Strategic planning evaluation of creating a new professional association

A reoccurring question examined by the Working Group has been “why change?” This long report has carefully explored the pros and cons of creating a new association and provided numerous suggestions for its services and organization structures. A better question than “why change?” is “what kind of change is demanded by postsecondary education and needed by these professionals?” Perhaps others can provide a paradigm for us when considering the future. When writing a dialogue among several of his characters in a play discussing the future, Shakespeare penned the expression “The Undiscovered Country” to describe this place. While everyone will visit the future, no one can come back and tell others exactly what it will be like. However, all of us will walk into The Undiscovered Country. We have the choice regarding how we walk into the future. Change can be proactively managed or simply reacted to. The best of past traditions can be brought into the future and merged with new structures and traditions or all can be left to chance. The most important element that moves forward into the new association are members of the current organizations. They form the core of the new future and bring forward the history and traditions of the previous organizations. Let us encourage new members to join these veterans as we walk together into The Undiscovered Country as colleagues and friends. Let’s build a new future together

The Freshman, vol. 5, no. 1

The Freshman was a weekly, student newsletter issued on Mondays throughout the academic year. The newsletter included calendar notices, coverage of campus social events, lectures, and athletic teams. The intent of the publication was to create unity, a sense of community, and class spirit among first year students

HDNetDB: A Molecular Interaction Database for Network-Oriented Investigations into Huntington’s Disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded CAG repeat in the huntingtin gene. Although HD is monogenic, its molecular manifestation appears highly complex and involves multiple cellular processes. The recent application of high throughput platforms such as microarrays and mass-spectrometry has indicated multiple pathogenic routes. The massive data generated by these techniques together with the complexity of the pathogenesis, however, pose considerable challenges to researchers. Network-based methods can provide valuable tools to consolidate newly generated data with existing knowledge, and to decipher the interwoven molecular mechanisms underlying HD. To facilitate research on HD in a network-oriented manner, we have developed HDNetDB, a database that integrates molecular interactions with many HD-relevant datasets. It allows users to obtain, visualize and prioritize molecular interaction networks using HD-relevant gene expression, phenotypic and other types of data obtained from human samples or model organisms. We illustrated several HDNetDB functionalities through a case study and identified proteins that constitute potential cross-talk between HD and the unfolded protein response (UPR). HDNetDB is publicly accessible at http://hdnetdb.sysbiolab.eu.CHDI Foundation [A-2666]; Portuguese Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BPD/70718/2010, SFRH/BPD/96890/2013, IF/00881/2013, UID/BIM/04773/2013 - CBMR, UID/Multi/04326/2013 - CCMAR]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Wnt Receptor Ryk Reduces Neuronal and Cell Survival Capacity by Repressing FOXO Activity During the Early Phases of Mutant Huntingtin Pathogenicity

The Wnt receptor Ryk is an evolutionary-conserved protein important during neuronal differentiation through several mechanisms, including γ-secretase cleavage and nuclear translocation of its intracellular domain (Ryk-ICD). Although the Wnt pathway may be neuroprotective, the role of Ryk in neurodegenerative disease remains unknown. We found that Ryk is up-regulated in neurons expressing mutant huntingtin (HTT) in several models of Huntington's disease (HD). Further investigation in Caenorhabditis elegans and mouse striatal cell models of HD provided a model in which the early-stage increase of Ryk promotes neuronal dysfunction by repressing the neuroprotective activity of the longevity-promoting factor FOXO through a noncanonical mechanism that implicates the Ryk-ICD fragment and its binding to the FOXO co-factor β-catenin. The Ryk-ICD fragment suppressed neuroprotection by lin-18/Ryk loss-of-function in expanded-polyQ nematodes, repressed FOXO transcriptional activity, and abolished β-catenin protection of mutant htt striatal cells against cell death vulnerability. Additionally, Ryk-ICD was increased in the nucleus of mutant htt cells, and reducing γ-secretase PS1 levels compensated for the cytotoxicity of full-length Ryk in these cells. These findings reveal that the Ryk-ICD pathway may impair FOXO protective activity in mutant polyglutamine neurons, suggesting that neurons are unable to efficiently maintain function and resist disease from the earliest phases of the pathogenic process in HD. © 2014 Tourette et al

Predicting self-compassion in UK nursing students: Relationships with resilience, engagement, motivation, and mental wellbeing

Self-compassion, being kind towards oneself, has been identified as a key protective factor of mental health. This is consistent with students’ experiences in the study of nursing, which attracts a large number of students in the United Kingdom. Despite the importance of self-compassion, knowledge in how to enhance self-compassion is under-researched. Self-compassion interventions are commonly related to meditative exercises. In order to suggest alternative approaches, relationships between self-compassion and more established constructs need to be appraised. Accordingly, this study evaluated predictors of self-compassion, examining its relationships with more established constructs examined in other healthcare student populations: resilience, engagement, motivation and mental wellbeing. An opportunity sample of 182 UK nursing students at a university in East Midlands completed self-report measures about these constructs. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted. Self-compassion was positively related to resilience, engagement, intrinsic motivation and mental wellbeing, while negatively related to amotivation. Resilience and mental wellbeing were identified as significant predictors of self-compassion. As resilience and mental wellbeing are relatively familiar to many nursing lecturers and students, educators can incorporate a self-compassion component into the existing resilience training and/or mental wellbeing practices.N/

Initiation of student-TA interactions in tutorials

At the University of Maryland we videotaped several semesters of tutorials as part of a large research project. A particular research task required us to locate examples of students calling the teaching assistants (TAs) over for assistance with a physics question. To our surprise, examples of this kind of interaction were difficult to find. We undertook a systematic study of TA-student interactions in tutorial: In particular, how are the interactions initiated? Do the students call the TA over for help with a particular issue, does the TA stop by spontaneously, or does the worksheet require a discussion with the TA at that point? The initiation of the interaction is of particular interest because it provides evidence of the motivation for and purpose of the interaction. This paper presents the results of that systematic investigation. We discovered that the majority of student-TA interactions in tutorial are initiated by teaching assistants, confirmed our initial observation that relatively few interactions are initiated by students, and found, further, that even fewer interactions are worksheet initiated. Perhaps most importantly, we found that our sense of who initiates tutorial interactions—based on extensive but informal observations—is not necessarily accurate. We need systematic investigations to uncover the reality of our classroom experiences

Position paper: Creating a new professional association

A reoccurring question examined by the CRLA/ NADE Working Group has been “why change?” In the full report available online (http://www. crla.net/WorkingGroupReport091007.doc) we carefully explored the pros and cons of creating a new association and provided numerous suggestions for its services and organizational structures. A better question than “why change?” is “what kind of change is demanded by postsecondary education and needed by these professionals?” Perhaps an analogy provided by Shakespeare can provide a paradigm for us when considering the future. When writing a dialogue among several of his characters in a play discussing the future, Shakespeare penned the expression “The Undiscovered Country” to describe this place. Although everyone will visit the future, no one can come back and tell others exactly what it will be like. However, all of us will walk into The Undiscovered Country as colleagues and friends. Let’s create a dynamic new association together