Growth Performance and Root Transcriptome Remodeling of Arabidopsis in Response to Mars-Like Levels of Magnesium Sulfate

Martian regolith (unconsolidated surface material) is a potential medium for plant growth in bioregenerative life support systems during manned missions on Mars. However, hydrated magnesium sulfate mineral levels in the regolith of Mars can reach as high as 10 wt%, and would be expected to be highly inhibitory to plant growth. at 180 min. after initiation of treatment. mutants exhibit partial tolerance to magnesium sulfate, and by elucidating a small subset (500 vs. >10,000) of candidate genes for mutation or metabolic engineering that will enhance tolerance to magnesium sulfate soils

Long term productivity and collaboration in information science

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 02/07/2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2061-8 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Funding bodies have tended to encourage collaborative research because it is generally more highly cited than sole author research. But higher mean citation for collaborative articles does not imply collaborative researchers are in general more research productive. This article assesses the extent to which research productivity varies with the number of collaborative partners for long term researchers within three Web of Science subject areas: Information Science & Library Science, Communication and Medical Informatics. When using the whole number counting system, researchers who worked in groups of 2 or 3 were generally the most productive, in terms of producing the most papers and citations. However, when using fractional counting, researchers who worked in groups of 1 or 2 were generally the most productive. The findings need to be interpreted cautiously, however, because authors that produce few academic articles within a field may publish in other fields or leave academia and contribute to society in other ways

Vocational education in practice : a study of work-based learning in a construction programme at a Swedish upper secondary school

In many OECD countries an apparent connection is shown between education, the local economy and the local labor market. This connection seems to be stronger and more radical in Sweden, than in other similar countries. The construction program is thereby also a part of this market. Given the needs of the building industry for competent workers and the requirements from specific course syllabuses this paper explores how project-based vocational education contributes to the student's vocational competences. The aim of this study was to describeand analyse students’ perceptions of vocational competence gained from a PBVE environment and identify how this competence is constituted. From this broad aim, the following research questions were asked: (1) What kinds of competence are the students able to develop in a PBLE? (2) In what ways do the developed competence and vocational skills relate to the specific course syllabuses? (3) How is the students’vocational competence constituted? Methods adopted for this study are observations over student action in a project-based vocational education and focus group interviews with observed students. The result indicates a gap between acquired vocational competence at the project and the related learning goals in the course syllabuses. The developed vocational competence seems more adopted to fit the demands of the building industry rather than the intended course goals. Further, the findings indicate that the relationship between learning and support from teachers are strong whereas the room for individual initiative in the learning environment is limited. This study highlights the relationship between student action and the complexity in vocational education as a project based vocational education. The project’s high complexity affects the students’ learning ability to take own decisionsin the learning environment. This also affects the students’ motivation and ability to develop competences required to fulfill goals in course syllabuses. So, if the students’ are supposed to be able to be a part of their own learning the complexity in the task should not be too high. Hence, if the task is to easy the students’ will not be challenge enough in order to develop vocational competences