Prejudice

This activity - Prejudice - is designed to expose students\u27 explicit prejudices. This activity should help students understand that everyone holds prejudices and to launch a discussion about the source of prejudice – especially ways to reduce it. Often, superordinate goals are a great way to bring together disparate groups, so the class does spend time talking about goals that may unite humanity. This activity uses a worksheet, “Acceptability of Prejudice,” from http://breakingprejudice.org/teaching/group-activities/acceptability-of-prejudice.html The worksheet was adapted by Mary Kite and Elizabeth Tobin from a 2002 article by Crandell, Eshleman, and O’Brien

Secondary Data Analysis Project

This activity is designed to give students an opportunity to apply what they have learned in statistics to a real dataset. This activity will help students apply what they have learned in statistics to real world data and answer their own research questions. Students will also practice reporting their results in a paper using APA format

Quantitative Jeopardy Feud

This activity - Quantitative Jeopardy Feud - is a method for using a game as a final exam

Developing Educational & Professional Training Synergies in Aviation-Related Academic Programs

While academic professional flight programs have successfully combined professional training and certifications (FAA flight ratings, e.g.) for decades, other academic disciplines have rarely followed this model. The authors posit that aviation-related disciplines such as Safety would also substantially benefit from greater incorporation of professional certification and training programs. Utilizing a content mapping technique, the authors evaluate the relationships between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 30-hour General Industry Certification Program and the program outcomes for an undergraduate degree in a safety discipline. Results will include discussion of whether curriculum taught within OSHA 30-Hour Training correlates with the curriculum taught in safety-related majors; whether specific lesson topics are taught in safety related courses as well, in particular courses such as Safety Program Management, and Human Factors and Ergonomics. Finally, the authors will discuss whether students are more likely to grasp and understand theoretical and practical concepts in safety-related academic courses as a result of taking an OSHA 30-Hour General Industry Certification Training Program

Comprehensive modelling study of ozonolysis of oleic acid aerosol based on real-time, online measurements of aerosol composition

The chemical composition of organic aerosols profoundly influences their atmospheric properties, but a detailed understanding of heterogeneous and in-particle reactivity is lacking. We present here a combined experimental and modeling study of the ozonolysis of oleic acid particles. An online mass spectrometry (MS) method, Extractive Electrospray Ionization (EESI), is used to follow the composition of the aerosol at a molecular level in real time; relative changes in the concentrations of both reactants and products are determined during aerosol aging. The results show evidence for multiple non-first-order reactions involving stabilized Criegee intermediates, including the formation of secondary ozonides and other oligomers. Offline liquid chromatography MS is used to confirm the online MS assignment of the monomeric and dimeric products. We explain the observed EESI-MS chemical composition changes, and chemical and physical data from previous studies, using a process-based aerosol chemistry simulation, the Pretty Good Aerosol Model (PG-AM). In particular, we extend previous studies of reactant loss by demonstrating success in reproducing the time dependence of product formation and the evolving particle size. This advance requires a comprehensive chemical scheme coupled to the partitioning of semivolatile products; relevant reaction and evaporation parameters have been refined using our new measurements in combination with PG-AM.This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC grant NE/I528277/1) and the European Research Council (ERC starting grant 279405 and the Atmospheric Chemistry Climate Interactions (ACCI) project, grant 267760). PTG thanks NCAS Climate for support

Viral adaptation to immune selection pressure by HLA class I–restricted CTL responses targeting epitopes in HIV frameshift sequences

CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)–mediated immune responses to HIV contribute to viral control in vivo. Epitopes encoded by alternative reading frame (ARF) peptides may be targeted by CTLs as well, but their frequency and in vivo relevance are unknown. Using host genetic (human leukocyte antigen [HLA]) and plasma viral sequence information from 765 HIV-infected subjects, we identified 64 statistically significant (q < 0.2) associations between specific HLA alleles and sequence polymorphisms in alternate reading frames of gag, pol, and nef that did not affect the regular frame protein sequence. Peptides spanning the top 20 HLA-associated imprints were used to test for ex vivo immune responses in 85 HIV-infected subjects and showed responses to 10 of these ARF peptides. The most frequent response recognized an HLA-A*03–restricted +2 frame–encoded epitope containing a unique A*03-associated polymorphism at position 6. Epitope-specific CTLs efficiently inhibited viral replication in vitro when viruses containing the wild-type sequence but not the observed polymorphism were tested. Mutating alternative internal start codons abrogated the CTL-mediated inhibition of viral replication. These data indicate that responses to ARF-encoded HIV epitopes are induced during natural infection, can contribute to viral control in vivo, and drive viral evolution on a population level

26th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2017): Part 3 - Meeting Abstracts - Antwerp, Belgium. 15–20 July 2017

This work was produced as part of the activities of FAPESP Research,\ud Disseminations and Innovation Center for Neuromathematics (grant\ud 2013/07699-0, S. Paulo Research Foundation). NLK is supported by a\ud FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship (grant 2016/03855-5). ACR is partially\ud supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong

What makes an event: temporal integration of stimuli or actions?

In this article, we ask what serves as the "glue" that temporarily links information to form an event in an active observer. We examined whether forming a single action event in an active observer is contingent on the temporal presentation of the stimuli (hence, on the temporal availability of the action information associated with these stimuli), or on the learned temporal execution of the actions associated with the stimuli, or on both. A partial-repetition paradigm was used to assess the boundaries of an event for which the temporal properties of the stimuli (i.e., presented either simultaneously or temporally separate) and the intended execution of the actions associated with these stimuli (i.e., executed as one, temporally integrated, response or as two temporally separate responses) were manipulated. The results showed that the temporal features of action execution determined whether one or more events were constructed; the temporal presentation of the stimuli (and hence the availability of their associated actions) did not. This suggests that the action representation, or "task goal," served as the "glue" in forming an event in an active observer. These findings emphasize the importance of action planning in event construction in an active observer

Late Afternoon Concurrent Sessions: Training and Education: Presentation: Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Simulation on Flight Training

Factors affecting the effectiveness of simulation on flight training. Jennah C. Perry and Jonathan M. Gallimore Flight simulation is commonly used to enhance flight training. Some of the key factors that contributed towards the use of flight simulation tools such as True Course Simulation (TCS) were examined. Three collegiate ground school courses tasked their students with using TCS. During the Spring 2015 semester, TCS was paid for by the university and participation was not mandatory rather incentivized through extra credit. During the Summer 2015 semester, the students purchased TCS and completion was required before the end of the semester. During the Fall 2015 semester, students were required to purchase, participate, and complete weekly assignments in TCS. Across all semesters we learned that incentives, financial investment, and TCS participation contributing to student’s grades, increased the use of flight simulation. We learned that students bypassed portions of TCS to quickly complete the simulations, instead of focusing on the quality of learning. Strategies are needed to encourage students to distribute their use of flight simulation evenly across a semester instead of mass practice before a due date. Approaches will be discussed for effectively encouraging distributed practice, investment in simulation, and methods for enhancing the quality of learning through simulation