Learning design templates – a pedagogical just-in-time support tool

An ongoing obstacle to the widespread adoption of effective and engaging online teaching is the degree of pedagogical understanding required by the academic to make the most of the available online tools. This paper describes the Learning Design Templates project at Queensland University of Technology, which provides academics with templates that embed specific pedagogical principles, for example problem based learning, work integrated learning and creative thinking skills. These ‘learning design templates’ consist of online tools, examples and suggestions that are carefully structured around generic learning activities. The templates can be customised to suit a range of subject disciplines, and are situated within an educational framework. This short paper outlines the rationale and process undertaken to create the learning design templates

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

What your learning management system is telling you about supporting your teachers: monitoring system information to improve support for teachers using educational technologies at Queensland University Of Technology

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, is implementing several approaches to support staff in their online teaching activities, using system information captured from the University’s online learning and teaching system (OLT). This paper outlines some data harvesting techniques adopted by QUT for improving support for teachers’ use of educational technologies. The existing system logs and the databases developed at QUT have led to more proactive support service and improved system usability

Learning design templates – a pedagogical just-in-time\ud support tool

An ongoing obstacle to the widespread adoption of effective and engaging online\ud teaching is the degree of pedagogical understanding required by the academic to\ud make the most of the available online tools. This paper describes the Learning\ud Design Templates project at Queensland University of Technology, which provides\ud academics with templates that embed specific pedagogical principles, for example\ud problem based learning, work integrated learning and creative thinking skills. These\ud ‘learning design templates’ consist of online tools, examples and suggestions that are\ud carefully structured around generic learning activities. The templates can be\ud customised to suit a range of subject disciplines, and are situated within an\ud educational framework. This short paper outlines the rationale and process\ud undertaken to create the learning design templates

Word frequency and word likeness mirror effects in episodic recognition memory

Estes and Maddox (2002) suggested that the word frequency mirror effect in episodic recognition memory might be due to word likeness rather than to the frequency of experience with a word per se. We examined their suggestion using a factorial manipulation of frequency and neighborhood density, a measure used in lexical memory research to measure orthographic word likeness. For study with no specified task, main effects of density and frequency were in the mirror order, confirming the hypothesized mirror effect of word likeness but not its role in producing the frequency mirror effect. Lexical decision study increased the size of both mirror effects, even though the density manipulation had a negligible effect on lexical decision performance for words. Post hoc analyses showed that neither mirror effect could be explained by differences in lower order measures of word likeness (letter and bigram frequency). The joint orders of frequency and density results were mirrored across new and old conditions in accordance with attention likelihood theory (ALT), but density effects on z-ROC slope suggest that ALT may require extension to accommodate the effect of word likeness on response confidence

Methane-carbon budget of a ferruginous meromictic lake and implications for marine methane dynamics on early Earth

The greenhouse gas methane (CH4) contributed to a warm climate that maintained liquid water and sustained Earth’s habitability in the Precambrian despite the faint young sun. The viability of methanogenesis (ME) in ferruginous environments, however, is debated, as iron reduction can potentially outcompete ME as a pathway of organic carbon remineralization (OCR). Here, we document that ME is a dominant OCR process in Brownie Lake, Minnesota (midwestern United States), which is a ferruginous (iron-rich, sulfate-poor) and meromictic (stratified with permanent anoxic bottom waters) system. We report ME accounting for ≥90% and >9% ± 7% of the anaerobic OCR in the water column and sediments, respectively, and an overall particulate organic carbon loading to CH4 conversion efficiency of ≥18% ± 7% in the anoxic zone of Brownie Lake. Our results, along with previous reports from ferruginous systems, suggest that even under low primary productivity in Precambrian oceans, the efficient conversion of organic carbon would have enabled marine CH4 to play a major role in early Earth’s biogeochemical evolution.This article is published as Sajjad A. Akam, Pei-Chuan Chuang, Sergei Katsev, Chad Wittkop, Michelle Chamberlain, Andrew W. Dale, Klaus Wallmann, Adam J. Heathcote, Elizabeth D. Swanner; Methane-carbon budget of a ferruginous meromictic lake and implications for marine methane dynamics on early Earth. Geology 2024; doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G51713.1. © 2024 The Authors.This paper is published under the terms of the CC-BY license

Methane-carbon budget of a ferruginous meromictic lake and implications for marine methane dynamics on early Earth

The greenhouse gas methane (CH4) contributed to a warm climate that maintained liquid water and sustained Earth’s habitability in the Precambrian despite the faint young sun. The viability of methanogenesis (ME) in ferruginous environments, however, is debated, as iron reduction can potentially outcompete ME as a pathway of organic carbon remineralization (OCR). Here, we document that ME is a dominant OCR process in Brownie Lake, Minnesota (midwestern United States), which is a ferruginous (iron-rich, sulfate-poor) and meromictic (stratified with permanent anoxic bottom waters) system. We report ME accounting for ≥90% and >9% ± 7% of the anaerobic OCR in the water column and sediments, respectively, and an overall particulate organic carbon loading to CH4 conversion efficiency of ≥18% ± 7% in the anoxic zone of Brownie Lake. Our results, along with previous reports from ferruginous systems, suggest that even under low primary productivity in Precambrian oceans, the efficient conversion of organic carbon would have enabled marine CH4 to play a major role in early Earth’s biogeochemical evolution

Carriage of a tumor necrosis factor polymorphism amplifies the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 attributed risk of primary biliary cirrhosis:evidence for a gene-gene interaction

Common genetic variants significantly influence complex diseases such as primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). We recently reported an association between PBC and a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs231725) of the immunoreceptor gene cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4). We hypothesized that PBC risk attributed to this polymorphism might be increased by propensity to an overly robust inflammatory response. Thus, we examined its potential interaction with the commonly studied −308AG promoter polymorphism (rs1800629) of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) gene for which the variant TNF2A allele causes increased TNF production. The polymorphisms were genotyped in 866 PBC patients and 761 controls from independent US and Canadian registries; the effects of individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and their interaction on PBC risk was assessed by logistic regression. The reported association of PBC with the CTLA4 “A/A” genotype was replicated in the Canadian cohort and significant for PBC risk in the combined data (odds ratio [OR], 1.68; P = 0.0005). TNF2A allele frequency was elevated in PBC patients, but only reached borderline significance using the combined data (OR, 1.21; P = 0.042). Analysis showed that TNF2A carriage was significantly increased in CTLA4 “A/A” PBC patients compared with CTLA4 “A/A” controls (39.7% versus 16.5%, P = 0.0004); no apparent increase of TNF2A carriage was noted in CTLA4 “A/G” or “G/G” individuals. Finally, interaction under a logistic model was highly significant, as TNF2A carriage in combination with the CTLA4 “A/A” genotype was present in 6.5% of PBC patients, compared with 1.7% of controls (OR, 3.98; P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: TNF2A amplifies the CTLA4 rs231725 “A/A” genotype risk for PBC. Although the mechanisms remain unclear, the premise that deficiency in T-cell regulation resulting in an increased risk of PBC is amplified by overexpression of an important proinflammatory cytokine provides a basis for future functional studies