Maneuvering Over an Obstacle in Dim Lighting: Joint Torque Distribution and Implications for Older Adults

As research has shown, older adults tend to have less accuracy in perceiving and maneuvering around obstacles in dim lighting. This research study intends to shed light on how joint loading changes when older adults need to walk over an obstacle in the dark. For this study, 10 young, healthy adult participants had reflective markers placed on anatomical landmarks and joint endpoints to track their movement with motion capture cameras. All 10 participants walked across a force platform, and each participant\u27s ground reaction forces and joint torques at the ankle, knee, and hip were calculated. Participants walked at a preferred speed across the force platform under these conditions: flat ground in the light, stepping over an obstacle in the light, flat ground in the dark, and stepping over an obstacle in the dark. Analyzing these results will allow me to determine changes in loading patterns that are distributed across the ankle, knee, and hip as people walk over obstacles in the dark and light. Findings from this study will be very useful to the older adult population in which obstacle maneuvering has greater safety implications due to the high prevalence of falls in this age group

Software Piracy Among Teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence and personality correlates of software piracy among teachers, who were 97 inservice teachers enrolled in Education courses at UNO. Subjects completed the Computing Teacher Inventory (a questionnaire designed expressly for this study to measure teachers\u27 experience with and attitudes toward microcomputer software), the Teacher Stress Inventory, and the Teacher Job Satisfaction Questionnaire. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. Results indicated that teachers procured more software from illegal sources than from legal sources. More than half of those teachers who owned software admitted to illegally copying software from school. The other crimes against impersonal victims that teachers committed most frequently were traffic and reprography violations. The pattern of correlations among variables suggested that teachers\u27 tendency toward software piracy appeared to be related to the tendencies to be dissatisfied with their jobs, to be stressed, and to commit other impersonal crimes

Teaching transdisciplinary competencies for sustainability transformation by co-producing social learning videos

Film has great potential to initiate social learning processes. Therefore, working with film is suitable as a teaching format that enables co-production of knowledge and transformative learning. Through participatory filmmaking, students can acquire transdisciplinary competencies, which are necessary for sustainability transformations. We discuss how transdisciplinary competences can be acquired by building on transformative teaching by co-producing social learning videos

A Role for Nogo Receptor in Macrophage Clearance from Injured Peripheral Nerve

SummaryWe report a role for Nogo receptors (NgRs) in macrophage efflux from sites of inflammation in peripheral nerve. Increasing numbers of macrophages in crushed rat sciatic nerves express NgR1 and NgR2 on the cell surface in the first week after injury. These macrophages show reduced binding to myelin and MAG in vitro, which is reversed by NgR siRNA knockdown and by inhibiting Rho-associated kinase. Fourteen days after sciatic nerve crush, regenerating nerves with newly synthesized myelin have fewer macrophages than cut/ligated nerves that lack axons and myelin. Almost all macrophages in the cut/ligated nerves lie within the Schwann cell basal lamina, while in the crushed regenerating nerves the majority migrate out. Furthermore, crush-injured nerves of NgR1- and MAG-deficient mice and Y-27632-treated rats show impaired macrophage efflux from Schwann cell basal lamina containing myelinated axons. These data have implications for the resolution of inflammation in peripheral nerve and CNS pathologies

Introductory statistics students’ conceptual understanding of study design and conclusions

