Education Reform for the Digital Era

Will the digital-learning movement repeat the mistakes of the charter-school movement? How much more successful might today's charter universe look if yesterday's proponents had focused on the policies and practices needed to ensure its quality, freedom, and resources over the long term? What mistakes might have been avoided? Damaging scandals forestalled? Missed opportunities seized

The Grizzly, February 25, 2010

Airband Date Auction Meets, Surpasses Goal • Drawing the Curtain Opens at the Berman Museum • Spread the Word to End the R Word Next Week • Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Takes UC Athletics Beyond the Fieldhouse • Snow Photos • Author Speaks on Campus About Bringing Nature Home • Skin We\u27re In Addresses Self-Esteem Issues • Cutting Down Waste by Recycling Kegs Instead of Canshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1807/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, February 4, 2010

The Brandon Kamin Show Premieres • Students Leading Haiti Relief Initiatives • Berman Premieres Min(d)ing the Landscape Exhibit • Ursinus Alumnus, J. D. Salinger, Dies • TCE Air Monitoring: Ursinus Student Research with the DEP • Learning to Learn: Choosing Majors and Finding a Path at Ursinus College • Opinion: Student Perceptions of CIE: What do Students Take from Course? • Ursinus Men\u27s Rugby Looking Forward to 2010https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1804/thumbnail.jp

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) is a young organization dedicated to timedomain observations at optical and (potentially) near-IR wavelengths. To this end, LCOGT is constructing a worldwide network of telescopes, including the two 2 m Faulkes telescopes, as many as 17 × 1 m telescopes, and as many as 23 × 40 cm telescopes. These telescopes initially will be outfitted for imaging and (excepting the 40 cm telescopes) spectroscopy at wavelengths between the atmospheric UV cutoff and the roughly 1-μm limit of silicon detectors. Since the first of LCOGT’s 1 m telescopes are now being deployed, we lay out here LCOGT’s scientific goals and the requirements that these goals place on network architecture and performance, we summarize the network’s present and projected level of development, and we describe our expected schedule for completing it. In the bulk of the paper, we describe in detail the technical approaches that we have adopted to attain desired performance. In particular, we discuss our choices for the number and location of network sites, for the number and sizes of telescopes, for the specifications of the first generation of instruments, for the software that will schedule and control the network’s telescopes and reduce and archive its data, and for the structure of the scientific and educational programs for which the network will provide observations

Variants in PRKAR1B cause a neurodevelopmental disorder with autism spectrum disorder, apraxia, and insensitivity to pain

Purpose We characterize the clinical and molecular phenotypes of six unrelated individuals with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder who carry heterozygous missense variants of the PRKAR1B gene, which encodes the R1 beta subunit of the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA). Methods Variants of PRKAR1B were identified by single- or trio-exome analysis. We contacted the families and physicians of the six individuals to collect phenotypic information, performed in vitro analyses of the identified PRKAR1B-variants, and investigated PRKAR1B expression during embryonic development. Results Recent studies of large patient cohorts with neurodevelopmental disorders found significant enrichment of de novo missense variants in PRKAR1B. In our cohort, de novo origin of the PRKAR1B variants could be confirmed in five of six individuals, and four carried the same heterozygous de novo variant c.1003C>T (p.Arg335Trp; NM_001164760). Global developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, and apraxia/dyspraxia have been reported in all six, and reduced pain sensitivity was found in three individuals carrying the c.1003C>T variant. PRKAR1B expression in the brain was demonstrated during human embryonal development. Additionally, in vitro analyses revealed altered basal PKA activity in cells transfected with variant-harboring PRKAR1B expression constructs. Conclusion Our study provides strong evidence for a PRKAR1B-related neurodevelopmental disorder