Building Inclusive University Culture by Gameful Design of Teaching

Inclusive learning environments with active learning are well supported in peer reviewed research. STEM industries require graduates, but students are not engaged and stereotype threat prevents academic success. Campus cultures often reinforce silent desperation of creative minds. Gameful design can promote the building of empathy between participants, which is a start of grassroots support for inclusive culture in the classroom, online, and campus wide. Session Objectives: (1) Analyze research in active learning and inclusive teaching. (2) Analyze the connection between gameful design and inclusive campus culture. (3) Evaluate case studies in gameful design of teaching and learning

Getting Comfortable with Failure and Vulnerability to Facilitate Learning and Innovation in the Game of School

Schools should teach students how to fail fast and safely in order to learn and to allow innovation through vulnerability. The lessons that the gaming culture has for learning will define future strategies of teaching and learning. Games are sometimes called well-designed work. As a result, people flock to them. The secret of engagement in games can be adopted in academia as soon as courses become well-designed games

Open Source Analytics for Blackboard Learn

Big Data is often addressed by small open source projects. A few of them include Apache Hadoop, Oracle Cluster File System, Storm, and Drill. BbStats is a Blackboard module, authored by Szymon Machajewski, to predict system performance and graph trends for course usage and user activity. The software is the second most frequently downloaded module for Blackboard at projects.oscelot.org. The BbStats project leverages the data generated by student activity and provides Business Intelligence reports powered by JavaScript libraries of Timeplot (based on MIT Simile project)

Computer Software Release: Open Photo Roster

Learning student names in a classroom course is important to creating an inclusive learning environment. Some Learning Management Systems, like Blackboard Learn, provide tools for student images, but such tools are insufficient. This software project creates a consistent and reliable way of identifying students for the needs of proctored exams as well as for learning student names.https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/oer_teaching/1000/thumbnail.jp

Kronika

PAMIĘCI MGR. EUGENIUSZA „GWIDONA” WILGOCKIEG

3,15-Dimeth­oxy-10-methyl­tricyclo­[9.4.0.02,7]penta­deca-1(11),2(7),3,5,9,12,14-heptaen-8-one

The title mol­ecule, C18H16O3, contains three fused rings, of which the seven-membered cyclo­hept-2-enone ring has a screw-boat conformation. The two meth­oxy­phenyl rings make a dihedral angle of 50.4 (2)°. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, leading to a three-dimensional supra­molecular architecture

(S)-2-(Iodo­meth­yl)-1-tosyl­pyrrolidine

In the title mol­ecule, C12H16INO2S, the pyrrolidine ring is in an envelope conformation. The dihedral angle between the four essentially coplanar atoms of the pyrrolidine ring and the benzene ring is 75.5 (4)°

Mutations Closer to the Active Site Improve the Promiscuous Aldolase Activity of 4-Oxalocrotonate Tautomerase More Effectively than Distant Mutations

The enzyme 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (4-OT), which catalyzes enol-keto tautomerization as part of a degradative pathway for aromatic hydrocarbons, promiscuously catalyzes various carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions. These include the aldol condensation of acetaldehyde with benzaldehyde to yield cinnamaldehyde. Here, we demonstrate that 4-OT can be engineered into a more efficient aldolase for this condensation reaction, with a &gt;5000-fold improvement in catalytic efficiency (kcat /Km ) and a &gt;10(7) -fold change in reaction specificity, by exploring small libraries in which only "hotspots" are varied. The hotspots were identified by systematic mutagenesis (covering each residue), followed by a screen for single mutations that give a strong improvement in the desired aldolase activity. All beneficial mutations were near the active site of 4-OT, thus underpinning the notion that new catalytic activities of a promiscuous enzyme are more effectively enhanced by mutations close to the active site.</p

Engineering a Promiscuous Tautomerase into a More Efficient Aldolase for Self-Condensations of Linear Aliphatic Aldehydes

The enzyme 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (4-OT) from Pseudomonas putida mt-2 takes part in a catabolic pathway for aromatic hydrocarbons, where it catalyzes the conversion of 2hydroxyhexa-2,4-dienedioate into 2-oxohexa-3-enedioate. This tautomerase can also promiscuously catalyze carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions, including various types of aldol reactions, by using its amino-terminal proline as a key catalytic residue. Here, we used systematic mutagenesis to identify two hotspots in 4-OT (Met45 and Phe50) at which single mutations give marked improvements in aldolase activity for the self-condensation of propanal. Activity screening of a focused library in which these two hotspots were varied led to the discovery of a 4-OT variant (M45Y/F50V) with strongly enhanced aldolase activity in the self-condensation of linear aliphatic aldehydes, such as acetaldehyde, propanal, and butanal, to yield α,β-unsaturated aldehydes. With both propanal and benzaldehyde, this double mutant, unlike the previously constructed single mutant F50A, mainly catalyzes the self-condensation of propanal rather than the cross-condensation of propanal and benzaldehyde, thus indicating that it indeed has altered substrate specificity. This variant could serve as a template to create new biocatalysts that lack dehydration activity and possess further enhanced aldolase activity, thus enabling the efficient enzymatic self-coupling of aliphatic aldehydes