The effectiveness of e-Learning on biosecurity practice to slow the spread of invasive alien species

Online e-Learning is increasingly being used to provide environmental training. Prevention measures including biosecurity are essential to reducing the introduction and spread of invasive alien species (IAS) and are central to international and national IAS policy. This paper is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of e-Learning as a tool to increase awareness, risk perception and biosecurity behaviour in relation to IAS among individuals conducting work activities or research (fieldwork) in the field. We surveyed participants (a mixture of students and professionals) before, and 6 months after undertaking an e-Learning course on IAS and biosecurity practices. Awareness of IAS and self-reported biosecurity behaviour increased after e-Learning among students and professionals. Students had a lower awareness of IAS than professionals before training (20% of students vs 60% of professionals), but after training students showed a greater increase in awareness which led to similar levels of awareness post-training (81%). Prior to training, risk perception was also lower amongst students than professionals (33% of students and 59% of professionals were aware of the risk that their activities posed to the accidental spread of IAS). There was no change in risk perception amongst professionals after training, however training led to a doubling of risk perception in students. E-Learning also led to an increase in reported biosecurity behaviour and cleaning practices and there were higher levels of biosecurity cleaning amongst professionals. The higher awareness and better biosecurity amongst professionals is likely to reflect their familiarity with the issues of IAS and day-to-day activities in the field. Our results suggest that e-Learning is an effective tool to raise awareness and encourage behaviour change among field workers and researchers in an attempt to reduce the risk of accidental introduction and spread of IAS

ENM2020 : A FREE ONLINE COURSE AND SET OF RESOURCES ON MODELING SPECIES NICHES AND DISTRIBUTIONS

The field of distributional ecology has seen considerable recent attention, particularly surrounding the theory, protocols, and tools for Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) or Species Distribution Modeling (SDM). Such analyses have grown steadily over the past two decades-including a maturation of relevant theory and key concepts-but methodological consensus has yet to be reached. In response, and following an online course taught in Spanish in 2018, we designed a comprehensive English-language course covering much of the underlying theory and methods currently applied in this broad field. Here, we summarize that course, ENM2020, and provide links by which resources produced for it can be accessed into the future. ENM2020 lasted 43 weeks, with presentations from 52 instructors, who engaged with >2500 participants globally through >14,000 hours of viewing and >90,000 views of instructional video and question-and-answer sessions. Each major topic was introduced by an "Overview" talk, followed by more detailed lectures on subtopics. The hierarchical and modular format of the course permits updates, corrections, or alternative viewpoints, and generally facilitates revision and reuse, including the use of only the Overview lectures for introductory courses. All course materials are free and openly accessible (CC-BY license) to ensure these resources remain available to all interested in distributional ecology.Peer reviewe

ENM2020: A Free Online Course and Set of Resources on Modeling Species' Niches and Distributions

The field of distributional ecology has seen considerable recent attention, particularly surrounding the theory, protocols, and tools for Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) or Species Distribution Modeling (SDM). Such analyses have grown steadily over the past two decades-including a maturation of relevant theory and key concepts-but methodological consensus has yet to be reached. In response, and following an online course taught in Spanish in 2018, we designed a comprehensive English-language course covering much of the underlying theory and methods currently applied in this broad field. Here, we summarize that course, ENM2020, and provide links by which resources produced for it can be accessed into the future. ENM2020 lasted 43 weeks, with presentations from 52 instructors, who engaged with >2500 participants globally through >14,000 hours of viewing and >90,000 views of instructional video and question-and-answer sessions. Each major topic was introduced by an "Overview" talk, followed by more detailed lectures on subtopics. The hierarchical and modular format of the course permits updates, corrections, or alternative viewpoints, and generally facilitates revision and reuse, including the use of only the Overview lectures for introductory courses. All course materials are free and openly accessible (CC-BY license) to ensure these resources remain available to all interested in distributional ecology

Biodiversity information services: a (not-so-) little knowledge that acts

Standards set up by Biodiversity Information Standards-Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG), initially developed as a way to share taxonomical data, greatly facilitated the establishment of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as the largest index to digitally-accessible primary biodiversity information records (PBR) held by many institutions around the world. The level of detail and coverage of the body of standards that later became the Darwin Core terms enabled increasingly precise retrieval of relevant records useful for increased digitally-accessible knowledge (DAK) which, in turn, may have helped to solve ecologically-relevant questions. After more than a decade of data accrual and release, an increasing number of papers and reports are citing GBIF either as a source of data or as a pointer to the original datasets. GBIF has curated a list of over 5,000 citations that were examined for contents, and to which tags were applied describing such contents as additional keywords. The list now provides a window on what users want to accomplish using such DAK. We performed a preliminary word frequency analysis of this literature, starting at titles, which refers to GBIF as a resource. Through a standardization and mapping of terms, we examined how the facility-enabled data seem to have been used by scientists and other practitioners through time: what concepts/issues are pervasive, which taxon groups are mostly addressed, and whether data concentrate around specific geographical or biogeographical regions. We hoped to cast light on which types of ecological problems the community believes are amenable to study through the judicious use of this data commons and found that, indeed, a few themes were distinctly more frequently mentioned than others. Among those, generally-perceived issues such as climate change and its effect on biodiversity at global and regional scales seemed prevalent. The taxonomic groups were also unevenly mentioned, with birds and plants being the most frequently named. However, the entire list of potential subjects that might have used GBIF-enabled data is now quite wide, showing that the availability of well-structured data has spawned a widening spectrum of possible use cases. Among them, some enjoy early and continuous presence (e.g. species, biodiversity, climate) while others have started to show up only later, once a critical mass of data seemed to have been attained (e.g. ecosystems, suitability, endemism). Biodiversity information in the form of standards-compliant DAK may thus already have become a commodity enabling insight into an increasingly more complex and diverse body of science. Paraphrasing Tennyson, more things were wrought by data than TDWG dreamt of

Lysine deacetylase inhibition prevents diabetes by chromatin-independent immunoregulation and β-cell protection

Item does not contain fulltextType 1 diabetes is due to destruction of pancreatic beta-cells. Lysine deacetylase inhibitors (KDACi) protect beta-cells from inflammatory destruction in vitro and are promising immunomodulators. Here we demonstrate that the clinically well-tolerated KDACi vorinostat and givinostat revert diabetes in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes and counteract inflammatory target cell damage by a mechanism of action consistent with transcription factor--rather than global chromatin--hyperacetylation. Weaning NOD mice received low doses of vorinostat and givinostat in their drinking water until 100-120 d of age. Diabetes incidence was reduced by 38% and 45%, respectively, there was a 15% increase in the percentage of islets without infiltration, and pancreatic insulin content increased by 200%. Vorinostat treatment increased the frequency of functional regulatory T-cell subsets and their transcription factors Gata3 and FoxP3 in parallel to a decrease in inflammatory dendritic cell subsets and their cytokines IL-6, IL-12, and TNF-alpha. KDACi also inhibited LPS-induced Cox-2 expression in peritoneal macrophages from C57BL/6 and NOD mice. In insulin-producing beta-cells, givinostat did not upregulate expression of the anti-inflammatory genes Socs1-3 or sirtuin-1 but reduced levels of IL-1beta + IFN-gamma-induced proinflammatory Il1a, Il1b, Tnfalpha, Fas, Cxcl2, and reduced cytokine-induced ERK phosphorylation. Further, NF-kappaB genomic iNos promoter binding was reduced by 50%, and NF-kappaB-dependent mRNA expression was blocked. These effects were associated with NF-kappaB subunit p65 hyperacetylation. Taken together, these data provide a rationale for clinical trials of safety and efficacy of KDACi in patients with autoimmune disease such as type 1 diabetes