Creativity, Laterality and Critical State Balance in Learning

Understanding the intersecting cognitive pathways that are integral to ways of thinking, creating and functioning in both art and science is an important grounding for a STEAM educational approach. We combine three divergent concepts, including creativity, hemisphere laterality, and critical state theory, to argue for a more balanced approach to learning as part of a modern meaning-centered education in STEAM. Reviewing the concept of hemisphere laterality, or how the two hemispheres of our brain have different (though not disconnected) ways of processing sensory information, we note how these two means of interpreting the world have become unbalanced in traditional modes of learning. We then discuss creativity as a mechanism that serves to balance the work of both hemispheres. Finally, critical state theory is introduced as an argument for why our brains need to exist in a more dynamically balanced state to function well in contemporary society

Art-Science Collaboration: Blending the Boundaries of Practice

The Art + Oceans Project was the sixth in the ongoing ‘Art + Science’  Project series, where artists collaborate with scientists individually, or in pairs, to develop artworks for public exhibition relating to science interpreted in a broad context.In Art + Oceans, collaborators tackled the complexities of our changing marine environment; working together over several months (from October 2017 to July 2018), they produced many generative interactions between art and science. The large group exhibition (held in the Otago Museum’s HD Skinner Annex, 23 July–5 August 2018) represented 26 collaborations between artists (including graduates, staff and senior students of the Dunedin School of Art and the School of Design at Otago Polytechnic) and scientists (from University of Otago science departments including Surveying, Physics, Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, Marine Science, Physical Education and Science Communication; as well as the University of British Columbia; the Cawthron Institute; LandcareResearch; the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); and research collectives including Coastal Acidification: Rate, Impacts & Management (CARIM) and the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge)

The waters were wide: A report on the Art and Science Project “Water/Wai: Mountains to the Sea”

The first known Greek/Phonecian philosopher of science, Thales of Miletus, viewed water as both the centre of life and the unifier of nature. We would all still agree – water is essential to life as we know it. Over the millennia, whole civilizations have risen and fallen depending on fresh water security; our species has adapted, thrived, or been decimated, depending on the availability of water. For this reason, water has always been the subject of close governance and stewardship.In 2019, the seventh in the Art and Science Project series embarked on Art+Water, with the theme of “Water: Mountains to the Sea.”This theme was interpreted in many ways, including: the forms of water, water-related protein structures, ice-formation, water-borne disease in birds, fossilized structures made by aquatic/ marine animals, the impacts of land-use on water quality, water-born environmental DNA, the effects of ocean acidification on marine calcifying organisms, the ecology of coastline shallows and deep ocean canyons, bioengineering on farmland, and conflicts in communities around water scarcity. Several projects involved community-based environmental restoration work, including volunteer projects at the Sinclair Wetlands and at Lake Wanaka.As for previous Art and Science projects, the aim of Art+Water was to foster artistic response to scientific research, rather than its illustration

Art, Science and the Viewing Public: Illuminating Observations from “Art and Light” Viewers

“Art and Light” was the third iteration of the art and science collaborations between the Dunedin School of Art and the University of Otago. Both informal and formal evaluation has shown that these collaborations work well for the scientists and the artists involved, with both parties experiencing mutual stimulation (see Scope: Art and Design 9, November, 2014, 142-151). But what impact do these collaborative projects have on the viewing public

Place-based film for growing community engagement in local marine conservation

Awareness, knowledge and community identity can grow from local narratives about conservation and enhance our capacity for environmental stewardship. New media narrative approaches are also seeking to improve the terms of community engagement across a spectrum of stakeholders. For instance, film is increasingly being used by scientists and policymakers to situate science stories within a community in order to increase local ownership and enhance engagement, be it through active participation in conservation or to support/social license. Here, the use of placebased documentary film as a tool to affect these outcomes is explored in a community adjacent to a controversial marine reserve, and we focus in particular on the effect of film on local youth

