Blood Parasites in Relation to Pheasants and Quail in Iowa

Blood parasite investigations of ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) and bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) were conducted in Iowa during 1957-59 and 1959-61. Wild pheasants from Winnebago, Union, Ringgold, and Adair counties, and wild quail from Ringgold and Wapello counties were checked for blood parasites. Pen-reared pheasants and quail checked for blood parasites were supplied by the State Wildlife Research and Exhibit Station at Boone and by private game clubs. Examination of blood smears from 364 pheasants and 673 bobwhite indicated no positive cases of Haemoproteus, Leucocytozoon, or Plasmodium. Experiments aimed at inducing infections of Plasmodium in pheasants and Leucocytozoon in bobwhite were unsuccessful

A Pedagogical Framework for the Design and Utilization of Place-Based Experiential Learning Curriculum on a Campus Farm

Campus agriculture projects are increasingly being recognized as spaces impactful to student engagement and learning through curricular and co-curricular programming; however, most campus farm activities are limited to agriculture or sustainability programs and/or co-curricular student clubs. Thus, campus farms are largely underutilized in the undergraduate curriculum, marking a need to explore the efficacy and impact of engaging a diverse array of disciplinary courses in the rich social, environmental, and civic context of local sustainable agriculture. The Farm Hub program presented here incentivizes instructors to refocus a portion of existing course content around the topic of local, sustainable agriculture, and reduces barriers to using a campus farm as a situated learning context for curricula. A pedagogical framework founded in place-based experiential learning (PBEL) theory was developed to guide instructors in the development and implementation of 4–6-week inquiry-based PBEL modules embedded in existing courses. The framework was converted into a research protocol to quantify program implementation fidelity and PBEL best practice adherence for the proposed lesson plans (intended) and their implementation (applied). The framework enables the development of a cohesive cross-curricular program so that the impact of implementation fidelity and best practice adherence to student learning outcomes in scientific literacy, place attachment and meaning, and civic mindedness can be assessed and the results utilized to develop a formal farm-situated PBEL pedagogical taxonomy. This framework can be applied to PBEL curriculum in natural spaces beyond campus farms

Translocal imagination of Hong Kong connections: the shifting of Chow Yun-Fat's star image since 1997

Anyone who is interested in Hong Kong cinema must be familiar with one name: Chow Yun-fat (b. 1955). He rose to film stardom in the 1980s when Hong Kong cinema started to attract global attention beyond East Asia. During his early screen career, Chow established a star image as an urban citizen of modern Hong Kong through films such as A Better Tomorrow/Yingxiong bense (John Woo, 1986), City on Fire/Longhu fengyun (Ringo Lam, 1987), All About Ah-Long/A Lang de gushi (Johnnie To, 1989), God of Gamblers/Du shen (Wong Jing, 1989), and Hard Boiled/Lashou shentan (John Woo, 1992)

Airborne Radar Interferometric Repeat-Pass Processing

Earth science research often requires crustal deformation measurements at a variety of time scales, from seconds to decades. Although satellites have been used for repeat-track interferometric (RTI) synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) mapping for close to 20 years, RTI is much more difficult to implement from an airborne platform owing to the irregular trajectory of the aircraft compared with microwave imaging radar wavelengths. Two basic requirements for robust airborne repeat-pass radar interferometry include the ability to fly the platform to a desired trajectory within a narrow tube and the ability to have the radar beam pointed in a desired direction to a fraction of a beam width. Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is equipped with a precision auto pilot developed by NASA Dryden that allows the platform, a Gulfstream III, to nominally fly within a 5 m diameter tube and with an electronically scanned antenna to position the radar beam to a fraction of a beam width based on INU (inertial navigation unit) attitude angle measurements

148. Exploring the Impact of College Students' COVID-19- and Capitol Insurrection-Related Horizontal and Vertical Collectivism/Individualism on Emotional Reaction to Those Events

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or be any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Purpose: While many studies have explored individuals’ feelings related to recent national events, none have explored the relationship of individualism and collectivist leanings caused by these events on the individuals emotions related to those events. For this research we specifically focus on the COVID-19 Pandemic and the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. Methods: Data were collected from college students at a small, private midwestern private university over a 10-day period at the end of January and the beginning of February 2021. A Qualtrics survey was sent to 1,041 students who had completed a similar survey 5 months earlier related to their feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic. We used a subsample (N=314 students; 74.2% female; 83.4% White; 0.6% freshman, 24.5% sophomores, 34.7% juniors and 29.3% seniors) who provided complete data. Measures included horizontal (“We are the same, high freedom, equality”) and vertical (“I am different, Authority ranking, high freedom”) individualism as well as horizontal (“We are the same, share, less freedom”) and vertical (“I am different, sharing, authority ranking”) collectivism. Participants also provided data on the positive and negative affective responses to COVID-19 and to the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the direct effects between individual and collectivism and the affective responses to each event (all standardized; Stata v. 17.0). Global fit was evaluated using the chi-square test and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). Local fit was addressed using the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Tucker Louis Index (TLI). We also investigated group differences by gender (male/female) and race (minority/white) where significant overall direct effects were observed. Results: Fit indices (Chi-sq[df]: 60.99[31], p<.001; RMSEA[90% CI]: 0.046[0.035-0.076); CFI: 0.972; TLI: 0.905) suggested the specified model provided a good fit to the data. Higher COVID VI was associated with higher positive (B=0.12) and negative (B=0.15) affective reactions to COVID (B=0.12). Higher Capitol HI and HC were both associated with higher positive (both: B=0.21) and higher negative (B=0.12-0.23) affective reaction to the capitol riots. Higher COVID VI was associated with lower negative affective response (B=-0.16) to COVID. We observed no gender or race/ethnicity differences in these significant effects. Conclusions: Students who felt more strongly that people were the same (horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism) were more likely to have both strong positive and negative emotions to the Janury 6th insurrection. For COVID-19 negative feelings, students whose feelings towards COVID were more individualistic had mixed results. Those who believed people are different (vertical individualism) were more likely to have lower negative feelings towards COVID-19 while those who believed people are the same (horizontal individualism) had greater negative feelings. These data have implications for scaffolding young adult support in advance of future socio-political emergencies

