Good images, effective messages? Working with students and educators on academic practice understanding

Work at Northumbria University has focussed on activity that extends opportunities for students to engage directly with the skills development necessary for sound academic practice. This has included highly visual campaigns on the "Plagiarism trap", providing access to Turnitin plagiarism detection software, guides and sessions to highlight use of associated referencing tools. Sessions on a variety of topics, such as supporting study skills and reading originality reports, have been provided for students on taught, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. This provision has included students working on collaborative partners' sites and also those on research programmes. Alongside the activities with students, "designing out" approaches have been embedded in staff development within the educator community at Northumbria. Formative use of Turnitin is integrated throughout programmes and academic practice development is formally recognised within the University Learning and Teaching Strategy's focus on information literacy. This article outlines and reviews these activities in a critical institutional context and evaluates responses from a variety of students and educators to determine how effective these measures have been

Nescient Helix-Loop-Helix 2 Interacts with Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 to Regulate Transcription of Prohormone Convertase 1/3

Mechanisms controlling body weight involve gene regulation through the activation of signal transduction pathways. The Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) signal transduction pathway is the mechanism primarily used by leptin in the hypothalamus. The transcription factor nescient helix-loop-helix 2 (Nhlh2) is a downstream target of leptin signaling and is expressed in proopiomelanocortin arcuate neurons. Proopiomelanocortin is cleaved by prohormone convertase 1/3 (PC1/3) to produce peptides that regulate the body’s response to energy availability. Previous studies show that the PC1/3 promoter contains STAT3 sites mediating leptin-induced PC1/3 expression, and that Nhlh2 is required for hypothalamic PC1/3 expression because Nhlh2 knockout mice have reduced PC1/3 mRNA levels. Studies herein reveal that leptin-induced PC1/3 gene expression is abrogated in N2KO mice, and that in a hypothalamic cell line both STAT3 and Nhlh2 are required for the full transcriptional response of a PC1/3 reporter gene after leptin stimulation. Furthermore, it is shown that Nhlh2 binds to E-box motifs found adjacent to STAT3 sites in the PC1/3 promoter both in vitro and in chromatin immunoprecipitation assays. Finally, two different protein-protein interaction assays confirm the presence of a STAT3:Nhlh2 heterodimer on the PC1/3 promoter. The Nhlh2:STAT3 heterodimer may be an important transcriptional regulator of other hypothalamic genes in the leptin signaling pathway. These data confirm Nhlh2 as an integral element of the Janus kinase/STAT signaling pathway and are the first to demonstrate coordinated control of PC1/3 transcription by Nhlh2 and STAT3 after leptin stimulation