Framing Collaborative Behaviors: Listening and Speaking in Problem-based Learning

PBL is described as small-group collaborative learning; however, literature on how collaboration is enacted in PBL contexts is limited. A two-year ethnographic study examined the experiences and responses of Asian students to the obligations of PBL in a Western context. Participant-observation, videotape data, and video-stimulated recall interviews provided insights into collaborative behaviors in PBL classrooms. Even though students recognized that listening and speaking were important to collaboration, speaking was clearly privileged over listening in this PBL setting. A framework was developed that incorporated both collaborative and noncollaborative listening and speaking behaviors. This Collaborative Listening/Speaking (CLS) framework provides a structure for tutors to scaffold the novice learners’ collaborative skills, and therefore more effectively facilitate the group’s learning through collaboration

Protected Areas and Rural Depopulation in Spain: A Multi-Stakeholder Perceptual Study

Protected areas (PAs) are thought by some to contribute to local wellbeing and socioeconomic development, whereas for others PAs remain a regulatory burden that hampers rural development. Here, we sought to ascertain the perceived causes of rural depopulation and the potential impact of four Natura 2000 sites on the wellbeing and depopulation figures of four protected rural municipalities in Spain that were selected as extreme case studies. We used phone surveys to elicit experts’ views (n = 19) on the topic and convened eight in-person workshops to garner local residents’ insights (n = 40) using structured questionnaires. We complemented perceived wellbeing data from PAs with surveys to residents in neighbouring unprotected municipalities (n = 28). Both experts and workshops’ attendees from protected municipalities overwhelmingly attributed depopulation figures to structural causes linked to transport accessibility, basic service provision and the existence of job opportunities, which they perceived to be unrelated to the PAs’ regulations or management. Local residents did generally not perceive any impact on their collective or individual wellbeing from those PAs, and most who did, expressed a negative impact chiefly due to socioeconomic restrictions. Four-fifths of the experts and half of the workshops’ attendees from protected municipalities, however, expressed that PAs’ administrations could help improve depopulation figures in their towns mainly through promoting tourism and greater compatibility of land uses, including housing and infrastructure development. While the assessed Natura 2000 sites certainly have scope for tourism promotion, their lenient legal regimes make it largely unfeasible to broaden land use compatibility without damaging protected featuresThis study was funded by the University of Malaga through its Research Plan 2020, Research Grant Number B3-2020-04. Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Improved understanding of the role of gene and genome duplications in chordate evolution with new genome and transcriptome sequences

Funding: MEA-R is supported by funding from the University of St Andrews School of Biology and St Leonard’s College. Work in the lab of DEKF is funded by the BBSRC (BB/S016856/1) with additional support from the European project Assemble Plus (H2020-INFRAIA-1-2016–2017; grant no. 730984).Comparative approaches to understanding chordate genomes have uncovered a significant role for gene duplications, including whole genome duplications, giving rise to and expanding gene families. In developmental biology, gene families created and expanded by both tandem and whole genome duplications (WGDs) are paramount. These genes, often involved in transcription and signalling, are candidates for underpinning major evolutionary transitions because they are particularly prone to retention and subfunctionalisation, neofunctionalisation, or specialisation following duplication. Under the subfunctionalisation model, duplication lays the foundation for the diversification of paralogues, especially in the context of gene regulation. Tandemly duplicated paralogues reside in the same regulatory environment, which may constrain them and result in a gene cluster with closely linked but subtly different expression patterns and functions. Ohnologues (WGD paralogues) often diversify by partitioning their expression domains between retained paralogues, amidst the many changes in the genome during rediploidisation, including chromosomal rearrangements and extensive gene losses. The patterns of these retentions and losses is still not fully understood, nor is the full extent of the impact of gene duplication on chordate evolution. The growing number of sequencing projects, genomic resources, transcriptomics, and improvements to genome assemblies for diverse chordates from non-model and under-sampled lineages like the coelacanth, as well as key lineages, such as amphioxus and lamprey, has allowed more informative comparisons within developmental gene families as well as revealing the extent of conserved synteny across whole genomes. This influx of data provides the tools necessary for phylogenetically-informed comparative genomics, which will bring us closer to understanding the evolution of chordate body plan diversity and the changes underpinning the origin and diversification of vertebrates.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Monitoring compliance with governmental and institutional open access policies across spanish universities: Seguimiento del cumplimiento de las políticas de acceso abierto gubernamental e institucional en universidades españolas.

Universities and research centers in Spain are subject to a national open access (OA) mandate and to their own OA institutional policies, if any, but compliance with these requirements has not been fully monitored yet. We studied the degree of OA archiving of publications of 28 universities within the period 2012-2014. Of these, 12 have an institutional OA mandate, 9 do not require but request or encourage OA of scholarly outputs, and 7 do not have a formal OA statement but are well known for their support of the OA movement. The potential OA rate was calculated according to the publisher open access policies indicated in Sherpa/Romeo directory. The universities showed an asymmetric distribution of 1% to 63% of articles archived in repositories that matched those indexed by the Web of Science in the same period, of which 1% to 35% were OA and the rest were closed access. For articles on work carried out with public funding and subject to the Spanish Science law, the percentage was similar or slightly higher. However, the analysis of potential OA showed that the figure could have reached 80% in some cases. This means that the real proportion of articles in OA is far below what it could potentially be

Amphioxus muscle transcriptomes reveal vertebrate-like myoblast fusion genes and a highly conserved role of insulin signalling in the metabolism of muscle

Madeleine E. Aase-Remedios and Clara Coll-Lladó were supported by funding from the University of St Andrews, School of Biology and additional support from St Leonards College (MEAR), the CORBEL grant European Research Infrastructure cluster project and European Assemble Plus (H2020-INFRAIA-1-2016-2017; grant no.730984). Transcriptome sequencing was done with an award under the BBSRC TGAC Capacity and Capability Challenge.Background:   The formation and functioning of muscles are fundamental aspects of animal biology, and the evolution of ‘muscle genes’ is central to our understanding of this tissue. Feeding-fasting-refeeding experiments have been widely used to assess muscle cellular and metabolic responses to nutrition. Though these studies have focused on vertebrate models and only a few invertebrate systems, they have found similar processes are involved in muscle degradation and maintenance. Motivation for these studies stems from interest in diseases whose pathologies involve muscle atrophy, a symptom also triggered by fasting, as well as commercial interest in the muscle mass of animals kept for consumption. Experimentally modelling atrophy by manipulating nutritional state causes muscle mass to be depleted during starvation and replenished with refeeding so that the genetic mechanisms controlling muscle growth and degradation can be understood. Results:  Using amphioxus, the earliest branching chordate lineage, we address the gap in previous work stemming from comparisons between distantly related vertebrate and invertebrate models. Our amphioxus feeding-fasting-refeeding muscle transcriptomes reveal a highly conserved myogenic program and that the pro-orthologues of many vertebrate myoblast fusion genes were present in the ancestral chordate, despite these invertebrate chordates having unfused mononucleate myocytes. We found that genes differentially expressed between fed and fasted amphioxus were orthologous to the genes that respond to nutritional state in vertebrates. This response is driven in a large part by the highly conserved IGF/Akt/FOXO pathway, where depleted nutrient levels result in activation of FOXO, a transcription factor with many autophagy-related gene targets. Conclusion:  Reconstruction of these gene networks and pathways in amphioxus muscle provides a key point of comparison between the distantly related groups assessed thus far, significantly refining the reconstruction of the ancestral state for chordate myoblast fusion genes and identifying the extensive role of duplicated genes in the IGF/Akt/FOXO pathway across animals. Our study elucidates the evolutionary trajectory of muscle genes as they relate to the increased complexity of vertebrate muscles and muscle development.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

More than one-to-four via 2R : evidence of an independent amphioxus expansion and two-gene ancestral vertebrate state for MyoD-related Muscle Regulatory Factors (MRFs)

Funding: Madeleine Aase-Remedios and Dr Clara Coll-Lladówere supported by funding from the University of St Andrews, School of Biology and additional support from the CORBEL grant European Research Infrastructure cluster project.The evolutionary transition from invertebrates to vertebrates involved extensive gene duplication, but understanding precisely how such duplications contributed to this transition requires more detailed knowledge of specific cases of genes and gene families. MyoD (Myogenic differentiation) has long been recognized as a master developmental control gene and member of the MyoD family of bHLH transcription factors (Myogenic regulatory factors, MRFs) that drive myogenesis across the bilaterians. Phylogenetic reconstructions within this gene family are complicated by multiple instances of gene duplication and loss in several lineages. Following two rounds of whole genome duplication (2R WGD) at the origin of the vertebrates the ancestral function of MRFs is thought to have become partitioned amongst the daughter genes, so that MyoD and Myf5 act early in myogenic determination while Myog and Myf6 are expressed later, in differentiating myoblasts. Comparing chordate MRFs, we find an independent expansion of MRFs in the invertebrate chordate amphioxus, with evidence for a parallel instance of subfunctionalisation relative to that of vertebrates. Conserved synteny between chordate MRF loci supports the 2R WGD events as a major force in shaping the evolution of vertebrate MRFs. We also resolve vertebrate MRF complements and organization, finding a new type of vertebrate MRF gene in the process, which allowed us to infer an ancestral two-gene state in the vertebrates corresponding to the early- and late-acting types of MRFs. This necessitates a revision of previous conclusions about the simple one-to-four origin of vertebrate MRFs.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

El nada despreciable acceso abierto potencial

[ES]Objetivo: evaluar el acceso abierto potencial a las publicaciones de universidades españolas en función de la revista dónde se publica