Student performance on the Test of Scientific Literacy Skills (TOSLS) does not change with assignment of a low-stakes grade.

Objective: Response-validated multiple-choice assessments are used in college courses to assess student learning gains. The ability of a test to accurately reflect student learning gains is highly dependent on the students' effort. Within our institution, lackluster student effort is common on response-validated multiple-choice concept assessments that are not included as a portion of the semester grade but are used to inform curricular changes.

Semi-automated quantification of axonal densities in labeled CNS tissue.

Current techniques used to quantify axons often rely upon manual quantification or potentially expensive commercially available programs for automated quantification. We describe a computerized method for the detection and quantification of axons in the rat CNS using readily available free software. Feature J, a java-based plug-in to the imaging software NIH Image J, faithfully detects linear structures such as axons in confocal or bright-field images using a Hessian-based algorithm.