Negotiating a ‘Tangled Web of Pride and Shame’: A Crimean Case-Study

This article complements an identified ‘cultural turn’ in military history, which emphasizes the potency of perception and the extent to which successes, failures, opportunities and threats are culturally conditioned (Black 2004: 233-35). It will deal with issues surrounding ‘collective remembrance’, a concept which Joanna Bourke identifies as problematic. For Bourke, ‘collectivememory’ has been characterized by a ‘museal sensibility’ in which mass narratives ‘wallow’ in a nostalgic world of community, stability and certainty (Bourke 2004: 473). She argues that collective memory is an exclusive script, which imposes unity on individual experiences and overlooks conscious acts of cultural selection (Bourke 2004: 473). Whilst scholarship on the relationship of present with past rightly takes issue with collective, or public, memory, precluding individual, or private, memories, Bourke usefully draws attention to the mythical qualities of collective remembrance. Military history, integral as it is to national identity yet harbouring inherently difficult histories, is particularly susceptible to cultural, social and political mediation. This article traces nineteenth-century treatments of two Crimean failures and the legacy ofthese attitudes today in museums, which to a large extent echo some of the dominant myths and silences of Victorian Britain

Aspects of the biology of Trypanorhynch tapeworms and investigations on their use as biological tags

Four hundred papers published in refereed papers during the years 1935-1985 were researched for information on the biology of trypanorhynchs, and a publishable host-parasite list was compiled for this period as a complement to the only previous monograph (published forty-five years ago) on all known members of the order Trypanorhyncha (Platyhelminthes: Cestoda). The theoretical information gained from this initial exercise was then used in carrying out original research on trypanorhynchs found in over 1,000 elasmobranch and teleost fish. This led to a choice of three research topics for more detailed investigations: (i) taxonomic studies on four little-known species and the application of this information to fisheries biology, (ii) life-cycle studies on Grillotia erinaceus (van Beneden, 1858) and (iii) the use of Grillotia smaris-gore (Wagener, 1854) Dollfus, 1946 as a biological tag for commercially important teleosts. A pre-requisite of this last problem was the need to review critically all information on the use of parasites as population indicators. Thus a further 100 papers published in primary journals were researched. The work concludes with a discussion of the above and also brief comments on the need for further research on tapeworms of the order Trypanorhyncha as an aid to our understanding of other basic contemporary problems in parasitology, relating to host-specificity, ecology and phylogeny

Asking the right questions: Developing diagnostic tests in undergraduate physics

Being able to discover students‟ conceptions and more importantly alternate- and misconceptions about a topic is vital in order to be able to assess and thus be able to improve student learning. It is well known that this can be achieved via the use of well-designed diagnostic tests, a widely used example of which is the Force Concept Inventory. Creating the right questions in order to form a reliable diagnostic test can be a lengthy and complicated process. This article reports work on a Development Project funded in 2008 to develop such a test for introductory Quantum Mechanics courses in both physics and chemistry. We present details of our methodology, which involves augmenting a „standard‟ multiple-choice question set with free-response boxes to determine the reasons for a student choosing a particular answer, and a self-assessment of their level of confidence in their choice. The responses from piloting this initial test in different institutions are used to inform the subsequent refinement of the test, as well as assessing the reliability and validity of the questions. We highlight examples of misconceptions that have been found during the development of the diagnostic tests

Developing an Entrepreneurial Education in a Residential College: An Exploratory Case Study

Entrepreneurship is a source of innovation, job creation, and vibrancy for local and regional economies. As a direct result, there is a profound interest in creating an infrastructure that effectively encourages entrepreneurship and incubates entrepreneurial endeavors. Western State University has responded to this call by developing the Harvey Entrepreneurship Program, which is integrated in the Enterprise Residential College.The Harvey program provides a socially embedded experiential learning approach to entrepreneurial education. Faculty, students, entrepreneurs, and technical experts are drawn together in an environment that provides space for business incubators and an entrepreneurially focused curriculum. In this article, we present a case study in which we use qualitative research methods to explore the benefits and challenges of creating such a program.The delivery model that Enterprise Residential College provides for entrepreneurial education is examined through the perspectives of program administrators, faculty, and students. The findings reveal evidence that a residential college can form a powerful nexus of formal instruction, experiential learning, socialization, and networking to influence entrepreneurship. We discuss relevant findings that may aid others considering similar endeavors

