Incorporating Wikipedia in the Classroom to Improve Science Learning and Communication

Wikipedia, the digital encyclopedia, has approximately 15 billion page views a month and is a platform where editors worldwide collaborate to improve content on topics, including the questions above. Wikipedia supports science communication in several ways. It helps readers comprehend information and contributors clarify the meaning and implications of scientific knowledge. The anatomy of Wikipedia is symmetric, allowing for ease in contribution and discussion. Wikipedia-based assignments range from making small edits, such as copyediting a series of science-related topics, adding citations, or inserting internal links to existing Wikipedia pages, to more substantial contributions. Challenges faced by students necessitate \u27just-in-time instruction on reference reliability, content incorporation, and rules regarding plagiarism. Students in \u27Natural Disturbances and Society\u27 are tasked to contribute content to a series of disturbance articles on Wikipedia based on research in primary literature. Substantial contribution to Wikipedia can be as simple as locating and expanding a Stub, short undeveloped articles on a notable topic

Mitefauna (Arachnida: Acari) associated to grapevine, Vitis vinifera L. (Vitaceae), in the municipalities of Bento Gonçalves and Candiota, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

The mitefauna associated to Merlot and Chardonnay grapevine cultivars and associated plants in the municipalities of Bento Gonçalves and Candiota, Rio Grande do Sul was investigated. The study was developed between October 2006 and September 2007, where 20 grapevine plants were randomly chosen from each municipality and monthly sampled. Three leaves of each plant were taken. A total of 11,598 mites belonging to 14 families and to 52 species were found. Fifty-nine percent of the total specimens were collected in Candiota, being 93% associated to the Merlot cultivar. Higher species richness was observed on associated plants. Phytoseiidae showed the highest species richness, with ten species, and Eriophyidae showed the highest abundance, with 8,675 specimens. Calepitrimerus vitis (Nalepa, 1905) and polyphagotarsonemus latus (Banks, 1904) were the most common phytophagous mites, while Neoseiulus californicus (McGregor, 1954) and Pronematus anconai (Baker, 1943) were the most common predators

Multi-Discipline Modeling of Complete Hypersonic Vehicles Using CFD Surrogates

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143103/1/6.2017-0182.pd

Nonlinear Thermal Reduced-Order Modeling for Hypersonic Vehicles

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143073/1/1.J055499.pd

The anatomy of a cluster IDP. Part 1: Carbon abundance, bulk chemistry, and mineralogy of fragments from L2008#5

The objective of this study was to determine whether or not cluster particles are sufficiently homogeneous to enable observations from one fragment of the cluster to be extrapolated to the entire cluster. We report on the results of a consortium study of the fragments of a large cluster particle. Multiple fragments from one large cluster were distributed to several research groups and were subjected to a variety of mineralogical and chemical analyses including: SEM, TEM, ion probe, SXRF, noble gas measurements, and microprobe laser mass spectrometry of individual fragments

Acarofauna (Acari) associada à videira (Vitis vinifera L.) no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul.

Na cultura da videira (Vitis vinifera L.: Vitaceae), ácaros fitófagos das famílias Eriophyidae, Tarsonemidae e Tetranychidae são os mais importantes, enquanto que dentre os predadores destacamse os Phytoseiidae, Stigmaeidae e Iolinidae como inimigos naturais de ácaros praga. O objetivo deste trabalho foi conhecer a acarofauna associada à videira das variedades Alfrocheiro, Cabernet Sauvignon e Pinot Noir, nos municípios de Bento Gonçalves, Candiota e Encruzilhada do Sul, no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. As amostragens foram constituídas de três folhas coletadas de um ramo de 20 plantas tomadas ao acaso em cada área. Para avaliar a presença de ácaros nas gemas, no período de senescência, um ramo foi coletado de cada uma das 20 plantas amostradas. Foram encontrados 57.401 ácaros pertencentes a 18 famílias, 49 gêneros e 69 espécies. Phytoseiidae apresentou maior riqueza, com 17 espécies, seguida por Stigmaeidae, com 10 espécies, e Eriophyidae e Tydeidae, com sete espécies cada. Os Eriophyidae foram mais abundantes, com 88%, seguido de Tetranychidae, com 4% dos ácaros coletados. Calepitrimerus vitis (Nalepa, 1905) e Panonychus ulmi (Koch, 1836) foram os ácaros fitófagos mais comuns e Neoseiulus californicus (McGregor, 1954), Agistemus floridanus Gonzalez, 1965 e Pronematus anconai Baker, (1943) 1944 os ácaros predadores mais comuns. Palavras- Chave: Parreira, Tetranychidae, Phytoseiidae, Iolinidae, Controle biológico

