Digital Commons Network^™

A Cultured Learning Environment: Implementing A Problem- And Service-Based Microbiology Capstone Course To Assess Process- And Skill-Based Learning Objectives, Rachel M. Watson, John D. Willford, Mariel A. Pfeifer

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

In this study, a problem-based capstone course was designed to assess the University of Wyoming Microbiology Program’s skill-based and process-based student learning objectives. Students partnered with a local farm, a community garden, and a free downtown clinic in order to conceptualize, propose, perform, and present studies addressing problems experienced by these partners. Instructor assessments enabled understanding of student competencies, and according to external subject matter experts students demonstrated mastery of all learning objectives on the final research presentation. Community partners were completely satisfied with the students’ solutions, professionalism, and communication. Instructional diagnosis and student course evaluations showed satisfaction, engagement, and …

Indiana’S Past & Future Climate: A Report From The Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, Melissa Widhalm, Alan Hamlet, Kyuhyun Byun, Scott Robeson, Mike Baldwin, Paul Staten, Chun-Mei Chiu, Jill Coleman, E. Hall, Kim Hoogewind, Matthew Huber, Chanh Kieu, Jinwoong Yoo, Jeffrey Dukes

Climate Change Reports

Indiana’s climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, more precipitation is falling and the last spring frost of the year has been getting steadily earlier. This report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA) describes historical climate trends from more than a century of data, and future projections that detail the ways in which our climate will continue to change.

Frame, Preference, And Memory In Literary History Narration, Guoqiang Qiao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Frame, Preference, and Memory in Literary History Narration" Guoqiang Qiao analyzes the frame, preference and memory in literary historiography from a narratological and cognitive perspectives. He maintains that literary history is of multileveled narration that includes not only the perceptualized literary events, literary figures, and literary works, but also the conceptualized spirit of the time, national culture, and personal and collective memories. Qiao employs the basic concepts of frame, preference, and memory to suggest a cognitive approach to the narration of literary history. To illustrate the complex construction of literary historiography, he provides examples from Chinese literary …

Indiana’S Climate Trends: A Resource For The Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, Melissa Widhalm, Scott Robeson, Beth Hall, Mike Baldwin, Jill Coleman

Climate Change Reports

This white paper was developed by members of the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment – Climate Working Group. It describes historical observations and trends in Indiana’s climate over the last century.

Academic Libraries On Social Media: Finding The Students And The Information They Want, Heather A. Howard, Sarah E. Huber, Elizabeth A. Moore, Lisa Carter

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Librarians from Purdue University wanted to determine which social media platforms students use, which platforms they would like the library to use, and what content they would like to see from the library on each of these platforms. We conducted a survey at four of the nine campus libraries to determine student social media habits and preferences. Results show that students currently use Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat more than other social media types; however, students responded that they would like to see the library on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Students wanted nearly all types of content from the libraries on …

Final Report: Paths To Quality Evaluation, James Elicker, Sarah Lane, Zachary S. Gold, Aura Mishra, Sharon Christ

Center for Families Publications

Paths to QUALITY Evaluation—Phase 2 Final Report to the Indiana Office of Early Childhood and Out of School Learning Family and Social Services Administration March, 2018

Pantheism And Escapism In Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' And 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives, Yasser K. R. Aman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Pantheism and Escapism in Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' and 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives" Yasser K. R. Aman investigates and analyses the possibilities of pantheism's encirclement of escapism in Elia Abu Madi's two poems from English Romanticism perspective. The article compares Abu Madi's fluctuating attitude towards escapism and pantheism to William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13, 1798," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," highlighting the affinities and differences. The …

Other-Languagedness In Stories By R.K. Narayan, Saadat Hassan Manto, And Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Biljana Djorić Francuski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Other-languagedness in Stories by R.K. Narayan, Saadat Hassan Manto, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala" Biljana Djorić Francuski examines, within a comparative framework, the concepts of otherness and other-languagedness as expressed in three short stories by authors from separate but interconnected cultures: an Indian English writer, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan; a Pakistani writer, Saadat Hassan Manto; and a writer of European origins who lived in and wrote about India, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The author analyzes, within the context of the (post)colonial discourse, the instances of misunderstanding resulting from binary oppositions between the interlocutors, due to their mutual otherness.

