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Background: Given the opportunity to teach a mixed language/content course and my longstanding interest in TRPGs and second-language acquisition, I made a course titled “Interaction through Tabletop Roleplaying Games.” Aim: The aim of the course was - beyond the development of students’ English language skills - to open a window into the world of tabletop roleplaying games and encourage students to see TRPGs as an opportunity to use English outside the classroom in a playful way and learn how to play them. Teaching methods: The course used three different TRPG systems of slowly advancing difficulty in order to acclimate the students to the genre and equip them with the basic schema they would need to participate fully in English. To introduce the materials, I began with a teacher-centered approach and then moved to a student-centered one as students became more familiar with the genre. Results: By the end of the course, students were able to play TRPGs unassisted in English by creating their own stories, characters, and adapting them to their playstyle. Some also expressed interest in playing TRPGs in their futures, or if not running a game themselves, said that they would be open to the idea if someone else invited them. Conclusion: In the future, I want to use this paper as a starting point to further refine and develop the course as well as the ideas within it.

Hurricanes Isaac (2012), Harvey (2017), and Irma (2017) were storms with different geophysical characteristics and track forecast consistencies. Despite the differences, common themes emerged from the perception of track forecasts from evacuees for each storm. Surveys with a mixture of closed and open-ended responses were conducted during the evacuations of each storm while the storm characteristics and decision-making were fresh in the minds of evacuees. Track perception accuracy for each evacuee was quantified by taking the difference between three metrics: perceived track and official track (PT − OT), perceived track and forecast track (PT − FT), and home location and perceived track (HL − PT). Evacuees from Hurricanes Isaac and Harvey displayed a tendency to perceive hurricane tracks as being closer to their home locations than what was forecast to occur and what actually occurred. The large sample collected for Hurricane Irma provided a chance to statistically verify some of the hypotheses generated from Isaac and Harvey. Results from Hurricane Irma confirmed that evacuees expected a storm to be closer to their home locations after controlling for regional influences. Furthermore, participants with greater previous hurricane experience perceived a track as being closer to their home locations, and participants residing in zip codes corresponding with nonmandatory evacuation zones also perceived tracks as being closer to their home locations. These findings suggest that most evacuees from hurricanes in the United States appear to perceive storms as being closer to their home locations than they are and overestimate wind speeds at their homes, thus overestimating the true danger from landfalling hurricanes in many storms.

Social movements engage in processes of identity work to construct and reconstruct identities. Within movements characterized by group differences, such as contemporary LGBT movements, demands for ...

Vibration vehicle models provide a great opportunity to integrate vehicle-based vibrations into a mechanical engineering vibrations course. This paper documents and discusses an approach to a multiple-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) in regards to pitch and bounce of the vehicle body with dampening and stiffness observed. The approach utilizes hand calculations, OCTAVE, and ANSYS to solve speed-bump induced vibration and to calculate vibrations modes. The problem involves a bicycle-model approach to a vehicle’s response when subject to a speed bump, or a sudden impulse load upon the forward-face of the model. These responses are captured and analyzed on pitch and bounce of the model at the center-of-gravity and the front/rear sides of the model. Graphical models capture responses of the loading conditions and the modal equations of the model providing a method of studying and understanding vibrational responses under provided stiffness. Using ANSYS as an approach of the model to capture damping response, further graphical models can be captured and used to describe motions of the vehicle model’s center-of-gravity, frontward and rearward wheel assembly, and the pitch (rotation) of the center-of-gravity to the introduced responses. A successful study with analysis of each graphical element and further dissemination of the results is concluded.

Many universities and colleges focus on student retention and completion as a measure of their success. Publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education carry an increasing number of articles dealing with student retention, success, and completion. Academic libraries support this goal through a wide variety of services, teaching, resources, and spaces. Often, attention centers on the students who have been typical at universities for generations: 18- to 22-year-olds who are single and live on campus. As campuses change in demographics, libraries are adjusting services, teaching, resources, and spaces to accommodate a wider range of students. The J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City created a unique space for students with children as one way to contribute to the goals of student retention, success, and completion.

