Intersectional Education

Education leads to higher future success, freedom, autonomy over one’s lifestyle, and an overall better quality of life. Unfortunately, women make up seventy percent of the world’s out-of-school youth. Additionally, minority groups are suffering from lack of access to educational resources, including native tongue instruction (Intel 2012). Not only are both groups suffering separately, but the intersection of female and minority groups are not achieving the same educational outcomes as majority or male groups. This brief explores this problem and examines how some governments are trying—or not trying—to address it

Drone Policy Overview

Modern advances in unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, have meant the proliferation of these aircraft throughout the United States (U.S.) that include uses for military, government, commerce, and recreation. Coinciding with advances in technology, increased access to drones, and decreased operational complexities, regulatory models have not been able to adapt to the evolving aerial environment

Affordable Net Zero Housing and Transportation Solutions

Today the built environment expends 43% of US energy. In the past ten years the science community has begun to tackle this issue with research on the concept of net zero buildings, or buildings that combine energy efficiency and on-site renewable energy production to use no net energy from off-site sources (Dannenberg, 2007). This policy brief explores some of the issues related to net zero construction, as well as variation in state policy approaches that support a net zero construction approach. Current issues affecting net zero are the lack of definitional clarity, the broad range of policies needed to construct net zero housing, and the cost of implementation

Think-aloud interviews: A tool for exploring student statistical reasoning

Research has shown that introductory statistics students hold many misconceptions, and that many of these are also present among practicing scientists. But statistics is becoming important to many new fields, and understanding how students learn statistics is more important than ever, if it is to be effectively taught. We describe an education research method intended to reveal how students think and to provide practical ways of measuring their understanding: a combination of think-aloud interviews and concept inventories. Think-aloud interviews give unprecedented insight into student thinking, while concept inventories can be administered to entire classes to measure learning. We demonstrate the method through insights gained from 42 think-aloud interviews with introductory students, plus large-scale concept inventory data from over 50 questions given as pre- and post-tests to hundreds of introductory statistics students at two institutions. Think-aloud interviews revealed previously under-reported misconceptions about sampling distributions and causation, while helping us refine conceptual questions to measure their prevalence at large scale. These insights, and the final questions, may help educators develop improved lessons, while suggesting directions for future statistics education research and providing practical tools for researchers to improve our understanding of student learning.Comment: 23 pages, 4 tables, 3 figures; supplemental data available online at https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/1005844

The Holocene lake-evaporation history of the afro-alpine Lake Garba Guracha in the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia, based on δ18O records of sugar biomarker and diatoms

In eastern Africa, there are few long, high-quality records of environmental change at high altitudes, inhibiting a broader understanding of regional climate change. We investigated a Holocene lacustrine sediment archive from Lake Garba Guracha, Bale Mountains, Ethiopia, (3,950 m a.s.l.), and reconstructed high-altitude lake evaporation history using δ18O records derived from the analysis of compound-specific sugar biomarkers and diatoms. The δ18Odiatom and δ18Ofuc records are clearly correlated and reveal similar ranges (7.9‰ and 7.1‰, respectively). The lowest δ18O values occurred between 10 and 7 cal ka BP and were followed by a continuous shift towards more positive δ18O values. Due to the aquatic origin of the sugar biomarker and the similar trends of δ18Odiatom, we suggest that our lacustrine δ18Ofuc record reflects δ18Olake water. Therefore, without completely excluding the influence of the ‘amount-effect’ and the ‘source-effect‘, we interpret our record to reflect primarily the precipitation-to-evaporation ratio (P/E). We conclude that precipitation increased at the beginning of the Holocene, leading to an overflowing lake between ~10 and ~8 cal ka BP, indicated by low δ18Olake water values interpreted as reduced evaporative enrichment. This is followed by a continuous trend towards drier conditions, indicating at least a seasonally closed lake system

DNA metabarcoding marker choice skews perception of marine eukaryotic biodiversity

DNA metabarcoding is an increasingly popular technique to investigate biodiversity; however, many methodological unknowns remain, especially concerning the biases resulting from marker choice. Regions of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and 18S rDNA (18S) genes are commonly employed “universal” markers for eukaryotes, but the extent of taxonomic biases introduced by these markers and how such biases may impact metabarcoding performance is not well quantified. Here, focusing on macroeukaryotes, we use standardized sampling from autonomous reef monitoring structures (ARMS) deployed in the world\u27s most biodiverse marine ecosystem, the Coral Triangle, to compare the performance of COI and 18S markers. We then compared metabarcoding data to image-based annotations of ARMS plates. Although both markers provided similar estimates of taxonomic richness and total sequence reads, marker choice skewed estimates of eukaryotic diversity. The COI marker recovered relative abundances of the dominant sessile phyla consistent with image annotations. Both COI and the image annotations provided higher relative abundance estimates of Bryozoa and Porifera and lower estimates of Chordata as compared to 18S, but 18S recovered 25% more phyla than COI. Thus, while COI more reliably reflects the occurrence of dominant sessile phyla, 18S provides a more holistic representation of overall taxonomic diversity. Ideal marker choice is, therefore, contingent on study system and research question, especially in relation to desired taxonomic resolution, and a multimarker approach provides the greatest application across a broad range of research objectives. As metabarcoding becomes an essential tool to monitor biodiversity in our changing world, it is critical to evaluate biases associated with marker choice

Mikaela Rose Meyer: Impact de la pandémie de Covid-19 sur les populations criminelles et pénitentiaires

Cette présentation a été faite par Mikaela Rose Meyer. Le titre de la présentation est: “Impact de la pandémie de Covid-19 sur les populations criminelles et pénitentiaires.” -- Chaque mois, l'équipe COVID Information Commons (avec le Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub) rassemble un groupe de chercheurs étudiant de nombreux aspects de la pandémie actuelle, pour partager leurs recherches et répondre aux questions de notre communauté. Ces événements mettent en valeur les efforts continus des scientifiques dans la lutte contre le COVID-19, notamment les opportunités de collaboration

Mikaela Meyer: Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Crime and Corrections Populations

This presentation was made by Mikaela Meyer, Carnegie-Mellon University. The presentation's title is: "Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Crime and Corrections Populations." -- Every month, the COVID Information Commons Team (along with the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub) brings together a group of researchers studying wide-ranging aspects of the current pandemic, to share their research and answer questions from our community. The events showcase scientists' ongoing efforts in the fight against COVID-19, including opportunities for collaboration