Coccolithophore Relief: An Art and Science Interrogation of Ocean Acidification

Organisms that remove carbon from the world’s carbon cycle are becoming ever more important as we try to constrain our carbon emissions to slow climate change. Marine phytoplankton, like coccolithophores, are responsible for 50 percent of global carbon fixation. Through photosynthesis, which also produces oxygen as a by-product, they fix carbon dioxide throughout their lives in the surface waters of the ocean. Even in their death, they help remove carbon from the system. Coccolithophores make armoured plates (coccoliths, hereafter referred to as ‘liths’) from calcium carbonate, which together form a sort of external skeleton for each organism. When they die, they sink and join bottom sediments, in effect exporting and burying carbon in deep-sea sediments.We decided to share the story of coccolithophores, including their important environmental role and their sensitivity to ocean acidification, with the public. We intentionally developed a project involving social arts practice to help people reflect on the importance of these small things. This included the beauty of the tiny liths that make up the  coccolithophore’s amour, the importance of each little lith to collectively make a healthy organism (that in turn has an important global role), and the effect of our individual small actions contributing to climate change. Engaging communities in social arts practice, by involving hands-on making with cognitive activity, gives time and space for such criticalreflection.5 Joining key features of the scientific narrative with congruent aspects of the art-making can serve to reinforce understanding and potential behaviour change

Empowering Students in Higher-Education to Teach and Learn

We explored opportunities, advantages and barriers to enabling students to establish student-led learning events at a New Zealand university. We used an action-research approach to explore if students felt empowered to use the infrastructure of this university to realise something that they themselves set out to achieve. We discovered that, in achieving a series of open discussions about sustainability, students adopted a democratic, distributed form of decision-making, not unlike a typical academic model, with leaders taking temporary roles that included passing on responsibility to those who followed. Students were proud of the events they created and identified the discussion format as something different from their experience as undergraduate students in our institution. This article, co-authored by staff and students, considers whether higher education processes that do empower students do so adequately and the extent to which students are prepared by higher education to take on powerful roles after they graduate

Plastic and Heritable Components of Phenotypic Variation in Nucella lapillus: An Assessment Using Reciprocal Transplant and Common Garden Experiments

Assessment of plastic and heritable components of phenotypic variation is crucial for understanding the evolution of adaptive character traits in heterogeneous environments. We assessed the above in relation to adaptive shell morphology of the rocky intertidal snail Nucella lapillus by reciprocal transplantation of snails between two shores differing in wave action and rearing snails of the same provenance in a common garden. Results were compared with those reported for similar experiments conducted elsewhere. Microsatellite variation indicated limited gene flow between the populations. Intrinsic growth rate was greater in exposed-site than sheltered-site snails, but the reverse was true of absolute growth rate, suggesting heritable compensation for reduced foraging opportunity at the exposed site. Shell morphology of reciprocal transplants partially converged through plasticity toward that of native snails. Shell morphology of F2s in the common garden partially retained characteristics of the P-generation, suggesting genetic control. A maternal effect was revealed by greater resemblance of F1s than F2s to the P-generation. The observed synergistic effects of plastic, maternal and genetic control of shell-shape may be expected to maximise fitness when environmental characteristics become unpredictable through dispersal

Discovery of [11C]MK-6884: a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agent for the study of M4 muscarinic receptor positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) in neurodegenerative diseases

The measurement of receptor occupancy (RO) using positron emission tomography (PET) has been instrumental in guiding discovery and development of CNS directed therapeutics. We and others have investigated muscarinic acetylcholine receptor 4 (M4) positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) for the treatment of symptoms associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. In this article, we describe the synthesis, in vitro, and in vivo characterization of a series of central pyridine-related M4 PAMs that can be conveniently radiolabeled with carbon-11 as PET tracers for the in vivo imaging of an allosteric binding site of the M4 receptor. We first demonstrated its feasibility by mapping the receptor distribution in mouse brain and confirming that a lead molecule 1 binds selectively to the receptor only in the presence of the orthosteric agonist carbachol. Through a competitive binding affinity assay and a number of physiochemical properties filters, several related compounds were identified as candidates for in vivo evaluation. These candidates were then radiolabeled with 11C and studied in vivo in rhesus monkeys. This research eventually led to the discovery of the clinical radiotracer candidate [11C]MK-6884

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead