Geochemical support for a climbing habit within the Paleozoic seed fern genus Medullosa

A long-standing problem in paleobotany is the accurate identification of the growth habits and statures of fossil plants. Tissue-specific analysis of stable carbon isotope ratios in plant fossils can provide an independent perspective on this issue. Lignin, a fundamental biopolymer providing structural support in plant tissues and the second most abundant organic material in plants, is ^(13)C depleted by several parts per thousand, averaging 4.1‰, relative to other plant constructional materials (e.g. cellulose). With this isotopic difference, the biochemical structural composition of ancient plants (and inferred stature) can be interrogated using microscale in situ isotope analysis between different tissues in fossils. We applied this technique to a well-preserved specimen of the Late Paleozoic seed plant Medullosa, an extinct genus with a variety of growth habits that includes several enigmatic yet abundant small-stemmed species widely found in calcium carbonate concretions (“coal balls”) in the Pennsylvanian coal beds of Iowa, USA. It remains unclear which of the medullosans were freestanding, and recent analysis of the medullosan vascular system has shown that this system provided little structural support to the whole plant. The leading hypothesis for small-stemmed medullosan specimens predicts that cortical tissues could have provided additional structural support, but only if they were lignified. The expected isotopic difference between lignified tissue and unlignified tissue is smaller than that expected from pure extracts, for the simple reason that even woody tissues maximally contain 40% lignin (by mass). This reduces the expected maximum difference between weakly and heavily lignified tissues by 60%, down to ~0.5‰–2‰. Analysis of the medullosan stem reveals a consistent difference in isotope ratios of 0.7‰–1.0‰ between lignified xylem and cortical tissues. This implies low abundances of lignin (between 0% and 11%) within the cortex. This inferred structural biochemistry supports hypotheses that the peripheral portions of these medullosan stems were not biomechanically reinforced to permit the plants to grow as freestanding, arborescent trees. A number of climbing or scandent medullosans have been identified in the fossil record, and this mode of growth has been suggested to be common within the group on the basis of observations from comparative biomechanics, hydraulics, and development. Finally, this mode of growth is common in several clades of stem group seed plants, including Lyginopteris and Callistophyton, along with Medullosa. This study provides further support for ideas that place a great portion of early seed plant diversity under the canopy, rather than forming it

Social Networking Systems as a Vehicle to Promote Sense of Community and Performance in Online Classes

Academicians are navigating through the intersection of information technology and social change. The path that educators choose will help determine the future of higher education in traditional and online settings. The journey of teachers is clouded by the abundance and rapid creation of emerging technologies, but the trends of Net Generation students offer direction. Among Web 2.0 applications, social networking systems (SNSs) offer students a new approach to communicating, learning, and collaborating. The sociocentric view of knowledge and learning and the theories of Vygotsky and Dewey are helping to drive educators to look for a solution to a missing link in the current e-learning ecosystem, which many identify to be community. This study sought to identify whether SNSs promote sense of community, connecting, learning, and performing better than learning management systems (LMSs) in community college elearning classrooms. Chaos theory was used as a metaphor to identify variables. The results indicated that students in the SNS environment performed significantly better than students in the LMS environment by almost an entire letter grade. SNS students made dramatic gains toward achieving the performance level of face-to-face students. The findings revealed that females gained more than males over time in e-learning for sense of community, connecting, and learning. SNS students did not outperform LMS students on sense of community, connecting, or learning. The results could offer educators direction in the pursuit of a healthy e-learning ecosystem that is flexible and adaptive. The findings are applicable to scholars, teachers, administrators, and policy makers

Children's Evaluations of Helpful and Unhelpful Individuals

Humans are cooperative and often help one another. Although we know that young children are helpful, there is much to understand about children’s evaluations of others who do and do not help. Prior work examined evaluations during middle childhood of helpers and non-helpers in India and the US in different settings (Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990). American children’s evaluations centered on their relationships with the needy person (e.g. friend or family member) and how severe the person’s need was. These differences in evaluations raise questions of how children’s views of helpful and unhelpful interactions arise, earlier development. The current studies examine 3- to 6-year-old children’s interpretations and evaluations of helpful and unhelpful people. Experiment 1 (N=95 of planned 96) investigated children’s evaluations of people who help versus neutral people and their views of helpful versus unhelpful interactions. Children watched two sets of videos. First, children watched a video of a helper giving tape to someone hanging a poster and a video of a neutral character with another girl. When asked to evaluate the helpful versus neutral characters, children rated the helper more positively (59 of 95, p = 0.01). Then, children watched videos of helpful and not helpful interactions. Overall, children viewed helpful action as more acceptable than unhelpful actions (X^2(1) = 85.01, p < 0.01). Experiment 2 (N=61 of planned 96) expanded this work by examining children’s evaluations of characters who do not help. Preliminary analyses will be presented in the poster

