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In this quasi-experimental mixed methods study, we examined the effectiveness of a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program to increase student success rates in online courses at an American university. Over one semester, 24 faculty mentees worked with 6 faculty mentors on improving course organization and implementing student engagement techniques. Using methodological triangulation, we found positive results for two of our effectiveness measures (i.e., mentor and mentee feedback and mentors’ ratings of mentees’ courses). However, in terms of our third measure (i.e., student learning data), although institutional data showed that there was a 4.1% aggregate increase in online student success after the intervention, the intervention group made no significantly greater gains than two control groups. Our findings highlight some benefits and shortcomings of these types of university initiatives and also emphasize the importance of using triangulation to integrate participant feedback with formal measures of student success

Focusing on the consumption and production of sports-based satire, this article stands to support teachers in sharpening students’ understandings of common satirical features, engaging students in the critical reading of online texts, and positioning students to make their own statements about social issues that have infiltrated the athletic arena

The authors contend that making effective and sustainable process improvements requires collaborative design among team members. Collective System Design (CSD) is a creative process that involves a group of people who design a product, service and/or process to meet customer, business, and societal needs. The focus is to include the thoughts and actions of the people who are in the system as part of the design process. This paper describes the tone, thinking, structure and work methods developed by the Emergency Room (ER) team at Franciscan St. Francis Health using Collective System Design and evaluates the phases of the St. Francis Emergency Room design from Staff Engagement in 2007 to the Now ER design in 2012 and to continuous improvement in 2013

This paper describes the eight laboratory experiments developed for the Electrical Power and Machines (ECET 231) course in the Department of Computer, Electrical, and Information Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), Indiana. The labs were first used during the Spring Semester of 2011 and have been improved every year since then. A brief description of each of the eight laboratory experiments, their respective objectives and the results obtained by some of the students are discussed in this paper. Student assessments for this course/lab are also presented. The feedback has been very positive and encouraging

This session focused on the relationship between gender roles, human rights laws, religious teachings and sustainable development. Moderated by Karen Hamilton (Secretary General, Canadian Council of Churches, Canada), speakers were Nazila Ghanea (Associate Professor International Human Rights Law, University of Oxford, OSCE Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief, United Kingdom), Sherrie Steiner (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indiana Purdue University Fort Wayne, USA), Anita Soboleva (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Department of Theory and History of Law, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia), and Lena Larsen (Executive Director, Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, Norway) Sherrie Steiner identified ways in which women of faith and faith communities are both making positive contributions to sustainable development, but the affirmation of a sustainability that affirms human flourishing requires adjustments to how gender roles are frequently lived out. The social construction of gender roles contributes to both the problem and the solution of the current crisis. Although women are more impacted by environmental degradation than men, when empowered, women tend to bring more stable and broad based changes to the community because of their caregiving roles in social relations and their responsibilities in everyday life. For this reason, investing in women has a multiplier effect for environmental sustainability. Historically, when women have exercised leadership roles in religious movement organizations, they have partly embraced and partly subverted dominant ideals about gender relations. Women often used their homes as basic organizing units within the movement, especially as a survival strategy during periods of repression and opposition from both organized religion and the state. Women negotiate their roles in a complex interplay between family, faith and the public domain. Although religious freedom may introduce an element of flourishing into the struggle for human survival, rigid gender role construction undermines the affirmation of life. Perhaps it is through women’s ongoing subversive embrace of their place in the world that sustainable development becomes possible.

All three choral ensembles at IPFW combined to sing choral music selected around the theme of ‘night,” with Dr. North accompanying at the piano

Class D amplifiers has two pole switching operation of transistors either in voltage mode configuration that uses series resonator or current mode configuration which uses parallel resonator circuit. In the operation of the Class D amplifier, transistors act as switches and they turn on and off alternately. The series resonator circuit comprised of L and C resonates at the operational frequency and tunes amplifier output circuit to provide sinusoidal output current waveform. Class D amplifiers are widely used in RF applications including semiconductor wafer processing, medical resonance imaging (MRI) and radar applications due to their several benefits including capability of delivering significant level RF power per die in comparison to other existing RF amplifier topologies. In plasma applications, pulsed RF power is used to improve the quality of the process results in semiconductor fabrication by enhancing notch effect and selectivity in the etch‐process. Plasma processes during pulsing may require high pulsing frequencies with small duty cycles. Hence, RF amplifiers that give the ability to provide high pulsing frequencies with adjustable duty cycles become very important. In this paper, the design, simulation and implementation of Class D RF amplifier that can operate between medium frequency (MF) to high frequency (HF) ranges for pulsed plasma applications are given. The characteristics of Class D amplifiers under various load conditions for RF continuous wave (CW) and pulsed waves have been studied extensively. The analytical, simulation, and experimental results are compared and agreement has been observed

