Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors' written responses

The topic of feedback to students is an under-researched area, and there has been little empirical research published which focuses on student perceptions. This study explores student perceptions of written feedback and examines whether feedback received demonstrated a student-centred approach to learning. A multi-method approach of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis was used to survey 44 students in the faculties of Business and Art & Design. Student responses show feedback is valued, but believed tutor comments could be more helpful. Survey results indicate that students may need advice on understanding and using feedback before they can engage with it. Content analysis of feedback samples and student responses uncovered four main themes of feedback considered unhelpful to improve learning: comments which were too general or vague, lacked guidance, focused on the negative, or were unrelated to assessment criteria. It is suggested that by focusing on messages conveyed by their writing, providing feedback set in the context of assessment criteria and learning outcomes, and by ensuring that it is timely, tutors could greatly improve the value of feedback

Ovarian Cancer Progression is Controlled by Phenotypic Changes in Dendritic Cells

We characterized the initiation and evolution of the immune response against a new inducible p53-dependent model of aggressive ovarian carcinoma that recapitulates the leukocyte infiltrates and cytokine milieu of advanced human tumors. Unlike other models that initiate tumors before the development of a mature immune system, we detect measurable antitumor immunity from very early stages, which is driven by infiltrating dendritic cells (DCs) and prevents steady tumor growth for prolonged periods. Coinciding with a phenotypic switch in expanding DC infiltrates, tumors aggressively progress to terminal disease in a comparatively short time. Notably, tumor cells remain immunogenic at advanced stages, but anti-tumor T cells become less responsive, whereas their enduring activity is abrogated by different microenvironmental immunosuppressive DCs. Correspondingly, depleting DCs early in the disease course accelerates tumor expansion, but DC depletion at advanced stages significantly delays aggressive malignant progression. Our results indicate that phenotypically divergent DCs drive both immunosurveillance and accelerated malignant growth. We provide experimental support for the cancer immunoediting hypothesis, but we also show that aggressive cancer progression after a comparatively long latency period is primarily driven by the mobilization of immunosuppressive microenvironmental leukocytes, rather than loss of tumor immunogenicity

Citizen science reveals widespread negative effects of roads on amphibian distributions

Landscape structure is important for shaping the abundance and distribution of amphibians, but prior studies of landscape effects have been species or ecosystem-specific. Using a large-scale, citizen science-generated database, we examined the effects of habitat composition, road disturbance, and habitat split (i.e. the isolation of wetland from forest by intervening land use) on the distribution and richness of frogs and toads in the eastern and central United States. Undergraduates from nine biology and environmental science courses collated occupancy data and characterized landscape structure at 1617 sampling locations from the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program. Our analysis revealed that anuran species richness and individual species distributions were consistently constrained by both road density and traffic volume. In contrast, developed land around wetlands had small, or even positive effects on anuran species richness and distributions after controlling for road effects. Effects of upland habitat composition varied among species, and habitat split had only weak effects on species richness or individual species distributions. Mechanisms underlying road effects on amphibians involve direct mortality, behavioral barriers to movement, and reduction in the quality of roadside habitats. Our results suggest that the negative effects of roads on amphibians occur across broad geographic regions, affecting even common species, and they underscore the importance of developing effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of roads on amphibian populations

The Importance of Socio-Economic Versus Environmental Risk Factors for Reported Dengue Cases in Java, Indonesia

Background: Dengue is a major mosquito-borne viral disease and an important public health problem. Identifying which factors are important determinants in the risk of dengue infection is critical in supporting and guiding preventive measures. In South-East Asia, half of all reported fatal infections are recorded in Indonesia, yet little is known about the epidemiology of dengue in this country. Methodology/Principal findings: Hospital-reported dengue cases in Banyumas regency, Central Java were examined to build Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal models assessing the influence of climatic, demographic and socio-economic factors on the risk of dengue infection. A socio-economic factor linking employment type and economic status was the most influential on the risk of dengue infection in the Regency. Other factors such as access to healthcare facilities and night-time temperature were also found to be associated with higher risk of reported dengue infection but had limited explanatory power. Conclusions/Significance: Our data suggest that dengue infections are triggered by indoor transmission events linked to socio-economic factors (employment type, economic status). Preventive measures in this area should therefore target also specific environments such as schools and work areas to attempt and reduce dengue burden in this community. Although our analysis did not account for factors such as variations in immunity which need further investigation, this study can advise preventive measures in areas with similar patterns of reported dengue cases and environmen

Canonical wnt signaling activity in early stages of chick lung development

Wnt signaling pathway is an essential player during vertebrate embryonic development which has been associated with several developmental processes such as gastrulation, body axis formation and morphogenesis of numerous organs, namely the lung. Wnt proteins act through specific transmembrane receptors, which activate intracellular pathways that regulate cellular processes such as cell proliferation, differentiation and death. Morphogenesis of the fetal lung depends on epithelial-mesenchymal interactions that are governed by several growth and transcription factors that regulate cell proliferation, fate, migration and differentiation. This process is controlled by different signaling pathways such as FGF, Shh and Wnt among others. Wnt signaling is recognized as a key molecular player in mammalian pulmonary development but little is known about its function in avian lung development. The present work characterizes, for the first time, the expression pattern of several Wnt signaling members, such as wnt-1, wnt-2b, wnt-3a, wnt-5a, wnt-7b, wnt-8b, wnt-9a, lrp5, lrp6, sfrp1, dkk1, β-catenin and axin2 at early stages of chick lung development. In general, their expression is similar to their mammalian counterparts. By assessing protein expression levels of active/total β-catenin and phospho-LRP6/LRP6 it is revealed that canonical Wnt signaling is active in this embryonic tissue. In vitro inhibition studies were performed in order to evaluate the function of Wnt signaling pathway in lung branching. Lung explants treated with canonical Wnt signaling inhibitors (FH535 and PK115-584) presented an impairment of secondary branch formation after 48 h of culture along with a decrease in axin2 expression levels. Branching analysis confirmed this inhibition. Wnt-FGF crosstalk assessment revealed that this interaction is preserved in the chick lung. This study demonstrates that Wnt signaling is crucial for precise chick lung branching and further supports the avian lung as a good model for branching studies since it recapitulates early mammalian pulmonary development.Rute S. Moura was supported by a grant of ON.2 SR&TD Integrated Program (N-01-01-0124-01-07), ref: UMINHO/BPD/31/2013. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis

Very Low-mass Stellar and Substellar Companions to Solar-like Stars from MARVELS II: A Short-period Companion Orbiting an F Star with Evidence of a Stellar Tertiary And Significant Mutual Inclination

We report the discovery via radial velocity of a short-period (P = 2.430420 \pm 0.000006 days) companion to the F-type main sequence star TYC 2930-00872-1. A long-term trend in the radial velocities indicates the presence of a tertiary stellar companion with $P > 2000$ days. High-resolution spectroscopy of the host star yields T_eff = 6427 +/- 33 K, log(g) = 4.52 +/- 0.14, and [Fe/H]=-0.04 +/- 0.05. These parameters, combined with the broad-band spectral energy distribution and parallax, allow us to infer a mass and radius of the host star of M_1=1.21 +/- 0.08 M_\odot and R_1=1.09_{-0.13}^{+0.15} R_\odot. We are able to exclude transits of the inner companion with high confidence. The host star's spectrum exhibits clear Ca H and K core emission indicating stellar activity, but a lack of photometric variability and small v*sin(I) suggest the primary's spin axis is oriented in a pole-on configuration. The rotational period of the primary from an activity-rotation relation matches the orbital period of the inner companion to within 1.5 \sigma, suggesting they are tidally locked. If the inner companion's orbital angular momentum vector is aligned with the stellar spin axis, as expected through tidal evolution, then it has a stellar mass of M_2 ~ 0.3-0.4 M_\odot. Direct imaging limits the existence of stellar companions to projected separations < 30 AU. No set of spectral lines and no significant flux contribution to the spectral energy distribution from either companion are detected, which places individual upper mass limits of M < 1.0 M_\odot, provided they are not stellar remnants. If the tertiary is not a stellar remnant, then it likely has a mass of ~0.5-0.6 M_\odot, and its orbit is likely significantly inclined from that of the secondary, suggesting that the Kozai-Lidov mechanism may have driven the dynamical evolution of this system.Comment: 37 pages, 7 tables, 21 figures, Accepted in A

Understanding the influences on successful quality improvement in emergency general surgery: learning from the RCS Chole-QuIC project

Abstract: Background: Acute gallstone disease is the highest volume Emergency General Surgical presentation in the UK. Recent data indicate wide variations in the quality of care provided across the country, with national guidance for care delivery not implemented in most UK hospitals. Against this backdrop, the Royal College of Surgeons of England set up a 13-hospital quality improvement collaborative (Chole-QuIC) to support clinical teams to reduce time to surgery for patients with acute gallstone disease requiring emergency cholecystectomy. Methods: Prospective, mixed-methods process evaluation to answer the following: (1) how was the collaborative delivered by the faculty and received, understood and enacted by the participants; (2) what influenced teams’ ability to improve care for patients requiring emergency cholecystectomy? We collected and analysed a range of data including field notes, ethnographic observations of meetings, and project documentation. Analysis was based on the framework approach, informed by Normalisation Process Theory, and involved the creation of comparative case studies based on hospital performance during the project. Results: Chole-QuIC was delivered as planned and was well received and understood by participants. Four hospitals were identified as highly successful, based upon a substantial increase in the number of patients having surgery in line with national guidance. Conversely, four hospitals were identified as challenged, achieving no significant improvement. The comparative analysis indicate that six inter-related influences appeared most associated with improvement: (1) achieving clarity of purpose amongst site leads and key stakeholders; (2) capacity to lead and effective project support; (3) ideas to action; (4) learning from own and others’ experience; (5) creating additional capacity to do emergency cholecystectomies; and (6) coordinating/managing the patient pathway. Conclusion: Collaborative-based quality improvement is a viable strategy for emergency surgery but success requires the deployment of effective clinical strategies in conjunction with improvement strategies. In particular, achieving clarity of purpose about proposed changes amongst key stakeholders was a vital precursor to improvement, enabling the creation of additional surgical capacity and new pathways to be implemented effectively. Protected time, testing ideas, and the ability to learn quickly from data and experience were associated with greater impact within this cohort

Semi-Automated Image Analysis for the Assessment of Megafaunal Densities at the Arctic Deep-Sea Observatory HAUSGARTEN

Megafauna play an important role in benthic ecosystem function and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. Non-invasive monitoring of benthic communities can be accomplished by seafloor imaging. However, manual quantification of megafauna in images is labor-intensive and therefore, this organism size class is often neglected in ecosystem studies. Automated image analysis has been proposed as a possible approach to such analysis, but the heterogeneity of megafaunal communities poses a non-trivial challenge for such automated techniques. Here, the potential of a generalized object detection architecture, referred to as iSIS (intelligent Screening of underwater Image Sequences), for the quantification of a heterogenous group of megafauna taxa is investigated. The iSIS system is tuned for a particular image sequence (i.e. a transect) using a small subset of the images, in which megafauna taxa positions were previously marked by an expert. To investigate the potential of iSIS and compare its results with those obtained from human experts, a group of eight different taxa from one camera transect of seafloor images taken at the Arctic deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN is used. The results show that inter- and intra-observer agreements of human experts exhibit considerable variation between the species, with a similar degree of variation apparent in the automatically derived results obtained by iSIS. Whilst some taxa (e. g. Bathycrinus stalks, Kolga hyalina, small white sea anemone) were well detected by iSIS (i. e. overall Sensitivity: 87%, overall Positive Predictive Value: 67%), some taxa such as the small sea cucumber Elpidia heckeri remain challenging, for both human observers and iSIS

Semi-Automated Image Analysis for the Assessment of Megafaunal Densities at the Arctic Deep-Sea Observatory HAUSGARTEN

Megafauna play an important role in benthic ecosystem function and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. Non-invasive monitoring of benthic communities can be accomplished by seafloor imaging. However, manual quantification of megafauna in images is labor-intensive and therefore, this organism size class is often neglected in ecosystem studies. Automated image analysis has been proposed as a possible approach to such analysis, but the heterogeneity of megafaunal communities poses a non-trivial challenge for such automated techniques. Here, the potential of a generalized object detection architecture, referred to as iSIS (intelligent Screening of underwater Image Sequences), for the quantification of a heterogenous group of megafauna taxa is investigated. The iSIS system is tuned for a particular image sequence (i.e. a transect) using a small subset of the images, in which megafauna taxa positions were previously marked by an expert. To investigate the potential of iSIS and compare its results with those obtained from human experts, a group of eight different taxa from one camera transect of seafloor images taken at the Arctic deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN is used. The results show that inter- and intra-observer agreements of human experts exhibit considerable variation between the species, with a similar degree of variation apparent in the automatically derived results obtained by iSIS. Whilst some taxa (e. g. Bathycrinus stalks, Kolga hyalina, small white sea anemone) were well detected by iSIS (i. e. overall Sensitivity: 87%, overall Positive Predictive Value: 67%), some taxa such as the small sea cucumber Elpidia heckeri remain challenging, for both human observers and iSIS