Co-Curricular Report 1: Roundtable Discussion

This assignment is designed for First Year Seminar -- Liberal Arts: Humanities and Social Science majors. The main course objectives addressed are that students: Demonstrate engagement in the life of the college and their use of key academic support services, advisement, and co-curricular organizations and activities critical to meeting those goals. Show growing mastery of the writing, reading, and speaking skills, as well as the study and management strategies essential for college success. The primary purposes of this written and oral report are to encourage students to discover and use the campus resources and co-curricular opportunities critical for their success at LaGuardia and to further their skill in public speaking and writing. But it also goes a long way in helping students who have trouble participating in class to speak up and to practice public speaking in preparation for the PowerPoint presentation they will give at the end of the semester. In addition, the roundtable discussion offers guided practice in active listening and note-taking, underscores the habit of interdependent thinking and learning, and fosters classroom community by giving students a chance to hear about and respond to one another’s interests and concerns. Scaffolding: Students are introduced to college resources in the lecture and in an ePortfolio exercise and scavenger hunt that asks them to visit the Health Center, Writing Center, and other offices where they can get help. They then attend our college club fair, Spring Fest, together as a class, and in the lecture practice using journalism’s 5 W’s to gather information and write a report. For the roundtable discussion, the whole class is seated in a circle and before giving their individual reports, students share tips on effective public speaking and active listening. They also are directed to fill out the attached active listening worksheet and ask at least one question, and are encouraged to be supportive of classmates. Listening, writing, and speaking are included in the evaluation of the report. (See the rubric, attached.) The idea of interdependent learning is also highlighted in a class discussion of the required text, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, as we consider what promotes the protagonist’s success and the role that assistance plays in every hero’s quest. Finally, students discuss the campus resources and co-curricular activities that helped them in a final reflection essay at term’s end. This assignment is worth 10% of the final grade. It takes approximately 2 weeks to complete. Each student presentation lasts 3-5 minutes

A Literary Argument Developed with Scholarly Research for ENG102 [Composition]

This assignment was developed in the context of CTL sponsored Learning Matters Mini-grant awarded to the English Department. The primary purpose was to assist full-time and part-time faculty in the Department with revising ENG 102 course materials to align with the Inquiry and Problem Solving (IPS) Core Competency and Written ability. This goal was achieved through several workshops, a programmatic benchmark reading, and a departmental review process that prepared assignments to be submitted for the CTL Assignment Library. The assignment underwent a two-phase review process. In the first round, the grant leader, Dr. Anita Baksh, suggested feedback for revision. Then, faculty members revised their assignments and submitted them to Dr. Jacqueline Jones, Director of Composition II, for final review. After receiving a second set of feedback from Dr. Jones, faculty modified assignments again. ENG 102 is fundamentally a composition course rather than an introduction to literature course or a literary studies course. It is part of the required core for most LaGuardia students, which students usually take in their second semester, after completing ENG 101: Composition I, a pre-requisite for the course. Thinking about the dimensions of the IPS rubric in relation to the ENG 102 research paper allows faculty to better understand this idea, and to create assignments that lead students to produce work that demonstrate aspects of the competency and also fulfill the learning outcomes of the class. Assignments that meet the standards of the IPS competency also help students see how they can transfer skills practiced in ENG 102 to other writing and problem solving situations in academic and real world settings. Mini-grant activities helped faculty, especially part-time instructors, better grasp these important concepts. This high stakes assignment was designed to take four weeks, allowing approximately one week for each stage of the process and was counted as 25% of the final grade. Upon reflection, I think that puts too much weight on a genre that many students are trying for the first time, so in the future, I would reduce its weight to 15-20%. Identifying and framing a question is a fundamental challenge for academic writers and journalists, which I felt I had overlooked in the past by giving students questions to write about. For this assignment, I wanted to give students almost a full week to work on this skill and to focus on an issue that might be more meaningful to them than the one I framed for them. However, even with support, this proved very difficult, so in the future, I would ask students to focus on fewer and more specific themes (different kinds of jealousy and their causes, male bonds, insecurity, blinding anger) and brainstorm possible questions together. I also would consider providing critical essays for students, because reading and finding pertinent, accessible articles in Gale Literary Resources absorbs a significant amount of time, which students might spend more productively identifying a critic’s argument, analyzing what it is based on, and deciding whether they agree or not, and on what basis. It might be useful to have students analyze critical essays in pairs or trios as well. LaGuardia’s Core Competencies and Communication Abilities Learning Objectives A staged literary argument that requires students to submit work at each phase of the writing process, this assignment asks students to review one of the primary course objectives of Composition II, which is to “demonstrate an understanding of writing as a process that involves prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading,” as our department course description states. It also asks students to develop and support a thesis about one theme or element of a play based on their close reading of the text and selected literary criticism, which addresses the course objective of teaching students to ”interpret and write critically about drama . . . while applying techniques of close reading.” In addition, this assignment reinforces the objective of supporting a thesis with a well-reasoned argument and textual evidence, by having students analyze and summarize how three literary scholars construct professional arguments before explaining why they agree or disagree with these critics in their own essays. This, of course, also addresses the ENG102 goal of having students demonstrate an understanding of research methods, and of teaching them to “evaluate, synthesize, and cite primary and secondary sources, while writing critically and analytically about literature.” In writing a proposal, gathering and analyzing literary criticism, and developing an argument, students also grapple with the key dimensions of Inquiry and Problem Solving as suggested in the rubric that LaGCC uses. In particular, they work on identifying and addressing a question that matters to them -- the first and often most challenging IPS objective -- by spending almost a week developing their own questions about a play and doing preliminary research about it. They must then draw conclusion about the validity of their thesis and discuss the implications of important ideas in the play in terms of their own lives. Asked to draft and revise a well-organized and fully-developed essay and to provide thoughtful feedback on a classmate’s essay, students also develop the key dimensions of Written Communication, working toward developing keener awareness and mastery of content development and organization; the purpose, audience, and genre of the essay that they are writing; and control of language, syntax, punctuation, and grammar

