Introducing “CORA,” the Community of Online Research Assignments Repository

This session will introduce CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), a pilot open access educational resource developed for faculty and librarians in higher education. Librarians at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) received a Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) Project Initiatives Fund grant to create an online open access repository of user contributed research and information literacy assignments targeted to SCELC institutions. This session will cover the timeline of events during the first year of development, ending with a demo of the live online prototype. LMU faculty provided input on the characteristics of effective research assignments and the desired features in a searchable open access repository. The Cherry Hill Company was contracted to build and host a live prototype of the CORA website using Drupal, an open source content management platform . The current collection of research assignments will be extended and enriched by user contributed assignments, building a community of faculty and librarians sharing their knowledge of pedagogy, information literacy, research and writing within the landscape of higher education. All teaching resources contributed to this collection are released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by other educators, allowing the assignments to be enhanced by user feedback in order to build a rich corpus of best practices. A live demo of CORA will highlight policies and procedures for acceptable use along with search capabilities, sample assignments, and teaching resources. CORA promotes and encourages the sharing of success and lessons learned so its entire community can benefit

Couple trends and gender roles in the 20th century in China according to Xinran’s nonfiction work “The Promise” (2019)

La situación sociocultural de la mujer china es una realidad en continuo cambio. Ni valores sociales confucianos (xiao孝: piedad filial; wulun五轮: cinco relaciones fundamentales; hexie和谐: armonía social) ni cambios en la política que dicen ‘liberar’ a las mujeres (Ley del Matrimonio de 1950; 1980; 2001) satisfacen al número creciente de mujeres chinas que elige la desfavorecida condición de ‘solterona’ (shengnü剩女). La escritora china contemporánea Xinran (1958--) explora la evolución de tan lian’ai谈恋爱 (cortejo; relaciones amorosas) en China en su última obra de no-ficción. The Promise (2019) narra varias historias de pareja desde el punto de vista de las mujeres de cuatro generaciones dentro de una misma familia china del siglo XX. El análisis parte de investigaciones sobre la mujer china (Botton Beja, 1995, 2017; Fincher, 2015), de teoría de literatura de no ficción (Cheney, 2001; Gutkind, 2012) y de la auto/biografía (Holmes, 2011; Stanley, 1993). Se concluye, en parte, que ciertos roles de género confucianos tradicionales, como san cong si de 三从四德 (‘Tres Obediencias y Cuatro Virtudes’), mantienen a las mujeres chinas en una posición desfavorable en la sociedad.The socio-cultural situation of Chinese women is a constantly changing reality. Neither Confucian social values (xiao孝: filial piety; wulun五轮: five fundamental relationships; hexie和谐: social harmony) nor policy changes which claimed to ‘liberate’ women (marriage laws of 1950; 1980; 2001) can satisfy the growing number of Chinese women who choose the disadvantaged social position of ‘spinster’ (sheng nü剩女). Contemporary Chinese writer Xinran (1958--) explores the evolution of tan lian’ai谈恋爱 (courtship and romantic relationships) in China in her latest non-fiction work. The Promise (2019) narrates several courting stories from the woman’s point of view, over four generations, within the same 20th-century Chinese family. We analyse the work based on research on Chinese women (Botton Beja, 1995, 2017; Fincher, 2015; Hershatter, 2007), through the lens of non-fiction literature theory (Cheney, 2001; Gutkind, 2012) and auto/biography theory (Holmes, 2011; Stanley, 1993). One conclusive observation is that certain traditional Confucian gender roles ascribed to Chinese women, such as san cong si de 三从四德 (the ‘Three Obedience and Four Virtues’), keep them in an unfavourable position in society

Rethinking Trust, Reconnecting Us

Advancements in online platforms can lead to a more widely informed public, but they also create room for false information. Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine has become a public safety issue. Our team created a project that contributes to solving this global problem. Our project’s mission is to tackle vaccine related misinformation. The project utilizes a human-centered method to design a solution. Based on our literature review the main problem is skepticism about getting vaccinated. Our solution is to create an online portal targeted at college students, highlighting the benefits of vaccination, examining examples of misinformation, providing trusted sources for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals and persuading misinformation receivers to improve their media literacy. Our understanding of the target audience increased via QR code stickers that directed unvaccinated individuals to a survey. This data, alongside student and expert interviews, helped design our platform. The site’s tailored to the concerns of those less likely to receive the vaccine due to misinformation. Part of our campaign is to use Facebook to direct people to our website, which has had nearly 433 views since its launch in February. A stronger future in a virtual world requires sharpening the world\u27s ability to spot misinformation. Our project called upon our target audience to engage in 4 Rs: rethink COVID vaccine information they receive, re-evaluate information by fact-checking, reconsider getting vaccinated so that they can reconnect with their family and friends safely. We built an internationally accessible website, fostered an accepting online environment for education and asking questions to a healthcare professional, increased awareness of COVID-19 misinformation, connected individuals with different perspectives on vaccinations, encouraged young people to improve their media literacy, developed an appealing brand for vaccine-hesitant young people, contributed to research about campaign strategies for reducing vaccine hesitancy, and we’ve sparked a global conversation

Detection by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay of Antibodies to West Nile virus in Birds

We adapted an indirect immunoglobulin G enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to facilitate studies of West Nile virus (WNV) and evaluated its application to taxonomically diverse avian species. Anti-WNV antibodies were detected in 23 bird species, including many exotic species, demonstrating its value in studies of WNV epizootiology

Alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 glycoprotein B:recombinant expression and antibody recognition

The gammaherpesvirus alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 (AlHV-1) causes fatal malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) in susceptible species including cattle, but infects its reservoir host, wildebeest, without causing disease. Pathology in cattle may be influenced by virus-host cell interactions mediated by the virus glycoproteins. Cloning and expression of a haemagglutinin-tagged version of the AlHV-1 glycoprotein B (gB) was used to demonstrate that the AlHV-1-specific monoclonal antibody 12B5 recognised gB and that gB was the main component of the gp115 complex of AlHV-1, a glycoprotein complex of five components identified on the surface of AlHV-1 by immunoprecipitation and radiolabelling. Analysis of AlHV-1 virus particles showed that the native form of gB was detected by mAb 12B5 as a band of about 70 kDa, whilst recombinant gB expressed by transfected HEK293T cells appeared to be subject to additional cleavage and incomplete post-translational processing. Antibody 12B5 recognised an epitope on the N-terminal furin-cleaved fragment of gB on AlHV-1 virus particles. It could be used to detect recombinant and virus-expressed gB on western blots and on the surface of infected cells by flow cytometry, whilst recombinant gB was detected on the surface of transfected cells by immunofluorescence. Recombinant gB has potential as an antigen for ELISA detection of MCF virus infection and as a candidate vaccine antigen

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum