34 research outputs found
Three Sister Crops: Understanding American Indian Agricultural Practices of Corn, Beans and Squash
American Indians have practiced an inter-planting system to produce corn, beans, and squash, for generations. These crops are known as the “Three Sisters”. In this lesson developed for secondary agriscience curriculum, students will understand the past, current and future production practices of the three important crops. Students will also apply their knowledge to understand the crop selection process and relate to the changing environment
Climate Change within a Biome
In this iLEARN lesson, students will investigate impacts of climate change on the native plants and animals, as well as the fisheries, agriculture, and forestry, within a biome of their choosing, and then develop and refine a solution for one of the impacts resulting from the climate change
Understanding Greenhouse Gases
Students will conduct hands-on experiments to see how greenhouse gases interact with the Earth’s atmosphere and how greenhouse gases affect temperature. This lesson introduces National Geographic’s Geo-Inquiry Process, where students will identify a Geo-inquiry question, collect data, and create a project around the answer to their question. Students will then present their findings to their peers and evaluate their Geo-Inquiry process
Avalanches on a conical bead pile: scaling with tuning parameters
Uniform spherical beads were used to explore the behavior of a granular
system near its critical angle of repose on a conical bead pile. We found two
tuning parameters that could take the system to a critical point where a simple
power-law described the avalanche size distribution as predicted by
self-organized criticality, which proposed that complex dynamical systems
self-organize to a critical point without need for tuning. Our distributions
were well described by a simple power-law with the power {\tau} = 1.5 when
dropping beads slowly onto the apex of a bead pile from a small height.
However, we could also move the system from the critical point using either of
two tuning parameters: the height from which the beads fell onto the top of the
pile or the region over which the beads struck the pile. As the drop height
increased, the system did not reach the critical point yet the resulting
distributions were independent of the bead mass, coefficient of friction, or
coefficient of restitution. All our apex-dropping distributions for any type of
bead (glass, stainless steel, zirconium) showed universality by scaling onto a
common curve with {\tau} = 1.5 and {\sigma} = 1.0, where 1/{\sigma} is the
power of the tuning parameter. From independent calculations using the moments
of the distribution, we find values for {\tau} = 1.6 \pm 0.1 and {\sigma} =
0.91 \pm 0.15. When beads were dropped across the surface of the pile instead
of solely on the apex, then the system also moved from the critical point and
again the avalanche size distributions fell on a common curve when scaled
similarly using the same values of {\tau} and {\sigma}. We also observed that
an hcp structure on the base of the pile caused an emergent structure in the
pile that had six faces with some fcc or hcp structure.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures; submitted to Granular Matter; Reformatted into
LaTeX from Word; Fixed typo in uncertainty of tau; Rearranged two paragraphs
to improve flo
Sustainable Agriculture Lesson for Middle School Classrooms
In this lesson, students will learn about sustainability, where farmers/agriculturists can meet the needs of food, fiber, and fuel for the growing population. Students learn about growing population, its growth rate, major food source, sustainability barrel, potential ripple effects of positive impacts as well as the food waste and its effects
Recycling Aluminum
Students will investigate and compare the energy cost to produce aluminum products from aluminum ore and recycled aluminum. Students will perform an electrolysis activity to reinforce the idea that recycling metal requires less energy than mining and refining metals from their original source in the earth
Using a Case Study Approach to Teach Invasive Species and Climate Change
In this teaching module, students will explore emerald ash borer (EAB), its impacts on the ash trees, and how warming temperatures could affect EAB populations. The emerald ash borer is a green buprestid or jewel beetle native to north-eastern Asia that causes devastating disease in ash trees
A Large-Scale Genetic Analysis Reveals a Strong Contribution of the HLA Class II Region to Giant Cell Arteritis Susceptibility
We conducted a large-scale genetic analysis on giant cell arteritis (GCA), a polygenic immune-mediated vasculitis. A case-control cohort, comprising 1,651 case subjects with GCA and 15,306 unrelated control subjects from six different countries of European ancestry, was genotyped by the Immunochip array. We also imputed HLA data with a previously validated imputation method to perform a more comprehensive analysis of this genomic region. The strongest association signals were observed in the HLA region, with rs477515 representing the highest peak (p = 4.05 × 10−40, OR = 1.73). A multivariate model including class II amino acids of HLA-DRβ1 and HLA-DQα1 and one class I amino acid of HLA-B explained most of the HLA association with GCA, consistent with previously reported associations of classical HLA alleles like HLA-DRB1∗04. An omnibus test on polymorphic amino acid positions highlighted DRβ1 13 (p = 4.08 × 10−43) and HLA-DQα1 47 (p = 4.02 × 10−46), 56, and 76 (both p = 1.84 × 10−45) as relevant positions for disease susceptibility. Outside the HLA region, the most significant loci included PTPN22 (rs2476601, p = 1.73 × 10−6, OR = 1.38), LRRC32 (rs10160518, p = 4.39 × 10−6, OR = 1.20), and REL (rs115674477, p = 1.10 × 10−5, OR = 1.63). Our study provides evidence of a strong contribution of HLA class I and II molecules to susceptibility to GCA. In the non-HLA region, we confirmed a key role for the functional PTPN22 rs2476601 variant and proposed other putative risk loci for GCA involved in Th1, Th17, and Treg cell function