An Innovative Approach To Faculty Coaching

As online education has grown rapidly, colleges and universities have developed various approaches to effectively evaluating and coaching faculty.  Faculty performance is central to student success and faculty need feedback that is consistent, constructive and illustrative.  Through the use of screen recording technology, academic department chairs can record a visual, clear walk- through of an online class while providing constructive, audio feedback to the instructor. This technology in and of itself is simple and straightforward to use, and can be archived for future reference in the event that an academic department chairs and/or administrator would need documentation regarding the performance of a faculty member.  In 2009, the School of Business and Management at an online university began using Jing/Screen cast recording to provide faculty feedback.  The response from faculty has been overwhelmingly positive.  Faculty have expressed that combining the use of visual and audio feedback results in straightforward expectations  in meeting teaching requirements and a better understanding of teaching requirements. This has proven to be an efficient and effective way of providing not only positive feedback but also constructive criticism, which has resulted in faculty taking actions to improve their teaching performance.  This tool has worked well for this online university but the application could be equally effective in managing fewer faculty members.  Faculties have been able to gain an immediate understanding of what they are proficient in and where they can improve. They have provided such feedback as, “I am in awe of the technology!  This is so very user friendly, and it is such an efficient and effective way to get your message across to me.”  The introduction and use of this technology, audio and visual feedback, has created a community of improved understanding of University requirements and classroom expectations while establishing a better relationship and more open line of communication between academic department chairs and remote adjunct faculty

The targeted delivery of multicomponent cargos to cancer cells by nanoporous particle-supported lipid bilayers.

Encapsulation of drugs within nanocarriers that selectively target malignant cells promises to mitigate side effects of conventional chemotherapy and to enable delivery of the unique drug combinations needed for personalized medicine. To realize this potential, however, targeted nanocarriers must simultaneously overcome multiple challenges, including specificity, stability and a high capacity for disparate cargos. Here we report porous nanoparticle-supported lipid bilayers (protocells) that synergistically combine properties of liposomes and nanoporous particles. Protocells modified with a targeting peptide that binds to human hepatocellular carcinoma exhibit a 10,000-fold greater affinity for human hepatocellular carcinoma than for hepatocytes, endothelial cells or immune cells. Furthermore, protocells can be loaded with combinations of therapeutic (drugs, small interfering RNA and toxins) and diagnostic (quantum dots) agents and modified to promote endosomal escape and nuclear accumulation of selected cargos. The enormous capacity of the high-surface-area nanoporous core combined with the enhanced targeting efficacy enabled by the fluid supported lipid bilayer enable a single protocell loaded with a drug cocktail to kill a drug-resistant human hepatocellular carcinoma cell, representing a 10(6)-fold improvement over comparable liposomes

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Personal Problems Among Rural Youth and Their Relation to Psychosocial Well-Being

To understand stressors experienced by rural adolescents and their relationship to psychosocial well-being, high school students completed the Personal Problems Checklist for Adolescents and three measures of well-being. The most frequently reported problems were in social/friendship and parental domains. The most commonly reported individual problem was Not having any privacy. Analyses indicated significant associations between problems reported and well-being. As age increased, problems reported in parental, dating, and crisis domains decreased. Girls reported more problems than boys in the parental domain, as did participants in stepfamilies. Extension and 4-H programs may help ease the effects of stressors on rural youth