Andrey Reznikov. Russian Anti-Proverbs of the 21st Century: A Sociolinguistic Dictionary. (Burlington, Vermont 2012) – (Kathleen Scollins)

Russian Anti-Proverbs of the 21st Century: A Sociolinguistic Dictionary. By Andrey Reznikov. Burlington, Vermont: “Proverbium” in cooperation with the Department of German and Russian, University of Vermont, 2012. Pp. 33

Andrey Reznikov. Russian Anti-Proverbs of the 21st Century: A Sociolinguistic Dictionary. (Burlington, Vermont 2012) – (Kathleen Scollins)

Russian Anti-Proverbs of the 21st Century: A Sociolinguistic Dictionary. By Andrey Reznikov. Burlington, Vermont: “Proverbium” in cooperation with the Department of German and Russian, University of Vermont, 2012. Pp. 33

The amyloid precursor protein of Alzheimer’s disease clusters at the organelle/microtubule interface on organelles that bind microtubules in an ATP dependent manner

© The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0147808, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147808.The amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a causal agent in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and is a transmembrane protein that associates with membrane-limited organelles. APP has been shown to co-purify through immunoprecipitation with a kinesin light chain suggesting that APP may act as a trailer hitch linking kinesin to its intercellular cargo, however this hypothesis has been challenged. Previously, we identified an mRNA transcript that encodes a squid homolog of human APP770. The human and squid isoforms share 60% sequence identity and 76% sequence similarity within the cytoplasmic domain and share 15 of the final 19 amino acids at the C-terminus establishing this highly conserved domain as a functionally import segment of the APP molecule. Here, we study the distribution of squid APP in extruded axoplasm as well as in a well-characterized reconstituted organelle/microtubule preparation from the squid giant axon in which organelles bind microtubules and move towards the microtubule plus-ends. We find that APP associates with microtubules by confocal microscopy and co-purifies with KI-washed axoplasmic organelles by sucrose density gradient fractionation. By electron microscopy, APP clusters at a single focal point on the surfaces of organelles and localizes to the organelle/microtubule interface. In addition, the association of APP-organelles with microtubules is an ATP dependent process suggesting that the APP-organelles contain a microtubule-based motor protein. Although a direct kinesin/APP association remains controversial, the distribution of APP at the organelle/microtubule interface strongly suggests that APP-organelles have an orientation and that APP like the Alzheimer’s protein tau has a microtubule-based function.Research reported in this publication was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103430

Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School Promotes Student STEM Interest

The principal purpose of this investigation is to study the effect of robotic cooperative learning methodologies on middle school students’ critical thinking, and STEM interest. The semi-experimental inquiry consisted of ninety four six-grade students (forty nine students in the experimental group, forty five students in the control group), chosen by their principals. A critical thinking test was administered to evaluate the cognitive skills and STEM interest of the students. Instruction was implemented in two formats: cooperative learning and problem-based learning. The experimental group utilized robotic cooperative learning while the control group utilized problem-based learning.  After four sessions of both instruction types with both groups the findings reveal that critical thinking of students is enhanced significantly by robotic cooperative learning (P<0.01)

Working with images and emoji in the Dukki Facebook Corpus

In this chapter, I demonstrate how researchers can incorporate image content and emoji into corpus approaches to social media data. I present data from the Facebook Page of Dukki Gifts & Souvenirs, an independent business based in Nottingham, U.K. and, using a simple annotation scheme, I show how researchers can incorporate image content and emoji into frequency and collocation analysis in order to examine the patterns of use for images in this dataset. I discuss some of the adjustments required to extend approaches conventionally applied to written forms of data to image content, including how this might affect the way we think of core concepts, such as collocation