Learner Requirements and Geospatial Literacy Challenges for Making Meaning with Google Earth

This research contributes an educational research perspective to teaching and learning with geospatial technologies. This work considers the literacy of a geospatial text that is readily accessible to students, but often assumed to be intuitive to read– dynamic scalable satellite imagery, which often serves as base maps for common navigation, GIS, and virtual globe applications. Within the context of a STEM project, Grades 5 and 6 students were observed and interviewed to identify knowledge and skills that were required to make meaning of Google Earth imagery. A qualitative methodological approach incorporating a thinkaloud data collection protocol was followed to stay true to the breadth, depth and nuances of the student voice and experience. When engaged with Google Earth, the students were observed to employ a range of image interpretation skills, demonstrated various expertise in navigation, and also drew upon their knowledge of the technology. Challenges to understanding the imagery included dominant alignment effect, dimensional translation, and interpreting the nadir view. Students who had an understanding of the underlying technology of the application were better able to overcome these challenges. These results suggest that ensuring students have knowledge about the technology itself, and basic literacy of satellite imagery, is valuable in order to make meaning of the data, critical at this age when students are developing their mental constructs of the world with such geospatial data

GeoEPIC: Innovating a Solution to Implement Virtual Field Experiences for Education in the Time of COVID-19 and the Post-Pandemic Era

The spring of 2020 marked the start of many countries closing their borders to travel due to the COVID- 19 pandemic. These closures disrupted travel and learning opportunities for K- 16 education. International field trips and study abroad programs were some of the first canceled opportunities with domestic field trips becoming more complicated to implement safely. With termination of these experiences, students lost cooperative and collaborative opportunities for place-based, field-based education. To address these losses of situated learning opportunities for students, a digital learning platform was developed to increase access to educators and students to free virtual field-based experiences. The platform is enhanced to allow teachers easy adoption of resources with supporting workshops to help educators in creating and delivering this rich education content through authentic, virtual landscapes

Disabled Laborers And The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOCs) Nightmare

In 2012, EEOC v. Henry’s Turkey Service was one of the largest disability settlements in American history.  Henry’s Turkey Service was ordered to pay $240 million for paying mentally disabled workers with I.Q.s estimated in the 60-70 range, 41 cents per hour and housing them in unsafe housing and health conditions (Hsieh, 2013).  Over forty years, Henry’s Turkey Service relocated hundreds of mentally disabled workers from Texas to Iowa where they were subjected to horrendous living conditions with unlawful, minimal pay—about$65.00 per month, while they worked at a local turkey processing factory in West Liberty, Iowa.  The actual case shows a pattern of violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and Americans with Disability Act, 1990. After a raid of the bright blue, florescent colored, century old school house in Atalissa, Iowa, these employers were brought to justice.  This case study is about one of the largest EEOC settlements in the history of the United States; yet due to federal damage caps was cut to $1.6 million for all of the men and their estates. The graphic account of the inhumane treatment and degradation of the labors presented in this study is not provided for gratuitous or salacious purposes; rather, it places into context what can occur when governmental regulations and laws go unheeded, unenforced and when authorities are apprised of wrongdoing possibilities stand idly by and in this case, do nothing for 35 years.

