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Faculty can rely on curriculum developers, instructional designers, and assessment professionals' expertise to incorporate program theory and implementation fidelity into the work of learning improvement. In the late 2010s, assessment professionals began to turn their attention to how assessment practices in higher education may unintentionally contribute to achievement gaps among groups - particularly, those among students with different racial identities and those between first-generation and non-first-generation students. It also requires that (a) faculty be integral to and collaborate on learning improvement efforts because they design curricula and assessment tasks and (b) students be included in assessment and change processes. [Extracted from the article]

Singer-Freeman and Robinson (2020a; 2020b) conducted a national survey that identified four compelling challenges assessment professionals deem important, solvable, and impactful. Some assessment professionals are working with faculty and college administrators to use real-time assessment information to guide immediate interventions using adaptive learning, just-in-time material, and campus-wide crisis intervention teams. Singer-Freeman, Robinson, and Bastone (2021) discuss ways that assessment professionals can take a more active role in encouraging equity by supporting the development of a culture of inquiry among faculty. [Extracted from the article]

The purpose of assessment in higher education is to improve student learning. " Implementing a student assessment scholars program: Students engaging in continuous improvement." Although students are not present in large enough numbers to control committee decisions, including students as committee members can influence institutional culture by providing a formal role for the student voice in the assessment process. [Extracted from the article]

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) is a four-year public research-intensive institution. Academic planning, student learning outcomes assessment, and institutional accreditation efforts at the institution are led by a centralized five-person Office of Assessment and Accreditation (OAA), with additional assessment directors embedded within individual colleges. The first, "Achieving the Essentials for Assessing Student Learning" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAL9%5flG0sJs&feature=youtu.be), helped faculty determine which of their initial student learning outcomes were the most important for students' success in future courses and suggested a range of ways to assess learning outcomes remotely. [Extracted from the article]

Estimation of epidemic onset timing is an important component of controlling the spread of seasonal infectious diseases within community healthcare sites. The Above Local Elevated Respiratory Illness Threshold (ALERT) algorithm uses a threshold-based approach to suggest incidence levels that historically have indicated the transition from endemic to epidemic activity. In this paper, we present the first detailed overview of the computational approach underlying the algorithm. In the motivating example section, we evaluate the performance of ALERT in determining the onset of increased respiratory virus incidence using laboratory testing data from the Children's Hospital of Colorado. At a threshold of 10 cases per week, ALERT-selected intervention periods performed better than the observed hospital site periods (2004/2005-2012/2013) and a CUSUM method. Additional simulation studies show how data properties may effect ALERT performance on novel data. We found that the conditions under which ALERT showed ideal performance generally included high seasonality and low off-season incidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum maps can guide the measurement of changes in learning over time by identifying courses in which to track student progress. To expand the measurement of learning over the curriculum, adopt a uniform rubric like the VALUE rubrics (American Association of Colleges & Universities 2009) to measure a learning outcome in all courses. Curriculum maps identify courses in a curriculum in which learning outcomes emerge, develop, and become effective. The Grand Challenges for Assessment in Higher Education project is a collaborative effort to increase the extent to which assessment 1) supports equity; 2) is visible, actionable, and drives innovation; and 3) guides rapid improvements in pedagogy (Singer-Freeman and Robinson 2020a; 2021). [Extracted from the article]

Acute gastroenteritis accounts for a significant burden of medically attended illness in children under the age of five. For this study, four multiplex reverse transcription PCR assays were used to determine the incidence of adenovirus, astrovirus, coronavirus, norovirus GI and GII, rotavirus, and sapovirus in stool samples submitted for viral electron microscopy (EM) to the Children's Hospital Colorado. Of 1105 stool samples available, viral RNA/DNA was detected in 247 (26.2%) of 941 pediatric samples (median age = 2.97 years, 54% male) with 28 (3.0%) positive for more than one virus. Adenovirus, astrovirus, norovirus GI, norovirus GII, rotavirus, and sapovirus were detected in 95 (10.0%), 33 (3.5%), 8 (0.9%), 90 (9.6%), 49 (5.2%), and 2 (0.2%) of the pediatric samples, respectively. No coronaviruses were identified. Sequencing of norovirus positive samples indicated an outbreak of norovirus strain GII.4 in 2006 with evidence of numerous circulating strains. Multiple samples from the same immunocompromised patients demonstrated symptomatic shedding of norovirus for up to 32 weeks and astrovirus for 12 weeks. RT-PCR detected 99 of 111 (89%) adenovirus-positive samples versus 12 (11%) by EM, and 186 of 192 (97%) sapovirus/astrovirus/norovirus-positive samples versus 21 (11%) by EM. Noroviruses and adenoviruses are common causes of gastroenteritis in children. Immunocompromised patients can be infected with multiple viruses and shed viruses in their stools for prolonged periods. This data support the superiority of RT-PCR compared to EM for diagnosis of viral gastroenteritis. J. Med. Virol. 87:931-939, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human parechovirus (HPeV) and human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6) are acquired commonly in infancy and associated with central nervous system infection. The prevalence of HPeV and HHV-6 in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of infants tested for enterovirus (EV) and herpes-simplex virus (HSV) is unknown. All stored CSF samples from EV or HSV testing in infants less than 6 months of age at Children's Hospital Colorado between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2011 were tested for HPeV, HHV-6, EV, and HSV by PCR. Clinical characteristics and epidemiological data were collected using retrospective electronic chart review. Of 239 infants tested, 29 cases of EV (12.1%), 7 cases of HPeV (2.9%), 5 cases of HHV-6 (2.1%), and 5 cases of HSV (2.1%) were identified with no bacterial co-infections. HPeV cases occurred between July and October in infants with median age of 24 days. Infants with HPeV had a median maximum temperature of 39 °C, median fever duration of 3 days and median peripheral white blood cell count of 5.2 × 103/μL. HHV-6 cases occurred in infants with median age of 61 days without seasonality. Five percent of infants less than 6 months of age undergoing testing for EV or HSV have HPeV or HHV-6 in the CSF. Targeting testing of HPeV towards febrile infants less than 2 months of age with leukopenia in the late summer to early fall, and HHV-6 towards older infants may increase diagnostic yield. The clinical and fiscal impact of testing infants for HPeV and HHV-6 needs to be determined. J. Med. Virol. 87:829-835, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the teaching of closing sequences in telephone calls made in German language. It is stated that both opening and closing sequences of conversation are important in establishing interpersonal relationships between participants, but different languages and different cultures have different norms. The article also discusses the differences between the closing sequences in German and American English, and negotiation in closing sequences in German.

