Ancient Civilizations: What do we know and how do we know it?

A unit for the first time period of AP World History. Students explore the essential questions of “What do we know about ancient societies? How do we know it? How does the geography of a place impact human activity? What characteristics must a civilization possess?” Students will explore the Paleolithic Era by examining the Lascaux Caves and the modern “Paleo” diet. They will track the changes brought by the Neolithic Revolution and discuss the qualities of a civilization before completing a performance task in which they research and create a video about one of the six core/foundational civilizations

Evidence for Particle Dilution and Dispersion as the Strongest Effects on Reach-Scale Salmonid eDNA Sampling Outcomes in Mediterranean-Climate Rivers and Streams

Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling from rivers has emerged as a promising new method for monitoring freshwater organisms of management concern. However, to more confidently interpret eDNA sampling results – and thereby improve eDNA as a tool for management decision making – the influence of local environmental factors on eDNA fate (transport & decay dynamics) must be better understood. At nine river sites across the central California coast, we added a known quantity of novel eDNA (Brook Trout, Salvelinus fontinalis) and collected eDNA at sequential downstream distances for qPCR analysis. We then used random forest modeling to identify the most important factors to reach-scale sampling outcomes and characterize salmonid eDNA fate. Our results offer evidence of particle dilution and dispersion as primary drivers of salmonid eDNA sampling outcomes at the reach scale. In addition, we highlight the interplay between discharge, velocity, and cross-sectional area as key to interpreting eDNA data for future management goals

The Consumption of Children in a Capitalistic Society

Audre Lorde’s, “Now that I Am Forever with Child”, and Sharon Olds’, “The Moment the Two Worlds Meet,” juxtapose the natural aspects of childbirth with late capital methods of consumption and reproduction. In “Now that I Am Forever with Child”, Audre Lorde describes her fetus as a budding flower but feels detached from it during and after delivery. Sharon Olds also uses the metaphor of an opening flower to demonstrate the climax of delivery in “The Moment the Two Worlds Meet.” In both poems, the birth of the child is anticlimactic and disappointing for the mother who feels like an empty vessel. This dehumanizing of self is evident in both poems. These poets share a non-traditional, perhaps radically distorted, view of motherhood. This transformation, in which mothers are cold machines, allows the poets to critique the capitalistic system which necessitated that transformation in the first place. The contrast between nature and industry, presented in these works, illustrates capitalism as a negative effect on society, as far as the value of human life is concerned

Introducing the DBQ Essay Using Personal Evidence [10th grade]

In the free-response section of the AP World History Exam, all students are asked to answer three constructed-response questions. This unit is set at the beginning of the course to address the first form of question, a document-based question, and to serve as a way for the teacher and students to build their classroom community. Students will explore how evidence can be used to understand a person or time period while learning the components of a DBQ essay before any world history content is taught. Students will create a set of ten documents that show how they became the person they are today and write their first Document-Based Question (DBQ) Essay in response to the prompt: Analyze the factors that shaped the life of your partner in the period from 1996/7 to the present, using documents that another student has collected to represent their life in the Creating a Personal DBQ project

An interaction between replication protein A and SV40 T antigen appears essential for primosome assembly during SV40 DNA replication

Replication protein A from human cells (hRPA) is a multisubunit single-stranded DNA-binding protein (ssb) and is essential for SV40 DNA replication in vitro. The related RPA from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (scRPA) is unable to substitute for hRPA in SV40 DNA replication. To understand this species specificity, we evaluated human and yeast RPA in enzymatic assays with SV40 T antigen (TAg) and human DNA polymerase alpha/primase, the factors essential for initiation of SV40 DNA replication. Both human and yeast RPA stimulated the polymerase and (at subsaturating levels of RPA) the primase activities of human DNA polymerase alpha/primase on homopolymer DNA templates. In contrast, both human and yeast RPA inhibited synthesis by DNA polymerase alpha/primase on natural single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) templates. T antigen reversed the inhibition of DNA polymerase alpha/primase activity on hRPA-coated natural ssDNA, as previously described, but was unable to reverse the inhibition on scRPA or Escherichia coli ssb-coated templates. Therefore, the ability of an ssb to reconstitute SV40 DNA replication correlated with its ability to allow the TAg stimulation of polymerase alpha/primase in this assay. Enzyme-linked immunoassays demonstrated that hRPA interacts with TAg, as previously described; however, scRPA does not bind to TAg in this assay. These and other recent results suggest that T antigen contains a function analogous to some prokaryotic DNA replication proteins that facilitate primosome assembly on ssb-coated template DNAs