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Parents’ Perspectives on AAE use and how they Communicate those Perspectives to their Children
(2024-04-25) Hall, Sierra; Bryd, Arynn; Huang, Yi Ting
Background: Children learn about language ideologies from adults in their communities,including their parents and teachers (e.g., the intelligence of a dialect speaker or the appropriateness of a language). Parents' perspectives on languages and dialects can also impact the languages and dialects they encourage their children to use. However, there is a lack of research regarding how African American parents view the use of African American English (AAE) and how they communicate their perspectives to their children. This study posed two research questions to address that gap: 1) What are parents’ perspectives on the use of non-mainstream dialects, particularly AAE? and 2) How do they communicate these perspectives to their children?
Methods: 31 parents from various racial backgrounds were recruited from the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia areas. Parents answered a survey consisting of Likert and open-response questions that assessed parent perspectives of AAE and GAE, the dialect that parents identified speaking, how they explicitly communicated their views to their children, and general demographic information about the participants.
Results: The results show that parents significantly preferred GAE over AAE (p<0.05). After running separate ANOVA tests, with the independent variables being race and parent dialect group, there were no significant differences between ratings of Black and non-Black individuals and AAE and non-AAE speakers (p>0.05). The qualitative data from the open responses revealed no differences between how parents, across races and dialect groups, communicated their views of AAE and GAE to their children. Overall, parents had more negative views towards AAE use and more positive views toward GAE use and were more likely to encourage their children to speak GAE.
Conclusions: The results show that both AAE- and GAE-speaking parents may have an overall preference for GAE use, both for themselves and their children. Future work should include interviewing young adults to gauge how they formed their linguistic attitudes towards dialects. Also, include asking parents whether or not they code switch to gauge parent attitudes toward bidialectalism.
Computer Based Concept Mapping: Flipping the Research Process
(National Soci-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, 2022) Palmer, Margaret A.
The approach described is meant to facilitate the team-building process to accelerate interdisciplinary collaboration. It for use in workshops that bring together disciplinarily diverse groups who have not previously collaborated. A theme that is of interest to a broad array of scholars is identified. Selected themes should be those that can be conceptualized through many different frameworks e.g., food and water. A group of interested researchers are brought together and after introducing the theme and process, each individual participant uses a cyber platform to search for the types of data and data sets they believe important to the topic. This is followed by a facilitated group discussion focused on how each person approached data discovery—what topics and data they explored, in what order, and why? This exercise reveals differences in the assumptions, values, and perspectives that participants bring to a broad problem. Then the teams work iteratively in small groups to develop a research question(s) and identify associated types of data they can agree are critical. The search and discussion process facilitates the sharing and integration of knowledge. Because each person uses the same platform but queries it in diverse ways, then share how they went about the queries and why, the process promotes conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge—allowing diverse participants to communicate through cross-boundary discussion. Since building such platforms is time-consuming and expensive to build, widely available literature search platforms could be used.
Best Practices for Interdisciplinary Team Research: Shaping a Team’s Social Environment
(National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, 2023) Margaret A. Palmer
This paper describes the factors that most influence collaborative environments in interdisciplinary team research. Strategies and practical ways to enhance the collaborations are provided. These include the importance of social interaction time and types of these are suggested as are good practices for use in establishing project shared goals, meeting agendas, and facilitated discussions. Further, engaging in reflexive discussions of how the teamwork is proceeding and the effectiveness of team interactions are important and ways to do this mentioned. Devoting time to share expertise of team members is also important as is team member diversification in terms of knowledge content and skills; and ways to do these along with references are described. Particularly helpful are the specific activities suggested to elicit divergent views among team members which moves teams forward toward integrative problem solving.
Cloning and Expression of Human RPS24 into E.coli and the HEK293 Cell Line
(2024-04-26) Merrifield, Katherine; Apgar, Sofia; Jessica Whitney; Argueta, Vicky; Zeidan, Quira
Ribosome biogenesis is the process of constructing ribosomes and requires ribosomal RNA, ribosomal proteins (RPs), and assembly factors. The products of eukaryotic ribosome biogenesis are the large 60S subunit and the small 40S subunit, of which RPS24 is crucial in its formation. In addition to its translational roles, RPS24 is associated with regulating cell growth and proliferation, apoptosis, and DNA damage response. We hypothesize that the extra-ribosomal functions of RPS24 are impacted by its post-translational modifications (PTMs). To elucidate the functions of these PTMs, the coding sequence of human RPS24 was cloned into pNH-TrxT and pNIC28-Bsa4 bacterial expression vectors via ligase-independent cloning. The recombinant plasmids were then transformed into BL21 E.coli cells, and initial trials were conducted to optimize growth and expression conditions for the two transformed strains. Protein expression was determined using SDS-PAGE and Coomassie staining, the results of which indicated moderate levels of the RPS24 fusion protein in cells transformed with both the recombinant plasmids. RPS24 expression was observed without IPTG induction, indicating leaky expression. In parallel experiments, we investigated the overexpression of RPS24 in HEK293 cells from the plasmid pcDNA3.1(C)DYK, and successful transfection was confirmed by SDS-PAGE and Western Blot analysis. We aim to investigate the role of RPS24 PTMs in cell proliferation and viability under various stress conditions to evaluate their impact on tumor development.
Expressing Human Ribosomal Proteins S20 and S26 in Modified E.coli (BL21) Cells
(2024-04-26) Lee, Maia; Quenano, Erika; Owen, Jennifer; Ngouba, Andrea; Zahniser, Hannah; Tafesh, Talah; Ofoegbu, Stacie; Weber, Louis; Quira Zeidan
Ribosomes are fundamental in creating proteins that contribute to the proper functioning of cellular processes. Thus, ribosome biogenesis must occur with integrity by appropriately expressing ribosomal proteins (RPs). Mutations in the genes of human RPS20 and RPS26 have been linked to disruption in the translation machinery and anomalies in the production of red blood cells, leading to diseases such as Diamond-Blackfan Anemia. To develop our understanding of the role of mutations in human RPS20 and RPS26, we performed ligase-independent cloning of their coding sequence into pNIC28-Bsa4 and pNH-TrxT and transformed these plasmids into a BL21 E. coli expression system. IPTG induction was used to determine conditions necessary to maximize the expression of soluble RPS20 and RPS26. After SDS-PAGE, Coomassie staining showed successful expression of RPS26 in response to IPTG induction, whereas RPS20 was produced regardless of IPTG presence. Human RPs expressed in bacteria are often purified from insoluble inclusion bodies; thus, determining the conditions for maximal solubility provides an optimal strategy for studying fusion proteins. Future research on the effects of the overexpression of RPS20 and RPS26 on human cell growth and viability will expand our understanding of the complex mechanisms of human ribosome biogenesis and its role in disease.