OER Immersive Video Use and Production in COM1010

This unit is designed for a Public Speaking course and uses immersive technologies, found as OERs, which bring attention to the needs of Baruch students’ communities. By participating in this unit, students will spend time exploring OERs, and then receive training in video capture and editing tools including 360 cameras and Adobe Premier Pro to produce their own OERs which will be viewed by future classes. They will be partnered with the Baruch Maker Hub to explore how these tools have been used to produce public advocacy campaigns, and then in the classroom they will story board, rehearse and edit their own campaigns. They will then return to the Maker Hub for filming, editing, and viewing their productions. This unit aims to enhance student experiential learning by focusing on doing good in the world, as well as envisioning new career paths. Through engagements, such as this unit, taken early in the undergraduate curriculum, students will know what tools and trainings are available to them. They will gain rudimentary competence in those skills, and may work to overcome the economic divides at Baruch in which students enter college with radically different access to, skill with, and ability to produce using immersive technologies

Experience affects immediate early gene expression in response to conspecific call notes in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant and Discovery Accelerator Supplement, an Alberta Ingenuity Fund (AIF) New Faculty Grant, a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) New Opportunities Fund (NOF), and Infrastructure Operating Fund (IOF) grants along with start-up funding and CFI partner funding from the University of Alberta (UofA) to C.B.S. L.M.G. was supported by an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship (IWKMS) at UofA and is currently supported by a Newton International Fellowship jointly run by the Royal Society and the British Academy.Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) produce numerous vocalizations, including the acoustically complex chick-a-dee call that is composed of A, B, C, and D notes. D notes are longer in duration and lower in frequency than the other note types and contain information regarding flock and species identification. Adult wild-caught black-capped chickadees have been shown to have similar amounts of immediate early gene (IEG) expression following playback of vocalizations with harmonic-like acoustic structure, similar to D notes. Here we examined how different environmental experiences affect IEG response to conspecific D notes. We hand-reared black-capped chickadees under three conditions: (1) with adult conspecifics, (2) with adult heterospecific mountain chickadees, and (3) without adults. We presented all hand-reared birds and a control group of field-reared black-capped chickadees, with conspecific D notes and quantified IEG expression in the caudomedial mesopallium (CMM) and caudomedial nidopallium (NCM). We found that field-reared birds that heard normal D notes had a similar neural response as a group of field-reared birds that heard playback of reversed D notes. Field-reared birds that heard normal D notes also had a similar neural response as birds reared with adult conspecifics. Birds reared without adults had a significantly reduced IEG response, whereas the IEG expression in birds reared with heterospecifics was at intermediate levels between birds reared with conspecifics and birds reared without adults. Although acoustic characteristics have been shown to drive IEG expression, our results demonstrate that experience with adults or normal adult vocalizations is also an important factor.PostprintPeer reviewe

The role of spirituality in treatment of patients and work of health care workers