News Accuracy in Switzerland and Italy

Nearly 80 years of accuracy research in the United States has documented that the press frequently errs, but empirical study about news accuracy elsewhere in the world is absent. This article presents an accuracy audit of Swiss and Italian daily regional newspapers. Replicating US research, the study offers a trans-Atlantic perspective of news accuracy. To compare newspaper accuracy in Switzerland and Italy to longitudinal accuracy research in the United States, the study followed closely the methodology pioneered by Charnley (1936) and adapted by Maier (2005). News sources found factual inaccuracy in 60 percent of Swiss newspaper stories they reviewed, compared to 48 percent of US and 52 percent of Italian newspapers examined. The results show that newspaper inaccuracy—and its corrosive effect on media credibility—transcends national borders and journalism cultures. Nowadays, digitization offers new ways of implementing correction policies. Media organizations need, however, to adapt to these changes and to adapt their structures in particular to new forms of participative and interactive two-way communication

Study of the impacts of droplets deposited from the gas core onto a gas-sheared liquid film

The results of an experimental study on droplet impactions in the flow of a gas-sheared liquid film are presented. In contrast to most similar studies, the impacting droplets were entrained from film surface by the gas stream. The measurements provide film thickness data, resolved in both longitudinal and transverse coordinates and in time together with the images of droplets above the interface and images of gas bubbles entrapped by liquid film. The parameters of impacting droplets were measured together with the local liquid film thickness. Two main scenarios of droplet-film interaction, based on type of film perturbation, are identified; the parameter identifying which scenario occurs is identified as the angle of impingement. At large angles an asymmetric crater appears on film surface; at shallow angles a long, narrow furrow appears. The most significant difference between the two scenarios is related to possible impact outcome: craters may lead to creation secondary droplets, whereas furrows are accompanied by entrapment of gas bubbles into the liquid film. In addition, occurrence of partial survival of impacting droplet is reported

Involving Citizen Scientists in Biodiversity Observation

The involvement of non-professionals in scientific research and environmental monitoring, termed Citizen Science (CS), has now become a mainstream approach for collecting data on earth processes, ecosystems and biodiversity. This chapter examines how CS might contribute to ongoing efforts in biodiversity monitoring, enhancing observation and recording of key species and systems in a standardised manner, thereby supporting data relevant to the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), as well as reaching key constituencies who would benefit Biodiversity Observation Networks (BONs). The design of successful monitoring or observation networks that rely on citizen observers requires a careful balancing of the two primary user groups, namely data users and data contributors (i.e., citizen scientists). To this end, this chapter identifies examples of successful CS programs as well as considering practical issues such as the reliability of the data, participant recruitment and motivation, and the use of emerging technologies

Citizen science for observing and understanding the Earth

Citizen Science, or the participation of non-professional scientists in a scientific project, has a long history—in many ways, the modern scientific revolution is thanks to the effort of citizen scientists. Like science itself, citizen science is influenced by technological and societal advances, such as the rapid increase in levels of education during the latter part of the twentieth century, or the very recent growth of the bidirectional social web (Web 2.0), cloud services and smartphones. These transitions have ushered in, over the past decade, a rapid growth in the involvement of many millions of people in data collection and analysis of information as part of scientific projects. This chapter provides an overview of the field of citizen science and its contribution to the observation of the Earth, often not through remote sensing but a much closer relationship with the local environment. The chapter suggests that, together with remote Earth Observations, citizen science can play a critical role in understanding and addressing local and global challenges

Intracellular SERS nanoprobes for distinction of different neuronal cell types.

Distinction between closely related and morphologically similar cells is difficult by conventional methods especially without labeling. Using nuclear-targeted gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as intracellular probes we demonstrate the ability to distinguish between progenitor and differentiated cell types in a human neuroblastoma cell line using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). SERS spectra from the whole cell area as well as only the nucleus were analyzed using principal component analysis that allowed unambiguous distinction of the different cell types. SERS spectra from the nuclear region showed the developments during cellular differentiation by identifying an increase in DNA/RNA ratio and proteins transcribed. Our approach using nuclear-targeted AuNPs and SERS imaging provides label-free and noninvasive characterization that can play a vital role in identifying cell types in biomedical stem cell research