Disoriented Nationalist Discourse Of The Wenxuan Group Amidst Manchukuo’S Anti-Modern Chorus, Chao Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Disoriented Nationalist Discourse of the Wenxuan Group amidst Manchukuo's Anti-Modern Chorus" Chao Liu analyzes the proposal of "native-land literature" made by left-wing Chinese writers in occupied northeast China. As it turns out, inheriting the nationalist discourse of the May Fourth Movement and further radicalizing it via a "new romanticism," those writers over-emphasized the socio-political function of literary production and took native-land literature as the most effective tool for nationalist mobilization. Accordingly, they repelled modern civilization as it was associated with the colonists, relying instead on natural wilderness and primitive force and thus adopting subject matters as well …

Deromanticized Cosmopolitanism In Smith’S Swing Time And Chi’S 晚安玫瑰 (Goodnight, Rose), Songyun Zheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Deromanticized Cosmopolitanism in Smith's Swing Time and Chi's 晚安玫瑰 (Goodnight, Rose)" Songyun Zheng proposes a theoretical framework of deromanticized cosmopolitanism to conduct a comparative reading of Zadie Smith's Swing Time, a transcontinental narrative of London, New York, and Africa, and Zijian Chi's Goodnight, Rose, about a Jewish émigré living in Harbin, China. Zheng reframes cosmopolitanism by recognizing its contradictory and multifaceted nature, and questions the assumed connection between cosmopolitanism and cross-boundary activities such as migration and interracial relationships. The two novels form a constellation of deromanticized cosmopolitanism with characters of transcultural backgrounds …

Feminism In The Works Of Fawziyya Abū Khālid, Muneerah Badr Almahasheer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Feminism in the Works of Fawziyya Abū Khālid" Muneerah Badr Almahasheer examines how the Saudi poet Fawziyya Abū Khālid (1955–present) addresses feminism in her poems. Although distinct, Islam is frequently conflated with Arabic culture; consequently, women's role in Islam is commonly misunderstood. Therefore, following Western feminists, Muslim feminists have called for readings and understandings of the Qur'an, wherein the authority of the historically patriarchal interpretations is not assumed, and the sanctity of the text is valued. Through this lens, Abū Khālid's poems critically interrogate Arabic Muslim identity, particularly with regard to gender. A selected reading of Abū …

Vicarious Victimhood As Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity In Erica Fischer's Auto/Biography Aimée And Jaguar, Anne Rothe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Vicarious Victimhood as Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity in Erica Fischer's Auto/Biography Aimée and Jaguar" Anne Rothe reads the Austrian-Jewish journalist's interview-based dual biography in autobiographical terms. Taking recourse to such para-texts as the preface and epilogue, in which Fischer reflects on her own subject position, in addition to the auto/biographical narrative itself, Rothe critiques the notion of constructing secular Jewish identity based on the notion of vicarious or hereditary Holocaust victimhood. This provocative new reading reveals that the biography Fischer wrote constitutes a counter-narrative to the story her main collaborator, Lilly Wust, told the author about her …

Orion+: Automated Problem Diagnosis In Computing Systems By Mining Metric Data, Charitha Saumya, Nomchin Banga, Shreya Inamdar

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Nowadays, distributed systems are a necessity of almost all big enterprises. It is a programmers nightmare to encounter a bug which causes failures in the system and leads to a crash on such a large infrastructure. With the ever increasing code sizes and processing needs, a tool is required that is able to assist a programmer in figuring out potential causes of a bug and minimizing time taken for debugging, hence rectifying it quickly. We present our solution Orion+, which compares the system metrics at various levels, namely, hardware, OS, middleware and application layer. It then makes use of the …

