A Grounded theory approach to faculty’s perspective and patterns of online social presence

The purpose of this research study was to generate a grounded theory regarding the patterns and perceptions of nursing faculty in the formation of social processes in an online course. Employing a grounded theory approach, this researcher built upon the theoretical concepts of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). The CoI model illustrates the inner workings of the educational experience. The model consists of three main components: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. These three elements overlap to demonstrate how each factor influences the other forms of presence. This study sought to better understand the overlap of social presence and teaching presence that the model authors distinguished as climate factors. To explore the underpinnings of climate factors, this researcher interviewed online master\u27s level nurse educators, observed their online courses, and examined their course syllabi for creation of social presence. From the data emerged a substantive theory: humanizing was found to be the climate factor central to establishing social presence. Humanizing the course climate leads each member of the community to see the other members as real, thus enabling the establishment of online social presence. With the establishment of the core climate factor humanizing, there emerged theoretical concepts describing the patterns and perceptions of faculty initiating and maintaining online social presence. These theoretical concepts included faculty patterns: cyber role modeling, maintenance, and awareness. The faculty perceptions included: meaningful socialization, facilitate connections, and student control. Lastly, the faculty described a combination of pattern and perception, lifelines, to help students stay attached to the learning community. These findings suggest that faculty found value in creating a climate where the individual was acknowledged and made a prominent center-point of the course. Implications of this research resonate with the CoI model. By having a greater understanding of this area within the model, researchers can begin to quantify the level of humanizing within a course and establish best practices of climate creation for an online course

Topographically specific effects of ELF-1 on retinal axon guidance in vitro and retinal axon mapping in vivo

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

An exploration of concepts of community through a case study of UK university web production

The paper explores the inter-relation and differences between the concepts of occupational community, community of practice, online community and social network. It uses as a case study illustration the domain of UK university web site production and specifically a listserv for those involved in it. Different latent occupational communities are explored, and the potential for the listserv to help realize these as an active sense of community is considered. The listserv is not (for most participants) a tight knit community of practice, indeed it fails many criteria for an online community. It is perhaps best conceived as a loose knit network of practice, valued for information, implicit support and for the maintenance of weak ties. Through the analysis the case for using strict definitions of the theoretical concepts is made

What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works

This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his focus is the impact on individual identity. The applicability of the concept to the heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first century is questionable. The most recent work by Wenger – this time with McDermott and Snyder as coauthors – marks a distinct shift towards a managerialist stance. The proposition that managers should foster informal horizontal groups across organizational boundaries is in fact a fundamental redefinition of the concept. However it does identify a plausible, if limited, knowledge management (KM) tool. This paper discusses different interpretations of the idea of 'co-ordinating' communities of practice as a management ideology of empowerment

Transformations between 2MASS, SDSS and BVRI photometric systems: bridging the near infrared and optical

We present colour transformations for the conversion of the {\em 2MASS} photometric system to the Johnson-Cousins $UBVRI$ system and further into the {\em SDSS} $ugriz$ system. We have taken {\em SDSS} $gri$ magnitudes of stars measured with the 2.5-m telescope from $SDSS$ Data Release 5 (DR5), and $BVRI$ and $JHK_{s}$ magnitudes from Stetson's catalogue and \citet{Cu03}, respectively. We matched thousands of stars in the three photometric systems by their coordinates and obtained a homogeneous sample of 825 stars by the following constraints, which are not used in previous transformations: 1) the data are de-reddened, 2) giants are omitted, and 3) the sample stars selected are of the highest quality. We give metallicity, population type, and transformations dependent on two colours. The transformations provide absolute magnitude and distance determinations which can be used in space density evaluations at short distances where some or all of the {\em SDSS} $ugriz$ magnitudes are saturated. The combination of these densities with those evaluated at larger distances using {\em SDSS} $ugriz$ photometry will supply accurate Galactic model parameters, particularly the local space densities for each population.Comment: 11 pages, including 10 figures and 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Cold-adapted recombinants of influenza a virus in MDCK cells I. Development and characterization of A/Ann Arbor/6/60 x A/Alaska /6/77 recombinant viruses

