Based out of Washington State University, Dr. Universe teams up with professors, researchers, and experts in the field, to tackle big questions. Explore animated video answers to questions posed by curious questions from students in Washington and around the world. Videos created in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting. Though not openly licensed, content is free to view online and listen to via podcast.

Attached below are .pdf verisons of four books from the Aski & Friends series, and one .pdf about the characters included. Stories include:*Aski Turtle Island*Kon and The Circle of Life*Nipi and Mother Earth*Tate and the Flyers

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Microbial metagenomes are like a blueprint of all the functions performed by a microbial community. Some microbes can't be grown in the lab, so metagenomics is important for investigating otherwise-unknown microbial "dark matter". Short-read sequencing provides large amounts of data, but it's hard to assemble into complete genomes. A recent study combined short-read data with nanopore long-read data using Iterative Hybrid Assembly (IHA). The researchers reconstructed 49 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), including some with very low coverage. In total, 34 MAGs did not belong to any known genus, representing unknown microbe groups. The IHA method revealed more of the genes present than a short-read-only approach and showed that the anammox genome of genus Ca. Brocadia contains two identical hydrazine synthase genes. The current method is best for enriched microbial communities and will be extended to high-complexity samples in the future..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This easy-to-understand video animation describes drought and explains the different categories of drought used by the drought monitor. It discusses the effects of and contributions to drought, what the implications of the different drought levels are, and puts the drought maps into context to understand how the impacts vary geographically (e.g. drought in Nevada vs Kansas - one could affect tourism, the other agriculture). It also touches on how the development of maps/drought severity is determined and how it might vary geographically. The animation provides a basic overview of statistics and percentiles and the concept of '100 year events.'

Abstract

Professional Development (PD) is a process which helps teachers to maintain the quality and efficiency of teaching by improving their skills and updating their knowledge. However, many countries are not able to carry out professional development for their teachers due to many reasons. Issues such as budget and releasing teachers are challenges faced by many countries. The government of Maldives gives a high priority, for improving the standard of teaching and strongly accepts that the quality of teaching can be improved when school-based professional development (SBPD) of teachers is institutionalized in the school system.

The Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) strives to support the schools to established SBPD across the nation. Under the Ministry of Education’s professional development policy, a government policy, it is required for every teacher to complete a minimum of 15 hours of professional development every year. These PD hours are conducted by schools as SBPD. Three days are allocated in the academic calendar to conduct PD.
The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of professional development programs carried out in a secondary school on teaching and learning.

This resource is a modification of the Washington Models for the Evaluation of Bias Content in Instructional Materials (2009) that is made available through OER Commons under a public domain license. This resource attempts to both update the content with more contemporary vocabulary and also to narrow the scope to evaluating still images as they are found online. It was developed as a secondary project while working on a BranchED OER grant during summer 2020. It includes an attached rubric adapted from the Washington Model (2009).

This unit was planned as an intervention series for students struggling in this area of the standards. Our PLC selected these literary texts to teach because they are rich in key ideas and themes. Both stories are authored by Langston Hughes. "Thank You, Ma'am" will be used for the pretest. Then several actives will be used over the next two days to help students go deeper into the rich vocabulary, characterization, and themes of the story, to ultimately improve their understanding of the plot and key ideas. Finally, students will be asked to use some of the same comprehension strategies as they read the story, "Early Autumn." This will culminate in a post-test on the second story.

It is to be used in three lessons, approximately 40 minutes each. A teacher could easily adapt the lesson to be used in a whole group setting, over the course of more days, before administering the final post assessment.

There is broad interest to improve the reproducibility of published research. We developed a survey tool to assess the availability of digital research artifacts published alongside peer-reviewed journal articles (e.g. data, models, code, directions for use) and reproducibility of article results. We used the tool to assess 360 of the 1,989 articles published by six hydrology and water resources journals in 2017. Like studies from other fields, we reproduced results for only a small fraction of articles (1.6% of tested articles) using their available artifacts. We estimated, with 95% confidence, that results might be reproduced for only 0.6% to 6.8% of all 1,989 articles. Unlike prior studies, the survey tool identified key bottlenecks to making work more reproducible. Bottlenecks include: only some digital artifacts available (44% of articles), no directions (89%), or all artifacts available but results not reproducible (5%). The tool (or extensions) can help authors, journals, funders, and institutions to self-assess manuscripts, provide feedback to improve reproducibility, and recognize and reward reproducible articles as examples for others.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Research is increasingly showing the impact of the microbiome -- the diverse microbial communities living within the gut -- on human health. But, _when_ and _how_ is the microbiome established? Two opposing hypotheses have been put forward. For over a century, the prevailing thought has been that the human fetal environment is sterile and that microbes are acquired during and after birth. If this view is correct, the microbiome of infants born via C-section should differ from those born vaginally. Recent studies using molecular techniques, however, suggest that bacterial communities may be present in the placenta, amniotic fluid, and the baby’s first stool. They posit that the acquisition of the gut microbiome, therefore, begins _in utero_. If this is the case, delivery method should have less of an effect on early microbiome assembly..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

WR 121 Critical Thinking and Writing Assignment Sequence

Course Overview

This is a first year college composition course, focusing on critical thinking and writing. I designed the content and writing prompts as a progression of examining knowledge and each assignment seeks to expand ways of thinking and by extension, ways of writing.