Music from merry old England played on instruments of the period

This presentation examines how precarities against which artist-teacher-activist Dr. Margaret Burroughs successfully deployed art and activism still threaten to destroy the legacy of racial pride and history she worked so tirelessly to create. By understanding Burroughs’ anti-racist efforts, we can better grasp the available means to counter these ongoing injustices

Recently there has been increased interest in perception of self-motion (vection) in virtual environments. Bubka et. al. (2008) found less vection with an expanding optic flow pattern (visual stimuli approaching viewer) than with a contracting optic flow pattern (visual stimuli receding from the viewer). In another study, researchers found that people with video game experience are better at discriminating contracting optic flow than individuals with less video game experience, but no significant difference between the two groups at discriminating expanding optic flow (Hutchinson u26 Stocks, 2013). We examined effects of video game experience on vection, as well as motion sickness, with expanding and contracting optic flow patterns. Assuming that contracting flow patterns are more common in video games than in real life, we predicted experienced video gamers would feel more vection with a contracting flow than with an expanding flow. In our study, introductory psychology students rated time spent playing video games in the past 6 months. In a 3D head-mounted display, participants viewed one of four displays of moving white dots against a dark background for 8 minutes. Dots were displayed in an expanding or contracting flow pattern. The task was to press the spacebar when participants noticed a change in color of a crosshair in the center of the screen and to press a foot pedal when they experienced vection. Participants rated feelings of motion sickness before and after viewing the display. The results showed that more experienced video game players felt significantly more vection (perception of self-motion) in the contracting flow condition than did less experienced players. Highly experienced gamers felt significantly less motion sickness in the expanding flow condition than did less experienced gamers. We conclude that there may be two different mechanisms governing the effects of video game experience on vection and motion sickness. Because backward self-motion is more commonly experienced in video games than in the real world, there may be increased perception of selfmotion for a contracting flow pattern (visual stimuli receding from the viewer) for video gamers. However, everyone has experience with expanding optic flow as a cue for forward self-motion, regardless of video game experience, and therefore there would be no effect of video game experience for the expanding flow pattern. To explain our motion sickness findings, we observe that even in the virtual world, there is more exposure to expanding flow than contracting flow. If motion sickness is caused by sensory conflict between lack of vestibular feedback and visual cues for movement, then experienced video gamers may have less motion sickness for expanding flow because of more experience with this type of sensory conflict.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2015/1032/thumbnail.jp

Amphibians are of great conservation concern due to alarming population declines worldwide. These vulnerable species are threatened by habitat loss and degradation, especially in the midwestern United States. Efforts to restore wetland habitat can mitigate some aspects of habitat loss, but effective sampling techniques and suitable analytical approaches are needed to accurately measure the quality and functionality of the restored habitat. Occupancy modeling was applied to amphibians inhabiting a 716 acre restored wetland system in northeast Indiana in 2013 and 2014. Two types of survey methods, call surveys and tadpole surveys, were used to measure and compare amphibian presence and absence in forested, established wetlands and open, restored wetlands. Occupancy models based on habitat type revealed most species used both types of wetlands, with the exception of Ambystoma LTJ hybrid salamanders which bred exclusively in the forested, established wetlands. Factors affecting occupancy and habitat use varied among species, suggesting habitat preference is species-specific. Across both years, tadpole occupancy rates were the highest in the Northern Leopard Frog, Lithobates pipiens, a species of special concern in Indiana. Occupancy probability of calling American Bullfrogs, Lithobates catesbeiana, declined significantly in 2014, while rates of the Northern Cricket Frog, Acris crepitans, also a species of special concern, remained equal in both years. Across almost all species, occupancy rates were significantly higher for calling males than for tadpoles. Management decisions are often based on wetland characteristics where frogs call, but should also take into account habitat where reproduction is successful. These results on occupancy and metapopulation dynamics will be used to gauge population health and restoration success while providing management suggestions for the preserve and surrounding areas.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2015/1074/thumbnail.jp