Terminases are enzymes that are required for the insertion of a single viral genome into the interior of a viral procapsid by a process referred to as `encapsulation or packaging'. Many double-stranded DNA viruses such as bacteriophages T3, T4, T7, λ and SPP1, as well as herpes viruses, utilize terminase enzymes for this purpose. All the terminase enzymes described to date require two subunits, a small subunit referred to as TerS and a large subunit referred to as TerL, for in vivo activity. The TerS and TerL subunits interact with each other to form a functional hetero-oligomeric enzyme complex; however the stoichiometry and oligomeric state have not been determined. We have cloned, expressed and purified recombinant small terminase TerS from a 936 lactococcal bacteriophage strain ASCC454, initially isolated from a dairy factory. The terminase was crystallized using a combination of nanolitre sitting drops and vapour diffusion using sodium malonate as the precipitant, and crystallization optimized using standard vapour-diffusion hanging drops set up in the presence of a nitrogen atmosphere. The crystals belong to the P2 space group, with unit-cell parameters a = 73.93, b = 158.48, c = 74.23 Å, and diffract to 2.42 Å resolution using synchrotron radiation. A self-rotation function calculation revealed that the terminase oligomerizes into an octamer in the asymmetric unit, although size-exclusion chromatography suggests that it is possible for it to form an oligomer of up to 13 subunits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower respiratory tract infections are the leading cause of death in children worldwide. Studies on the epidemiology and clinical associations of the four human non-SARS human coronaviruses (HCoVs) using sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays are needed to evaluate the clinical significance of HCoV infections worldwide. Pediatric respiratory specimens (1,683) submitted to a diagnostic virology laboratory over a 1-year period (December 2004-November 2005) that were negative for seven respiratory viruses by conventional methods were tested for RNA of four HCoVs using sensitive RT-PCR assays. Coronavirus RNAs were detected in 84 (5.0%) specimens: HCoV-NL63 in 37 specimens, HCoV-OC43 in 34, HCoV-229E in 11, and HCoV-HKU1 in 2. The majority of HCoV infections occurred during winter months, and over 62% were in previously healthy children. Twenty-six (41%) coronavirus positive patients had evidence of a lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI), 17 (26%) presented with vomiting and/or diarrhea, and 5 (8%) presented with meningoencephalitis or seizures. Respiratory specimens from one immunocompromised patient were persistently positive for HCoV-229E RNA for 3 months. HCoV-NL63-positive patients were nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized ( P = 0.02) and to have a LRTI ( P = 0.04) than HCoV-OC43-positive patients. HCoVs are associated with a small, but significant number (at least 2.4% of total samples submitted), of both upper and lower respiratory tract illnesses in children in Colorado. Our data raise the possibility that HCoV may play a role in gastrointestinal and CNS disease. Additional studies are needed to investigate the potential roles of HCoVs in these diseases. J. Med. Virol. 81:1597-1604, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the national preoccupation with terrorism gives way to an unfolding, and likely enduring, economic crisis in the U.S. and globally, social research should focus more attention toward class-based social movements, which have largely been neglected within sociology and social movement scholarship over the last few decades. Class analysis and labor organizing have historically been central to the social movement activities of anarchists. Anarchist social movements are relatively understudied, despite indicators of their resurgence in the last decade. Today, however, anarchist politics have diversified to address a variety of social issues. This study contributes to neglected areas of social movement research by examining the ways in which social class directly and indirectly informs the politics of a contemporary anarchist collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human insulin receptor (IR) homodimer is heavily glycosylated and contains a total of 19 predicted N-linked glycosylation sites in each monomer. The recent crystal structure of the IR ectodomain shows electron density consistent with N-linked glycosylation at the majority of sites present in the construct. Here, we describe a refined structure of the IR ectodomain that incorporates all of the N-linked glycans and reveals the extent to which the attached glycans mask the surface of the IR dimer from interaction with antibodies or other potential therapeutic binding proteins. The usefulness of Fab complexation in the crystallization of heavily glycosylated proteins is also discussed. The compositions of the glycans on IR expressed in CHO-K1 cells and the glycosylation deficient Lec8 cell line were determined by protease digestion, glycopeptide purification, amino acid sequence analysis, and mass spectrometry. Collectively the data reveal: multiple species of complex glycan at residues 25, 255, 295, 418, 606, 624, 742, 755, and 893 (IR-B numbering); multiple species of high-mannose glycan at residues 111 and 514; a single species of complex glycan at residue 671; and a single species of high-mannose glycan at residue 215. Residue 16 exhibited a mixture of complex, hybrid, and high-mannose glycan species. Of the remaining five predicted N-linked sites, those at residues 397 and 906 were confirmed by amino acid sequencing to be glycosylated, while that at residue 78 and the atypical (NKC) site at residue 282 were not glycosylated. The peptide containing the final site at residue 337 was not recovered but is seen to be glycosylated in the electron density maps of the IR ectodomain. The model of the fully glycosylated IR reveals that the sites carrying high-mannose glycans lie at positions of relatively low steric accessibility. Proteins 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O-linked glycosylation is a post-translational and post-folding event involving exposed S/T residues at β-turns or in regions with extended conformation. O-linked sites are difficult to predict from sequence analyses compared to N-linked sites. Here we compare the results of chemical analyses of isolated glycopeptides with the prediction using the neural network prediction method NetOGlyc3.1, a procedure that has been reported to correctly predict 76% of O-glycosylated residues in proteins. Using the heavily glycosylated human insulin receptor as the test protein six sites of mucin-type O-glycosylation were found at residues T744, T749, S757, S758, T759, and T763 compared to the three sites (T759 and T763- correctly, T756- incorrectly) predicted by the neural network method. These six sites occur in a 20 residue segment that begins nine residues downstream from the start of the insulin receptor β-chain. This region which also includes N-linked glycosylation sites at N742 and N755, is predicted to lack secondary structure and is followed by residues 765-770, the known linear epitope for the monoclonal antibody 18-44. Proteins 2007. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]