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  1. With the rapid shift to remote learning in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, teachers, and students had to quickly adapt to what scholars have called emergency remote learning (ERL). This transition required increased reliance on digital tools, exacerbating privacy and security threats associated with expanded data collection and new vulnerabilities. In this study, we adopt a sociotechnical and infrastructural perspective to understand how these threats emerged through breakdowns and tensions in elementary school ERL. Through interviews with 29 US-based teachers and parents of elementary school students (grades PreK-6), we identify two core findings related to privacy and security. First, we detail three breakdowns in the ERL sociotechnical infrastructure: (1) reduced attention to privacy and security issues as parents and teachers cobbled together a patchwork of tools needed to make ERL work; (2) privacy and security risks that emerged from ambiguous and shifting school policies; and (3) the failure to adapt standard authentication mechanisms (e.g., passwords) to be usable by young children. Second, we identify tensions between parents' and teachers' desire to help children advance in their education and their desire for children's privacy and security in ERL, as well as tensions resulting from the collapse of home and school contexts. These findings collectively suggest that ERL exacerbated existing--and created new--privacy and security challenges for young students, and we argue these challenges will carry beyond the pandemic due to the increasing use of technology to supplement traditional education. In light of these findings, we recommend researchers and educators use a framework of care to develop social and technical approaches to improving remote learning in order to protect children's privacy and security.

     
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  2. We report on a highly selective experimental setup for particle-γ coincidence experiments at the Super-Enge Split-Pole Spectrograph (SE-SPS) of the John D. Fox Superconducting Linear Accelerator Laboratory at Florida State University (FSU) using fast CeBr3 scintillators for γ-ray detection. Specifically, we report on the results of characterization tests for the first five CeBr3 scintillation detectors of the CeBr3 Array (CeBrA) with respect to energy resolution and timing characteristics. We also present results from the first particle-γ coincidence experiments successfully performed with the CeBrA demonstrator and the FSU SE-SPS. We show that with the new setup, γ-decay branching ratios and particle-γ angular correlations can be measured very selectively using narrow excitation energy gates, which are possible thanks to the excellent particle energy resolution of the SE-SPS. In addition, we highlight that nuclear level lifetimes in the nanoseconds regime can be determined by measuring the time difference between particle detection with the SE-SPS focal-plane scintillator and γ-ray detection with the fast CeBrA detectors. Selective excitation energy gates with the SE-SPS exclude any feeding contributions to these lifetimes. 
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  3. Functional repair of osteochondral (OC) tissue remains challenging because the transition from bone to cartilage presents gradients in biochemical and physical properties necessary for joint function. Osteochondral regeneration requires strategies that restore the spatial composition and organization found in the native tissue. Several biomaterial approaches have been developed to guide chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). These strategies can be combined with 3D printing, which has emerged as a useful tool to produce tunable, continuous scaffolds functionalized with bioactive cues. However, functionalization often includes one or more post-fabrication processing steps, which can lead to unwanted side effects and often produce biomaterials with homogeneously distributed chemistries. To address these challenges, surface functionalization can be achieved in a single step by solvent-cast 3D printing peptide-functionalized polymers. Peptide-poly(caprolactone) (PCL) conjugates were synthesized bearing hyaluronic acid (HA)-binding (HAbind–PCL) or mineralizing (E3–PCL) peptides, which have been shown to promote hMSC chondrogenesis or osteogenesis, respectively. This 3D printing strategy enables unprecedented control of surface peptide presentation and spatial organization within a continuous construct. Scaffolds presenting both cartilage-promoting and bone-promoting peptides had a synergistic effect that enhanced hMSC chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation in the absence of differentiation factors compared to scaffolds without peptides or only one peptide. Furthermore, multi-peptide organization significantly influenced hMSC response. Scaffolds presenting HAbind and E3 peptides in discrete opposing zones promoted hMSC osteogenic behavior. In contrast, presenting both peptides homogeneously throughout the scaffolds drove hMSC differentiation towards a mixed population of articular and hypertrophic chondrocytes. These significant results indicated that hMSC behavior was driven by dual-peptide presentation and organization. The downstream potential of this platform is the ability to fabricate biomaterials with spatially controlled biochemical cues to guide functional tissue regeneration without the need for differentiation factors. 
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