Lessons Learned from Educational Research of a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates

Participation in an archaeological field school is the entry point to a professional career in the discipline. Despite the importance of field schools, few scholars have investigated achieved student-learning outcomes or lasting impacts on students from participation in archaeological field research. We report on the educational design, learning objectives, and results of three years of formative and summative assessments for an interdisciplinary, archaeology and ecology research program for undergraduate students. Our learning objectives include promoting scientific literacy and communication, critical thinking and STEM skills, and capacities in archaeological and ecological interdisciplinarity. Using developed rubrics that account for both critical thinking and STEM understanding, self-administered competency surveys, and program-developed items, we found significant gains in nearly all learning objectives. Students demonstrated growth in program specific content, perceived abilities in their scientific and discipline specific skills, critical thinking skills, and scientific communication skills. These educational outcomes and assessment tools have implications for how we design and evaluate field learning in archaeology and may be applied to field school instruction

Information Costs and Reverse Payment Settlements: Bridging the Gap Between the Courts and the Antitrust Agencies

Reverse payment settlements have attracted increased scrutiny due to the controversial presence of a payment from a brand-name drug company to a generic company that is ostensibly preparing to infringe on the branded company’s patent. The antitrust agencies and the courts settled into an intergovernmental stalemate regarding the appropriate framework of analysis to apply when reviewing antitrust challenges to these settlements. The FTC and DOJ have viewed the deals skeptically as a vehicle for competitors to split monopoly profits, but the lower courts have generally been deferential to what they identified as an exercise of a patent holder’s lawful right to exclude. Much has been written about which side is correct, yet there has been relatively little exploration of the source of the persistent disagreement. Building off of Henry Smith’s property rights theory and the cognitive miser literature from Peter Lee, this Article explains that the long-standing disagreement stems from the judiciary’s application of information-cost-saving rules. Courts adopted a formalistic approach that would almost invariably uphold a reverse payment settlement because they tend to apply bright-line rules when dealing with property rights, and they are prone to adjudicate complex patent and patent-related cases in ways that economize on the costs of information processing. Although the Supreme Court resolved the disagreement by adopting a more information-demanding rule of reason approach in FTC v. Actavis, the cognitive miser phenomenon will continue to affect how courts adjudicate antitrust challenges to reverse-payment settlements

My Dream of the USA

VERSE 1A soldier in camp lay dreaming,Dreaming of his native land,He saw her noble statesmanAnd blood-stained heroes, grand;He saw her soldiers and sailorsAnd the boys in Blue and Gray;At dawn unto his comrades,These words I heard him say: CHORUS“I saw Washington cross the Delaware,I saw Stark ‘mid Mountains Green;I saw Warren fight at Bunker Hill,Andrew Jackson at New Orleans;I saw Davy Crockett at the Alamo,Taylor fight at Monterey,And all fought for our liberty,In my dreams of the U. S. A. VERSE 2At Plymouth he saw the landingOf the gallant Pilgrim band,He heard a bell ring libertyAnd freedom thro’ the land;O’er battle fields he wandered,Where her heroes fought and fell;Then turning to his comrades,These words I heard him tell. CHORU

Making Space for Failure in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Blueprint

In this essay, we offer a typology of failure in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) to serve as the foundation for a new line of inquiry to be featured in this new section of Teaching & Learning Inquiry — SoTL in Process. Through the typology, we advocate for making space to talk about failure and its many forms in SoTL. Read the corresponding ISSOTL blog post here

Integrase-deficient lentiviral vectors mediate efficient gene transfer to human vascular smooth muscle cells with minimal genotoxic risk

We have previously shown that injury-induced neointima formation was rescued by adenoviral-Nogo-B gene delivery. Integrase-competent lentiviral vectors (ICLV) are efficient at gene delivery to vascular cells but present a risk of insertional mutagenesis. Conversely, integrase-deficient lentiviral vectors (IDLV) offer additional benefits through reduced mutagenesis risk, but this has not been evaluated in the context of vascular gene transfer. Here, we have investigated the performance and genetic safety of both counterparts in primary human vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) and compared gene transfer efficiency and assessed the genotoxic potential of ICLVs and IDLVs based on their integration frequency and insertional profile in the human genome. Expression of enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) mediated by IDLVs (IDLV-eGFP) demonstrated efficient transgene expression in VSMCs. IDLV gene transfer of Nogo-B mediated efficient overexpression of Nogo-B in VSMCs, leading to phenotypic effects on VSMC migration and proliferation, similar to its ICLV version and unlike its eGFP control and uninfected VSMCs. Large-scale integration site analyses in VSMCs indicated that IDLV-mediated gene transfer gave rise to a very low frequency of genomic integration compared to ICLVs, revealing a close-to-random genomic distribution in VSMCs. This study demonstrates for the first time the potential of IDLVs for safe and efficient vascular gene transfer

Interaction of reed and acoustic resonator in clarinetlike systems

Sound emergence in clarinetlike instruments is investigated in terms of instability of the static regime. Various models of reed-bore coupling are considered, from the pioneering work of Wilson and Beavers ["Operating modes of the clarinet", J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 56, 653--658 (1974)] to more recent modeling including viscothermal bore losses and vena contracta at the reed inlet. The pressure threshold above which these models may oscillate as well as the frequency of oscillation at threshold are calculated. In addition to Wilson and Beavers' previous conclusions concerning the role of the reed damping in the selection of the register the instrument will play on, the influence of the reed motion induced flow is also emphasized, particularly its effect on playing frequencies, contributing to reduce discrepancies between Wilson and Beavers' experimental results and theory, despite discrepancies still remain concerning the pressure threshold. Finally, analytical approximations of the oscillating solution based on Fourier series expansion are obtained in the vicinity of the threshold of oscillation. This allows to emphasize the conditions which determine the nature of the bifurcation (direct or inverse) through which the note may emerge, with therefore important consequences on the musical playing performances