Race, Breast Cancer Subtypes, and Survival in the Carolina Breast Cancer Study

Context: Gene expression analysis has identified several breast cancer subtypes, including basal-like, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 positive/estrogen receptor negative (HER2+/ER–), luminal A, and luminal B. Objectives: To determine population-based distributions and clinical associations for breast cancer subtypes. Design, Setting, and Participants: Immunohistochemical surrogates for each subtype were applied to 496 incident cases of invasive breast cancer from the Carolina Breast Cancer Study (ascertained between May 1993 and December 1996), a population based, case-control study that oversampled premenopausal and African American women. Subtype definitions were as follows: luminal A (ER+ and/or progesterone receptor positive [PR+], HER2−), luminal B (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2+), basal-like (ER−, PR−, HER2−, cytokeratin 5/6 positive, and/or HER1+), HER2+/ER− (ER−, PR−, and HER2+), and unclassified (negative for all 5 markers). Main Outcome Measures: We examined the prevalence of breast cancer subtypes within racial and menopausal subsets and determined their associations with tumor size, axillary nodal status, mitotic index, nuclear pleomorphism, combined grade, p53 mutation status, and breast cancer–specific survival. Results The basal-like breast cancer subtype was more prevalent among premenopausal African American women (39%) compared with postmenopausal African American women (14%) and non–African American women (16%) of any age (P<.001), whereas the luminal A subtype was less prevalent (36% vs 59% and 54%, respectively). The HER2+/ER− subtype did not vary with race or menopausal status (6%-9%). Compared with luminal A, basal-like tumors had more TP53 mutations (44% vs 15%, P<.001), higher mitotic index (odds ratio [OR], 11.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.6-21.7), more marked nuclear pleomorphism (OR, 9.7; 95% CI, 5.3-18.0), and higher combined grade (OR, 8.3; 95% CI, 4.4-15.6). Breast cancer–specific survival differed by subtype (P<.001), with shortest survival among HER2+/ER− and basal-like subtypes. Conclusions: Basal-like breast tumors occurred at a higher prevalence among premenopausal African American patients compared with postmenopausal African American and non–African American patients in this population-based study. A higher prevalence of basal-like breast tumors and a lower prevalence of luminal A tumors could contribute to the poor prognosis of young African American women with breast cancer

A Scalable System for Production of Functional Pancreatic Progenitors from Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Development of a human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-based therapy for type 1 diabetes will require the translation of proof-of-principle concepts into a scalable, controlled, and regulated cell manufacturing process. We have previously demonstrated that hESC can be directed to differentiate into pancreatic progenitors that mature into functional glucose-responsive, insulin-secreting cells in vivo. In this study we describe hESC expansion and banking methods and a suspension-based differentiation system, which together underpin an integrated scalable manufacturing process for producing pancreatic progenitors. This system has been optimized for the CyT49 cell line. Accordingly, qualified large-scale single-cell master and working cGMP cell banks of CyT49 have been generated to provide a virtually unlimited starting resource for manufacturing. Upon thaw from these banks, we expanded CyT49 for two weeks in an adherent culture format that achieves 50–100 fold expansion per week. Undifferentiated CyT49 were then aggregated into clusters in dynamic rotational suspension culture, followed by differentiation en masse for two weeks with a four-stage protocol. Numerous scaled differentiation runs generated reproducible and defined population compositions highly enriched for pancreatic cell lineages, as shown by examining mRNA expression at each stage of differentiation and flow cytometry of the final population. Islet-like tissue containing glucose-responsive, insulin-secreting cells was generated upon implantation into mice. By four- to five-months post-engraftment, mature neo-pancreatic tissue was sufficient to protect against streptozotocin (STZ)-induced hyperglycemia. In summary, we have developed a tractable manufacturing process for the generation of functional pancreatic progenitors from hESC on a scale amenable to clinical entry

Effects of body size on estimation of mammalian area requirements.

Accurately quantifying species' area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area-based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on the previous work, we hypothesized the magnitude of underestimation varies with body mass, a relationship that could have serious conservation implications. To evaluate this hypothesis for terrestrial mammals, we estimated home-range areas with global positioning system (GPS) locations from 757 individuals across 61 globally distributed mammalian species with body masses ranging from 0.4 to 4000 kg. We then applied blockcross validation to quantify bias in empirical home range estimates. Area requirements of mammals 1, meaning the scaling of the relationship changedsubstantially at the upper end of the mass spectrum

American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

Will a Good Citizen Actively Support Organizational Change? Investigation of Psychological Processes Underlying Active Change Support

The present study investigated motivational factors of employees active change support (ACS). It also investigated good citizens response to the change by highlighting convergence and divergence of motivational factors between ACS and traditional extra-role behavior. The findings based on 166 staff responses and 346 supervisor assessments in a hospital that recently implemented a sharedgovernance structure suggest that active change support is a result of an active thinking process that involves perception of potential benefit from change but not necessarily the consequence of conventional predictors of extra-role behaviors (i.e., positive attitudes). The findings also suggest that good citizens are not necessarily the supporters of organizational change and that in actuality they confront motivational dilemma especially when they hold high quality relationship with their employer because they are reluctant to challenge the status quo