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF A NON-TRADITIONAL INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS COURSE AMONG COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Calls for comprehensive innovative curriculum and pedagogical changes to mathematics courses and introductory statistics courses have been documented within multiple national reports during the last several decades. In recent years, research studies in statistical education aimed at the teaching of introductory statistics have emerged in the literature (see, e.g., Cobb, 1993, Garfield, 1995, Hoaglin & Moore, 1992, Moore, 1997). In addition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded numerous projects specifically designed to implement various aspects of statistics education reform (http://www.nsf.gov). The essence of the introductory statistics reform movement promotes statistical literacy and quantitative reasoning rather than calculations, procedures and formulae. Although there is a plethora of research on reform based statistics, there has been little research that describes the characteristics of a problem-based introductory statistics course at the college level or on how students respond to a more conceptually-based introductory statistics course. The purpose of this study was to describe through a phenomenological approach, the following: the characteristics of a non-traditional introductory statistics course designed for undergraduate students, approaches to learning statistical concepts as the student engaged in problem-based learning activities and to focus on the perceived student learning experiences and emerging statistics understanding as a result of engaging in various problem-based learning activities within the course. In an effort to deepen the community college students' statistical development, this study sought to examine alternative pedagogical practices that required students to negotiate their prior knowledge and past experiences to construct and formulate new statistical knowledge. This study addressed the deficiency in literature regarding alternative pedagogical practices and problem-based learning within undergraduate level statistics courses. A study analyzing the relationship between students and their mathematical perspective benefits future and current educators as well as future higher education students. Understanding student's experiences and interactions with mathematics and statistics can offer insight into future curriculum development and pedagogical design. Considerable improvements in mathematics and statistics learning will not occur unless educators can succeed in transforming the way they are taught. The results of this study offer important suggestions for PK-12 and post-secondary mathematics and statistics educators. The results of this study reveal first, that characteristics of this non-traditional introductory statistics course were consistent with the recommendations supported and outlined by the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC, 2006) and the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE, 2012). Consequently, it is possible to design and implement undergraduate statistics courses that abide by the reform recommendations outlined by AMATYC (2006) and GAISE (2012). Additionally, the results of this study suggest that adopting such an approach has the potential to positively affect the teaching and learning of that course for the instructor and the students. As pointed out in the GAISE College Report (2012), “teachers of statistics should rely much less on lecturing and much more on alternatives such as projects, lab exercises, and group problem-solving and discussion activities'' (p. 9). Despite the persuasive evidence in cognitive science and education research, too many college-level students experience lecture-based forms of instruction in mathematics and statistics courses. As noted by Laursen, Hassi, Kogan, and Weston (2014), this failure limits the advancement of undergraduate mathematics education. Therefore, if steps are not taken to provide instructors with professional development opportunities and resources to implement in their own classes, the teaching and learning of statistics will remain stagnate and efforts for reform will be ideals of dreamers. It is then incumbent upon members of our profession to disseminate education and cognitive research and model the pedagogical strategies that support cognitive construction and align with the reform movements set forth by AMATYC (2006), GAISE (2012), and NCTM (2000). Secondly, the student perceptions regarding the characteristics of this course revealed that the restrictive nature of the traditional lecture-based model hinders our students’ autonomous development. As mathematics educators, one of our goals is to develop our students’ problem solving skills. Mathematicians and statisticians are efficient, independent problem solvers because they have years of experience and developed skill sets that allow them to reason multiple possibilities before selecting an approach. For students, mathematics and statistics is most frequently experienced through series of computational procedures and memorized formulae because teachers routinely prevent intellectual development by demonstrating examples. The student perspectives in this study revealed that despite their initial need for external validation and request for step-by-step examples, they eventually grew more confident in their own knowledge and confident to try multiple approaches in order to obtain a reasonable explanation

Bile acids and neurological disease

This review will focus on how bile acids are being used in clinical trials to treat neurological diseases due to their central involvement with the gut-liver-brain axis and their physiological and pathophysiological roles in both normal brain function and multiple neurological diseases. The synthesis of primary and secondary bile acids species and how the regulation of the bile acid pool may differ between the gut and brain is discussed. The expression of several bile acid receptors in brain and their currently known functions along with the tools available to manipulate them pharmacologically are examined, together with discussion of the interaction of bile acids with the gut microbiome and their lesser-known effects upon brain glucose and lipid metabolism. How dysregulation of the gut microbiome, aging and sex differences may lead to disruption of bile acid signalling and possible causal roles in a number of neurological disorders are also considered. Finally, we discuss how pharmacological treatments targeting bile acid receptors are currently being tested in an array of clinical trials for several different neurodegenerative diseases

Interactome comparison of human embryonic stem cell lines with the inner cell mass and trophectoderm

Networks of interacting co-regulated genes distinguish the inner cell mass (ICM) from the differentiated trophectoderm (TE) in the preimplantation blastocyst, in a species specific manner. In mouse the ground state pluripotency of the ICM appears to be maintained in murine embryonic stem cells (ESCs) derived from the ICM. This is not the case for human ESCs. In order to gain insight into this phenomenon, we have used quantitative network analysis to identify how similar human (h)ESCs are to the human ICM. Using the hESC lines MAN1, HUES3 and HUES7 we have shown that all have only a limited overlap with ICM specific gene expression, but that this overlap is enriched for network properties that correspond to key aspects of function including transcription factor activity and the hierarchy of network modules. These analyses provide an important framework which highlights the developmental origins of hESCs