Getting Started with Blended Learning Workshop

New to blended learning? Interested in the idea of blended a course but not sure how to get started? This workshop is for you. We will focus on two questions: Why blend a course? How do I get started? Prior to the workshop, participants will be asked to review materials related to the first question, with ideas for improving learning outcomes, increasing engagement, and incorporating highly effective pedagogical practices into a course through blended learning. We will discuss these ideas in person to kick-off the workshop, and then participants will work individually and in small groups to identify pedagogical goals or challenges for their courses, brainstorm strategies for using blended learning to achieve those goals and/or address those challenges, and develop concrete, manageable next steps for getting started

Getting Started with Blended Learning Workshop

New to blended learning? Interested in the idea of blended a course but not sure how to get started? This workshop is for you. We will focus on two questions: Why blend a course? How do I get started? Prior to the workshop, participants will be asked to review materials related to the first question, with ideas for improving learning outcomes, increasing engagement, and incorporating highly effective pedagogical practices into a course through blended learning. We will discuss these ideas in person to kick-off the workshop, and then participants will work individually and in small groups to identify pedagogical goals or challenges for their courses, brainstorm strategies for using blended learning to achieve those goals and/or address those challenges, and develop concrete, manageable next steps for getting started

Neural Correlates of Competing Fear Behaviors Evoked by an Innately Aversive Stimulus

Environment and experience influence defensive behaviors, but the neural circuits mediating such effects are not well understood. We describe a new experimental model in which either flight or freezing reactions can be elicited from mice by innately aversive ultrasound. Flight and freezing are negatively correlated, suggesting a competition between fear motor systems. An unfamiliar environment or a previous aversive event, moreover, can alter the balance between these behaviors. To identify potential circuits controlling this competition, global activity patterns in the whole brain were surveyed in an unbiased manner by c-fos in situ hybridization, using novel experimental and analytical methods. Mice predominantly displaying freezing behavior had preferential neural activity in the lateral septum ventral and several medial and periventricular hypothalamic nuclei, whereas mice predominantly displaying flight had more activity in cortical, amygdalar, and striatal motor areas, the dorsolateral posterior zone of the hypothalamus, and the vertical limb of the diagonal band. These complementary patterns of c-fos induction, taken together with known connections between these structures, suggest ways in which the brain may mediate the balance between these opponent defensive behaviors

Post-Baccalaureate Support in Blended Learning: Using Our Experiences as Recent Graduates to Contribute to Change in Higher Education

Creating successful courses in higher education requires support from a variety of contributors with a wide range of perspectives and skill sets. In this session, two presenters will share their experience as Post-Baccalaureate Fellows. We will address the numerous opportunities for contribution as well as the unique challenges that come with occupying this necessarily ambiguous space. In the context of the Five College Consortium, the Post-Bacc position serves to give recent graduates experience in professional academic work settings, allowing us to pursue professional development opportunities, engage collaboratively with different groups of people, and contribute to the emerging fields of blended learning- from a course on media in cars to the Arabic language classroom. After briefly defining the unique nature of the position, we will address the variety of ways we interact with different constituents. First, we will discuss how we connect with faculty members and staff members on each grant-funded course development project we support. Then we will talk about how these connections that we have established and strengthened are used to identify and fill in gaps in project workflows. Next, we will delve into arguably one of the more important roles we play: creating sustainable structures so that the projects and connections we have made will remain long after our short-term grants and shorter-term positions end. As our conclusion, we’ll share some reflections on our time as Post-Baccs, particularly the ways in which the skills we are gaining from this position can be used in future positions, as well as feedback from students, faculty members, and staff members

A filtered database search algorithm for endogenous serum protein carbonyl modifications in a mouse model of inflammation

