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Teacher reports on school organizational functioning, curricular processes, and student engagement are a reliable means of ascertaining valuable information about classroom climate and learning outcomes. Yet, to date, the vast majority of quantitative teacher-reported data, where teachers themselves reach judgments about educational processes, have been summary rather than lesson specific, where teachers evaluate classroom experiences at the moment of instruction. In this study, we examine how lesson-specific teacher survey reports generate insight into the relationship between student engagement and instruction. Results suggest that this underutilized design has significant application for procuring data on within-teacher variability in practice, especially in studies focused on student engagement, active change in teacher practice, and/or teacher buy-in as a mediator of outcomes. Ultimately, we argue that lesson-specific teacher reports may be a valuable tool for researchers in measuring instructional change.

 

The etiology of sporadic Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains uncertain, but genetic, epidemiological, and physiological overlap between PD and inflammatory bowel disease suggests that gut inflammation could promote dysfunction of dopamine-producing neurons in the brain. Mechanisms behind this pathological gut-brain effect and their interactions with sex and with environmental factors are not well understood but may represent targets for therapeutic intervention.

We sought to identify active inflammatory mechanisms which could potentially contribute to neuroinflammation and neurological disease in colon biopsies and peripheral blood immune cells from PD patients. Then, in mouse models, we assessed whether dextran sodium sulfate-mediated colitis could exert lingering effects on dopaminergic pathways in the brain and whether colitis increased vulnerability to a subsequent exposure to the dopaminergic neurotoxicant 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). We assessed the involvement of inflammatory mechanisms identified in the PD patients in colitis-related neurological dysfunction in male and female mice, utilizing mice lacking the Regulator of G-Protein Signaling 10 (RGS10)—an inhibitor of nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB)—to model enhanced NFκB activity, and mice in which CD8⁺T-cells were depleted.

High levels of inflammatory markers includingCD8Band NFκB p65 were found in colon biopsies from PD patients, and reduced levels of RGS10 were found in immune cells in the blood. Male mice that experienced colitis exhibited sustained reductions in tyrosine hydroxylase but not in dopamine as well as sustained CD8⁺T-cell infiltration and elevatedIfngexpression in the brain. CD8⁺T-cell depletion prevented colitis-associated reductions in dopaminergic markers in males. In both sexes, colitis potentiated the effects of MPTP. RGS10 deficiency increased baseline intestinal inflammation, colitis severity, and neuropathology.

This study identifies peripheral inflammatory mechanisms in PD patients and explores their potential to impact central dopaminergic pathways in mice. Our findings implicate a sex-specific interaction between gastrointestinal inflammation and neurologic vulnerability that could contribute to PD pathogenesis, and they establish the importance of CD8⁺T-cells in this process in male mice.

 

Abstract The origin of aggregate silk glands and their production of wet adhesive silks is considered a key innovation of the Araneoidea, a superfamily of spiders that build orb-webs and cobwebs. Orb-web weavers place aggregate glue on an extensible capture spiral, whereas cobweb weavers add it to the ends of strong, stiff fibers, called gumfoot lines. Here we describe the material behavior and quantitative proteomics of the aggregate glues of two cobweb weaving species, the Western black widow, Latrodectus hesperus, and the common house spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum. For each species respectively, we identified 48 and 33 proteins that were significantly more abundant in the portion of the gumfoot line with glue than in its fibers. These proteins were more highly glycosylated and phosphorylated than proteins found in silk fibers without glue, which likely explains aggregate glue stickiness. Most glue-enriched proteins were of anterior aggregate gland origin, supporting the hypothesis that cobweb weavers’ posterior aggregate glue is specialized for another function. We found that cobweb weaver glue droplets are stiffer and tougher than the adhesive of most orb-web weaving species. Attributes of gumfoot glue protein composition that likely contribute to this stiffness include the presence of multiple protein families with conserved cysteine residues, a bimodal distribution of isoelectric points, and families with conserved functions in protein aggregation, all of which should contribute to cohesive protein-protein interactions. House spider aggregate droplets were more responsive to humidity changes than black widow droplets, which could be mediated by differences in protein sequence, post-translational modifications, the non-protein components of the glue droplets, and/or the larger amount of aqueous material that surrounds the adhesive cores of their glue droplets. 

Complement protein C3dg, a key linkage between innate and adaptive immunity, is capable of stimulating both humoral and cell-mediated immune responses, leading to considerable interest in its use as a molecular adjuvant. However, the potential of C3dg as an adjuvant is limited without ways of controllably assembling multiple copies of it into vaccine platforms. Here, we report a strategy to assemble C3dg into supramolecular nanofibers with excellent compositional control, using β-tail fusion tags. These assemblies were investigated as therapeutic active immunotherapies, which may offer advantages over existing biologics, particularly toward chronic inflammatory diseases. Supramolecular assemblies based on the Q11 peptide system containing β-tail–tagged C3dg, B cell epitopes from TNF, and the universal T cell epitope PADRE raised strong antibody responses against both TNF and C3dg, and prophylactic immunization with these materials significantly improved protection in a lethal TNF-mediated inflammation model. Additionally, in a murine model of psoriasis induced by imiquimod, the C3dg-adjuvanted nanofiber vaccine performed as well as anti-TNF monoclonal antibodies. Nanofibers containing only β-tail–C3dg and lacking the TNF B cell epitope also showed improvements in both models, suggesting that supramolecular C3dg, by itself, played an important therapeutic role. We observed that immunization with β-tail–C3dg caused the expansion of an autoreactive C3dg-specific T cell population, which may act to dampen the immune response, preventing excessive inflammation. These findings indicate that molecular assemblies displaying C3dg warrant further development as active immunotherapies.

 

An essential feature of many modern teacher observation protocols is their “global” approach to measuring instruction. Global protocols provide a summary evaluation of multiple domains of instruction from observers’ overall review of classroom processes.  Although these protocols have demonstrated strengths, including their comprehensiveness and advanced state of development, in this analysis we argue that global protocols also have inherent limitations affecting both research use and applied school improvement efforts.  Analyzing the Measures of Effective Teaching study data, we interrogate a set of five potential limitations of global protocols.  We conclude by discussing fine-grained measures of instruction, including tools that rely on automated methods of observation, as an alternative with the potential to overcome many of the fundamental limitations of global protocols.