Discovery of Brownleeite: a New Manganese Silicide Mineral in an Interplanetary Dust Particle

The Earth accretes approximately 40,000 tons of cosmic dust annually, originating mainly from the disintegration of comets and collisions among asteroids. This cosmic dust, also known as interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), is a subject of intense interest since it is made of the original building blocks of our Solar System. Although the specific parent bodies of IDPs are unknown, the anhydrous chondritic-porous IDPs (CP-IDPs) subset has been potentially linked to a cometary source. The CP-IDPs are extremely primitive materials based on their unequilibrated mineralogy, C-rich chemistry, and anomalous isotopic signatures. In particular, some CP-IDPs escaped the thermal, aqueous and impact shock processing that has modified or destroyed the original mineralogy of meteorites. Thus, the CP-IDPs represent some of the most primitive solar system materials available for laboratory study. Most CP-IDPs are comprised of minerals that are common on Earth. However, in the course of an examination of one of the CP-IDPs, we encountered three sub-micrometer sized grains of manganese silicide (MnSi), a phase that has heretofore not been found in nature. In the seminar, we would like to focus on IDP studies and this manganese silicide phase that has been approved as the first new mineral identified from a comet by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) in 2008. The mineral is named in honour of Donald E. Brownlee, an American astronomer and a founder of the field of cosmic dust research who is the principal investigator of the NASA Stardust Mission that collected dust samples from Comet 81P/Wild-2 and returned them to Earth. Much of our current view and understanding of the early solar system would not exist without the pioneering work of professor Don Brownlee in the study of IDPs

Evolutionary dynamics of tree invasions: complementing the unified framework for biological invasions

Evolutionary processes greatly impact the outcomes of biological invasions. An extensive body of research suggests that invasive populations often undergo phenotypic and ecological divergence from their native sources. Evolution also operates at different and distinct stages during the invasion process. Thus, it is important to incorporate evolutionary change into frameworks of biological invasions because it allows us to conceptualize how these processes may facilitate or hinder invasion success. Here, we review such processes, with an emphasis on tree invasions, and place them in the context of the unified framework for biological invasions. The processes and mechanisms described are pre-introduction evolutionary history, sampling effect, founder effect, genotype-by-environment interactions, admixture, hybridization, polyploidization, rapid evolution, epigenetics and second-genomes. For the last, we propose that co-evolved symbionts, both beneficial and harmful, which are closely physiologically associated with invasive species, contain critical genetic traits that affect the evolutionary dynamics of biological invasions. By understanding the mechanisms underlying invasion success, researchers will be better equipped to predict, understand and manage biological invasions

Error quantification in multi-parameter mapping facilitates robust estimation and enhanced group level sensitivity

Multi-Parameter Mapping (MPM) is a comprehensive quantitative neuroimaging protocol that enables estimation of four physical parameters (longitudinal and effective transverse relaxation rates and , proton density , and magnetization transfer saturation ) that are sensitive to microstructural tissue properties such as iron and myelin content. Their capability to reveal microstructural brain differences, however, is tightly bound to controlling random noise and artefacts (e.g. caused by head motion) in the signal. Here, we introduced a method to estimate the local error of , and maps that captures both noise and artefacts on a routine basis without requiring additional data. To investigate the method's sensitivity to random noise, we calculated the model-based signal-to-noise ratio (mSNR) and showed in measurements and simulations that it correlated linearly with an experimental raw-image-based SNR map. We found that the mSNR varied with MPM protocols, magnetic field strength (3T vs. 7T) and MPM parameters: it halved from to and decreased from to by a factor of 3-4. Exploring the artefact-sensitivity of the error maps, we generated robust MPM parameters using two successive acquisitions of each contrast and the acquisition-specific errors to down-weight erroneous regions. The resulting robust MPM parameters showed reduced variability at the group level as compared to their single-repeat or averaged counterparts. The error and mSNR maps may better inform power-calculations by accounting for local data quality variations across measurements. Code to compute the mSNR maps and robustly combined MPM maps is available in the open-source hMRI toolbox