun-D3A system enables precise DNA methylation deposition with the lowest off-target DNA methylation levels reported to date, allowing accurate functional determination of the role of DNA methylation at single loci.Christian Pflueger, Dennis Tan, Tessa Swain, Trung Nguyen, Jahnvi Pflueger, Christian Nefzger ... et al

Board 121: Using Tutor-led Support to Enhance Engineering Student Writing for All

Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS) is part of a three-year NSF IUSE grant with participants at three institutions. This research project seeks to determine to what extent students in the WATTS project show greater writing improvement than students using writing tutors not trained in WATTS. The team collected baseline, control, and experimental data. Baseline data included reports written by engineering and engineering technology students with no intervention to determine if there were variations in written communication related to student demographics and institutions. Control data included reports written by students who visited tutors with no WATTS training, and experimental data included reports written by students who visited tutors who were WATTS-trained. Reports were evaluated by the research team using a slightly modified version of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Written Communication VALUE Rubric. Baseline data assessment also provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of the rubric. This paper presents findings from the analysis of the control and experimental data to determine the impact of WATTS on student writing in lab reports. An aggregate score for each lab report was determined by averaging the reviewer scores. An analysis was run to determine if there was a statistical difference between pre-tutoring lab report scores from the baseline, control, and experimental rubric scores for each criterion and total scores; there was not a statistically significant difference. The research team ran a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to assess the relationship between control and experimental aggregate rubric scores for each criterion. The preliminary analysis of the control and experimental data shows that the WATTS intervention has a positive, statistically significant impact on written communication skills regardless of the campus student demographics. Since WATTS has been shown to be a low-cost, effective intervention to improve engineering and engineering technology students’ written communication skills at these participating campuses, it has potential use for other institutions to positively impact their students’ written communication

Board 317: Improving Undergraduate STEM Writing: A Collaboration Between Instructors and Writing Center Directors to Improve Peer-Writing Tutor Feedback

Undergraduate STEM writing skills, especially in engineering fields, need improvement. Yet students in engineering fields often do not value writing skills and underestimate the amount of writing they will do in their careers. University writing centers can be a helpful resource, but peer writing tutors need to be prepared for the differences between writing for the humanities and writing in STEM fields. The Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS) model is designed to improve tutor confidence and student writing. In this innovative training, the writing center supervisor collaborates with the STEM instructor to create a one-hour tutor-training where the tutors learn about the assignment content, vocabulary, and expectations. This multidisciplinary collaborative project builds on previous investigative work to determine the impact of WATTS on students, tutors, and faculty and to identify its mitigating and moderating effects. Data has been collected and analyzed from pre- and post- training surveys, interviews, and focus groups. In addition, the project studies WATTS effects on student writing pre- and post-tutoring. The team will use these results to develop a replicable, sustainable model for future expansion to other institutions and fields. By systematically collecting data and testing WATTS, the investigators will be able to identify its mitigating and moderating effects on different stakeholders and contribute valuable knowledge to STEM fields. This approach assesses the elements of the model that have the most impact and the extent to which WATTS can be used to increase collaboration between engineering instructors and writing centers. The project enables the investigators to expand WATTS to additional engineering courses, test key factors with more instructors, refine the process, and position WATTS for dissemination to a broad audience. As the cost of higher education rises, institutions are pressured to graduate students in four years and engineering curricula are becoming more complex. WATTS presents an economical, effective method to improve student writing in the discipline. Several factors indicate that it has the potential for broad dissemination and impact and will provide a foundation for a sustainable model for future work, as instructors become trainers for their colleagues, allowing additional ongoing expansion and implementation. WATTS serves as a model for institutions (large or small) to capitalize on existing infrastructure and resources to achieve large-scale improvements to undergraduate STEM writing while increasing interdisciplinary collaboration and institutional support

The Expression and Localization of N-Myc Downstream-Regulated Gene 1 in Human Trophoblasts

The protein N-Myc downstream-regulated gene 1 (NDRG1) is implicated in the regulation of cell proliferation, differentiation, and cellular stress response. NDRG1 is expressed in primary human trophoblasts, where it promotes cell viability and resistance to hypoxic injury. The mechanism of action of NDRG1 remains unknown. To gain further insight into the intracellular action of NDRG1, we analyzed the expression pattern and cellular localization of endogenous NDRG1 and transfected Myc-tagged NDRG1 in human trophoblasts exposed to diverse injuries. In standard conditions, NDRG1 was diffusely expressed in the cytoplasm at a low level. Hypoxia or the hypoxia mimetic cobalt chloride, but not serum deprivation, ultraviolet (UV) light, or ionizing radiation, induced the expression of NDRG1 in human trophoblasts and the redistribution of NDRG1 into the nucleus and cytoplasmic membranes associated with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and microtubules. Mutation of the phosphopantetheine attachment site (PPAS) within NDRG1 abrogated this pattern of redistribution. Our results shed new light on the impact of cell injury on NDRG1 expression patterns, and suggest that the PPAS domain plays a key role in NDRG1's subcellular distribution. © 2013 Shi et al

Replication of a Tutor-Training Method for Improving Interaction Between Writing Tutors and Stem Students

The improvement of tutor training programs can impact the important work of writing centers. Tutors often feel less comfortable tutoring in genres different from their own discipline. A previous study introduced an assignment-specific tutor training model to improve writing center tutoring sessions between engineering students and writing tutors. The results of the previous study indicated a valuable addition to the resources available for engineering students. This model has now been replicated at two universities to assess the potential for wider dissemination. Preliminary data analysis suggests a relationship between initial tutor rating of student work, student perceptions of tutoring, and tutor perception of student engagement in the tutorial. Plans for future research include continued replication and expansion to test larger sample sizes, analysis of impact within and adaptations for other STEM areas, and continued study of the impact on tutoring team projects