Chasing Possibilities: First-Generation College Graduates Negotiate Past and Future Selves

The higher education literature highlights the retention and persistence of firstgeneration college students. This study explores the work-related experiences of firstgeneration college graduates. Findings suggest early-career first-generation graduates are engaged in a process of (re)understanding their past, negotiating their present work environment, and positioning themselves for long-term career satisfaction

Grit and the Adult Learner: Should We Be Thinking about Work Ethic?

Research related to work ethic appears most frequently in psychology and business-related venues, with few publications in education. This roundtable encourages participants to explore whether thinking in terms of a learners’ work ethic is an appropriate or potentially beneficial concept for adult educators

Getting Situated in a New Community of Practice: The Early-Career Workplace Learning of First-Generation College Graduates

A phenomenological study conducted with first-generation college graduates who were working full time demonstrates how these first-generation college graduates’ work environments contributed to a sense of meaning in work. Graduates indicated that co-workers were not, generally, proactive to help newcomers learn their jobs. Participants described their attempts to reconcile ideas of “work ethic,” as understood from families of origin, with the realities of their current jobs. Rather than intentional and learning-friendly communities of practice seeking to incorporate newcomers into the workplace, participants more often found they were left alone to learn their job

“Creating What I Think I should Be Doing”: Contradictions and Learning of College Job Changers

This roundtable, and the study it is based on, outlines how non-faculty staff at a small college described their own workplace learning after a “significant” job change (as defined by the participant)

Is It Worth It? Examining the Educational Benefits of Synchronous Activities in an Online Theology Course

To explore the effect of adding synchronous activities to an online course, one section of a theology course was conducted in an asynchronous environment while the second section incorporated weekly Adobe Connect sessions. No significant differences were found on measures of academic achievement, student satisfaction, or classroom community

Is It Worth the Effort? The Impact of Incorporating Synchronous Lectures into an Online Course

This study explores student achievement, sense of social community, and sense of learning community (Rovai, 2002) in two sections of an online course taught concurrently by the same instructor. One section was delivered in a fully asynchronous format; the other incorporated weekly synchronous lectures using an Adobe Connect environment. Students were randomly assigned to one of the two sections but allowed to change sections (before the semester began) if unwilling or unable to participate in weekly Adobe Connect meetings. Data included grades on course assignments, final course grades, end-of-course evaluations, and responses to the Classroom Community Inventory (Rovai, Wighting & Lucking, 2004). No significant differences were found on measures of academic achievement, student satisfaction, social community, or learning community between the two sections

C6/36 Aedes albopictus Cells Have a Dysfunctional Antiviral RNA Interference Response

Mosquitoes rely on RNA interference (RNAi) as their primary defense against viral infections. To this end, the combination of RNAi and invertebrate cell culture systems has become an invaluable tool in studying virus-vector interactions. Nevertheless, a recent study failed to detect an active RNAi response to West Nile virus (WNV) infection in C6/36 (Aedes albopictus) cells, a mosquito cell line frequently used to study arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses). Therefore, we sought to determine if WNV actively evades the host's RNAi response or if C6/36 cells have a dysfunctional RNAi pathway. C6/36 and Drosophila melanogaster S2 cells were infected with WNV (Flaviviridae), Sindbis virus (SINV, Togaviridae) and La Crosse virus (LACV, Bunyaviridae) and total RNA recovered from cell lysates. Small RNA (sRNA) libraries were constructed and subjected to high-throughput sequencing. In S2 cells, virus-derived small interfering RNAs (viRNAs) from all three viruses were predominantly 21 nt in length, a hallmark of the RNAi pathway. However, in C6/36 cells, viRNAs were primarily 17 nt in length from WNV infected cells and 26–27 nt in length in SINV and LACV infected cells. Furthermore, the origin (positive or negative viral strand) and distribution (position along viral genome) of S2 cell generated viRNA populations was consistent with previously published studies, but the profile of sRNAs isolated from C6/36 cells was altered. In total, these results suggest that C6/36 cells lack a functional antiviral RNAi response. These findings are analogous to the type-I interferon deficiency described in Vero (African green monkey kidney) cells and suggest that C6/36 cells may fail to accurately model mosquito-arbovirus interactions at the molecular level

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education Series, Vol. 143

Georgia Southern faculty member C. Amelia Davis co-edited, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education Series, Vol. 143.https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/curriculum-facbookshelf/1033/thumbnail.jp