Saving Faculty Time, Saving Students Money

This presentation was for Teaching & Learning Day, hosted by the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning at the University of Central Florida. The session shared how the UCF Libraries and Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) can help faculty connect to free (open or library-sourced) resources and tools to find, adapt, or author course materials and reduce student out-of-pocket cost to zero ($0). Session activities included constructing queries to find quality, relevant free/open materials and using AI technology to automate the course assessment creation process

Rejuvenation: an integrated approach to regenerative medicine

The word “rejuvenate” found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is (1) to make young or youthful again: give new vigor to, and (2) to restore to an original or new state. Regenerative medicine is the process of creating living, functional tissues to repair or replace tissue or organ function lost due to age, disease, damage, or congenital defects. To accomplish this, approaches including transplantation, tissue engineering, cell therapy, and gene therapy are brought into action. These all use exogenously prepared materials to forcefully mend the failed organ. The adaptation of the materials in the host and their integration into the organ are all uncertain. It is a common sense that tissue injury in the younger is easily repaired and the acute injury is healed better and faster. Why does the elder have a diminished capacity of self-repairing, or why does chronic injury cause the loss of the self-repairing capacity? There must be some critical elements that are involved in the repair process, but are suppressed in the elder or under the chronic injury condition. Rejuvenation of the self-repair mechanism would be an ideal solution for functional recovery of the failed organ. To achieve this, it would involve renewal of the injury signaling, reestablishment of the communication and transportation system, recruitment of the materials for repairing, regeneration of the failed organ, and rehabilitation of the renewed organ. It thus would require a comprehensive understanding of developmental biology and a development of new approaches to activate the critical players to rejuvenate the self-repair mechanism in the elder or under chronic injury condition. Efforts focusing on rejuvenation would expect an alternative, if not a better, accomplishment in the regenerative medicine

Budaya Sekolah: Hubungannya dengan Komitmen Guru

Komitmen guru amat penting bagi memastikan kemenjadian murid seperti mana dalam PPPM 2013- 2025. Kajian ini adalah untuk mengenal pasti hubungan budaya sekolah terhadap komitmen guru sekolah rendah di bahagian pedalaman atas negeri Sabah, Malaysia. Kajian berbentuk bukan jenis eksperimental ini menggunakan kaedah tinjauan dan menggabungkan tiga teknik pensampelan kebarangkalian untuk mendapatkan sampel. Dua set soal selidik iaitu TCM Employee Commitment Survey (Meyer & Allen, 2004) dan Soal Selidik Budaya Organisasi (Ipek, 1999) digunakan untuk mendapatkan data daripada 458 responden guru. Data dianalisis menggunakan perisian IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0. Berpandukan analisis deskriptif, didapati budaya sekolah berada pada tahap tinggi. Manakala komitmen guru berada pada tahap sederhana. Berdasarkan analisis statistik inferensi, ujian-t bagi budaya sekolah berdasarkan jantina adalah tidak signifikan (t = 1.434, df = 456, p> 0.05) yang menunjukkan tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan budaya sekolah berdasarkan jantina. Manakala hasil ujian-t bagi komitmen guru berdasarkan jantina menunjukkan hasil yang signifikan (t = 2.018, df = 456, p<0.05) yang menunjukkan terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan komitmen guru berdasarkan jantina. Melalui ujian Korelasi Pearson didapati terdapat hubungan signifikan yang positif dengan kekuatan yang sederhana (r = 0.427, p<0.01) budaya sekolah dengan komitmen guru. Kajian mencadangkan agar budaya sekolah diamalkan pada tahap tinggi memandangkan terdapat hubungan signifikan yang positif antara budaya sekolah dengan komitmen guru

Kepuasan Komunikasi Guru Sekolah Rendah: Satu Kajian Tinjauan di Bahagian Pedalaman Atas Sabah

Kepuasan komunikasi merupakan jumlah kepuasan terhadap maklumat umum termasuk perubahan dalam polisi organisasi, prosedur, misi, visi, objektif, pencapaian, rancangan, struktur dan keadaan pekerjaan.  Kajian ini bertujuan mengenal pasti kepuasan komunikasi dalam kalangan guru sekolah rendah di bahagian pedalaman atas negeri Sabah, Malaysia. Kajian berbentuk bukan jenis eksperimental ini menggunakan kaedah tinjauan dan mengabung tiga teknik pensampelan kebarangkalian dalam mendapatkan data. Data dikumpulkan menggunakan satu set soal selidik yang diadaptasi dari Downs dan Hazen (1977) dan ditadbir ke atas 458 orang responden guru. Data dianalisis menggunakan perisian IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0. Berdasarkan analisis deskriptif, variabel kepuasan komunikasi menunjukkan seramai 410 orang responden (89.5%) berada pada tahap tinggi manakala 48 orang responden (10.5%) berada pada tahap sederhana. Dapatan analisis Ujian-t yang diperoleh adalah tidak signifikan (t = 0.663, df = 456, p>0.05), yang menunjukkan tidak terdapat perbezaan kepuasan komunikasi berdasarkan jantina.  Melalui ujian ANOVA sehala, kepuasan komunikasi berdasarkan pengalaman mengajar didapati tidak signifikan, [F(df=2, 455) = 1.685, p>0.05]. Kajian menyimpulkan bahawa tiada perbezaan dalam kepuasan komunikasi berdasarkan pengalaman mengajar guru. Kajian mencadangkan agar kepuasan komunikasi guru berada pada tahap tinggi. Hal ini kerana kepuasan komunikasi guru adalah penting untuk memastikan kelancaran perkongsian kemahiran, ilmu, maklumat dan arahan serta mengelakkan konflik dan merupakan kunci kepada kejayaan serta keberhasilan di sekolah

