Faith and Field: Christianity, the Environment, and Five Contemporary American Poets

Many poets write about the earth or even about God using the language of nature. And many poets and contemporary authors concern themselves with the state of the environment. However, the poetry of Wendell Berry, James Still, Li-Young Lee, Mary Oliver, and Charles Wright seems to engage different kinds of questions about how humans creatively respond to the earth. Collectively, their responses seem influenced by their connections with Christianity rather than any specific ecological agenda. In all of their poetry lies a sensibility about how humans should interact with the earth. All five of the poets seem to acknowledge humanity’s place on the earth as important without elevating humanity as the most important organism on the earth. Their work presupposes the existence of God or creator and because of this, engages the questions of being human in light of that Creator rather than as creators of their own environment or as the architecture of imagination. Their work offers an important insight into how we might live in harmony with all environments—agricultural, rural, wild or urban. Their work also suggests a connection between the Christian concept of worship, and a way of living that takes responsibility for human actions within creation. Their poetry recognizes the earth’s value as well as God’s presence and results in praise of both the beauty of creation and Creator

Finding and Using Open Educational Resources in k-12

Presentation from the Librarian to Librarian Networking Summi

The “Little White Lie:” An Exercise to Explore the Relevance of Diversity Curriculum

Compared to the previous decade, fewer incoming college students see racism as a major problem in America (Sax et al. 2001). While there are many complex variables that contribute to persistent racism, we argue that forms of both overt and covert racism are in part perpetuated by our language. This paper offers a concrete example of how educators in business schools in Jesuit institutions of higher education can infuse justice/social responsibility into our curricula (Spitzer 2010). The classroom activity, as described, is designed for a traditional face-to-face undergraduate classroom. Grounded in the principles of Ignatian pedagogy, this exercise provides a practical tool to contextualize the power of language of today’s Millennial college student, surfacing the connotations of power and privilege, while supporting student experience, reflection, and action

Creating and Publishing Open Educational Resources: A How-to

Presented at the Open Education Resources Conference at Central Carolina Community College in Sanford, NC.As Open Educational Resources (OER) become more popular on college campuses, educators, librarians, and instructional designers are being charged with more involvement in OER initiatives. Along with these initiatives are new tools used in creating, editing, and adapting OER. The presenters experimented with these tools to create an open text. In this session, we will explore some common tools used in OER publishing as well as key resources to support the publishing process. Familiarity with these tools can help individuals involved with OER initiatives to create OER, answer OER publishing questions, and support OER usage on campus.Project funded by J.Y. Joyner Library's Make a Difference Gran

OER Handbook for Eastern North Carolina

For this project, we developed an introductory handbook giving interested educators a basic overview of Open Educational Resources (OER), and suggestions on how to integrate them into their courses. As the popularity of OER has grown, the number of resources on OER have increased as well. Organizations, like the Open Textbook Network, have created guides on using, producing, and editing OER. Additionally, there are comprehensive books and Libguides on this topic. However, we identified a gap in these resources. The ideal audience for this handbook is someone who wants a basic understanding of OER: what they are, where to find them, and how to use them. Additionally, we produced a brief infographic detailing steps to create an OER.Project funded by J.Y. Joyner Library's Make a Difference Grant

Integrative Genomics Reveals the Genetics and Evolution of the Honey Bee’s Social Immune System

Social organisms combat pathogens through individual innate immune responses or through social immunity—behaviors among individuals that limit pathogen transmission within groups. Although we have a relatively detailed understanding of the genetics and evolution of the innate immune system of animals, we know little about social immunity. Addressing this knowledge gap is crucial for understanding how life-history traits influence immunity, and identifying if trade-offs exist between innate and social immunity. Hygienic behavior in the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, provides an excellent model for investigating the genetics and evolution of social immunity in animals. This heritable, colony-level behavior is performed by nurse bees when they detect and remove infected or dead brood from the colony. We sequenced 125 haploid genomes from two artificially selected highly hygienic populations and a baseline unselected population. Genomic contrasts allowed us to identify a minimum of 73 genes tentatively associated with hygienic behavior. Many genes were within previously discovered QTLs associated with hygienic behavior and were predictive of hygienic behavior within the unselected population. These genes were often involved in neuronal development and sensory perception in solitary insects. We found that genes associated with hygienic behavior have evidence of positive selection within honey bees (Apis), supporting the hypothesis that social immunity contributes to fitness. Our results indicate that genes influencing developmental neurobiology and behavior in solitary insects may have been co-opted to give rise to a novel and adaptive social immune phenotype in honey bees.York University Librarie

Extreme oceanographic forcing and coastal response due to the 2015-2016 El Nino

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is the dominant mode of interannual climate variability across the Pacific Ocean basin, with influence on the global climate. The two end members of the cycle, El Niño and La Niña, force anomalous oceanographic conditions and coastal response along the Pacific margin, exposing many heavily populated regions to increased coastal flooding and erosion hazards. However, a quantitative record of coastal impacts is spatially limited and temporally restricted to only the most recent events. Here we report on the oceanographic forcing and coastal response of the 2015–2016 El Niño, one of the strongest of the last 145 years. We show that winter wave energy equalled or exceeded measured historical maxima across the US West Coast, corresponding to anomalously large beach erosion across the region. Shorelines in many areas retreated beyond previously measured landward extremes, particularly along the sediment-starved California coast

Polo-like kinase 4 kinase activity limits centrosome overduplication by autoregulating its own stability

Plk4 phosphorylates itself in trans to prevent accumulation and self-limit kinase activity, which may be important for regulating centriole duplication