The Iterative Development And Use Of An Online Problem-Based Learning Module For Preservice And Inservice Teachers, Peter Rillero, Laurie Camposeco

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Teachers’ problem-based learning knowledge, abilities, and attitudes are important factors in successful K–12 PBL implementations. This article describes the development and use of a free, online module entitled Design a Problem-Based Learning Experience. The module production, aligned with theories of andragogy, was a partnership between the recipients of a grant using PBL to enhance English language learner education and the Sanford Inspire Program. A multistage evaluation design was used in the iterative process of module creation. Starting with an initial white paper, the module’s conceptualization, development, pilot testing, and refinement are described, along with the current use statistics. The URL …

Choosing Stem College Majors: Exploring The Role Of Pre-College Engineering Courses, L. Allen Phelps, Eric M. Camburn, Sookweon Min

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Despite the recent policy proclamations urging state and local educators to implement integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curricula, relatively little is known about the role and impact of pre-college engineering courses within these initiatives. When combined with appropriate mathematics and science courses, high school engineering and engineering technology (E&ET) courses may have the potential to provide students with pre-college learning experiences that encourage them to pursue STEM college majors. Our central research question was: What is the nature and extent of any relationship between high school E&ET course completion and subsequent selection of a STEM major in a …

Problem-Based Teacher-Mentor Education: Fostering Literacy Acquisition In Multicultural Classrooms, Pamela Hartman, Corinne Renguette, Mary Theresa Seig

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

We designed a professional development (PD) teacher-mentor program that used problem-based learning (PBL) to accomplish two goals. First, teachers explored how PBL could be used effectively in their classrooms to change the way they think about teaching to include literacy development in content areas. Second, PBL was the basis for PD training to help them improve their own knowledge of PBL, become mentors to other teachers, and implement PBL in their schools across content areas.

Educators in the United States are challenged to teach linguistically and culturally diverse (LCD) students with differing literacy levels. The demographics of U.S. classrooms require …

Perspectives On Science And Culture, Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, Ronald Soetaert

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Edited by Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, and Ronald Soetaert, Perspectives on Science and Culture explores the intersection between scientific understanding and cultural representation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Contributors to the volume analyze representations of science and scientific discourse from the perspectives of rhetorical criticism, comparative cultural studies, narratology, educational studies, discourse analysis, naturalized epistemology, and the cognitive sciences. The main objective of the volume is to explore how particular cognitive predispositions and cultural representations both shape and distort the public debate about scientific controversies, the teaching and learning of science, and the development of science itself. The theoretical background of …

Perspectives On Science And Culture, Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, Ronald Soetaert

Purdue University Press Books

Edited by Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, and Ronald Soetaert, Perspectives on Science and Culture explores the intersection between scientific understanding and cultural representation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Contributors to the volume analyze representations of science and scientific discourse from the perspectives of rhetorical criticism, comparative cultural studies, narratology, educational studies, discourse analysis, naturalized epistemology, and the cognitive sciences. The main objective of the volume is to explore how particular cognitive predispositions and cultural representations both shape and distort the public debate about scientific controversies, the teaching and learning of science, and the development of science itself. The theoretical background of …

Microrna-223 Suppresses The Canonical Nf-Kb Pathway In Basal Keratinocytes To Dampen Neutrophilic Inflammation, Wenqing Zhou, Arpita S. Pal, Alan Yi-Hui Hsu, Theodore Gurol, Xiaoguang Zhu, Sara E. Wirbisk-Hershberger, Jennifer L. Freeman, Andrea L. Kasinski, Qing Deng

Department of Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

MicroRNA-223 is known as a myeloid-enriched anti-inflammatory microRNA that is dysregulated in numerous inflammatory conditions. Here, we report that neutrophilic inflammation (wound response) is augmented in miR-223-deficient zebrafish, due pri- marily to elevated activation of the canonical nuclear factor kB (NF-kB) pathway. NF-kB over-activation is restricted to the basal layer of the surface epithelium, although miR-223 is detected throughout the epithe- lium and in phagocytes. Not only phagocytes but also epithelial cells are involved in miR-223-medi- ated regulation of neutrophils’ wound response and NF-kB activation. Cul1a/b, Traf6, and Tab1 are iden- tified as direct targets of miR-223, and their levels …

Living On The Edge Dependably: New Challenges And Solution Directions, Saurabh Bagchi, Jitesh Panchal

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Edge computing is the practice of placing computing resources at the edges of the Internet in close proximity to devices and information sources. This, much like a cache on a CPU, increases bandwidth and reduces latency for applications but at a potential cost of dependability and capacity.

Annual Medicare Wellness Visit: Advanced Nurse Practitioner Perceptions And Practices, Vicki Simpson, Nancy Edwards, Kathryn Berlin

School of Nursing Faculty Publications

Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) can contribute to health prevention efforts with older adults by utilizing a health risk appraisal (HRA) during the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV). This study examined APN perceptions and practices concerning use of HRAs during AWVs (N = 51). Results indicate that respondents agree it is important to collaboratively identify risks and develop a personalized prevention plan, but only a small percentage (7.8) use HRA data to do so. Reported concerns include reimbursement and time, further work on how to best integrate HRAs into APN practice to enhance prevention efforts with older adults is critical.

Self-Reported Healthcare Provider Utilization Across United States Midwestern Households, S. R. Dominick, Nicole Olynk Widmar, Laura E. D'Acunto, Lalatendu Acharya

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Understanding the relationships between health care provider usage and demographics of patients is necessary for the development of educational materials, outreach information, and programs targeting individuals who may benefit from services. This analysis identified relationships between health care provider usage and individual's demographics. A sample of Midwestern U.S. respondents (n = 1265) was obtained through the use of an online survey distributed February 12–26, 2016 and was targeted to be representative of the population of the Midwestern states sampled in terms of sex, age, income, and state of residence. Specific factors identified as significant in contributing to provider usage …

Simulation-Based Approximate Policy Gradient And Its Building Control Application, Donghwan Lee, Seungjae Lee, Panagiota Karava, Jianghai Hu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

The goal of this paper is to study the potential applicability of a stochastic approximationbased policy gradient method for optimal office building HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) control systems. A real-world building thermal dynamics with occupant interactions is the main focus of this paper. It is a complex stochastic system in the sense that its statistical properties depend on its state variables. In this case, existing approaches, for instance, stochastic model predictive control methods, cannot be applied to optimal control designs. As a remedy, we approximate the gradient of the cost function using simulations and use a gradient descent …

Approximate Dynamic Programming For Building Control Problems With Occupant Interactions, Donghwan Lee, Seungjae Lee, Panagiota Karava, Jianghai Hu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

The goal of this paper is to study potential applicability and performance of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) for building control problems. It is well known that occupants’ stochastic behavior affects the thermal dynamics of building spaces. Incorporating occupant interactions in building control system designs is the main focus of this work. We apply ADP to stochastic optimal control designs for illustrative scenarios of occupant-building interactions and demonstrate its validity through a simulation study.

On The Removal Of Motivation And Structural Barriers In The Classroom And Across The Mathematics Curriculum, Benjamin Wiles, Chantal Levesque-Bristol

IMPACT Presentations

Presentation at the research roundtable discussion at the 2018 Critical Issues in Math Education Workshop, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, in Berkeley, CA.

Presents data on the ability of active learning methods to impact motivation and promote learning outcomes in mathematics courses.

Charleston Comings And Goings, Leah H. Hinds

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Back Talk-Balacing The Books, Jim O'Donnell

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

From Your Editor, Katina Strauch

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Optimizing An Octopus: A Look At The Current State Of Electronic Resources Management And New Developments In The Coral Erm System, Heather Wilson

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Library Services — How Information Scientists Can Help Fix The Broken Peer Review Process, Lindsay Wertman, Caroline J. Campbell, Jeremy Horne

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.