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This project report describes using MasteryPaths in the Canvas Virtual Learning Environment as a method of helping improve the information literacy (IL) competence for undergraduate science students studying in their first year at university. The MasteryPaths incorporated a series of formative quiz assessments on referencing and finding and evaluating information, which depending on the students' initial score directed them to further enrichment or support materials. Four degree courses (Biology, Forensics, Biomedicine and Sport) each included the MasteryPaths in a first-year module in 2020/21, which were available in Canvas following face-to-face IL sessions. Focus groups were conducted with students, and interviews were carried out with two module leaders to explore perceptions of the MasteryPaths design and effectiveness for IL skills. The article provides insight into how online, self-paced, IL formative quiz assessments can be developed in a way to motivate and engage students in their learning.

Reliable tomographic inversion of geoelectrical monitoring data from unstable slopes relies critically on knowing the electrode positions, which may move over time. We develop and present an innovative inverse method to recover movements in both surface directions from geoelectrical measurements made on a grid of monitoring electrodes. For the first time, we demonstrate this method using field data from an active landslide to recover sequences of movement over timescales of days to years. Comparison with GPS measurements demonstrated an accuracy of within 10% of the electrode spacing, sufficient to correct the majority of artifacts that would occur in subsequent image reconstructions if incorrect positions are used. Over short timescales where the corresponding subsurface resistivity changes were smaller, the constraints could be relaxed and an order-of-magnitude better accuracy was achievable. This enabled the onset and acceleration of landslide activity to be detected with a temporal resolution of a few days.

The Peace River region, Alberta, Canada, has experienced extensive landslide activity since deglaciation. Shear zones within weak lacustrine silt and clay layers typically experience continuous creep, damaging highway and utilities infrastructure. However, occasionally, movement accelerates and potentially catastrophic failures occur. Conventional deformation monitoring approaches provide incremental measurements with low temporal resolution and do not necessarily allow rapid changes in stability to be detected and communicated sufficiently in advance to provide early warning. The study objectives were to (i) acquire a long-term dataset of continuous deformation measurements with high temporal resolution of a case study slope in Peace River, (ii) enhance understanding of a typical creeping Peace River slope's behavior in response to climatic drivers, and (iii) investigate the potential of an acoustic emission (AE) monitoring system to provide early warning of accelerating deformation behavior. ShapeAccelArray (SAA) and AE instruments were installed, in addition to conventional inclinometers and piezometers. Measurements show that the landslide is 'extremely slow', moving on average 5 mm annually, and reveal seasonal activity with periods of acceleration and deceleration driven by pore-water pressures. Measured AE correlated strongly with the rate and magnitude of SAA-measured displacement, demonstrating the potential of the AE technique to warn of accelerating deformation behavior. Key words: landslide, acoustic emission, slope creep, field monitoring. La region de Peace River, Alberta, Canada, a connu une vaste activite de glissement de terrain depuis la deglaciation. Les zones de cisaillement a l'interieur de la faiblesse de couches de limon et d'argiles lacustres subissent generalement un fluage continu, endommageant l'infrastructure routiere et les services publics. Cependant, a l'occasion, le mouvement s'accelere et des effondrements potentiellement catastrophiques se produisent. Les approches de surveillance de deformation classiques fournissent des mesures supplementaires a faible resolution temporelle et ne permettent pas necessairement de detecter les changements rapides de la stabilite et de communiquer suffisamment a l'avance pour donner l'alerte. L'etude avait pour objectifs : (i) d'acquerirun ensemble de donnees a long terme des mesures de deformation continue avec haute resolution temporelle d'une etude de cas de la pente de Peace River, (ii) d'ameliorer la comprehension du comportement typique de reptation sur la pente de Peace River en reponse aux facteurs climatiques et (iii) d'etudier le potentiel d'un systeme de surveillance d'emission acoustique (EA) pour assurer l'alerte rapide de l'acceleration du comportement en deformation. Des instruments ShapeAccelArray (ASA) et AE ont ete installes, en plus d'inclinometres et de piezometres. Les mesures montrent que le glissement est << extremement faible >>, se deplacant en moyenne de 5 mm par an, et demontre l'activite saisonniere avec des periodes d'acceleration et de deceleration entrainee par les pressions interstitielles. L'AE mesuree est fortement correlee avec le rythme et l'ampleur des deplacements mesures a l'ASA, demontrant le potentiel de la technique d'AE pour avertir de l'acceleration du comportement de deformation. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: glissement de terrain, emission acoustique, fluage lent, surveillance de terrain., Introduction Background The Peace River region in Alberta, Canada, has experienced extensive landslide activity since deglaciation and is one of the most historically active landslide sites in Western Canada (Fig. [...]