Using Generative AI to Remove Barriers in Support of Open Content Creation

Open content, such as textbook-length open educational resources (OER) or smaller pieces like an assignment, can offer numerous benefits to students by being free, diverse, and effective replacements for traditional textbooks, but there are limited open resources and difficulties creating new open content. This poster explores how generative AI can remove these barriers, enabling instructors to have time and support to create and use open content in their courses. By highlighting use cases, attendees will see how to do this approach in their own classroom, regardless of modality or discipline. Important considerations will be addressed, including usage, sharing, and ethics. This poster presentation was presented at Teaching and Learning with AI Conference 2023

The 5-Ps of Jumpstarting Open Assessment Creation with Generative AI

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI trained on Large Language Models to generate text) has exploded into the digital learning space. As the need for Open Educational Resources (OER) also continues to grow, generative AI can jumpstart aspects of OER creation. This presentation will consider barriers to OER adoption, including the availability of supplemental teaching resources, and will propose a use case for leveraging AI text-generation to support best practices for creating unique assessment questions. Through the “5-Ps,” – Problem, Past, Present, Possibilities, and Product – we will consider the ways that adopters, adapters, and authors of OER can use generative AI to support access, innovation, and evaluation. We will consider OER adoption through the lenses of textbook affordability and instructional design to propose a framework for using generative-AI so that open education reaches more learners while maintaining the principles of research-backed assessment practices. This is a presentation for the Open Education Conference 2023

Inhibition of Neovascularization by Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles

The present invention provides methods for reducing, reversing or inhibiting neovascularization of a tissue of a mammalian subject having a pathological condition involving neovascularization by administration in vivo of nanoceria particles (cerium oxide nanoparticles) to the subject. The method of the invention is useful, for example, for reducing, treating, reversing, or inhibiting neovascularization in ocular tissue such as the retina, macula, or the cornea; in skin; in synovial tissue; in intestinal tissue; or in bone. In addition, the method of the invention is useful for reducing or inhibiting neovascularization in a neoplasm (tumors), which can be benign or malignant, where malignant, can be a metastatic neoplasm. As such, the invention provides compositions, which contain nanoceria particles and are useful for reducing, treating, reversing, or inhibiting angiogenesis in a mammalian subject

The SUMO Ligase Protein Inhibitor of Activated STAT 1 (PIAS1) is a constituent PML-NB protein that contributes to the intrinsic antiviral immune response to herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1)

Aspects of intrinsic antiviral immunity are mediated by promyelocytic leukaemia (PML)-nuclear body (PML-NB) constituent proteins. During herpesvirus infection, these antiviral proteins are independently recruited to nuclear domains that contain infecting viral genomes to cooperatively promote viral genome silencing. Central to the execution of this particular antiviral response is the small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) signalling pathway. However, the participating SUMOylation enzymes are not fully characterized. We identify the SUMO ligase Protein Inhibitor of Activated STAT1 (PIAS1) as a constituent PML-NB protein. We show that PIAS1 localizes at PML-NBs in a SUMO interaction motif (SIM)-dependent manner that requires SUMOylated or SUMOylation competent PML. Following infection with herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), PIAS1 is recruited to nuclear sites associated with viral genome entry in a SIM-dependent manner, consistent with the SIM-dependent recruitment mechanisms of other well characterized PML-NB proteins. In contrast to Daxx and Sp100, however, the recruitment of PIAS1 is enhanced by PML. PIAS1 promotes the stable accumulation of SUMO1 at nuclear sites associated with HSV-1 genome entry, whereas the accumulation of other evaluated PML-NB proteins occurs independently of PIAS1. We show that PIAS1 cooperatively contributes to HSV-1 restriction through mechanisms that are additive to those of PML and cooperative with those of PIAS4. The antiviral mechanisms of PIAS1 are counteracted by ICP0, the HSV-1 SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligase, which disrupts the recruitment of PIAS1 to nuclear domains that contain infecting HSV-1 genomes through mechanisms that do not directly result in PIAS1 degradation