Academic libraries and student engagement: a literature review

The term ‘student engagement’ has a broad meaning and is used freely as an expression in several different contexts of academic librarianship. This literature review covers scholarship from across several of these areas and is structured so that four broad themes are systematically addressed: student engagement in learning; students as partners; student voice; methods and techniques for student engagement. The granular review of the literature reveals many sub-discussions about a range of academic librarianship topics and provides some discussion about how they cross over into the area of student engagement. The literature covers different innovations, techniques and strategies for student engagement, and the review illustrates how many techniques and tools are transferable across the different intentions and objectives of student engagement. The review concludes that many academic librarians are very proactive in student engagement activities and that student engagement itself has become a fundamental element of academic library management

Nuclear genome stability in long-term cultivated callus lines of Fagopyrum tataricum (L.) Gaertn

© 2017 Betekhtin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Long-term cultivated Fagopyrum tataricum (L.) Gaertn. (Tartary buckwheat) morphogenic and non-morphogenic callus lines are interesting systems for gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that are responsible for the genetic stability and instability of a plant tissue culture. In this work, we used histological sections and transmission electron microscopy to identify and describe the morphology of the nuclei of all of the analysed callus lines. We demonstrated that the embryogenic callus cells had prominent round nuclei that did not contain heterochromatin clumps in contrast to the non-morphogenic callus lines, in which we found nuclei that had multiple lobes. Flow cytometry analysis revealed significant differences in the relative DNA content between the analysed calli. All of the analysed morphogenic callus lines had peaks from 2C to 8C as compared to the nonmorphogenic callus lines, whose peaks did not reflect any regular DNA content and exceeded 8C and 16C for the line 6p1 and 16C and 32C for the callus line 10p2A. The results showed that non-morphogenic calli are of an aneuploid nature. The TUNEL test enabled us to visualise the nuclei that had DNA fragmentation in both the morphogenic and non-morphogenic lines. We revealed significantly higher frequencies of positively labelled nuclei in the non-morphogenic lines than in the morphogenic lines. In the case of the morphogenic lines, the highest observed frequency of TUNEL-positive nuclei was 7.7% for lines 2-3. In the non-morphogenic calli, the highest level of DNA damage (68.5%) was revealed in line 6p1. These results clearly indicate greater genome stability in the morphogenic lines

Population gene introgression and high genome plasticity for the zoonotic pathogen Streptococcus agalactiae

The influence that bacterial adaptation (or niche partitioning) within species has on gene spillover and transmission among bacteria populations occupying different niches is not well understood. Streptococcus agalactiae is an important bacterial pathogen that has a taxonomically diverse host range making it an excellent model system to study these processes. Here we analyze a global set of 901 genome sequences from nine diverse host species to advance our understanding of these processes. Bayesian clustering analysis delineated twelve major populations that closely aligned with niches. Comparative genomics revealed extensive gene gain/loss among populations and a large pan-genome of 9,527 genes, which remained open and was strongly partitioned among niches. As a result, the biochemical characteristics of eleven populations were highly distinctive (significantly enriched). Positive selection was detected and biochemical characteristics of the dispensable genes under selection were enriched in ten populations. Despite the strong gene partitioning, phylogenomics detected gene spillover. In particular, tetracycline resistance (which likely evolved in the human-associated population) from humans to bovine, canines, seals, and fish, demonstrating how a gene selected in one host can ultimately be transmitted into another, and biased transmission from humans to bovines was confirmed with a Bayesian migration analysis. Our findings show high bacterial genome plasticity acting in balance with selection pressure from distinct functional requirements of niches that is associated with an extensive and highly partitioned dispensable genome, likely facilitating continued and expansive adaptation

Surgical Standards for Management of the Axilla in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials with Pathological Complete Response Endpoint.

Advances in the surgical management of the axilla in patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, especially those with node positive disease at diagnosis, have led to changes in practice and more judicious use of axillary lymph node dissection that may minimize morbidity from surgery. However, there is still significant confusion about how to optimally manage the axilla, resulting in variation among practices. From the viewpoint of drug development, assessment of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy remains paramount and appropriate assessment of residual disease-the primary endpoint of many drug therapy trials in the neoadjuvant setting-is critical. Therefore decreasing the variability, especially in a multicenter clinical trial setting, and establishing a minimum standard to ensure consistency in clinical trial data, without mandating axillary lymph node dissection, for all patients is necessary. The key elements which include proper staging and identification of nodal involvement at diagnosis, and appropriately targeted management of the axilla at the time of surgical resection are presented. The following protocols have been adopted as standard procedure by the I-SPY2 trial for management of axilla in patients with node positive disease, and present a framework for prospective clinical trials and practice

Erratum: Author Correction: Surgical Standards for Management of the Axilla in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials with Pathological Complete Response Endpoint.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/s41523-018-0074-6.]