Community of Practice: A Metaphor for Online Design?

This article examines four cases and identifies several issues associated with the concept of communities of practice. These cases describe different forms of communities of practice in various settings including consulting firms and legal firms. After introducing these cases, we address several issues that emerged from these cases and the research literature. First, we caution against the tendency to romanticize the communities of practice construct and especially online communities. The cross-case analysis points to five problems that should be considered before developing an online community of practice. These five problems include: prescriptive versus description distinction; ready-made versus communities in the making; knowledge of possession versus knowing in practice; mid-level social theory versus micro learning theory; and motivated members versus unwilling subjects. In sum, we believe that community of practice is not likely to be forced, but is emerging, and designers need to be aware of the characteristics of existing communities of practice to nurture them

FARS2 mutations presenting with pure spastic paraplegia and lesions of the dentate nuclei.

Mutations in FARS2, the gene encoding the mitochondrial phenylalanine-tRNA synthetase (mtPheRS), have been linked to a range of phenotypes including epileptic encephalopathy, developmental delay, and motor dysfunction. We report a 9-year-old boy with novel compound heterozygous variants of FARS2, presenting with a pure spastic paraplegia syndrome associated with bilateral signal abnormalities in the dentate nuclei. Exome sequencing identified a paternal nonsense variant (Q216X) lacking the catalytic core and anticodon-binding regions, and a maternal missense variant (P136H) possessing partial enzymatic activity. This case confirms and expands the phenotype related to FARS2 mutations with regards to clinical presentation and neuroimaging findings

Detection of highly ionized O and Ne absorption lines in the X-ray spectrum of 4U1820-303 in the globular cluster, NGC 6624

We searched for absorption lines of highly ionized O and Ne in the energy spectra of two Low-mass X-ray binaries, 4U1820-303 in the globular cluster NGC6624 and Cyg X-2, observed with the Chandra LETG, and detected O VII, O VIII and Ne IX absorption lines for 4U1820-303. The equivalent width of the O VII K alpha line was 1.19 +0.47/-0.30 eV (90 % errors) and the significance was 6.5 sigma. Absorption lines were not detected for Cyg X-2 with a 90 % upper limit on the equivalent width of 1.06 eV for O VII K alpha. The absorption lines observed in 4U1820-303 are likely due to hot interstellar medium, because O will be fully photo-ionized if the absorbing column is located close to the binary system. The velocity dispersion is restricted to b = 200 - 420 km/s from consistency between O VII K alpha and K beta lines, Ne/O abundance ratio, and H column density. The average temperature and the O VII density are respectively estimated to be log(T[K]) = 6.2 - 6.3 and n(OVII) = (0.7 - 2.3) x 10^{-6} cm^{-3}. The difference of O VII column densities for the two sources may be connected to the enhancement of the soft X-ray background (SXB) towards the Galactic bulge region. Using the polytrope model of hot gas to account for the SXB we corrected for the density gradient and estimated the midplane O VII density at the solar neighborhood. The scale height of hot gas is then estimated using the AGN absorption lines. It is suggested that a significant portion of both the AGN absorption lines and the high-latitude SXB emission lines can be explained by the hot gas in our Galaxy.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 7 pages, 9 eps figure

Unveiling Consonant Harmony: Nonlexical reduplication in English

There is a lack of strong diachronic evidence in English phonology to demonstrate consonant harmony (hereafter CH) in reduplication (Fikkert et al. 2005; Goad & Buckley 2006; Hale & Reiss 2008; Pater & Werle 2003; Rose 2000; Wolfram & Johnson 1982). In the present study, we investigated CH in synchronic settings wherein native English speakers were asked to produce a euphonious pseudo reduplicant from a nonce base in uncontrolled and controlled experiments. The results of the experiments indicated that, in English, consonantal assimilations might have a hierarchical structure when CH is present in the synchronic formation of a rhyming reduplicant. Taken holistically, these findings suggest that the rate of coronal assimilation exceeds that of labial assimilation. The occurrence of dorsal assimilation may be restricted even further by the scarcity of word-initial dorsal onsets that meet the requirements for rhyming reduplication

Construction of Tertiary Chiral Centers by Pd-catalyzed Asymmetric Allylic Alkylation of Prochiral Enolate Equivalents