Recombinant influenza viruses made at 25 and 33[deg] in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells using the cold-adapted A/Ann Arbor/6/60 virus and the wild-type A/Alaska/6/77 virus were biologically and genetically analyzed. Eight recombinants were separated into two phenotypic groups based on cold-adapted (ca) and temperature-sensitive (ts) markers: ca and ts, ca and non-ts. The ca recombinants showed different degrees of cold adaptibility (DOCA) and different patterns of virus growth at 25[deg]. All recombinants contained at most three genes from the cold variant A/Ann Arbor/6/60 virus (triple-gene recombinant) and most contained two or one gene from the cold variant parent (double-gene and single-gene recombinants, respectively). Further, the same three genes, RNA2, RNA3, and RNA5 (NA) were the only ca A/Ann Arbor/6/60 genes found in the various recombinants. Two clones contained all three A/Ann Arbor/6/60 genes and were both cold-adapted (ca) and temperature-sensitive (ts). All other recombinant clones were ca and non-ts, and contained RNA2 and/or RNA5 (NA). Each set of single-gene ca recombinants correlated with a different, but specific cold-adapted characteristic exhibited by their growth curves at 25[deg]. Single-gene recombinants containing only the RNA2 of A/Ann Arbor/6/60 virus showed rapid growth early in infection and intermediate final virus yield (between the titer of virus yield for the ca A/Ann Arbor/6/60 virus and the wild-type A/Alaska/6/77 virus; while the single-gene recombinant containing only the RNA5 (NA) of A/Ann Arbor/6/60 virus showed slow growth early in infection, but a high final virus yield (equivalent to that of the ca A/Ann Arbor/6/60 parent). The double-gene recombinant containing both these genes showed both rapid growth early in infection and a high final virus yield. Thus, cold adaptation can be transferred to recombinant viruses by at least two independent genes each of which can confer the cold-adaptive property by its own pathway. The genetic basis for temperature sensitivity involves both RNA2 and RNA3, but remains ambiguous in the absence of a single-gene recombinant containing only RNA3 of the cold variant.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23988/1/0000237.pd

Burden of comorbidity in systemic lupus erythematosus in the UK, 1999–2012

Objective: To estimate the comorbidity associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the UK during 1999–2012. Methods: A retrospective cohort study using the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink was conducted. Prevalent cases of SLE were matched by age, sex, and practice to 4 controls. The incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD), stroke, end-stage renal failure (ESRF), cancer, osteoporosis, and infection were calculated per 1,000 person-years during the study period and compared to controls using Poisson regression to obtain incidence rate ratios (IRRs). IRRs were adjusted for baseline age, sex, body mass index, smoking status, alcohol intake, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, Charlson Index scores, and prednisolone use. Age- and sex-specific incidence rates were calculated. Results: When comparing the 7,732 prevalent cases of SLE with 28,079 matched controls, the unadjusted IRR was 1.98 (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.69–2.31) for CVD, 1.81 (95% CI 1.49–2.19) for stroke, 7.81 (95% CI 4.68–13.05) for ESRF, 1.28 (95% CI 1.17–1.40) for cancer, 2.53 (95% CI 2.27–2.82) for osteoporosis, and 1.49 (95% CI 1.40–1.58) for infection. After adjustment, the rates remained significantly higher in cases. Men with SLE had higher rates of CVD, stroke, and cancer, whereas women had higher rates of infection and osteoporosis. Those at younger ages were at the greatest relative risk compared with controls. Cases had significantly higher Charlson Index scores at baseline. Conclusion: People with SLE in the UK have a greater burden of comorbidity and are more likely to develop CVD, stroke, ESRF, cancer, osteoporosis, and infection than people of the same age and sex

Acetylated tubulin is essential for touch sensation in mice

At its most fundamental level, touch sensation requires the translation of mechanical energy into mechanosensitive ion channel opening, thereby generating electro-chemical signals. Our understanding of this process, especially how the cytoskeleton influences it, remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that mice lacking the a-tubulin acetyltransferase Atat1 in sensory neurons display profound deficits in their ability to detect mechanical stimuli. We show that all cutaneous afferent subtypes, including nociceptors have strongly reduced mechanosensitivity upon Atat1 deletion, and that consequently, mice are largely insensitive to mechanical touch and pain. We establish that this broad loss of mechanosensitivity is dependent upon the acetyltransferase activity of Atat1, which when absent leads to a decrease in cellular elasticity. By mimicking a-tubulin acetylation genetically, we show both cellular rigidity and mechanosensitivity can be restored in Atat1 deficient sensory neurons. Hence, our results indicate that by influencing cellular stiffness, atubulin acetylation sets the force required for touch