Leveraging Trade Agreements to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Accordance with the Paris Agreement

Climate change is the most obvious and pressing impairment of the biological, physical, and chemical systems. To help mitigate this unprecedented problem, I present heads of state, policymakers, and members of civil society with a set of new provisions that they can include in their trade agreements to drive emissions reduction from countries inside and outside of their trade agreements, maintain their ability to compete in an increasingly globalized world, and comply with international trading rules. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate the untapped potential for leveraging trade agreements to reduce emissions in the midst of an international system that lacks concerted climate action. In light of humanity’s inadequate efforts to address the immense threats posed by a changing climate, decentralized efforts, such as these, are increasingly essential to reduce emissions

The Power of Stories: Using Fiction & Nonfiction to Develop Information Literacy Skills

In this presentation, we will outline our experiences crafting new credit-bearing courses that integrate information literacy skills using non-traditional materials. Through the use of fiction and films based on real women, science fiction, and popular nonfiction, we will share how we built courses that satisfy university information literacy curriculum requirements. One challenge of credit-bearing information literacy courses can be providing authentic context for students. Students may not understand how skills transfer outside of the artificial contexts provided. We will address ways course content can be used to provide authentic context by asking students to use non-traditional materials to consider research. We will demonstrate the way that course content has impacted our design decisions, assessment, and instructional activities while adhering to common objectives. Course A uses fictional depictions of real women in fiction and film to engage students in discussions of authority. Students research the real women whose stories are told fictionally. This research forces them to grapple with what authority means in both fictional and non-fictional contexts. Course B uses science fiction to understand complex, technical science concepts. By combining active learning with science fiction stories and films, students can identify the role of science in a story, problems and solutions in modern science, and pseudoscience. Science fiction helps students communicate scientific concepts clearly, value forms of science journalism, and explore “forbidden knowledge,” the scientific method, transparency, and peer review. Course C uses popular nonfiction to consider scholarship as a conversation. Using Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, students are asked to consider the larger conversation that Ansari is part of. By considering the book’s research, students consider academic privilege and how we determine authority. Through stand-up comedy and Ansari’s Netflix show students evaluate how purpose impacts production and product, and how conversations are constructed as accessible or inaccessible

Exploratory Studies in the Evaluation of Educational Telecasts

Throughout the country today a new electronic dimension is being added to many classrooms-television. A tremendous amount of effort, time, and money is being spent to produce and transmit educational television programs to the schools and it appears that this output has not yet even approached its peak. In view of this fact, one would expect to find a somewhat proportionate amount of research being carried out to evaluate television as an educational tool so that it can be determined how it can be maximally effective. Such, though, is not the case. There is a surprising dearth of such research. It must be noted that this research is difficult. First of all, no criteria for evaluation have been firmly established. There are many variables which complicate any form of measurement. Teachers vary greatly in their ability to tie programs in with what is meaningful to the specific school situation. Schools vary in the amount of pre-program and post-program activities in which they engage for the purpose of pointing up the major points of each program. The programs are often viewed by different grade levels in different schools. Not all schools use them in conjunction with regular courses. Measurement is further complicated by the fact that many of the programs are not designed to teach objective information, which is comparatively simple to test, but rather aim at motivating the students to take a greater interest in the subject matter and, in the case of one series of programs produced by the University of Iowa during the past two years, to achieve a higher degree of personal adjustment

Assessing the Potential of Mineral Carbonation with Industrial Alkalinity Sources in the U.S

AbstractThe availability of industrial alkalinity sources is investigated to determine their potential for the mineral carbonation of CO2 from point-source emissions in the United States. The available aggregate markets are investigated as potential sinks for the mineralized CO2 products. Additionally, a life-cycle assessment of aqueous mineral carbonation suggests that a variety of alkalinity sources and process configurations are capable of net CO2 reductions. The CO2 storage potential of mineral carbonation was estimated using the life-cycle assessment results and alkalinity source availability

Canine Gastric Carcinomas: A Histopathological and Immunohistochemical Study and Similarities with the Human Counterpart

Canine gastric carcinoma (CGC) affects both sexes in relatively equal proportions, with a mean age of nine years, and the highest frequency in Staffordshire bull terriers. The most common histological subtype in 149 CGC cases was the undifferentiated carcinoma. CGCs were associated with increased chronic inflammation parameters and a greater chronic inflammatory score when Helicobacter spp. were present. Understanding the molecular pathways of gastric carcinoma is challenging. All markers showed variable expression for each subtype. Expression of the cell cycle regulator 14-3-3σ was positive in undifferentiated, tubular and papillary carcinomas. This demonstrates that 14-3-3σ could serve as an immunohistochemical marker in routine diagnosis and that mucinous, papillary and signet-ring cell (SRC) carcinomas follow a 14-3-3σ independent pathway. p16, another cell cycle regulator, showed increased expression in mucinous and SRC carcinomas. Expression of the adhesion molecules E-cadherin and CD44 appear context-dependent, with switching within tumor emboli potentially playing an important role in tumor cell survival, during invasion and metastasis. Within neoplastic emboli, acinar structures lacked expression of all markers, suggesting an independent molecular pathway that requires further investigation. These findings demonstrate similarities and differences between dogs and humans, albeit further clinicopathological data and molecular analysis are required

Alzheimers disease linked Aβ42 exerts product feedback inhibition on γ-secretase impairing downstream cell signaling.

Amyloid β (Aβ) peptides accumulating in the brain are proposed to trigger Alzheimers disease (AD). However, molecular cascades underlying their toxicity are poorly defined. Here, we explored a novel hypothesis for Aβ42 toxicity that arises from its proven affinity for γ-secretases. We hypothesized that the reported increases in Aβ42, particularly in the endolysosomal compartment, promote the establishment of a product feedback inhibitory mechanism on γ-secretases, and thereby impair downstream signaling events. We conducted kinetic analyses of γ-secretase activity in cell-free systems in the presence of Aβ, as well as cell-based and ex vivo assays in neuronal cell lines, neurons, and brain synaptosomes to assess the impact of Aβ on γ-secretases. We show that human Aβ42 peptides, but neither murine Aβ42 nor human Aβ17-42 (p3), inhibit γ-secretases and trigger accumulation of unprocessed substrates in neurons, including C-terminal fragments (CTFs) of APP, p75, and pan-cadherin. Moreover, Aβ42 treatment dysregulated cellular homeostasis, as shown by the induction of p75-dependent neuronal death in two distinct cellular systems. Our findings raise the possibility that pathological elevations in Aβ42 contribute to cellular toxicity via the γ-secretase inhibition, and provide a novel conceptual framework to address Aβ toxicity in the context of γ-secretase-dependent homeostatic signaling