In order to do more extensive testing in superconductive materials one must be able to produce superconductive material. For a room temperature superconductor, Yttrium Barium Cupric Oxide, YBa2Cu3O7 is great as an entry level superconductor. However in order to produce YBa2Cu3O7, one must heat it to high temperatures for significant amounts of time. Depending on the stage of firing, the components will be held at a temperature greater than 900°C for between 18 hours to 24 hours. Should the temperature fall below, or creep above, a certain threshold the entire material being heated is wasted. In an effort to sleep in my own bed, and see the sunlight from outside Kettler Hall, an automated system, with proper safety lockouts, must be designed. In order to ensure proper temperature without hands on adjustment, a PSoC, Programmable System on a Chip, is used to detect, collect, and actively control a heating element. To ensure accuracy double correlated sampling is advisable. The signal from a thermocouples produces a significant amount of noise at low temperature, and this noise becomes greater the hotter the thermocouple becomes. Double Correlated Sampling can be used to determine the current signal from the thermocouple as well as the base signal, and subtract the noise off the signal, providing a nice clear signal, for the PSoC to determine an accurate temperature and adjust accordingly.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2015/1056/thumbnail.jp

Tuberculosis, an emerging infectious disease, steals thousands of lives each year while latently infecting millions of individuals. Adding to the death toll, dormant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) reactivates when the immune system is suppressed. Current drugs and therapies only treat active tuberculosis disease and thus far no antibiotic against dormant Mtb has been found. Recent studies have shown that fatty acids are an energy source for the latent pathogen. However, the means by which fatty acids are transported into the mycobacterial cell remains unknown. We have identified an Mtb adenosine triphosphate binding-cassette (ABC) transport protein that potentially transports fatty acids based on its amino acid sequence identity with a known fatty acid transporter in another bacterium and designate this protein as mycobacterial ABC transporter (mABCT). We have cloned the mABCT gene from the genome of Mtb and expressed the protein in Escherichia coli cells. In this study, we examine the ability of the mABCT protein to enhance fatty acid transport and affect lipid metabolism in the heterologous host cells. Our research on understanding the role of this mycobacterial protein is expected to aid the development of novel antibiotics to treat latent tuberculosis disease.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2015/1051/thumbnail.jp

Background: The brain generates signals in a wide frequency range (∼2840 Hz). Existing magnetoen-cephalography (MEG) methods typically detect brain activity in a median-frequency range (1–70 Hz).The objective of the present study was to develop a new method to utilize the frequency signatures forsource imaging.New method: Morlet wavelet transform and two-step beamforming were integrated into a systematicapproach to estimate magnetic sources in time–frequency domains. A grid-frequency kernel (GFK) wasdeveloped to decode the correlation between each time–frequency representation and grid voxel. Brainactivity was reconstructed by accumulating spatial- and frequency-locked signals in the full spectraldata for all grid voxels. To test the new method, MEG data were recorded from 20 healthy subjects and3 patients with verified epileptic foci.Results: The experimental results showed that the new method could accurately localize brain activationin auditory cortices. The epileptic foci localized with the new method were spatially concordant withinvasive recordings.Comparison with existing methods: Compared with well-known existing methods, the new method isobjective because it scans the entire brain without making any assumption about the number of sources.The novel feature of the new method is its ability to localize high-frequency sources.Conclusions: The new method could accurately localize both low- and high-frequency brain activities.The detection of high-frequency MEG signals can open a new avenue in the study of the human brainfunction as well as a variety of brain disorders

The lipid bilayer membrane technology is vastly useful in explaining structural function of channel proteins, in the development of nanopore sensing technology as well as ultrafast DNA sequencing technology. In 2009, the portal protein, GP10, from bacteriophage phi29 was reported to be reconstituted into the planar bilayer membrane, which indicates the possibility of using the powerful technology to explore new applications of a large family of channel proteins from bacteriophages (Nature Nanotechnology, 2009, 4, 765-772). However, this utility comes at a great cost: For example, the portal protein reconstitution was time-consuming, unpredictable, and sporadic. Furthermore, the previously reported method was only limited to several hydrophilic mutant portal proteins and impossibly used as universal method to insert the portal proteins from other bacteriophages which are hydrophobic. In order to answer the questions, we proposed a method to form fusible vesicles reconstituted with portal proteins in the research. Using the vesicles, we were able to rapidly reconstitute portal proteins into planar bilayer membranes for the ionic channel current measurement. The time elapsed for 1st protein insertion was decreased by 14 folds. Furthermore, we could apply the methods to prepare vesicles reconstituted with hydrophobic proteins. Compared to previous methods, the new method proposed by our lab significantly extended the shelf-life of the proteoliposomes

