Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology

In the field of history, the Web and other technologies have become important tools in research and teaching of the past. Yet the use of these tools is limited—many historians and history educators have resisted adopting them because they fail to see how digital tools supplement and even improve upon conventional tools (such as books). In Pastplay, a collection of essays by leading history and humanities researchers and teachers, editor Kevin Kee works to address these concerns head-on. How should we use technology? Playfully, Kee contends. Why? Because doing so helps us think about the past in new ways; through the act of creating technologies, our understanding of the past is re-imagined and developed. From the insights of numerous scholars and teachers, Pastplay argues that we should play with technology in history because doing so enables us to see the past in new ways by helping us understand how history is created; honoring the roots of research, teaching, and technology development; requiring us to model our thoughts; and then allowing us to build our own understanding

Outbreak: Lessons Learned from Developing a “History Game”

This paper describes the production of Outbreak, a game focused on the 1885 smallpox epidemic in Montreal. It is a preliminary report on the manner in which, by both theorizing about and building a game, we are responding to some of the questions that have animated the literature on computer games for history. The article begins with a survey of publications by researchers who have studied the capacity of games to support learning, and outlined how these can be used in concert with books and other media. We next provide the context to our project, which was conceived to market a film to be broadcast on television, and support a book on which the film was based – a bestselling history of a preventable tragedy that resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Montrealers. We outline how we built from the book, creating a game that asked the player to save as many as possible from death, using tools that mimicked that which was available in the late nineteenth century. We conclude by reflecting on the lessons that we learned, and how we will apply these to our present and future projects

The Haunted School on Horror Hill

As gaming technology for personal computers has advanced over the last two decades, the text-adventures that predominated in the 1980s ceased to be commercially viable. However, the easy availability of powerful authoring systems developed by enthusiasts and distributed free over the Internet has led to a renaissance in text-adventures, now called “Interactive Fiction.” The educational potential in playing these text-based games and simulations was recognised when they were first popular; the new authoring systems now allow educators to explore the educational potential of creating these works. The authors present here a case-study using the ADRIFT authoring system to create a work of interactive fiction in a split grade 4/5 class (9 and 10 year-olds) in Quebec. They find that the process of creating the game helped improve literary and social skills amongst the student

Evidence of a universal and isotropic 2\Delta/kBTC ratio in 122-type iron pnictide superconductors over a wide doping range

We have systematically investigated the doping and the directional dependence of the gap structure in the 122-type iron pnictide superconductors by point contact Andreev reflection spectroscopy. The studies were performed on single crystals of Ba1-xKxFe2As2 (x = 0.29, 0.49, and 0.77) and SrFe1.74Co0.26As2 with a sharp tip of Pb or Au pressed along the c-axis or the ab-plane direction. The conductance spectra obtained on highly transparent contacts clearly show evidence of a robust superconducting gap. The normalized curves can be well described by the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk model with a lifetime broadening. The determined gap value scales very well with the transition temperature, giving the 2{\Delta}/kBTC value of ~ 3.1. The results suggest the presence of a universal coupling behavior in this class of iron pnictides over a broad doping range and independent of the sign of the doping. Moreover, conductance spectra obtained on c-axis junctions and ab-plane junctions indicate that the observed gap is isotropic in these superconductors

Josephson effect between electron-doped and hole-doped iron pnictide single crystals

We have observed the Josephson effect in junctions formed between single crystals of SrFe1.74Co0.26As2 and Ba0.23K0.77Fe2As2. The ac Josephson effect was observed under microwave irradiation in the I-V characteristics. By applying an in-plane magnetic field, the critical current is completely modulated and shows a relatively symmetric diffraction pattern consistent with the intermediate junction limit. The observation of the Josephson effect in the p-n bicrystal structure not only has significant implications for designing phase-sensitive junctions to probe the pairing symmetry of iron pnictide superconductors, but also represents an important step in developing all iron pnictide devices for applications.open252

COUP-TFII Mediates Progesterone Regulation of Uterine Implantation by Controlling ER Activity

Progesterone and estrogen are critical regulators of uterine receptivity. To facilitate uterine remodeling for embryo attachment, estrogen activity in the uterine epithelia is attenuated by progesterone; however, the molecular mechanism by which this occurs is poorly defined. COUP-TFII (chicken ovalbumin upstream promoter transcription factor II; also known as NR2F2), a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily, is highly expressed in the uterine stroma and its expression is regulated by the progesterone–Indian hedgehog–Patched signaling axis that emanates from the epithelium. To further assess COUP-TFII uterine function, a conditional COUP-TFII knockout mouse was generated. This mutant mouse is infertile due to implantation failure, in which both embryo attachment and uterine decidualization are impaired. Using this animal model, we have identified a novel genetic pathway in which BMP2 lies downstream of COUP-TFII. Epithelial progesterone-induced Indian hedgehog regulates stromal COUP-TFII, which in turn controls BMP2 to allow decidualization to manifest in vivo. Interestingly, enhanced epithelial estrogen activity, which impedes maturation of the receptive uterus, was clearly observed in the absence of stromal-derived COUP-TFII. This finding is consistent with the notion that progesterone exerts its control of implantation through uterine epithelial-stromal cross-talk and reveals that stromal-derived COUP-TFII is an essential mediator of this complex cross-communication pathway. This finding also provides a new signaling paradigm for steroid hormone regulation in female reproductive biology, with attendant implications for furthering our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie dysregulation of hormonal signaling in such human reproductive disorders as endometriosis and endometrial cancer