The palladium-catalyzed decarboxylative allylic alkylation of enol carbonates derived from lactams and ketones is described. Employing these substrates with an electronically tuned Pd catalyst system trisubstituted chiral centers are produced. These stereocenters have been previously challenging to achieve using Pd complex/chiral P–N ligand systems

Rescue with an anti-inflammatory peptide of chickens infected H5N1 avian flu

Chickens suffering from avian flu caused by H5N1 influenza virus are destined to die within 2 days due to a systemic inflammatory response. Since HVJ infection (1,2) and influenza virus infection (3,4) cause infected cells to activate homologous serum complement, the systemic inflammatory response elicited could be attributed to the unlimited generation of C5a anaphylatoxin of the complement system, which is a causative peptide of serious inflammation. In monkeys inoculated with a lethal dose of LPS (4 mg/kg body weight), inhibition of C5a by an inhibitory peptide termed AcPepA (5) rescued these animals from serious septic shock which would have resulted in death within a day (6). Therefore, we tested whether AcPepA could also have a beneficial effect on chickens with bird flu. On another front, enhanced production of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and the activation of mast cells (MCs) have been implicated in granulocyte sequestration (7). An endothelin receptor derived antisense homology box peptide (8) designated ETR-P1/fl was shown to antagonize endothelin A receptor (ET-A receptor) (9) and reduce such inflammatory responses as endotoxin-shock (10) and hemorrhagic shock (11), thereby suppressing histamine release in the circulation (12). Thus, we also administered ETR-P1/fl to bird flu chickens expecting suppression of a systemic inflammatory response

Combining extensive reading while listening (ERWL) with cooperative learning

In this teaching-oriented project, we propose an extensive reading while listening (ERWL) program in which cooperative learning (CL) tasks are also implemented. We believe that by implementing ERWL combined with CL tasks, teachers can invite their learners to improve all four language skills while simultaneously enhancing their motivation for ERWL. We will first explain the benefits of ERWL and CL for second language (L2) learners and then the rationale for combining these two learning methods. Next, we will present CL tasks designed for students to improve all four language skills while doing ERWL

Evidence for Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses in a Cohort of Intractable Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Patients.

Brain-infiltrating lymphocytes (BILs) were isolated from resected brain tissue from 10 pediatric epilepsy patients who had undergone surgery for Hemimegalencephaly (HME) (n = 1), Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) (n = 2), Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) (n = 4), and Rasmussen encephalitis (RE) (n = 3). Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were also isolated from blood collected at the time of the surgery. Cells were immunostained with a panel of 20 antibody markers, and analyzed by mass cytometry. To identify and quantify the immune cell types in the samples, an unbiased clustering method was applied to the entire data set. More than 85 percent of the CD45+ cells isolated from resected RE brain tissue comprised T cells; by contrast NK cells and myeloid cells constituted 80-95 percent of the CD45+ cells isolated from the TSC and the FCD brain specimens. Three populations of myeloid cells made up >50 percent of all of the myeloid cells in all of the samples of which a population of HLA-DR+ CD11b+ CD4- cells comprised the vast majority of myeloid cells in the BIL fractions from the FCD and TSC cases. CD45RA+ HLA-DR- CD11b+ CD16+ NK cells constituted the major population of NK cells in the blood from all of the cases. This subset also comprised the majority of NK cells in BILs from the resected RE and HME brain tissue, whereas NK cells defined as CD45RA- HLA-DR+ CD11b- CD16- cells comprised 86-96 percent of the NK cells isolated from the FCD and TSC brain tissue. Thirteen different subsets of CD4 and CD8 αβ T cells and γδ T cells accounted for over 80% of the CD3+ T cells in all of the BIL and PBMC samples. At least 90 percent of the T cells in the RE BILs, 80 percent of the T cells in the HME BILs and 40-66 percent in the TSC and FCD BILs comprised activated antigen-experienced (CD45RO+ HLA-DR+ CD69+) T cells. We conclude that even in cases where there is no evidence for an infection or an immune disorder, activated peripheral immune cells may be present in epileptogenic areas of the brain, possibly in response to seizure-driven brain inflammation