Cheating Resistant Pedagogies: Applying Insights from “Cheating Lessons” in the Classroom

Our panel discussion will focus on James Lang’s Cheating Lessons. Our goal is to capture the attention of any faculty members who suffer from plagiarism fatigue and think that everything that can be said about cheating in higher education has already been said. Our presentation will demonstrate that Lang breaks new ground. He draws on case studies of cheating, but not primarily to teach his readers about why students plagiarize or commit other academic ethics infractions. Rather, Lang invites his readers to treat each case as a distinct lesson in how students learn. Focusing on contextual rather than dispositional factors linked to cheating and drawing on a body of empirical research, Lang explores powerful pedagogies that come into view in the wake of learning failures to which his case studies attest. Scrutinizing the Olympics of Ancient Greece, civil service tests in China’s dynastic history, and Atlanta’s No Child Left Behind testing scandal, among other examples, Lang establishes that high-stakes testing settings as well as those that focus on performance rather than process offer students only an extrinsic motivation to learn. Most significantly, these environments are highly conducive to cheating. Juxtaposed with these cases are chapters by Lang that describe four distinct cheating-resistant learning environments. These environments will be the primary focus of our panel discussion. These settings promote learning through mastery rather than performance, feature low-stakes assessment, activate students’ intrinsic motivation to learn, and support learners’ self-efficacy. Lang draws his examples from interviews, observations, and teaching materials shared with him by award-winning college and university teachers. In our panel discussion, we will build on the examples in Cheating Lessons as four faculty members illustrate how we implement one of Lang’s teaching-resistant pedagogies in our classes. Lang’s account of powerful pedagogical practices, rich with possibilities for enhancing learning in the classroom, makes Cheating Lessons a valuable resource. But we believe his book will be even more valuable if persons attending the conference are able to engage in discussion with faculty who have implemented Lang’s ideas in the classroom. By demonstrating how Lang’s ideas can be applied in our local context, we hope to encourage other faculty to try his recommendations for creating cheating-resistant learning environments in their classes

Aortic arch enlargement and coarctation repair through a left thoracotomy: significance of ductal perfusion

OBJECTIVE To analyse the technique of neonatal aortic arch enlargement without cardiopulmonary bypass through a left posterior thoracotomy, as an adjunct to extended resection for Coarctation and severe arch hypoplasia. METHODS Ten neonates with coarctation, severe arch hypoplasia and a persistent ductus arteriosus (PDA) were subjected to arch repair through a left posterior thoracotomy. Nine of these patients had associated significant intracardiac anomalies; three of them received pulmonary artery (PA) banding. After exclusion from circulation, the roof of the intervening arch between left carotid and left subclavian was enlarged using a patch. After adequate reperfusion, a classic resection and extended end-to-end anastomosis was performed. Median age and weight were 5.5 (1-10) days and 3.3 (2.2-4.1)kg respectively. The median preoperative arch diameter was 1.07 (0.75-1.32)mm/kg body weight. RESULTS All patients could be successfully operated with this approach. The non-ischaemic and ischaemic aortic clamp times were 40 (15-68) and 23 (18-32)min, respectively. The median postoperative arch diameter achieved was 1.43 (1.06-1.46)mm/kg body weight. None of the patients had significant gradient early postoperatively. Two patients with recurrent stenosis were successfully treated with balloon dilatation (1) or surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) (1). One patient has a corrected gradient of 16mmHg in the proximal arch which is being observed. The remaining patients are free from stenosis at a median follow-up of 30.1 (13.2-57.8) months. CONCLUSIONS Use of PDA for lower body perfusion allows complex reconstruction of the arch without incurring lower body ischaemia. The extended resection could then be performed without excessive stretch. This modification saves these patients from undergoing a complex arch reconstruction with CPB in the early neonatal perio

Multiple infarcted regenerative nodules in liver cirrhosis after decompensation of cirrhosis: a case series

These patients showed focal liver lesions, to be considered in the differential diagnosis of cirrhotic livers. Infarcted regenerative nodules may be underdiagnosed in patients with decompensation of cirrhosis. In order to differentiate these lesions from malignant tumors, serial imaging seems to be helpful. However, the main differential diagnosis should be an abscess. It is important to know the wide spectrum of image appearances of these lesions. Hypotension can lead to a reduction of portal and arterial liver flow. Since variceal bleeding or septic shock can induce hypotension - as observed in our patients - we conclude that this leads to infarction of such nodules

Functionalization of Pyrene To Prepare Luminescent Materials—Typical Examples of Synthetic Methodology