The design of engineered earthworks is predominantly conducted through limit equilibrium analysis, requiring strain-independent strength criteria. Previous studies on deep-seated first-time failures within over-consolidated clay cut slopes have proposed the use of fully softened strength parameters for design. A study investigating shallow first-time failures in clay cut slopes due to seasonal stress cycles was undertaken using a validated numerical model capable of capturing seasonal ratcheting and progressive failure. It was found that fully softened strength criteria are inappropriate for the assessment of shallow first-time failures due to seasonal ratcheting and slopes at angles between the material's fully softened and residual friction angle may be at risk of failure in the future due to this behaviour. However, adopting residual strength parameters will likely result in overly conservative solutions considering the required design life of geotechnical assets. It was found that the strain-softening behaviour of clay defines the rate of strength deterioration and the operational life of engineered slopes. While general guidelines for analysis considering shallow first-time failures in clay cut slopes are provided, detailed understanding of a material's strain-softening behaviour, the magnitude and rate of strength reduction with strains, is needed to establish strength criteria for limit equilibrium analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic emission (AE) has become an established approach to monitor stability of soil slopes. However, the challenge has been to develop strategies to interpret and quantify deformation behaviour from the measured AE. AE monitoring of soil slopes commonly utilizes an active waveguide that is installed in a borehole through the slope and comprises a metal waveguide rod or tube with a granular backfill surround. When the host slope deforms, the column of granular backfill also deforms and this generates AE that can propagate along the waveguide. Results from the commissioning of dynamic shear apparatus used to subject full-scale active waveguide models to simulated slope movements are presented. The results confirm that AE rates generated are proportional to the rate of deformation, and the coefficient of proportionality that defines the relationship has been quantified (e.g., 4.4 x [10.sup.5] for the angular gravel examined). It is demonstrated that slope velocities can be quantified continuously in real time through monitoring active waveguide-generated AE during a slope failure simulation. The results show that the technique can quantify landslide velocity to better than an order of magnitude (i.e., consistent with standard landslide movement classification) and can therefore be used to provide an early warning of slope instability through detecting and quantifying accelerations of slope movement. Key words: acoustic emission (AE), deformation, instrumentation, landslide, slope instability. L'emission acoustique (EA) s'est etablie en tant qu'approche pour suivre la stabilite des pentes de sol. Cependant, le defi a ete de developper des strategies pour interpreter et quantifier le comportement en deformation a partir des mesures d'EA. Le suivi de pentes de sol avec l'EA utilise generalement un guide d'ondes actif qui est installe dans un trou de forage dans la pente et comprend une tige ou un tube de guide d'ondes avec un entourage de remblai granulaire. Quand la pente suivie se deforme, la colonne de remblai granulaire se deforme aussi et ceci genere des EA qui se propagent le long du guide d'ondes. L'article presente des resultats de la mise en place d'appareils de cisaillement dynamique utilises pour soumettre des modeles de guides d'ondes actifs a l'echelle reelle a des mouvements de pente simules. Les resultats confirment que les taux d'EA generes sont proportionnels au taux de deformation, et le coefficient de proportionnalite qui definit la relation a ete quantifie (ex.: 4,4 x [10.sup.-5] pour le gravier angulaire etudie). Il est demontre que les vitesses de pente peuvent etre quantifiees en continu en temps reel grace au suivi des EAgenerees par le guide d'ondes actif durant une simulation de rupture de pente. Les resultats suggerent que la technique peut quantifier la vitesse d'un glissement de terrain a mieux qu'un ordre de grandeur (c'est-a-dire consistant avec la classification standard des mouvements de glissements de terrain) et peut ainsi etre utilisee pour fournir un avertissement precoce de l'instabilite de pente grace a la detection et la quantification des accelerations du mouvement de la pente. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: emission acoustique (EA), deformation, instrumentation, glissement de terrain, instabilite de pente., Introduction Landslides cause many thousands of fatalities each year all over the globe (e.g., Petley (2012) reported records of over 32 000 fatalities that resulted from landslides during the period [...]

Post-translational modification of proteins by poly(ADP-ribosyl) ation regulates many cellular pathways that are critical for genome stability, including DNA repair, chromatin structure, mitosis and apoptosis (1). Poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) is composed of repeating ADP-ribose units linked via a unique glycosidic ribose-ribose bond, and is synthesized from NAD by PAR polymerases (1,2). PAR glycohydrolase (PARG) is the only protein capable of specific hydrolysis of the ribose-ribose bonds present in PAR chains; its deficiency leads to cell death (3,4). Here we show that filamentous fungi and a number of bacteria possess a divergent form of PARG that has all the main characteristics of the human PARG enzyme. We present the first PARG crystal structure (derived from the bacterium Thermomonospora curvata), which reveals that the PARG catalytic domain is a distant member of the ubiquitous ADP-ribose-binding macrodomain family (5,6). High-resolution structures of T. curvata PARG in complexes with ADP-ribose and the PARG inhibitor ADP-HPD, complemented by biochemical studies, allow us to propose a model for PAR binding and catalysis by PARG. The insights into the PARG structure and catalytic mechanism should greatly improve our understanding of how PARG activity controls reversible protein poly(ADP-ribosyl) ation and potentially of how the defects in this regulation are linked to human disease., Whereas the mechanism and functional aspects of PAR synthesis have been extensively characterized, the present understanding of the PAR-degradation pathways catalysed by PARG is comparatively poor. Until now, the catalytic [...]

A study was conducted to prove that the macrolide concanamycin is a potent and specific inhibitor of the vacuolar H(super plus)minus ATPase (V-ATPase), binding to the V(sub 0) membrane of eukaryotic acid pump. It showed that the extracted 16 kDa proteolipid retains sufficient fold to form a high-affinity inhibitor binding site for both natural and synthetic V-ATPase inhibitors and that the proteolipid contains the major proportion of the structural determinants for inhibitor binding.