WR 121 College Composition

Offers broad preparation for both academic writing and professional communication. Includes composing for a variety of rhetorical situations, writing for both oneself, and for external audiences. Provides self-guided learning opportunities alongside more structured opportunities for practice with support as needed.

This handout presents two sample writing assignments aimed at evaluating the students’ prior knowledge belonging to a particular area.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Consuming high amounts of red meat is commonly linked to an increased risk of developing cancer, especially colorectal cancer. At the same time, antibodies against Neu5Gc , a carbohydrate derived from red meat, have been observed to worsen cancer in “human-like” mice. While these antibodies and red meat consumption are each believed to increase cancer risk, it remains unknown how diet affects the antibodies. Now, research suggests that consuming Neu5Gc from red meat and dairy can modulate the amounts and properties of anti-Neu5Gc antibodies in humans, providing clues to how the carbohydrate might be linked to cancer. The team behind the study calculated daily intake of Neu5Gc for more than 19,000 subjects aged 18 years or older. These participants provided regular logs of food consumed over 24-hour periods as part of the NutriNet-Santé study, which was designed to investigate relationships between nutrition and health status..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

To increase transparency in research, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors required, in 2005, prospective registration of clinical trials as a condition to publication. However, many trials remain unregistered or retrospectively registered. We aimed to assess the association between trial prospective registration and treatment effect estimates. Methods This is a meta-epidemiological study based on all Cochrane reviews published between March 2011 and September 2014 with meta-analyses of a binary outcome including three or more randomised controlled trials published after 2006. We extracted trial general characteristics and results from the Cochrane reviews. For each trial, we searched for registration in the report’s full text, contacted the corresponding author if not reported and searched ClinicalTrials.gov and the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform in case of no response. We classified each trial as prospectively registered (i.e. registered before the start date); retrospectively registered, distinguishing trials registered before and after the primary completion date; and not registered. Treatment effect estimates of prospectively registered and other trials were compared by the ratio of odds ratio (ROR) (ROR <1 indicates larger effects in trials not prospectively registered). Results We identified 67 meta-analyses (322 trials). Overall, 225/322 trials (70 %) were registered, 74 (33 %) prospectively and 142 (63 %) retrospectively; 88 were registered before the primary completion date and 54 after. Unregistered or retrospectively registered trials tended to show larger treatment effect estimates than prospectively registered trials (combined ROR = 0.81, 95 % CI 0.65–1.02, based on 32 contributing meta-analyses). Trials unregistered or registered after the primary completion date tended to show larger treatment effect estimates than those registered before this date (combined ROR = 0.84, 95 % CI 0.71–1.01, based on 43 contributing meta-analyses). Conclusions Lack of trial prospective registration may be associated with larger treatment effect estimates.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"SARS-CoV-2 is the notorious virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other viruses, it coexists with a multitude of other microorganisms that could influence our susceptibility to infection. Thus, identifying associations between bacteria and SARS-CoV-2 could lend critical insight for the development of strategies for COVID-19 prevention and treatment. To meet this need, researchers recently characterized the microbial communities associated with COVID-19 patients, health care providers, and indoor surfaces in the hospital environment using 16S rRNA sequencing. They found SARS-CoV-2 RNA on 16% of the surfaces in COVID-19 patient rooms, with the highest prevalence in floor samples and lower prevalence on bed rails. SARS-CoV-2-positive samples had higher bacterial diversity than SARS-CoV-2-negative samples. Interestingly, bacteria in the genus Rothia were commonly found in the samples containing SARS-CoV-2, suggesting the existence of an association between these microorganisms..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In the human gut, a subpopulation of the microbiome belonging to Archaea produces methane through fermentation. Increased methane production is associated with gastrointestinal discomfort and disorders, and 20% of the healthy Western population exhales high methane levels, indicating high gut methane production. However, the mechanisms and health effects are unclear. To learn more, a recent study analysed 100 healthy young adults who were divided into high methane emitters and low methane emitters according to breath analysis. 16S rRNA sequencing revealed that the microbiomes of high and low emitters had different diversity levels and different compositions. Notably, the relative abundance of the archaeon Methanobrevibacter smithii was 1000-fold higher in high emitters than in low emitters, and M. smithii in the high emitters co-occurred with dietary fiber-degrading bacteria, including Ruminococcaceae and Christensenellaceae..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.