Your voice matters: Assessing the need for a resource center

With the transformation of the AGEP project initiative, identifying and preserving the knowledge created and making it available for re-use by other researchers and higher education institutions will require the development of a specific intervention. The current trajectory for the Alliances materials will fail to reach the larger audiences needed to realize their full promise and the materials will be lost over time due to the absence of infrastructure to provide ongoing access

The Materials Curation Inventory Toolkit: Interviewer\u27s Manual

The Interviewer’s Manual provides the framework for the interview. It contains text and questions to be read to the participating researcher over the course of the interview. It is meant to be used in conjunction with the Interview Worksheet

The Materials Curation Inventory Toolkit: Interview Worksheet

This worksheet is designed to elicit the information necessary to develop an inventory of materials produced by a particular research project and targeted for curation. This worksheet is meant to be filled out as a part of the interview

Women Faculty in STEM Colleges at Purdue University: Perceptions of the Classroom Environment Related to Student Interactions

As part of the mission to increase faculty success, the ADVANCE-Purdue Center for Faculty Success (PCFS) sought to understand faculty experiences related to student interactions and the classroom environment. Consequently, the PCFS launched a university-wide survey to understand the various faculty perceptions of their classroom environment specifically related to student interactions. The survey was administered to faculty members during fall 2012. This paper will focus on the perceptions of women faculty members in the Colleges / Schools of Agriculture, Engineering, Pharmacy, Science, Technology and Veterinary Medicine (STEM). In addition to the demographic items such as gender, rank, and college, participants were asked to rate the overall classroom climate based on perceived level of respect from students and teaching assistants, general satisfaction with the classroom environment, and sense of fairness related to students’ ratings for the courses and instructors. Participants also commented on their classroom management style and their overall perception of the classroom environment and interactions with undergraduate and graduate students. Faculty members were asked about teaching experiences across four semesters from fall 2010 to spring 2012. Factors such as rank, gender, course level, course format, class size, whether the course was required for major, and the instructor’s experience teaching the course were considered in the data analysis. Faculty actions in response to student incivility were also examined. Preliminary results will be presented

Non-Associative Learning and Serotonin Induce Similar Bi-Directional Changes in Excitability of a Neuron Critical for Learning in the Medicinal Leech

In studies of the cellular basis of learning, much attention has focused on plasticity in synaptic transmission in terms of transmitter release and the number or responsiveness of neurotransmitter receptors. However, changes in postsynaptic excitability independent of receptors may also play an important role. Changes in excitability of a single interneuron in the leech, the S-cell, were measured during non-associative learning of the whole-body shortening reflex. This interneuron was chosen because it is known to be necessary for sensitization and full dishabituation of the shortening response. During sensitization, S-cell excitability increased, and this enhancement corresponded to facilitation of the shortening reflex and increased S-cell activity during the elicited response. During habituation training, there was a decrement in both the shortening reflex and the elicited S-cell activity, along with decreased S-cell excitability. Conversely, dishabituation facilitated both the shortening response and S-cell activity during shortening, with an accompanying increase in S-cell excitability. Bath application of 1–10 μ m serotonin (5HT), a modulatory neurotransmitter that is critical for sensitization, for full dishabituation, and for associative learning, increased S-cell excitability. S-cell excitability also increased after stimulation of the serotonergic Retzius cells. However, focal application of serotonin onto the S-cell soma hyperpolarized the interneuron, and bath application of a lower dose of serotonin (0.1 μ m ) decreased excitability. The observed changes in postsynaptic excitability appear to contribute to non-associative learning, and modulatory neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, evidently help regulate excitability. Such changes in S-cell excitability may also be relevant for more complex, associative forms of learning

ATP and NO dually control migration of microglia to nerve lesions

Microglia migrate rapidly to lesions in the central nervous system (CNS), presumably in response to chemoattractants including ATP released directly or indirectly by the injury. Previous work on the leech has shown that nitric oxide (NO), generated at the lesion, is both a stop signal for microglia at the lesion and crucial for their directed migration from hundreds of micrometers away within the nerve cord, perhaps mediated by a soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC). In this study, application of 100 microM ATP caused maximal movement of microglia in leech nerve cords. The nucleotides ADP, UTP, and the nonhydrolyzable ATP analog AMP-PNP (adenyl-5'-yl imidodiphosphate) also caused movement, whereas AMP, cAMP, and adenosine were without effect. Both movement in ATP and migration after injury were slowed by 50 microM reactive blue 2 (RB2), an antagonist of purinergic receptors, without influencing the direction of movement. This contrasted with the effect of the NO scavenger cPTIO (2-(4-carboxyphenyl)-4,4,5,5-teramethylimidazoline-oxyl-3-oxide), which misdirected movement when applied at 1 mM. The cPTIO reduced cGMP immunoreactivity without changing the immunoreactivity of eNOS (endothelial nitric oxide synthase), which accompanies increased NOS activity after nerve cord injury, consistent with involvement of sGC. Moreover, the sGC-specific inhibitor LY83583 applied at 50 microM had a similar effect, in agreement with previous results with methylene blue. Taken together, the experiments support the hypothesis that ATP released directly or indirectly by injury activates microglia to move, whereas NO that activates sGC directs migration of microglia to CNS lesions

Multiple Sites of Action Potential Initiation Increase Neuronal Firing Rate

Sensory input to an individual interneuron or motoneuron typically evokes activity at a single site, the initial segment, so that firing rate reflects the balance of excitation and inhibition there. In a network of cells that are electrically coupled, a sensory input produced by appropriate, localized stimulation can cause impulses to be initiated in several places. An example in the leech is the chain of S cells, which are critical for sensitization of reflex responses to mechanosensory stimulation. S cells, one per segment, form an electrically coupled chain extending the entire length of the CNS. Each S cell receives input from mechanosensory neurons in that segment. Because impulses can arise in any S cell and can reliably propagate throughout the chain, all the S cells behave like a single neuron with multiple initiation sites. In the present experiments, well-defined stimuli applied to a small area of skin evoked mechanosensory action potentials that propagated centrally to several segments, producing S cell impulses in those segments. Following pressure to the skin, impulses arose first in the S cell of the same segment as the stimulus, followed by impulses in S cells in other segments. Often four or five separate initiation sites were observed. This timing of impulse initiation played an important role in increasing the frequency of firing. Impulses arising at different sites did not usually collide but added to the total firing rate of the chain. A computational model is presented to illustrate how mechanosensory neurons distribute the effects of a single sensory stimulus into spatially and temporally separated synaptic input. The model predicts that changes in impulse propagation in mechanosensory neurons can alter S cell frequency of firing by changing the number of initiation sites