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.December 2017. Major: Educational Psychology. Advisors: Robert delMas, Andrew Zieffler. 1 computer file (PDF); xvi, 454 pages.Recommended learning goals for students in introductory statistics courses include the ability to recognize and explain the key role of randomness in designing studies and in drawing conclusions from those studies involving generalizations to a population or causal claims (GAISE College Report ASA Revision Committee, 2016). The purpose of this study was to explore introductory statistics students’ understanding of the distinct roles that random sampling and random assignment play in study design and the conclusions that can be made from each. A study design unit lasting two and a half weeks was designed and implemented in four sections of an undergraduate introductory statistics course based on modeling and simulation. The research question that this study attempted to answer is: How does introductory statistics students’ conceptual understanding of study design and conclusions (in particular, unbiased estimation and establishing causation) change after participating in a learning intervention designed to promote conceptual change in these areas? In order to answer this research question, a forced-choice assessment called the Inferences from Design Assessment (IDEA) was developed as a pretest and posttest, along with two open-ended assignments, a group quiz and a lab assignment. Quantitative analysis of IDEA results and qualitative analysis of the group quiz and lab assignment revealed that overall, students’ mastery of study design concepts significantly increased after the unit, and the great majority of students successfully made the appropriate connections between random sampling and generalization, and between random assignment and causal claims. However, a small, but noticeable portion of students continued to demonstrate misunderstandings, such as confusion between random sampling and random assignment

Effects of prenatal exposure to endocrine disruptors and toxic metals on the fetal epigenome

Exposure to environmental contaminants during pregnancy has been linked to adverse outcomes at birth and later in life. The link between prenatal exposures and latent health outcomes suggests that these exposures may result in long-term epigenetic reprogramming. Toxic metals and endocrine disruptors are two major classes of contaminants that are ubiquitously present in the environment and represent threats to human health. In this review, we present evidence that prenatal exposures to these contaminants result in fetal epigenomic changes, including altered global DNA methylation, gene-specific CpG methylation and microRNA expression. Importantly, these changes may have functional cellular consequences, impacting health outcomes later in life. Therefore, these epigenetic changes represent a critical mechanism that warrants further study

Environmental contaminants and microRNA regulation: Transcription factors as regulators of toxicant-altered microRNA expression

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression by binding mRNA transcripts and inhibiting translation and/or inducing degradation of the associated transcripts. Expression levels of miRNAs have been shown to be altered in response to environmental toxicants, thus impacting cellular function and influencing disease risk. Transcription factors (TFs) are known to be altered in response to environmental toxicants and play a critical role in the regulation of miRNA expression. To date, environmentally-responsive TFs that are important for regulating miRNAs remain understudied. In a state-of-the-art analysis, we utilized in silico bioinformatic analysis to characterize potential transcriptional regulators of environmentally-responsive miRNAs. Using the miRStart database, genomic sequences of promoter regions for all available human miRNAs (n=847) were identified and promoter regions were defined as −1000/+500 base pairs from the transcription start site. Subsequently, the promoter region sequences of environmentally-responsive miRNAs (n=128) were analyzed using enrichment analysis to determine overrepresented TF binding sites (TFBS). While most (56/73) TFs differed across environmental contaminants, a set of 17 TFs was enriched for promoter binding among miRNAs responsive to numerous environmental contaminants. Of these, one TF was common to miRNAs altered by the majority of environmental contaminants, namely SWI/SNF-related, matrix-associated, actin-dependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily A, member 3 (SMARCA3). These identified TFs represent candidate common transcriptional regulators of miRNAs perturbed by environmental toxicants

The influence of journal publisher characteristics on open access policy trends

Examines SHERPA/RoMEO publisher Open Access (OA) policy information for 100 publishers over a thirteen year period (2004-2016) to consider whether their size, type or country (UK or US) affected the development of their OA policy over time. A publisher’s RoMEO colour code, whether they offered a Gold OA option, and the mean number of restrictions as to when, how and where papers may be self-archived, were all mapped. Kruskal Wallis tests were run to assess whether the differences between their 2004 and 2016 positions were statistically significant. Finds that the growth of Green and Gold OA policy approaches has not been evenly distributed amongst publishers with some significant differences amongst publishers of different size, types and country (UK and US). Large commercial publishers are more likely to be allocated a RoMEO colour code, but at the same time place a high volume of restrictions as to where and how authors might self-archive. Small publishers are less likely to have a RoMEO green colour code, but the volume of restrictions they place on self-archiving are minimal. University presses appear not to be engaging with either OA agenda to any considerable degree. UK and US publishers’ OA policies appear to be influenced by the national OA policy environment which, considering the global nature of the scholarly journals market, was more pronounced than might have been anticipated