The arctic circle boundary and the Airy process

We prove that the, appropriately rescaled, boundary of the north polar region in the Aztec diamond converges to the Airy process. The proof uses certain determinantal point processes given by the extended Krawtchouk kernel. We also prove a version of Propp's conjecture concerning the structure of the tiling at the center of the Aztec diamond.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117904000000937 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Modelling the Health Impact of an English Sugary Drinks Duty at National and Local Levels

Increasing evidence associates excess refined sugar intakes with obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Worryingly, the estimated volume of sugary drinks purchased in the UK has more than doubled between 1975 and 2007, from 510ml to 1140ml per person per week. We aimed to estimate the potential impact of a duty on sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) at a local level in England, hypothesising that a duty could reduce obesity and related diseases. Methods and Findings We modelled the potential impact of a 20% sugary drinks duty on local authorities in England between 2010 and 2030. We synthesised data obtained from the British National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), drinks manufacturers, Office for National Statistics, and from previous studies. This produced a modelled population of 41 million adults in 326 lower tier local authorities in England. This analysis suggests that a 20% SSB duty could result in approximately 2,400 fewer diabetes cases, 1,700 fewer stroke and coronary heart disease cases, 400 fewer cancer cases, and gain some 41,000 Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) per year across England. The duty might have the biggest impact in urban areas with young populations. Conclusions This study adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting health benefits for a duty on sugary drinks. It might also usefully provide results at an area level to inform local price interventions in England

Population Genomic Analysis of a Bacterial Plant Pathogen: Novel Insight into the Origin of Pierce's Disease of Grapevine in the U.S.

Invasive diseases present an increasing problem worldwide; however, genomic techniques are now available to investigate the timing and geographical origin of such introductions. We employed genomic techniques to demonstrate that the bacterial pathogen causing Pierce's disease of grapevine (PD) is not native to the US as previously assumed, but descended from a single genotype introduced from Central America. PD has posed a serious threat to the US wine industry ever since its first outbreak in Anaheim, California in the 1880s and continues to inhibit grape cultivation in a large area of the country. It is caused by infection of xylem vessels by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa, a genetically distinct subspecies at least 15,000 years old. We present five independent kinds of evidence that strongly support our invasion hypothesis: 1) a genome-wide lack of genetic variability in X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa found in the US, consistent with a recent common ancestor; 2) evidence for historical allopatry of the North American subspecies X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex and X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa; 3) evidence that X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa evolved in a more tropical climate than X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex; 4) much greater genetic variability in the proposed source population in Central America, variation within which the US genotypes are phylogenetically nested; and 5) the circumstantial evidence of importation of known hosts (coffee plants) from Central America directly into southern California just prior to the first known outbreak of the disease. The lack of genetic variation in X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa in the US suggests that preventing additional introductions is important since new genetic variation may undermine PD control measures, or may lead to infection of other crop plants through the creation of novel genotypes via inter-subspecific recombination. In general, geographically mixing of previously isolated subspecies should be avoided

X-treme loss of sequence diversity linked to neo-X chromosomes in filarial nematodes

