Letter from Jonathan Doty to James B. Finley

Doty writes to complain about the pastor appointed to his congregation. (Finley at this time is the Presiding Elder of the Sandusky District and Superintendent of the Wyandot Mission). Doty asks Finley for aid and begs him to attend the next quarterly meeting. Doty reports: The Society generally believes he has ruled with extreme partiality and we doubt his veracity in many instances. Abstract Number - 37https://digitalcommons.owu.edu/finley-letters/1036/thumbnail.jp

Teacher Performance Evaluation and Professional Growth in the Era of Educator Effectiveness in Maine

Maine is one of many states that undertook reform to teacher supervision and evaluation in the wake of public attention (e.g., Waiting for Superman) and federal pressure (e.g., NCLB Flexibility Waivers). The Maine Legislature passed An Act to Ensure Effective Teaching and School Leadership (2012), shifting from local discretion to greater state influence on the functions of formative supervision and summative evaluation. As school districts created systems to meet the state’s mandates, they combined growth and employment functions and navigated persistent challenges described in the literature on evaluation and supervision. The purpose of this study was to examine perspectives from the field as to major local changes in teacher performance evaluation (PE) and professional growth (PG), the ways in which local PE & PG systems were or were not beginning to improve teacher effectiveness, and perceptions of factors contributing to or providing barriers to this improvement. This mixed-method, multi-site case study captured eight school districts as they piloted or implemented systems; the sites were purposefully selected to yield a rural and a non-rural site for each of the professional practice models frequently chosen in Maine. Teachers, evaluators, and supervisors were interviewed (20 total); 302 practitioners in the same roles contributed survey data. Data were analyzed through multi-cycle coding (Saldaña, 2016), descriptive statistics, and basic inferential statistics. Major changes were underway, including implementation of new and more detailed professional standards, rubrics, and processes for supervision and evaluation. Sites were striving to put professional growth in the forefront and were perceiving positive gains with the detailed standards and cultural efforts, but some intentions such as increasing formative feedback to teachers were not yet realized. New resources were rare and the implementation of sites’ aspirations exposed the scarcity of time for all involved, especially for evaluators (e.g., Principals). Participants largely found the student growth data evaluation mandate unhelpful. Overall in this piloting and early implementation stage participants were not yet seeing the intended increase in effectiveness, but promising practices emerged along with rural differences and the need to address the scarcity of time for evaluative accuracy and formative growth

Induced CNS expression of CXCL1 augments neurologic disease in a murine model of multiple sclerosis via enhanced neutrophil recruitment.

Increasing evidence points to an important role for neutrophils in participating in the pathogenesis of the human demyelinating disease MS and the animal model EAE. Therefore, a better understanding of the signals controlling migration of neutrophils as well as evaluating the role of these cells in demyelination is important to define cellular components that contribute to disease in MS patients. In this study, we examined the functional role of the chemokine CXCL1 in contributing to neuroinflammation and demyelination in EAE. Using transgenic mice in which expression of CXCL1 is under the control of a tetracycline-inducible promoter active within glial fibrillary acidic protein-positive cells, we have shown that sustained CXCL1 expression within the CNS increased the severity of clinical and histologic disease that was independent of an increase in the frequency of encephalitogenic Th1 and Th17 cells. Rather, disease was associated with enhanced recruitment of CD11b+ Ly6G+ neutrophils into the spinal cord. Targeting neutrophils resulted in a reduction in demyelination arguing for a role for these cells in myelin damage. Collectively, these findings emphasize that CXCL1-mediated attraction of neutrophils into the CNS augments demyelination suggesting that this signaling pathway may offer new targets for therapeutic intervention

Massive Star and Star Cluster Formation

I review the status of massive star formation theories: accretion from collapsing, massive, turbulent cores; competitive accretion; and stellar collisions. I conclude the observational and theoretical evidence favors the first of these models. I then discuss: the initial conditions of star cluster formation as traced by infrared dark clouds; the cluster formation timescale; and comparison of the initial cluster mass function in different galactic environments.Comment: 7 pages, invited paper in proceedings of IAU Symposium 237, "Triggered Star Formation in a Turbulent ISM", eds. B. G. Elmegreen & J. Palou

Gamma Ray Detection Efficiency of GAGG Crystal Scintillator Using Three Tagged Gamma Ray Techniques

A CubeSat with a prototype scintillating detector with a sensitive volume of GAGG crystal is being developed with a possible launch date of 2025. Its purpose is to characterize the background signals that mimic the neutrino interaction that the nuSOL team is looking for. An important part of the characterization of the backgrounds and the expected real signal is understanding the gamma ray detection efficiency of the prototype detector. To this end we have used and developed three techniques to do an absolute measurement of gamma ray efficiency. The first is using EC sources that emit an X-ray before prompt emission of a de-excitation gamma ray, specifically Zn-65 and Mn-54. The second is using a beta + decay source wherein a positron annihilates on an atomic shell electron producing two back-to-back 511 keV gammas followed promptly by a de-excitation gamma, specifically Na-22. The third is using a gamma cascade of two near-simultaneous de-excitation gammas from the same nucleus, specifically from Co-60 decay.Comment: 27 pages. 29 Figures. This is soon to be a Nuclear Instruments and Methods Articl

