Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power

Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power reviewed by Kelly A. Concannon Mannis

Book Review: Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power

Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power reviewed by Kelly A. Concannon Mannis

Feminist Interruptions: Creating Care-ful and Collaborative Community-Based Research with Students

This article describes a feminist community-based research project involving faculty and student collaboration to evaluate a dating and domestic violence awareness initiative. Using a critical ethics of care that emphasizes relationships and allows for constant reflection about power dynamics, role, positionality, and emotions, the authors reflect on what was learned during the research process. Faculty and student researchers share their perspectives and offer suggestions for future feminist collaborative research projects. Significant lessons learned include ensuring that all are invested from the outset of the project, guaranteeing that student researchers understand why their role is so critical in community-based research, and acknowledging not just faculty power over students but student privilege as well

Cultivating Emotional Wellness and Self-Care through Mindful Mentorship

The practice of mindfulness is growing both in higher education (Wenger) and in writing centers (Johnson; Kervin and Barrett). Because mindfulness involves being attuned to what’s happening in a given moment and maintaining a purposeful awareness of what one feels, thinks, and does, we argue that writing center administrators can utilize principles of mindfulness for mentoring writing center tutors. We adopt Jennifer Clary-Lemon and Duane Roen’s definition of mentoring as an “activity that is both reciprocal and transformational” (181), whereby “the mentor is learning by monitoring and evaluating his or her mentoring activities and their effects on the mentee” (179). Their definition incorporates elements of mindfulness: self-awareness, reflection, and presence

Crafting Partnerships: Exploring Student-Led Feminist Strategies for Community Literacy Projects

Relationships have served as a cornerstone to feminist research in community-based research and service learning sites, as feminist scholars have argued for co-constructing knowledges in these sites, while being attentive to the reciprocal nature of these relationships within any context of and for learning (Bayer, Grossman, & Dubois, 2015; Parks & Goldblatt, 2000; Novek, 1999). These relationships are especially crucial when feminists attempt to create real and sustained partnerships through mentoring in their community-based literacy site (DuBois & Karcher, 2005). We stress the value of cultivating sustained relationships, as oftentimes discourses surrounding service learning exhibit a level of engagement that is not sustained and/or does not adequately expose the workings of power and privilege in a systematic way (Deans, 2002). In light of our feminist motivations, we need to continuously create spaces to foreground the value of experience and take seriously the process of cultivating relationships with students in ways that are both ethical and accountable.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_facbooks/1122/thumbnail.jp

A Transition to Using Online Learning Modules for Staff Education

This panel will discuss how a writing center transitioned staff education and training from being primarily onsite to being primarily online. We will review methods used to develop a series of online learning modules, how we conducted assessment, and how we plan to revise in the future

Memory and attention while SCUBA diving at shallow and deep depths: An open water study

SCUBA diving requires a high level of cognitive functioning, however, many divers anecdotally report poor memory and attentional skills while underwater. Few studies have documented cognitive deficits resulting from an open-water dive. Here, 23 divers completed both shallow (8 m) and deep (28 m) dives over two days in the open-water. The order of the dives was counterbalanced across participants. While at depth, they completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to assess anxiety levels, learned and were tested on a list of 36 words, and completed the trail making task (TMT) to assess executive functioning. They also gave saliva samples to measure cortisol levels before and after each dive and completed the Profile of Mood States survey after each dive on the boat. Divers remembered fewer words, took longer to complete the TMT, and exhibited higher cortisol levels following a deep dive; they reported no changes in anxiety or mood states. The results contribute to our understanding of how cognition is affected by pressurized environments and has implications for divers, as well as others who engage in high-altitude sports

Facilitating the analysis of a UK national blood service supply chain using distributed simulation

In an attempt to investigate blood unit ordering policies, researchers have created a discrete-event model of the UK National Blood Service (NBS) supply chain in the Southampton area of the UK. The model has been created using Simul8, a commercial-off-the-shelf discrete-event simulation package (CSP). However, as more hospitals were added to the model, it was discovered that the length of time needed to perform a single simulation severely increased. It has been claimed that distributed simulation, a technique that uses the resources of many computers to execute a simulation model, can reduce simulation runtime. Further, an emerging standardized approach exists that supports distributed simulation with CSPs. These CSP Interoperability (CSPI) standards are compatible with the IEEE 1516 standard The High Level Architecture, the defacto interoperability standard for distributed simulation. To investigate if distributed simulation can reduce the execution time of NBS supply chain simulation, this paper presents experiences of creating a distributed version of the CSP Simul8 according to the CSPI/HLA standards. It shows that the distributed version of the simulation does indeed run faster when the model reaches a certain size. Further, we argue that understanding the relationship of model features is key to performance. This is illustrated by experimentation with two different protocols implementations (using Time Advance Request (TAR) and Next Event Request (NER)). Our contribution is therefore the demonstration that distributed simulation is a useful technique in the timely execution of supply chains of this type and that careful analysis of model features can further increase performance

A mathematical modelling tool for predicting survival of individual patients following resection of glioblastoma: a proof of principle

The prediction of the outcome of individual patients with glioblastoma would be of great significance for monitoring responses to therapy. We hypothesise that, although a large number of genetic-metabolic abnormalities occur upstream, there are two ‘final common pathways' dominating glioblastoma growth – net rates of proliferation (ρ) and dispersal (D). These rates can be estimated from features of pretreatment MR images and can be applied in a mathematical model to predict tumour growth, impact of extent of tumour resection and patient survival. Only the pre-operative gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted (T1-Gd) and T2-weighted (T2) volume data from 70 patients with previously untreated glioblastoma were used to derive a ratio D/ρ for each patient. We developed a ‘virtual control' for each patient with the same size tumour at the time of diagnosis, the same ratio of net invasion to proliferation (D/ρ) and the same extent of resection. The median durations of survival and the shapes of the survival curves of actual and ‘virtual' patients subjected to biopsy or subtotal resection (STR) superimpose exactly. For those actually receiving gross total resection (GTR), as shown by post-operative CT, the actual survival curve lies between the ‘virtual' results predicted for 100 and 125% resection of the T1-Gd volume. The concordance between predicted (virtual) and actual survivals suggests that the mathematical model is realistic enough to allow precise definition of the effectiveness of individualised treatments and their site(s) of action on proliferation (ρ) and/or dispersal (D) of the tumour cells without knowledge of any other clinical or pathological information