The Need for Professionally Oriented ESL Instruction in the United States

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90262/1/3586694.pd

Policies of financing livestock programs by commercial banks in Kansas

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1964 O5

Point-driven understanding in engineering lecture comprehension

Nonnative speakers have long been known to have trouble understanding academic lectures. ESP researchers and teachers agree that the problem lies mainly at the discourse level, not at the sentence level; accordingly, a body of discourse-oriented teaching materials for lecture comprehension is now on the market. Though a step in the right direction, these materials fail to do justice to the rhetorical, strategic nature of academic lectures. As our study shows, students may understand all the words of a lecture (including lexical connectives and other discourse markers) and yet fail to understand the lecturer's main points or logical argument.Our study was an exploratory one. Fourteen NNS graduate and undergraduate students watched an authentic 16-minute videotaped lecture on a topic in mechanical engineering and then were asked to provide immediate-recall summaries, which were then analyzed in consultation with the lecturer. Although the lecture was clerly structured around several main points, most of the students failed to grasp these points. These results are discussed in terms of listening strategies: the successful students used a `point-driven' strategy while the unsuccessful ones used an `information-driven' strategy. We conclude that students should be taught how to listen to lectures in a more rhetorical, strategic way. More generally, if we are to teach students to understand and communicate more effectively, we should help them see how the organization of their discourse fits into the larger goals, agendas, and contexts in their fields.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28773/1/0000605.pd

CRISPRi-based radiation modifier screen identifies long non-coding RNA therapeutic targets in glioma.

BackgroundLong non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) exhibit highly cell type-specific expression and function, making this class of transcript attractive for targeted cancer therapy. However, the vast majority of lncRNAs have not been tested as potential therapeutic targets, particularly in the context of currently used cancer treatments. Malignant glioma is rapidly fatal, and ionizing radiation is part of the current standard-of-care used to slow tumor growth in both adult and pediatric patients.ResultsWe use CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) to screen 5689 lncRNA loci in human glioblastoma (GBM) cells, identifying 467 hits that modify cell growth in the presence of clinically relevant doses of fractionated radiation. Thirty-three of these lncRNA hits sensitize cells to radiation, and based on their expression in adult and pediatric gliomas, nine of these hits are prioritized as lncRNA Glioma Radiation Sensitizers (lncGRS). Knockdown of lncGRS-1, a primate-conserved, nuclear-enriched lncRNA, inhibits the growth and proliferation of primary adult and pediatric glioma cells, but not the viability of normal brain cells. Using human brain organoids comprised of mature neural cell types as a three-dimensional tissue substrate to model the invasive growth of glioma, we find that antisense oligonucleotides targeting lncGRS-1 selectively decrease tumor growth and sensitize glioma cells to radiation therapy.ConclusionsThese studies identify lncGRS-1 as a glioma-specific therapeutic target and establish a generalizable approach to rapidly identify novel therapeutic targets in the vast non-coding genome to enhance radiation therapy

A framework for mathematics curricula in engineering education: a report of the mathematics working group.

This document adapts the competence concept to the mathematical education of engineers and explains and illustrates it by giving examples. It also provides information for specifying the extent to which a competency should be acquired. It does not prescribe a particular level of progress for competence acquisition in engineering education. There are many different engineering branches and many different job profiles with various needs for mathematical competencies; consequently it is not appropriate to specify a fixed profile. The competence framework serves as an analytical framework for thinking about the current state in one’s own institution and also as a design framework for specifying the intended profile. A sketch of an example profile for a practice-oriented study course in mechanical engineering is given in the document. This document retains the list of content-related learning outcomes (slightly modified) that formed the ‘kernel’ of the previous curriculum document. These are still important because lecturers teaching application subjects want to be sure that students have at least an ‘initial familiarity’ with certain mathematical concepts and procedures which they need in their application modelling. In order to offer helpful orientation for designing teaching processes, teaching and learning environments and approaches are outlined which help students to obtain the competencies to an adequate degree. It is clear that such competencies cannot be obtained by simply listening to lectures, so adequate forms of active involvement of students need to be included. Moreover, in a competence-based approach the mathematical education must be integrated in the surrounding engineering study course to really achieve the ability to use mathematics in engineering contexts. The document presents several forms of how this integration can be realized. This integration is essential to the development of competencies and will require close co-operation between mathematics academics and their engineering counterparts. Finally, since assessment procedures determine to a great extent the behaviour of students, it is extremely important to address competency acquisition in assessment schemes. Ideas for doing this are also outlined in the document. The main purpose of this document is to provide orientation for those who set up concrete mathematics curricula for their specific engineering programme, and for lecturers who think about learning and assessment arrangements for achieving the intended level of competence acquisition. It also serves as a framework for the group’s future work and discussions

DNA nanomapping using CRISPR-Cas9 as a programmable nanoparticle

Physical mapping of DNA can be used to detect structural variants and for whole-genome haplotype assembly. Here, the authors use CRISPR-Cas9 and high-speed atomic force microscopy to ‘nanomap’ single molecules of DNA

The RAST Server: Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The number of prokaryotic genome sequences becoming available is growing steadily and is growing faster than our ability to accurately annotate them.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>We describe a fully automated service for annotating bacterial and archaeal genomes. The service identifies protein-encoding, rRNA and tRNA genes, assigns functions to the genes, predicts which subsystems are represented in the genome, uses this information to reconstruct the metabolic network and makes the output easily downloadable for the user. In addition, the annotated genome can be browsed in an environment that supports comparative analysis with the annotated genomes maintained in the SEED environment.</p> <p>The service normally makes the annotated genome available within 12–24 hours of submission, but ultimately the quality of such a service will be judged in terms of accuracy, consistency, and completeness of the produced annotations. We summarize our attempts to address these issues and discuss plans for incrementally enhancing the service.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>By providing accurate, rapid annotation freely to the community we have created an important community resource. The service has now been utilized by over 120 external users annotating over 350 distinct genomes.</p

Transcriptome Remodeling Contributes to Epidemic Disease Caused by the Human Pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes

For over a century, a fundamental objective in infection biology research has been to understand the molecular processes contributing to the origin and perpetuation of epidemics. Divergent hypotheses have emerged concerning the extent to which environmental events or pathogen evolution dominates in these processes. Remarkably few studies bear on this important issue. Based on population pathogenomic analysis of 1,200 Streptococcus pyogenes type emm89 infection isolates, we report that a series of horizontal gene transfer events produced a new pathogenic genotype with increased ability to cause infection, leading to an epidemic wave of disease on at least two continents. In the aggregate, these and other genetic changes substantially remodeled the transcriptomes of the evolved progeny, causing extensive differential expression of virulence genes and altered pathogen-host interaction, including enhanced immune evasion. Our findings delineate the precise molecular genetic changes that occurred and enhance our understanding of the evolutionary processes that contribute to the emergence and persistence of epidemically successful pathogen clones. The data have significant implications for understanding bacterial epidemics and for translational research efforts to blunt their detrimental effects. IMPORTANCE The confluence of studies of molecular events underlying pathogen strain emergence, evolutionary genetic processes mediating altered virulence, and epidemics is in its infancy. Although understanding these events is necessary to develop new or improved strategies to protect health, surprisingly few studies have addressed this issue, in particular, at the comprehensive population genomic level. Herein we establish that substantial remodeling of the transcriptome of the human-specific pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes by horizontal gene flow and other evolutionary genetic changes is a central factor in precipitating and perpetuating epidemic disease. The data unambiguously show that the key outcome of these molecular events is evolution of a new, more virulent pathogenic genotype. Our findings provide new understanding of epidemic disease.Peer reviewe