Exploring How Secondary STEM Teachers and Undergraduate Mentors Adapt Digital Technologies to Promote Culturally Relevant Education during COVID-19

The COVID-19 global pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to K-16 educators, including the closing of educational agencies and the abrupt transition to online teaching and learning. Educators sought to adapt in-person learning activities to teach in remote and hybrid online settings. This study explores how a partnership between middle and high school teachers in an urban school district and undergraduate STEM mentors of color leveraged digital tools and collaborative pedagogies to teach science, technology, and engineering during a global pandemic. We used a qualitative multi-case study to describe three cases of teachers and undergraduate mentors. We then offer a cross-case analysis to interpret the diverse ways in which partners used technologies, pedagogy, and content to promote equitable outcomes for students, both in remote and hybrid settings. We found that the partnership and technologies led to rigorous and connected learning for students. Teachers and undergraduates carefully scaffolded technology use and content applications while providing ongoing opportunities for students to receive feedback and reflect on their learning. Findings provide implications for community partnerships and digital tools to promote collaborative and culturally relevant STEM learning opportunities in the post-pandemic era

Reciprocal Disarmament: A Game Proposal

The events of the late 1980s brought high hopes that arms control could play a major role in reducing both the danger of war and the considerable economic burden which the maintenance of large military forces represents. At the same time, many critics have pointed out that arms control, at least as traditionally conceived, has inherent limitations. For no treaty, however well-drafted, can ever encompass and quantify every significant aspect of the military strength that potential adversaries may have

Evaluation of ozone difluoride as a liquid propellant additive Final report

Ozone difluoride evaluated as liquid propellant additiv

“Breaking the rules”: A reflective processual analysis of multidisciplinary academic collaboration.

Three academics from different fields collaborated on a study in which we reflected on our group involvement. Although we originally worked together to provide our different perspectives on how to use debates in online courses, we found that our multidisciplinary collaboration evolved into self-study as we each wrote narratives about our own participation which we then discussed and interpreted from our unique perspectives. Despite the fact that our members consisted of someone from nursing, someone from business, and someone in psychology, we all agreed that we engaged in a successful collaboration, as assessed by our desire to work together again and by the joint publication of an article. This paper presents our individual and collective interpretations of our attempts to understand why we were successful in this project, even though we did not follow most of the principles of multidisciplinary collaboration, nor of the usual conventions of our respective disciplines

Debate as a Teaching Strategy in Online Education: A Case Study

This reflective case study was based on our independent use of the debate as an online instructional approach and our shared interest in instructional techniques. Using narrative inquiry, we melded our data sources to analyze the findings, including our individual experiences with the technique. Our paper contributes to the field of research on instructional techniques (specifically debates), as well as online distance education. The findings suggest that the use of debates as instructional techniques in text-based paced and un-paced courses at the online undergraduate and graduate levels can contribute to improved learning outcomes and student satisfaction

Evidence That Eye-Facing Photophores Serve as a Reference for Counterillumination in an Order of Deep-Sea Fishes

Counterillumination, the masking of an animal\u27s silhouette with ventral photophores, is found in a number of mesopelagic taxa but is difficult to employ because it requires that the animal match the intensity of downwelling light without seeing its own ventral photophores. It has been proposed that the myctophid, Tarletonbeania crenularis, uses a photophore directed towards the eye, termed an eye-facing photophore, as a reference standard that it adjusts to match downwelling light. The potential use of this mechanism, however, has not been evaluated in other fishes. Here, we use micro-computed tomography, photography and dissection to evaluate the presence/absence of eye-facing photophores in three families of stomiiform fishes. We found that all sampled species with ventral photophores capable of counterillumination possess an eye-facing photophore that is pigmented on the anterior and lateral sides, thus preventing its use as a laterally directed signal, lure or searchlight. The two species that are incapable of counterillumination, Cyclothone obscura and Sigmops bathyphilus, lack an eye-facing photophore. After determining the phylogenetic distribution of eye-facing photophores, we used histology to examine the morphology of the cranial tissue in Argyropelecus aculeatus and determined that light from the eye-facing photophore passes through a transparent layer of tissue, then the lens, and finally strikes the accessory retina. Additionally, eight of the 14 species for which fresh specimens were available had an aphakic gap that aligned with the path of emitted light from the eye-facing photophore, while the remaining six had no aphakic gap. These findings, combined with records of eye-facing photophores from distantly related taxa, strongly suggest that eye-facing photophores serve as a reference for counterillumination in these fishes

Abundance and dynamics of filamentous fungi in the complex ambrosia gardens of the primitively eusocial beetle Xyleborinus saxeseniiRatzeburg (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae)

Insect fungus gardens consist of a community of interacting microorganisms that can have either beneficial or detrimental effects to the farmers. In contrast to fungus-farming ants and termites, the fungal communities of ambrosia beetles and the effects of particular fungal species on the farmers are largely unknown. Here, we used a laboratory rearing technique for studying the filamentous fungal garden community of the ambrosia beetle, Xyleborinus saxesenii, which cultivates fungi in tunnels excavated within dead trees. Raffaelea sulfurea and Fusicolla acetilerea were transmitted in spore-carrying organs by gallery founding females and established first in new gardens. Raffaelea sulfurea had positive effects on egg-laying and larval numbers. Over time, four other fungal species emerged in the gardens. Prevalence of one of them, Paecilomyces variotii, correlated negatively with larval numbers and can be harmful to adults by forming biofilms on their bodies. It also comprised the main portion of garden material removed from galleries by adults. Our data suggest that two mutualistic, several commensalistic and one to two pathogenic filamentous fungi are associated with X. saxesenii. Fungal diversity in gardens of ambrosia beetles appears to be much lower than that in gardens of fungus-culturing ants, which seems to result from essential differences in substrates and behaviour