Focus Group Initiative: Increase Student Participation in Program Planning and Evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better insight into nursing student participation in governance activities of St. Catherine University Associate Degree Nursing Program. The Associate Degree Nursing Program (ADNP) has lacked student input into governance activities, and is missing a process to engage student input. Qualitative research was conducted to ascertain ways to improve student participation in program governance activities. The author completed two pilot focus groups with one cohort of ADNP students to test the process and determine feasibility throughout the program during fall term of 2010. The author took the results from that process to improve the method of data collection. Three focus groups were completed during fall term of 2010 and five during winter term 2011. There was at least one focus group for each cohort of students in the ADNP. Focus groups allowed the researcher to gain rich data about student perceptions of the course of study, providing a venue for participation in program planning and evaluation. The process also afforded the opportunity to ask students if they would participate in governance activities and if there were barriers to involvement that faculty might address. When evaluating the focus group data, the author analyzed both themes and outlier comments. The analysis mainly considered the student group comments as a whole, but occasionally data demanded immediate action for individual student needs

Database of nitrification and nitrifiers in the global ocean

As a key biogeochemical pathway in the marine nitrogen cycle, nitrification (ammonia oxidation and nitrite oxidation) converts the most reduced form of nitrogen – ammonium–ammonia (NH4+–NH3) – into the oxidized species nitrite (NO2-) and nitrate (NO3-). In the ocean, these processes are mainly performed by ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). By transforming nitrogen speciation and providing substrates for nitrogen removal, nitrification affects microbial community structure; marine productivity (including chemoautotrophic carbon fixation); and the production of a powerful greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide (N2O). Nitrification is hypothesized to be regulated by temperature, oxygen, light, substrate concentration, substrate flux, pH and other environmental factors. Although the number of field observations from various oceanic regions has increased considerably over the last few decades, a global synthesis is lacking, and understanding how environmental factors control nitrification remains elusive. Therefore, we have compiled a database of nitrification rates and nitrifier abundance in the global ocean from published literature and unpublished datasets. This database includes 2393 and 1006 measurements of ammonia oxidation and nitrite oxidation rates and 2242 and 631 quantifications of ammonia oxidizers and nitrite oxidizers, respectively. This community effort confirms and enhances our understanding of the spatial distribution of nitrification and nitrifiers and their corresponding drivers such as the important role of substrate concentration in controlling nitrification rates and nitrifier abundance. Some conundrums are also revealed, including the inconsistent observations of light limitation and high rates of nitrite oxidation reported from anoxic waters. This database can be used to constrain the distribution of marine nitrification, to evaluate and improve biogeochemical models of nitrification, and to quantify the impact of nitrification on ecosystem functions like marine productivity and N2O production. This database additionally sets a baseline for comparison with future observations and guides future exploration (e.g., measurements in the poorly sampled regions such as the Indian Ocean and method comparison and/or standardization). The database is publicly available at the Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8355912 (Tang et al., 2023).</p

Microbes as Engines of Ecosystem Function: When Does Community Structure Enhance Predictions of Ecosystem Processes?

Microorganisms are vital in mediating the earth’s biogeochemical cycles; yet, despite our rapidly increasing ability to explore complex environmental microbial communities, the relationship between microbial community structure and ecosystem processes remains poorly understood. Here, we address a fundamental and unanswered question in microbial ecology: ‘When do we need to understand microbial community structure to accurately predict function?’ We present a statistical analysis investigating the value of environmental data and microbial community structure independently and in combination for explaining rates of carbon and nitrogen cycling processes within 82 global datasets. Environmental variables were the strongest predictors of process rates but left 44% of variation unexplained on average, suggesting the potential for microbial data to increase model accuracy. Although only 29% of our datasets were significantly improved by adding information on microbial community structure, we observed improvement in models of processes mediated by narrow phylogenetic guilds via functional gene data, and conversely, improvement in models of facultative microbial processes via community diversity metrics. Our results also suggest that microbial diversity can strengthen predictions of respiration rates beyond microbial biomass parameters, as 53% of models were improved by incorporating both sets of predictors compared to 35% by microbial biomass alone. Our analysis represents the first comprehensive analysis of research examining links between microbial community structure and ecosystem function. Taken together, our results indicate that a greater understanding of microbial communities informed by ecological principles may enhance our ability to predict ecosystem process rates relative to assessments based on environmental variables and microbial physiolog