Oritavancin vs Standard of Care for Treatment of Nonendovascular Gram-Positive Bloodstream Infections

BACKGROUND: Data is limited comparing oritavancin (ORT) to the standard-of-care (SOC) for the treatment gram-positive blood stream infections (BSI). METHODS: This was a retrospective study of all patients in the Veteran\u27s Affairs Health Care System treated with at least 1 dose of oritavancin or at least 5 days of vancomycin, daptomycin, ceftaroline, ampicillin, ampicillin-sulbactam, nafcillin, oxacillin, or cefazolin for a documented gram-positive BSI from 1 January 2015 to 30 June 2021. Patients with polymicrobial blood cultures or positive cultures from other sites were included if the organisms were sensitive to the incident antimicrobial; no concomitant antimicrobials could be used once the incident agent was started. Individuals were also excluded if they were diagnosed with endocarditis, had a neutrophil count 96-hours of treatment before the incident antimicrobial was started.The primary composite outcome was clinical failure, defined as all-cause mortality within 30-days from the end of therapy, or blood cultures positive for the incident organisms ≥72 hours after administration of the first dose and ≤30 days after the administration of the final dose of the study antimicrobial, or any drug or line-related readmissions within 30-days of hospital discharge. RESULTS: Two hundred-forty patients were identified for screening with 96 meeting criteria (27 in ORT and 69 in SOC groups). Baseline characteristics were generally balanced between groups except more patients in the ORT group received \u3e96-hours of treatment before the incident antimicrobial was started (70.3% (19/27) vs 13.04% 9/69); CONCLUSIONS: ORT appears to be a safe and effective option when directly compared to the SOC for non-endocarditis BSIs

Molecular Dynamics Studies of Dislocations in CdTe Crystals from a New Bond Order Potential

Cd1-xZnxTe (CZT) crystals are the leading semiconductors for radiation detection, but their application is limited by the high cost of detector-grade materials. High crystal costs primarily result from property non-uniformity that causes low manufacturing yield. While tremendous efforts have been made in the past to reduce Te inclusions / precipitates in CZT, this has not resulted in an anticipated improvement in material property uniformity. Moreover, it is recognized that in addition to Te particles, dislocation cells can also cause electric field perturbation and the associated property non-uniformity. Further improvement of the material, therefore, requires that dislocations in CZT crystals be understood and controlled. Here we use a recently developed CZT bond order potential to perform representative molecular dynamics simulations to study configurations, energies, and mobilities of 29 different types of possible dislocations in CdTe (i.e., x = 1) crystals. An efficient method to derive activation free energies and activation volumes of thermally activated dislocation motion will be explored. Our focus gives insight into understanding important dislocations in the material, and gives guidance toward experimental efforts for improving dislocation network structures in CZT crystals

NFIL3 Is a Regulator of IL-12 p40 in Macrophages and Mucosal Immunity

Regulation of innate inflammatory responses against the enteric microbiota is essential for the maintenance of intestinal homeostasis. Key participants in innate defenses are macrophages. In these studies, the basic leucine zipper protein, NFIL3, is identified as a regulatory transcription factor in macrophages, controlling IL-12 p40 production induced by bacterial products and the enteric microbiota. Exposure to commensal bacteria and bacterial products induced NFIL3 in cultured macrophages and in vivo. The Il12b promoter has a putative DNA-binding element for NFIL3. Basal and LPS-activated NFIL3 binding to this site was confirmed by chromatin immunoprecipitation. LPS-induced Il12b promoter activity was inhibited by NFIL3 expression and augmented by NFIL3-short hairpin RNA in an Il12b-bacterial artificial chromosome-GFP reporter macrophage line. Il12b inhibition by NFIL3 does not require IL-10 expression, but a C-terminal minimal repression domain is necessary. Furthermore, colonic CD11b+ lamina propria mononuclear cells from Nfil3−/− mice spontaneously expressed Il12b mRNA. Importantly, lower expression of NFIL3 was observed in CD14+ lamina propria mononuclear cells from Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis patients compared with control subjects. Likewise, no induction of Nfil3 was observed in colons of colitis-prone Il10−/− mice transitioned from germ-free to a conventional microbiota. In conclusion, these experiments characterize NFIL3 as an Il12b transcriptional inhibitor. Interactions of macrophages with the enteric microbiota induce NFIL3 to limit their inflammatory capacity. Furthermore, altered intestinal NFIL3 expression may have implications for the pathogenesis of experimental and human inflammatory bowel diseases