The sequence diversity of natural and laboratory populations of Brugia pahangi and Brugia malayi was assessed with Illumina resequencing followed by mapping to identify single nucleotide variants and insertions/deletions. In natural and laboratory Brugia populations, there is a lack of sequence diversity on chromosome X relative to the autosomes (πX/πA = 0.2), which is lower than the expected πX/πA = 0.75). A reduction in diversity is also observed in other filarial nematodes with neo-X chromosome fusions in the genera Onchocerca and Wuchereria, but not those without neo-X chromosome fusions in the genera Loa and Dirofilaria. In the species with neo-X chromosome fusions, chromosome X is abnormally large, containing a third of the genetic material such that a sizable portion of the genome is lacking sequence diversity. Such profound differences in genetic diversity can be consequential, having been associated with drug resistance and adaptability, with the potential to affect filarial eradication

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

The rapid photochemical reduction of U(VI) at high uranium concentrations relevant to spent nuclear fuel recycle processes

An Advanced PUREX process for the recycling of spent nuclear fuel is currently under active development in the UK. Its key aims are to avoid pure separated plutonium at all stages of the process to enhance the level of proliferation resistance, and to achieve a single cycle flowsheet that has a smaller plant footprint with consequent decreases in the capital cost and secondary wastes generated. Addressing these aims, a significant feature of the process is the co-treatment of U and Pu and thus the in situ co-conversion of mixed actinide metal nitrate solutions into oxide powders, suitable for the fabrication of new mixed metal oxide (MOx) fuel. The baseline industrial process for plutonium recovery is by oxalate precipitation; however, in order to quantitatively recover both U and Pu the uranium must be in the U(IV) oxidation state due to the high solubility of U(VI) oxalate. The first stage of this co-conversion, the development of which is reported on here, is the rapid, clean photochemical co-reduction of a mixed U(VI)/Pu(IV) nitrate stream to U(IV)/Pu(III). Here we describe a study of the reduction of U(VI) in preparation for mixed U(VI)/Pu(IV) reduction trials. Exploiting the photochemistry of U, we demonstrate the convenient and efficient photo-excitation and chemical reduction of U(VI) upon exposure to 407 nm wavelength light in the presence of alcohol-based reductants. Using a purpose built laboratory-scale photochemical reactor, U(VI) solutions of up to process-relevant concentrations of 630 mmol/dm3 (150 g/l) U have been successfully converted to a U(IV) product, achieving a conversion efficiency of ∼98% within 1.5–15 min when using propan-2-ol as a sacrificial reductant. Modelling of the dependence of the rate of U(IV) generation on initial U(VI) concentration reveals the importance of light penetration depth and effective solution mixing in determining the efficiency of the photochemical process at high U-loadings. It also reveals that the photoreduction of U(VI) to U(IV) occurs by two sequential 1-electron reductions: (i) the photochemically driven reduction of UO22+ to UO2+ by propan-2-ol, which itself is oxidised to form an α-hydroxyalkyl radical, immediately followed by (ii) a second chemical reduction of UO22+ to UO2+ and/or UO2+ to U4+ by the so-formed radical. With the addition of a nitrous acid scavenger to prevent re-oxidation of the photochemically generated U(IV), a stable product is maintained indefinitely, and the solution is suitable for subsequent oxalate co-precipitation as part of a MOx fuel fabrication process

Large-Scale Intersubspecific Recombination in the Plant-Pathogenic Bacterium Xylella fastidiosa Is Associated with the Host Shift to Mulberry

Homologous recombination plays an important role in the structuring of genetic variation of many bacteria; however, its importance in adaptive evolution is not well established. We investigated the association of intersubspecific homologous recombination (IHR) with the shift to a novel host (mulberry) by the plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. Mulberry leaf scorch was identified about 25 years ago in native red mulberry in the eastern United States and has spread to introduced white mulberry in California. Comparing a sequence of 8 genes (4,706 bp) from 21 mulberry-type isolates to published data (352 isolates representing all subspecies), we confirmed previous indications that the mulberry isolates define a group distinct from the 4 subspecies, and we propose naming the taxon X. fastidiosa subsp. morus. The ancestry of its gene sequences was mixed, with 4 derived from X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa (introduced from Central America), 3 from X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex (considered native to the United States), and 1 chimeric, demonstrating that this group originated by large-scale IHR. The very low within-type genetic variation (0.08% site polymorphism), plus the apparent inability of native X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex to infect mulberry, suggests that this host shift was achieved after strong selection acted on genetic variants created by IHR. Sequence data indicate that a single ancestral IHR event gave rise not only to X. fastidiosa subsp. morus but also to the X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex recombinant group which infects several hosts but is the only type naturally infecting blueberry, thus implicating this IHR in the invasion of at least two novel native hosts, mulberry and blueberry