Pyrene-based π-conjugated materials are considered to be an ideal organic electro-luminescence material for application in semiconductor devices, such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs), and so forth. However, the great drawback of employing pyrene as an organic luminescence material is the formation of excimer emission, which quenches the efficiency at high concentration or in the solid-state. Thus, in order to obtain highly efficient optical devices, scientists have devoted much effort to tuning the structure of pyrene derivatives in order to realize exploitable properties by employing two strategies, 1) introducing a variety of moieties at the pyrene core, and 2) exploring effective and convenient synthetic strategies to functionalize the pyrene core. Over the past decades, our group has mainly focused on synthetic methodologies for functionalization of the pyrene core; we have found that formylation/acetylation or bromination of pyrene can selectly lead to functionalization at K-region by Lewis acid catalysis. Herein, this Minireview highlights the direct synthetic approaches (such as formylation, bromination, oxidation, and de-tert-butylation reactions, etc.) to functionalize the pyrene in order to advance research on luminescent materials for organic electronic applications. Further, this article demonstrates that the future direction of pyrene chemistry is asymmetric functionalization of pyrene for organic semiconductor applications and highlights some of the classical asymmetric pyrenes, as well as the latest breakthroughs. In addition, the photophysical properties of pyrene-based molecules are briefly reviewed. To give a current overview of the development of pyrene chemistry, the review selectively covers some of the latest reports and concepts from the period covering late 2011 to the present day

Autoproteolytic Activation of Bacterial Toxins

Protease domains within toxins typically act as the primary effector domain within target cells. By contrast, the primary function of the cysteine protease domain (CPD) in Multifunctional Autoprocessing RTX-like (MARTX) and Clostridium sp. glucosylating toxin families is to proteolytically cleave the toxin and release its cognate effector domains. The CPD becomes activated upon binding to the eukaryotic-specific small molecule, inositol hexakisphosphate (InsP6), which is found abundantly in the eukaryotic cytosol. This property allows the CPD to spatially and temporally regulate toxin activation, making it a prime candidate for developing anti-toxin therapeutics. In this review, we summarize recent findings related to defining the regulation of toxin function by the CPD and the development of inhibitors to prevent CPD-mediated activation of bacterial toxins

An extensible framework for multicore response time analysis

In this paper, we introduce a multicore response time analysis (MRTA) framework, which decouples response time analysis from a reliance on context independent WCET values. Instead, the analysis formulates response times directly from the demands placed on different hardware resources. The MRTA framework is extensible to different multicore architectures, with a variety of arbitration policies for the common interconnects, and different types and arrangements of local memory. We instantiate the framework for single level local data and instruction memories (cache or scratchpads), for a variety of memory bus arbitration policies, including: Round-Robin, FIFO, Fixed-Priority, Processor-Priority, and TDMA, and account for DRAM refreshes. The MRTA framework provides a general approach to timing verification for multicore systems that is parametric in the hardware configuration and so can be used at the architectural design stage to compare the guaranteed levels of real-time performance that can be obtained with different hardware configurations. We use the framework in this way to evaluate the performance of multicore systems with a variety of different architectural components and policies. These results are then used to compose a predictable architecture, which is compared against a reference architecture designed for good average-case behaviour. This comparison shows that the predictable architecture has substantially better guaranteed real-time performance, with the precision of the analysis verified using cycle-accurate simulation

Atomic structures of TDP-43 LCD segments and insights into reversible or pathogenic aggregation.

The normally soluble TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) is found aggregated both in reversible stress granules and in irreversible pathogenic amyloid. In TDP-43, the low-complexity domain (LCD) is believed to be involved in both types of aggregation. To uncover the structural origins of these two modes of β-sheet-rich aggregation, we have determined ten structures of segments of the LCD of human TDP-43. Six of these segments form steric zippers characteristic of the spines of pathogenic amyloid fibrils; four others form LARKS, the labile amyloid-like interactions characteristic of protein hydrogels and proteins found in membraneless organelles, including stress granules. Supporting a hypothetical pathway from reversible to irreversible amyloid aggregation, we found that familial ALS variants of TDP-43 convert LARKS to irreversible aggregates. Our structures suggest how TDP-43 adopts both reversible and irreversible β-sheet aggregates and the role of mutation in the possible transition of reversible to irreversible pathogenic aggregation

From Black Holes to Quivers

Middle cohomology states on the Higgs branch of supersymmetric quiver quantum mechanics - also known as pure Higgs states - have recently emerged as possible microscopic candidates for single-centered black hole micro-states, as they carry zero angular momentum and appear to be robust under wall-crossing. Using the connection between quiver quantum mechanics on the Coulomb branch and the quantum mechanics of multi-centered black holes, we propose a general algorithm for reconstructing the full moduli-dependent cohomology of the moduli space of an arbitrary quiver, in terms of the BPS invariants of the pure Higgs states. We analyze many examples of quivers with loops, including all cyclic Abelian quivers and several examples with two loops or non-Abelian gauge groups, and provide supporting evidence for this proposal. We also develop methods to count pure Higgs states directly.Comment: 56 pages; v2: added Eqs 4.28-30, 5.35-36, 5.55; v3: journal version; v4: Misprints corrected, improved discussion of Higgs branch for non-Abelian 3-node quiver, see around Eq. (6.22) and (6.37