Organophosphate poisoning can occur from exposure to agricultural pesticides or chemical weapons. This exposure inhibits acetylcholinesterase resulting in increased acetylcholine levels within the synaptic cleft causing loss of muscle control, seizures, and death. Mitigating the effects of organophosphates in our bodies is critical and yet an unsolved challenge. Weaponized organophosphates are a deadly threat to armed forces and civilians (e.g., exposure to one droplet of VX exceeds the LD50 of ~15 μg/kg). Here, we present two computational strategies to 1) identify a novel protein acting as a stoichiometric bioscavenger to covalently bind organophosphates, and 2) improve the stability and activity of organophosphate hydrolase as a catalytic bioscavenger through allosteric modulation. We use our first computational strategy, integrating structure mining and modeling approaches, to identify novel candidates capable of interacting with a serine hydrolase probe (either covalently or with equilibrium binding constants ranging from 20 to 120 µM). One candidate Smu. 1393c catalyzes the hydrolysis of the organophosphate omethoate (kcat/Km of (2.0±1.3)×10-1 M-1s-1) and paraoxon (kcat/Km of (4.6±0.8)×103 M-1s-1), V- and G-agent analogs respectively. In addition, Smu. 1393c protects acetylcholinesterase activity from being inhibited by two organophosphate simulants. We demonstrate that the utilized approach is an efficient and highly-extendable framework for the development of prophylactic therapeutics against organophosphate poisoning. Organophosphate hydrolase (OPH) degrades many classes of organophosphates and plays an important role in organophosphate remediation. Here, we demonstrate our second computational strategy of protein design to enhance OPH’s enzymatic hydrolysis of organophosphates and test on paraoxon, a G-agent analog, and omethoate, a V-agent analog. We identify five hotspot residues for allosteric regulation and assay these mutants for hydrolysis activity against paraoxon. A number of the predicted mutants exhibit enhanced paraoxon activity over wild type OPH (kcat =907 s-1), such as T54I/T199I (1260 s-1) while the Km remains relatively unchanged. Computational protein dynamics study reveals four distinct distal regions that display significant changes in conformation dynamics. The enzymatic enhancement of OPH validates a computational design method that is both efficient and readily adapted as a general procedure for enzymatic enhancement.

We survey low cost high-throughput virtual screening (HTVS) computer programs for instructors who wish to demonstrate molecular docking in their courses. Since HTVS programs are a useful adjunct to the time consuming and expensive wet bench experiments necessary to discover new drug therapies, the topic of molecular docking is core to the instruction of biochemistry and molecular biology. The availability of HTVS programs coupled with decreasing costs and advances in computer hardware have made computational approaches to drug discovery possible at institutional and non-profit budgets. This paper focuses on HTVS programs with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that use either DOCK or AutoDock for the prediction of DockoMatic, PyRx, DockingServer, and MOLA since their utility has been proven by the research community, they are free or affordable, and the programs operate on a range of computer platforms.

Fortilin, a pro-survival molecule, inhibits p53-induced apoptosis by binding to the sequence-specific DNA-binding domain of the tumor suppressor protein and preventing it from transcriptionally activating Bax. Intriguingly, fortilin protects cells against ROS-induced cell death, independent of p53. The signaling pathway through which fortilin protects cells against ROS-induced cell death, however, is unknown. Here we report that fortilin physically interacts with the antioxidant enzyme peroxiredoxin-1 (PRX1), protects it from proteasome-mediated degradation, and keeps it enzymatically active by blocking its deactivating phosphorylation by Mst1, a serine/threonine kinase. At the whole animal level, the liver-specific overexpression of fortilin reduced PRX1 phosphorylation in the liver, enhanced PRX1 activity, and protected the transgenic animals against alcohol-induced, ROS-mediated, liver damage. These data suggest the presence of a novel oxidative-stress-handling pathway where the anti-p53 molecule fortilin augments the peroxidase PRX1 by protecting it against degradation and inactivation of the enzyme. Fortilin-PRX1 interaction in the liver could be clinically exploited further to prevent acute alcohol-induced liver damage in humans.