During inflammation, the resulting oxidative stress can damage surrounding host tissue, forming protein-carbonyls. The SJL mouse is an experimental animal model used to assess in vivo toxicological responses to reactive oxygen and nitrogen species from inflammation. The goals of this study were to identify the major serum proteins modified with a carbonyl functionality and to identify the types of carbonyl adducts. To select for carbonyl-modified proteins, serum proteins were reacted with an aldehyde reactive probe that biotinylated the carbonyl modification. Modified proteins were enriched by avidin affinity and identified by two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem MS. To identify the carbonyl modification, tryptic peptides from serum proteins were subjected to avidin affinity and the enriched modified peptides were analyzed by liquid chromatography tandem MS. It was noted that the aldehyde reactive probe tag created tag-specific fragment ions and neutral losses, and these extra features in the mass spectra inhibited identification of the modified peptides by database searching. To enhance the identification of carbonyl-modified peptides, a program was written that used the tag-specific fragment ions as a fingerprint (in silico filter program) and filtered the mass spectrometry data to highlight only modified peptides. A de novo-like database search algorithm was written (biotin peptide identification program) to identify the carbonyl-modified peptides. Although written specifically for our experiments, this software can be adapted to other modification and enrichment systems. Using these routines, a number of lipid peroxidation-derived protein carbonyls and direct side-chain oxidation proteins carbonyls were identified in SJL mouse serum.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NCI Program Project Grant CA26731)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS grant P30 ES002109

Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites

Waste plastics represent major environmental and economic burdens due to their ubiquity, slow breakdown rates, and inadequacy of current recycling routes. Polyethylenes are particularly problematic, because they lack robust recycling approaches despite being the most abundant plastics in use today. We report a novel chemical and biological approach for the rapid conversion of polyethylenes into structurally complex and pharmacologically active compounds. We present conditions for aerobic, catalytic digestion of polyethylenes collected from post‐consumer and oceanic waste streams, creating carboxylic diacids that can then be used as a carbon source by the fungus Aspergillus nidulans. As a proof of principle, we have engineered strains of A. nidulans to synthesize the fungal secondary metabolites asperbenzaldehyde, citreoviridin, and mutilin when grown on these digestion products. This hybrid approach considerably expands the range of products to which polyethylenes can be upcycled

Deep learning quantification of percent steatosis in donor liver biopsy frozen sections

BACKGROUND: Pathologist evaluation of donor liver biopsies provides information for accepting or discarding potential donor livers. Due to the urgent nature of the decision process, this is regularly performed using frozen sectioning at the time of biopsy. The percent steatosis in a donor liver biopsy correlates with transplant outcome, however there is significant inter- and intra-observer variability in quantifying steatosis, compounded by frozen section artifact. We hypothesized that a deep learning model could identify and quantify steatosis in donor liver biopsies. METHODS: We developed a deep learning convolutional neural network that generates a steatosis probability map from an input whole slide image (WSI) of a hematoxylin and eosin-stained frozen section, and subsequently calculates the percent steatosis. Ninety-six WSI of frozen donor liver sections from our transplant pathology service were annotated for steatosis and used to train (n = 30 WSI) and test (n = 66 WSI) the deep learning model. FINDINGS: The model had good correlation and agreement with the annotation in both the training set (r of 0.88, intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] of 0.88) and novel input test sets (r = 0.85 and ICC=0.85). These measurements were superior to the estimates of the on-service pathologist at the time of initial evaluation (r = 0.52 and ICC=0.52 for the training set, and r = 0.74 and ICC=0.72 for the test set). INTERPRETATION: Use of this deep learning algorithm could be incorporated into routine pathology workflows for fast, accurate, and reproducible donor liver evaluation. FUNDING: Mid-America Transplant Society

BMP signaling is required for cell cleavage in preimplantation-mouse embryos.

The mechanisms regulating cell division during development of the mouse pre-implantation embryo are poorly understood. We have investigated whether bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling is involved in controlling cell cycle during mouse pre-implantation development. We mapped and quantitated the dynamic activities of BMP signaling through high-resolution immunofluorescence imaging combined with a 3D segmentation method. Immunostaining for phosphorylated Smad1/5/8 shows that BMP signaling is activated in mouse embryos as early as the 4-cell stage, and becomes spatially restricted by late blastocyst stage. Perturbation of BMP signaling in preimplantation mouse embryos, whether by treatment with a small molecule inhibitor, with Noggin protein, or by overexpression of a dominant-negative BMP receptor, indicates that BMPs regulate cell cleavage up to the morula stage. These results indicate that BMP signaling is active during mouse pre-implantation development and is required for cell cleavage in preimplantation mouse embryos