A Lesson in Comedy

Teaching students the basics in comedy, professional entertainer Gavin Jerome and Dr. Peter Orazem show students how to get a laugh in an Iowa State honors seminar called Comedy College. Th e seminar is offered exclusively in the fall to honors seminar students. Technically, Jerome could only help teach the class since he isn’t a licensed instructor, so Orazem, an economics professor at Iowa State University and Teaching Assistant for Comedy College, accompanied Jerome in every class

Preaching Acceptance

Jon Page, a minister at the United Church of Christ, first realized he was gay at the age of 11 or 12. He tried talking to a priest about it since his parents weren’t interested in discussing it. The priest then gave him a website address that promoted the “ex-gay” movement. The website listed some of the reasons why its creators thought he was gay: you had too many girl friends when you were younger; you didn’t go out and play enough sports; you were too close to your mother; you are too feminine, not manly enough

High-resolution mapping reveals topologically distinct cellular pools of phosphatidylserine

Phosphatidylserine exists lumenally in the ER, Golgi, and mitochondria but cytoplasmically in the trans-Golgi and at the plasma membrane, which suggests that functionally important flipping may occur during trafficking

2018 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1005/thumbnail.jp

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015

A Lesson in Comedy

Teaching students the basics in comedy, professional entertainer Gavin Jerome and Dr. Peter Orazem show students how to get a laugh in an Iowa State honors seminar called Comedy College. Th e seminar is offered exclusively in the fall to honors seminar students. Technically, Jerome could only help teach the class since he isn’t a licensed instructor, so Orazem, an economics professor at Iowa State University and Teaching Assistant for Comedy College, accompanied Jerome in every class.</p

Preaching Acceptance

Jon Page, a minister at the United Church of Christ, first realized he was gay at the age of 11 or 12. He tried talking to a priest about it since his parents weren’t interested in discussing it. The priest then gave him a website address that promoted the “ex-gay” movement. The website listed some of the reasons why its creators thought he was gay: you had too many girl friends when you were younger; you didn’t go out and play enough sports; you were too close to your mother; you are too feminine, not manly enough.</p

Investigation of an immunoreactive chorionic gonadotropin-like substance in the placenta, serum, and urine of pregnant bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that an immunoreactive chorionic gonadotropin (CG)-like substance ispresent in full-term dolphin placentas and to determine if CG immunoreactivity can be detected in corresponding serum and urine samples for potential application to diagnose pregnancy. Six placentas were collected immediately after parturition from four captive bottlenose dolphins in 2003, 2007 (Experiment 1), and 2011 (Experiment 2). Serum and urine were collected during early, middle, and late pregnancy from the same dolphins. In Experiment 1, an eCG radioimmunoassay (RIA)was used to analyze dilutions of supernatants from the homogenates of each placenta for eCG immunoreactivity, and a commercial hCG Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was used to analyze individual serum samples and dilutions of poolsof serum and urine for hCG immunoreactivity. Specific CG immunoreactivity was not detected above assay sensitivities in any of the supernatants of respective placental homogenates, including the highest concentrate (100 mg/mL), nor in anyofthe individual samples and pools of serum and urine. In Experiment 2, the highest placental homogenate was increased five-fold (500 mg/mL), sensitivity of the eCG RIA was increased six-fold, and a different combination of hCG antibodies wasused in an alternative commercial sandwich -type ELISA. Despite the optimization, specific CG immunoreactivity in placental tissue and individual serum and urine samples was not detected above assay sensitivities. In conclusion, the hypothesis that an immunore-active CG-like substance is present in full-term dolphin placentas was not supported. In addition,non-immunoreactivity of a CG-like substance in serum and urine samples collected during various stages of pregnancyprecluded the development and application of a CG-based immunoassay for diagnosing pregnancy status in dolphins