The non-occurrence of events

No abstract available

SERUM VITAMIN D AND MAGNESIUM LEVELS IN A PSYCHIATRIC COHORT

Background: Both Vitamin D deficiency and magnesium deficiency have an increased prevalence and have been associated with an increased risk of and increased severity of symptoms in both depression and schizophrenia (Boerman 2016, Tarleton & Littenberg 2015). This effect appears more pronounced in younger populations and is often apparent from the time of initial diagnosis and is present with adjustment for confounding factors. Thus, the evidence suggests that Vitamin D and magnesium deficiency reflects not only dietary or somatic aspects of health but also may have a role in the pathophysiology of depression and schizophrenia. Subjects and methods: A single site audit of serum Vitamin D and magnesium levels in patients at an Acute Day Treatment Unit was carried out. Blood tests were performed on admission and analysed in house. Data were collected between April - June 2019 and was analysed subsequently, as described below (n=73). Results: Our data show that our psychiatric day treatment unit cohort (n=73) had a higher proportion of vitamin D deficiency (52%) than the general population (40%), although due to the limited sample size this was not significant (p=0.22, Chi-squared test). The percentage of patients who were magnesium deficient was 78.6% (n=22/28). However, the F60 subgroup of patients with personality disorders showed a high prevalence of vit D deficiency (p=0.07), highlighting a trend towards significance despite the limited size of this subgroup. Conclusions: We carried out a single-site audit of serum vitamin D and magnesium levels in a psychiatric day unit population in order to assess the extent of vitamin deficiency in such patients. These data indicate that that the proportion of patients with vitamin D deficiency is higher than in the general population. Further larger analysis is needed to establish the statistical significance of these data and whether treatment with vitamin D supplementation improves outcomes

Coaching education: wake up to the new digital and AI coaching revolution!

In this article we argue that coach education has been through three distinct phases of development over the past three decades: 1990-2020. These phrases reflect changes in the coaching industry, which itself has seen significant change over the same period. These phases include ‘pre-profession’, reflected in ad hoc and non-qualification based training, ‘practice based professionalisation’, which saw a growth in small scale coach providers using professional body competencies, and ‘evidenced-based professionalisation’, which stimulated the growth in university based coach education programmes focused on evidenced based and research informed training. We argue that as we enter the Mid 2020’s we are witnessing a new shift in the coaching industry from ‘professionalisation’ to ‘productization’, with the emergence of large scale digitally enabled coaching providers. These new providers employ thousands of home working coaches and are focused on delivering coaching at scale to tens of thousands of coachees in enterprise size organisations using digital channels. This industrial change calls for a need to rethink and modernise coach education. Coach educators must acknowledge the shift towards the management of industrial scale delivery and the focus on data, the integration of AI into the coaching process alongside a movement towards mastery of the technologies which have enabled coaches to work globally. We conclude by suggesting coach education should offer two new career pathways: one for those commissioning and managing coaching services and a second for those working in digital coaching firms in coaching service management, in roles such as Customer Success and Coach Relations, alongside a revitalised coach training which equips coaches to operate in digital environments through a mastery of the communication platforms, tools and apps which they employ and a deeper understanding of new technologies such as AI, VR and MR

Four hundred million years of silica biomineralization in land plants

Biomineralization plays a fundamental role in the global silicon cycle. Grasses are known to mobilize significant quantities of Si in the form of silica biominerals and dominate the terrestrial realm today, but they have relatively recent origins and only rose to taxonomic and ecological prominence within the Cenozoic Era. This raises questions regarding when and how the biological silica cycle evolved. To address these questions, we examined silica abundances of extant members of early-diverging land plant clades, which show that silica biomineralization is widespread across terrestrial plant linages. Particularly high silica abundances are observed in lycophytes and early-diverging ferns. However, silica biomineralization is rare within later-evolving gymnosperms, implying a complex evolutionary history within the seed plants. Electron microscopy and X-ray spectroscopy show that the most common silica-mineralized tissues include the vascular system, epidermal cells, and stomata, which is consistent with the hypothesis that biomineralization in plants is frequently coupled to transpiration. Furthermore, sequence, phylogenetic, and structural analysis of nodulin 26-like intrinsic proteins from diverse plant genomes points to a plastic and ancient capacity for silica accumulation within terrestrial plants. The integration of these two comparative biology approaches demonstrates that silica biomineralization has been an important process for land plants over the course of their >400 My evolutionary history