Lemons to Lemonade: Educational Modifications During the COVID-19 Pandemic and their Utility Moving Forward

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated changes across social institutions, including education. This case study outlines specific innovations using five cases of pedagogical developments made by social science faculty members at a public university, and their utility for undergraduate students in a post-pandemic world. These innovations relate specifically to office hour scheduling, class assignment reminders, building informal class support groups, experiential learning, and virtual paper submission and evaluation. For each case, we outline the implementation procedure, evaluate its effectiveness, and discuss the benefits. We argue that these methods, forged during “challenging times”, will help improve students’ experiences and success during their time in college, and benefit instructors in higher education in a variety of ways

Exploring Ethical Development from Standard Instruction in the Contexts of Biomedical Engineering and Earth Science

Ethics continues to be required in the accreditation of engineers. However, ethics is seldom the core focus of departmental instruction. Yet, standard instruction may have myriad impacts on students' ethical development. This study explores students’ ethical formation when ethics is a peripheral or non-intentional aspect of instruction in departmental courses in Biomedical Engineering and Earth Science. The research question that we seek to address is, “In what different ways and to what extent does participation in departmental engineering and science courses cultivate STEM students’ ethical formation?” To address our research question, we disseminated a survey to students before (pre) and after (post) their participation in one of 12 courses offered in Earth Science or Biomedical Engineering during the Fall 2017 or Spring 2018. The survey included four instruments: (1) the Civic-Minded Graduate scale; (2) the Interpersonal Reactivity Index; (3) two relational constructs developed by the authors; and (4) the Defining Issues Test-2. Results suggest that current Earth Science curriculum, overall, positively contributes to students' ethical growth. However, the Biomedical Engineering courses showed no evidence of change. As the Earth Science courses do not explicitly focus on ethics, one potential explanation for this trend is the community-engaged nature of the Earth Science curriculum. These findings will be beneficial locally to help direct improvements in departmental STEM instruction. In addition, these findings pave the way for future comparative analyses exploring how variations in ethical instruction contribute to students' ethical and professional formation. © 2019 American Society for Engineering Educatio

The Developing Human Connectome Project: typical and disrupted perinatal functional connectivity

The Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP) is an Open Science project which provides the first large sample of neonatal functional MRI (fMRI) data with high temporal and spatial resolution. This data enables mapping of intrinsic functional connectivity between spatially distributed brain regions under normal and adverse perinatal circumstances, offering a framework to study the ontogeny of large-scale brain organisation in humans. Here, we characterise in unprecedented detail the maturation and integrity of resting-state networks (RSNs) at term-equivalent age in 337 infants (including 65 born preterm). First, we applied group independent component analysis (ICA) to define 11 RSNs in term-born infants scanned at 43.5-44.5 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA). Adult-like topography was observed in RSNs encompassing primary sensorimotor, visual and auditory cortices. Among six higher-order, association RSNs, analogues of the adult networks for language and ocular control were identified, but a complete default mode network precursor was not. Next, we regressed the subject-level datasets from an independent cohort of infants scanned at 37-43.5 weeks PMA against the group-level RSNs to test for the effects of age, sex and preterm birth. Brain mapping in term-born infants revealed areas of positive association with age across four of six association RSNs, indicating active maturation in functional connectivity from 37 to 43.5 weeks PMA. Female infants showed increased connectivity in inferotemporal regions of the visual association network. Preterm birth was associated with striking impairments of functional connectivity across all RSNs in a dose-dependent manner; conversely, connectivity of the superior parietal lobules within the lateral motor network was abnormally increased in preterm infants, suggesting a possible mechanism for specific difficulties such as developmental coordination disorder which occur frequently in preterm children. Overall, we find a robust, modular, symmetrical functional brain organisation at normal term age. A complete set of adult-equivalent primary RSNs is already instated, alongside emerging connectivity in immature association RSNs, consistent with a primary-to-higher-order ontogenetic sequence of brain development. The early developmental disruption imposed by preterm birth is associated with extensive alterations in functional connectivity

Development of microstructural and morphological cortical profiles in the neonatal brain

Interruptions to neurodevelopment during the perinatal period may have long-lasting consequences. However, to be able to investigate deviations in the foundation of proper connectivity and functional circuits, we need a measure of how this architecture evolves in the typically developing brain. To this end, in a cohort of 241 term-born infants, we used magnetic resonance imaging to estimate cortical profiles based on morphometry and microstructure over the perinatal period (37-44 weeks postmenstrual age, PMA). Using the covariance of these profiles as a measure of inter-areal network similarity (morphometric similarity networks; MSN), we clustered these networks into distinct modules. The resulting modules were consistent and symmetric, and corresponded to known functional distinctions, including sensory-motor, limbic, and association regions, and were spatially mapped onto known cytoarchitectonic tissue classes. Posterior regions became more morphometrically similar with increasing age, while peri-cingulate and medial temporal regions became more dissimilar. Network strength was associated with age: Within-network similarity increased over age suggesting emerging network distinction. These changes in cortical network architecture over an 8-week period are consistent with, and likely underpin, the highly dynamic processes occurring during this critical period. The resulting cortical profiles might provide normative reference to investigate atypical early brain development

Molecular identification, cloning and characterization of transmitted/founder HIV-1 subtype A, D and A/D infectious molecular clones

AbstractWe report the molecular identification, cloning and initial biological characterization of 12 full-length HIV-1 subtype A, D and A/D recombinant transmitted/founder (T/F) genomes. T/F genomes contained intact canonical open reading frames and all T/F viruses were replication competent in primary human T-cells, although subtype D virus replication was more efficient (p<0.05). All 12 viruses utilized CCR5 but not CXCR4 as a co-receptor for entry and exhibited a neutralization profile typical of tier 2 primary virus strains, with significant differences observed between subtype A and D viruses with respect to sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies VRC01, PG9 and PG16 and polyclonal subtype C anti-HIV IgG (p<0.05 for each). The present report doubles the number of T/F HIV-1 clones available for pathogenesis and vaccine research and extends their representation to include subtypes A, B, C and D

Multi-level selection and the issue of environmental homogeneity

In this paper, I identify two general positions with respect to the relationship between environment and natural selection. These positions consist in claiming that selective claims need and, respectively, need not be relativized to homogenous environments. I then show that adopting one or the other position makes a difference with respect to the way in which the effects of selection are to be measured in certain cases in which the focal population is distributed over heterogeneous environments. Moreover, I show that these two positions lead to two different interpretations – the Pricean and contextualist ones – of a type of selection scenarios in which multiple groups varying in properties affect the change in the metapopulation mean of individual-level traits. Showing that these two interpretations stem from different attitudes towards environmental homogeneity allows me to argue: a) that, unlike the Pricean interpretation, the contextualist interpretation can only claim that drift or selection is responsible for the change in frequency of the focal trait in a given metapopulation if details about whether or not group formation is random are specified; b) that the traditional main objection against the Pricean interpretation – consisting in arguing that the latter takes certain side-effects of individual selection to be effects of group selection – is unconvincing. This leads me to suggest that the ongoing debate about which of the two interpretations is preferable should concentrate on different issues than previously thought

The Impact of Digital Storytelling on Social Agency: Early Experience at an Online University

Digital Storytelling\u27 is a term often used to refer to a number of different types of digital narrative including web-based stories, hypertexts, videoblogs and computer games. This emergent form of creative work has found an outlet in a wide variety of different domains ranging from community social history, to cookbooks, to the classroom. It is the latter domain that provides the focus for this paper, specifically the online classroom at the tertiary level...Early feedback from students suggests that listening to and telling \u27true stories\u27 was a compelling and emotionally-engaging experience, providing an opportunity for \u27transformative reflection\u27 (Lambert 2000). By including multimedia, learners were able to build upon the fundamentals, presenting content in an easy-to-absorb and compelling way. In terms of team assignments students learned to become more effective actors in collaborative work environments

Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally

Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants—the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage—and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants. Hence, the nature of interactions among nondominant species could be modified by dominant species. Furthermore, these differences could translate into a disparity in the phylogenetic relatedness among dominants compared to the relatedness among nondominants. By estimating phylogenetic dispersion in 78 grasslands across five continents, we found that dominant species were clustered (e.g., co-dominant grasses), suggesting dominant species are likely organized by environmental filtering, and that nondominant species were either randomly assembled or overdispersed. Traits showed similar trends for those sites (\u3c50%) with sufficient trait data. Furthermore, several lineages scattered in the phylogeny had more nondominant species than expected at random, suggesting that traits common in nondominants are phylogenetically conserved and have evolved multiple times. We also explored environmental drivers of the dominant/nondominant disparity. We found different assembly patterns for dominants and nondominants, consistent with asymmetries in assembly mechanisms. Among the different postulated mechanisms, our results suggest two complementary hypotheses seldom explored: (1) Nondominant species include lineages adapted to thrive in the environment generated by dominant species. (2) Even when dominant species reduce resources to nondominant ones, dominant species could have a stronger positive effect on some nondominants by ameliorating environmental stressors affecting them, than by depleting resources and increasing the environmental stress to those nondominants. These results show that the dominant/nondominant asymmetry has ecological and evolutionary consequences fundamental to understand plant communities