Duhovnost kao specifična dimenzija čovjekove osobnosti u medicini je prepoznata tek u posljednjih dvadesetak godina kao važan čimbenik u procesu izlječenja i odnosa zdravstveni djelatnik – bolesnik. U tu su svrhu provedena brojna istraživanja među pacijentima glede njihova religioznog svjetonazora i vjerničke duhovnosti kako bi se proniknulo što dublje i stekle što sveobuhvatnije spoznaje o utjecaju vjere i duhovnosti na ljudsko zdravlje. Kolika je važnost duhovnosti u suvremenoj medicini, posebice psihologiji, svjedoči i činjenica što su mnoge svjetske akademske institucije uvrstile duhovnost u programe redovite izobrazbe zdravstvenih djelatnika. Djelovanje zdravstvenog osoblja temelji se na kvalitetnom međuljudskom odnosu prema bolesnicima o kojima skrbe. Ovaj je odnos obilježen “povjerenjem” čovjeka koji je pogođen bolešću, ali se uzda u “savjest” i stručnost liječnika koji ga liječi i medicinske sestre koja ga njeguje. Ovaj se interpersonalni odnos temelji na pretpostavci da bolesnik nije samo “klinički slučaj”. Odnos, dakle, mora biti mnogo dublji, cjelovitiji, jer nije bolesno samo njegovo tijelo, nego je bolest zahvatila cijelu osobu, sa svim njezinim duševnim i duhovnim komponentama. Upravo zato zdravstveno osoblje treba biti osposobljeno prepoznati i procijeniti duhovne potrebe pacijenta. Dužnost je zdravstvenog djelatnika stvoriti ozračje međusobnog poštovanja kako bi stekao povjerenje bolesnika koji će potom očitovati svoje tegobe i osjećaje pa i duhovne potrebe. Zdravstveni djelatnik treba biti čuvar i služitelj ljudskoga života, što pretpostavlja integralni pristup fenomenu zdravlja i bolesti. Bez obzira na osobno vjersko uvjerenje ili svjetonazor zdravstveni je djelatnik pozvan u svom profesionalnom odnosu prema bolesniku poštivati i zagovarati temeljne moralne vrijednosti: dostojanstvo ljudske osobe i nepovrjedivost ljudskoga života na svim razinama: tjelesnoj, emocionalnoj, društvenoj i duhovnoj. Za liječenje bolesti, dakle, prijeko je potrebno uzeti u obzir ne samo tjelesne, psihološke i društvene, nego i duhovne čimbenike.Spirituality as a specific dimension of human personality has been recognized in medicine not earlier than the last twenty years as an important factor in the healing process and the relationship between the health care worker and patient. For this purpose numerous researches have been carried out among the patients with regard to their religious worldview and spirituality in order to gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of the influence of religion and spirituality on human health. The importance of spirituality in contemporary medicine, especially in psychology, can be seen in the fact that numerous academic institutions in the world have included spirituality in the educational programmes for health care professionals. The activities of health care workers are founded on a good quality relationship to the patients they care for. This relationship is marked by the confidence of the person affected by a disease who believes in the doctor’s conscience and expertise and the nurse’s care. This interpersonal relationship is based on the assumption that the patient is not just a clinical case. Therefore, the relationship should be much deeper and more comprehensive, because not only his body is ill but illness has affected the whole person with his/her mental and spiritual components. That is why health care workers should be qualified to recognize and assess the spiritual needs of the patient. It is the duty of health care workers to create an atmosphere of mutual respect in order to gain the trust of patients who will then manifest their problems and feelings as well as their spiritual needs. The health worker should be a guardian and minister of human life which implies an integral approach to the phenomenon of health and disease. Regardless of personal religious belief or worldview, a health care worker is called in his professional relationship to the patient to respect and advocate the fundamental moral values: human dignity and inviolability of human life at all levels: physical, emotional, social and spiritual. Therefore, in the treatment of diseases it is necessary to take into account not only physical, psychological and social factors, but spiritual factors as well

Paired quantitative and qualitative assessment of the replication-competent HIV-1 reservoir and comparison with integrated proviral DNA

HIV-1-infected individuals harbor a latent reservoir of infected CD4⁺ T cells that is not eradicated by antiretroviral therapy (ART). This reservoir presents the greatest barrier to an HIV-1 cure and has remained difficult to characterize, in part, because the vast majority of integrated sequences are defective and incapable of reactivation. To characterize the replication-competent reservoir, we have combined two techniques, quantitative viral outgrowth and qualitative sequence analysis of clonal outgrowth viruses. Leukapheresis samples from four fully ART-suppressed, chronically infected individuals were assayed at two time points separated by a 4- to 6-mo interval. Overall, 54% of the viruses emerging from the latent reservoir showed gp160 env sequences that were identical to at least one other virus. Moreover, 43% of the env sequences from viruses emerging from the reservoir were part of identical groups at the two time points. Groups of identical expanded sequences made up 54% of proviral DNA, and, as might be expected, the sequences of replication-competent viruses in the active reservoir showed limited overlap with integrated proviral DNA, most of which is known to represent defective viruses. Finally, there was an inverse correlation between proviral DNA clone size and the probability of reactivation, suggesting that replication-competent viruses are less likely to be found among highly expanded provirus-containing cell clones

