Impact of Assurance of Learning (AOL) in programming course for novices

One of the aims of any higher education institution is to align its curriculum with program learning goals. Programs which ensure proper learning have positive effects on students, instructors, departments and also on the higher education institution itself. This paper discusses the implementation and effects of Assurance Of Learning (AOL) processes on introductory programming (IP) courses. It elaborates five stages of AOL to align program learning goals with IP curriculum. Then, it discusses how the AOL process identifies shortcomings in the assessment methods of IP courses. Furthermore, it enlightens how the assessment findings, as a result of the AOL process, provide mechanisms to address the drawbacks during the delivery of such courses. Feedback o

Replication Stress Drives Constitutive Activation of the DNA Damage Response and Radioresistance in Glioblastoma Stem-like Cells

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a lethal primary brain tumor characterized by treatment resistance and inevitable tumor recurrence, both of which are driven by a subpopulation of GBM cancer stem-like cells (GSC) with tumorigenic and self-renewal properties. Despite having broad implications for understanding GSC phenotype, the determinants of upregulated DNA damage response (DDR) and subsequent radiation resistance in GSC are unknown and represent a significant barrier to developing effective GBM treatments. In this study, we show that constitutive DDR activation and radiation resistance are driven by high levels of DNA replication stress (RS). CD133+ GSC exhibited reduced DNA replication velocity and a higher frequency of stalled replication forks than CD133- non-GSC in vitro; immunofluorescence studies confirmed these observations in a panel of orthotopic xenografts and human GBM specimens. Exposure of non-GSC to low-level exogenous RS generated radiation resistance in vitro, confirming RS as a novel determinant of radiation resistance in tumor cells. GSC exhibited DNA double strand breaks (DSB) which co-localized with 'replication factories' and RNA: DNA hybrids. GSC also demonstrated increased expression of long neural genes (>1Mbp) containing common fragile sites, supporting the hypothesis that replication/transcription collisions are the likely cause of RS in GSC. Targeting RS by combined inhibition of ATR and PARP (CAiPi) provided GSC-specific cytotoxicity and complete abrogation of GSC radiation resistance in vitro. These data identify RS as a cancer stem cell-specific target with significant clinical potential

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

Sex differences in the adult human brain:Evidence from 5216 UK Biobank participants

Sex differences in the human brain are of interest for many reasons: for example, there are sex differences in the observed prevalence of psychiatric disorders and in some psychological traits that brain differences might help to explain. We report the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain (2750 female, 2466 male participants; mean age 61.7 years, range 44–77 years). Males had higher raw volumes, raw surface areas, and white matter fractional anisotropy; females had higher raw cortical thickness and higher white matter tract complexity. There was considerable distributional overlap between the sexes. Subregional differences were not fully attributable to differences in total volume, total surface area, mean cortical thickness, or height. There was generally greater male variance across the raw structural measures. Functional connectome organization showed stronger connectivity for males in unimodal sensorimotor cortices, and stronger connectivity for females in the default mode network. This large-scale study provides a foundation for attempts to understand the causes and consequences of sex differences in adult brain structure and function

Impact of laboratory test use strategies in a Turkish hospital

Objectives: Eliminating unnecessary laboratory tests is a good way to reduce costs while maintain patient safety. The aim of this study was to define and process strategies to rationalize laboratory use in Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital (ANH) and calculate potential savings in costs. Methods: A collaborative plan was defined by hospital managers; joint meetings with ANHTA and laboratory professors were set; the joint committee invited relevant staff for input, and a laboratory efficiency committee was created. Literature was reviewed systematically to identify strategies used to improve laboratory efficiency. Strategies that would be applicable in local settings were identified for implementation, processed, and the impact on clinical use and costs assessed for 12 months. Results: Laboratory use in ANH differed enormously among clinics. Major use was identified in internal medicine. The mean number of tests per patient was 15.8. Unnecessary testing for chloride, folic acid, free prostate specific antigen, hepatitis and HIV testing were observed. Test panel use was pinpointed as the main cause of overuse of the laboratory and the Hospital Information System test ordering page was reorganized. A significant decrease (between 12.6-85.0%) was observed for the tests that were taken to an alternative page on the computer screen. The one year study saving was equivalent to 371,183 US dollars. Conclusion: Hospital-based committees including laboratory professionals and clinicians can define hospital based problems and led to a standardized approach to test use that can help clinicians reduce laboratory costs through appropriate use of laboratory test

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Understanding collaborative approaches to research: A synthesis of the research partnership literature

A Coordinator Multicenter Team approach describing a series of complementary literature reviews conducted across six Canadian universities, exploring unique aspects of different types of research partnership approaches, predominantly in the health sciences