This paper will describe the approach of Collective System Design, a methodology used by the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering to facilitate the design and implementation of sustainable enterprises. This paper will also describe how Collective System Design is being used to enhance the educational curricula at IPFW in Systems Engineering and growth in Northeast Indiana

MCMICHAEL, Kaitlin N., Geosciences, Indiana University-Purdue University Ft. Wayne (IPFW), Fort Wayne, IN 46805 and ISIORHO, K. Solomon, Geosciences, Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1499, mcmikn1110@gmail.com As part of my upper level environmental class, I chose to examine the impact of the increasing Canadian geese population on water quality. Within the last 40 years, Indiana has seen a substantial growth in its population of Canadian Geese. This rise in population may mean that a larger amount of fecal matter is being produced, and may be detrimental to the water quality and other pond inhabitants. To test this hypothesis, water samples were taken from a pond in a city zoo, in the Midwest where a substantial growth in goose population has been observed, and compared to a retention pond of roughly the same shape and size with a much lower waterfowl population. The water samples, for the zoo pond and the residential pond were tested using the most probable number test (MPN), and both samples were then tested for E. coli using eosin methylene blue (EMB) agar. The water from the pond in the zoo had a very high bacterial count (240/100ml) and tested positive for E. coli. The water from the residential pond with a substantially smaller waterfowl population had a very low bacteria count (43/100ml) and the E. coli test was negative. Although it is an ongoing project, the current results seem to point to the fact that larger populations of waterfowl may have a negative effect on the water quality of the ponds they frequent

It is widely accepted that plant defense responses vary with insect host plant specialization and feeding guilds. Generalists are thought to be more susceptible to a given plant defense compound compared to specialists that may use these same defensive compounds to their own advantage. Feeding guilds are also a strong indicator of differential induction of plant responses. Insect herbivores can be classified into several feeding guilds. Example- leaf chewers, phloem feeders, xylem feeders, leaf miners, fruit and flower chewers, gall-inducing, and root chewers. Studies examining the mechanisms underlying plant defense responses to insect herbivore attack have identified the role of two major phytohormones- salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA). We investigated how soybean plants tailor their defense against insect herbivores from two feeding guilds: phloem feeding aphids and cell content feeding thrips. Gene expression analyses indicated that SA pathway was induced in response to aphids whereas JA was activated against thrips feeding. Exogenous application of SA and JA confirmed gene expression results in that SA application lowered aphid numbers and JA application reduced thrips population. In the short-term, results of this study will shed light on the ecological and molecular interactions of plant and insects, and in the long-term this research can be applied to ecologically based management programs of the insect herbivores.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2015/1064/thumbnail.jp

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata (M. Bieb.) Cavara u26 Grande) is a non-native plant that commonly invades hardwood forest understory plant communities. Such invasions have the potential of restructuring forest communities and influencing community function. Litter dwelling arthropods were collected from areas with and without garlic mustard, and were identified to family. Forest characteristics, including canopy cover, forest basal area, litter depth, and soil moisture, were also measured. Plot locations with and without garlic mustard did not differ in the forest characteristics. However, arthropod richness was significantly reduced in areas with garlic mustard compared to areas without. Arthropod richness and diversity were positively related to leaf litter species diversity. In nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination, mature garlic mustard density influenced a few arthropod taxonomic groups. However, it is likely that forest characteristics that facilitate the intensity of garlic mustard colonization (i.e., canopy cover, moisture) may be part of that influence. Additionally, leaf litter species richness provided a strong relationship with the majority of taxonomic groups. While garlic mustard presence may have a minor influence on the litter dwelling arthropod community, leaf litter richness and diversity play a major role in defining the arthropod community diversity and individual taxonomic group abundances. Management to control garlic mustard in forests may have little impact on leaf litter dwelling arthropods, especially if the litter layer remains intact