ZENK expression in the auditory pathway of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) as a function of D note number and duty cycle of chick-a-dee calls

Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) use their namesake chick-a-dee call for multiple functions, altering the features of the call depending on context. For example, duty cycle (the proportion of time filled by vocalizations) and fine structure traits (e.g., number of D notes) can encode contextual factors, such as predator size and food quality. Wilson and Mennill (2011) found that chickadees show stronger behavioral responses to playback of chick-a-dee calls with higher duty cycles, but not to the number of D notes. That is, independent of the number of D notes in a call, but dependent on the overall proportion of time filled with vocalization, birds responded more to higher duty cycle playback compared to lower duty cycle playback. Here we presented chickadees with chick-a-dee calls that contained either two D (referred to hereafter as 2 D) notes with a low duty cycle, 2 D notes with a high duty cycle, 10 D notes with a high duty cycle, or 2 D notes with a high duty cycle but played in reverse (a non-signaling control). We then measured ZENK expression in the auditory nuclei where perceptual discrimination is thought to occur. Based on the behavioral results of Wilson and Mennill, 2011, we predicted we would observe the highest ZENK expression in response to forward-playing calls with high duty cycles; we predicted we would observe no significant difference in ZENK expression between forward-playing high duty cycle playbacks (2 D or 10 D). We found no significant difference between forward-playing 2 D and 10 D high duty cycle playbacks. However, contrary to our predictions, we did not find any effects of altering the duty cycle or note number presented

Defining and quantifying the resilience of responses to disturbance: a conceptual and modelling approach from soil science

There are several conceptual definitions of resilience pertaining to environmental systems and, even if resilience is clearly defined in a particular context, it is challenging to quantify. We identify four characteristics of the response of a system function to disturbance that relate to “resilience”: (1) degree of return of the function to a reference level; (2) time taken to reach a new quasi-stable state; (3) rate (i.e. gradient) at which the function reaches the new state; (4) cumulative magnitude of the function (i.e. area under the curve) before a new state is reached. We develop metrics to quantify these characteristics based on an analogy with a mechanical spring and damper system. Using the example of the response of a soil function (respiration) to disturbance, we demonstrate that these metrics effectively discriminate key features of the dynamic response. Although any one of these characteristics could define resilience, each may lead to different insights and conclusions. The salient properties of a resilient response must thus be identified for different contexts. Because the temporal resolution of data affects the accurate determination of these metrics, we recommend that at least twelve measurements are made over the temporal range for which the response is expected

Search for anomalous t t-bar production in the highly-boosted all-hadronic final state

A search is presented for a massive particle, generically referred to as a Z', decaying into a t t-bar pair. The search focuses on Z' resonances that are sufficiently massive to produce highly Lorentz-boosted top quarks, which yield collimated decay products that are partially or fully merged into single jets. The analysis uses new methods to analyze jet substructure, providing suppression of the non-top multijet backgrounds. The analysis is based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns. Upper limits in the range of 1 pb are set on the product of the production cross section and branching fraction for a topcolor Z' modeled for several widths, as well as for a Randall--Sundrum Kaluza--Klein gluon. In addition, the results constrain any enhancement in t t-bar production beyond expectations of the standard model for t t-bar invariant masses larger than 1 TeV.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics; this version includes a minor typo correction that will be submitted as an erratu

Measurement of the t t-bar production cross section in the dilepton channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The t t-bar production cross section (sigma[t t-bar]) is measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV in data collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.3 inverse femtobarns. The measurement is performed in events with two leptons (electrons or muons) in the final state, at least two jets identified as jets originating from b quarks, and the presence of an imbalance in transverse momentum. The measured value of sigma[t t-bar] for a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV is 161.9 +/- 2.5 (stat.) +5.1/-5.0 (syst.) +/- 3.6(lumi.) pb, consistent with the prediction of the standard model.Comment: Replaced with published version. Included journal reference and DO