Practicing What We Preach? Reflections on More Sustainable and Responsible IS Research and Teaching Practices

Research on IS solutions for environmental sustainability have evolved to a modest, but firm body of knowledge. Despite this progressive understanding about the potential of IS in enabling environmental sustainability, our academic practices seem widely unaffected by these insights. The way we do research or conduct teaching is rarely influenced by sustainability considerations. For example, before the pandemic many of us belonged to a hypermobile group that travelled 5-6 times more than the average employee. Our research is also often not aligned with environmental goals. We research digital technologies without sufficiently acknowledging the significant amounts of resources they consume. Similarly, our teaching often focuses on the effective development and use of information systems; however, rebound, second order, or spillover effects are barely covered. Based on these observations we raise the question: Are we practicing enough of what we preach? While recognizing several efforts of IS researchers, we can no longer ignore the ‘environmental elephant in the room’. In our panel report, we discuss the status-quo and ideas to improve the environmental and societal impact of our academic practices and present three ideas to move forward: Leverage virtualization and limit air travel, overhaul teaching curricula, and recalibrate incentives and evaluation regimes

Practicing what we preach? Reflecting on environmental sustainable research practices of the IS community

Over the past decade, research on IS solutions for environmental sustainability evolved and produced a modest but firm body of knowledge. Despite this progressive understanding about ICT’s solution potential for environmental sustainability, our research practices seem widely unaffected by these insights. Most of us travel by air for work several times a year, to conferences, research stays, or guest lectures. Our community meetings do not seem well aligned with ecological goals. We research and apply technologies, such as blockchain or artificial intelligence, without sufficiently acknowledging the enormous amounts of energy they consume. It raises the fundamental question: Do we practice what we preach? While recognizing the good intentions IS research pursues, should we no longer ignore the environmental ‘elephant in the room’? In this inclusive panel discussion, we openly debate these issues. Thereby, we intend to capture the status-quo of the sustainability of our research practices and develop recommendations on how to improve it and ways of measuring the carbon footprint of some key activities

Practicing what we preach? Reflections on more sustainable and responsible IS research and teaching practices

Research on IS solutions for environmental sustainability have evolved to a modest, but firm body of knowledge. Despite this progressive understanding about the potential of IS in enabling environmental sustainability, our academic practices seem widely unaffected by these insights. The way we do research or conduct teaching is rarely influenced by sustainability considerations. For example, before the pandemic many of us belonged to a hypermobile group that travelled 5-6 times more than the average employee. Our research is also often not aligned with environmental goals. We research digital technologies without sufficiently acknowledging the significant amounts of resources they consume. Similarly, our teaching often focuses on the effective development and use of information systems; however, rebound, second order, or spillover effects are barely covered. Based on these observations we raise the question: Are we practicing enough of what we preach? While recognizing several efforts of IS researchers, we can no longer ignore the ‘environmental elephant in the room’. In our panel report, we discuss the status-quo and ideas to improve the environmental and societal impact of our academic practices and present three ideas to move forward: Leverage virtualization and limit air travel, overhaul teaching curricula, and recalibrate incentives and evaluation regimes

Challenges of and opportunities for protecting European soil biodiversity

Soil biodiversity and related ecosystem functions are neglected in most biodiversity assessments and nature conservation actions. We examined how society, and particularly policy makers, have addressed these factors worldwide with a focus on Europe and explored the role of soils in nature conservation in Germany as an example. We reviewed past and current global and European policies, compared soil ecosystem functioning in- and outside protected areas, and examined the role of soils in nature conservation management via text analyses. Protection and conservation of soil biodiversity and soil ecosystem functioning have been insufficient. Soil-related policies are unenforceable and lack soil biodiversity conservation goals, focusing instead on other environmental objectives. We found no evidence of positive effects of current nature conservation measures in multiple soil ecosystem functions in Europe. In German conservation management, soils are considered only from a limited perspective (e.g., as physicochemical part of the environment and as habitat for aboveground organisms). By exploring policy, evidence, and management as it relates to soil ecosystems, we suggest an integrative perspective to move nature conservation toward targeting soil ecosystems directly (e.g., by setting baselines, monitoring soil threats, and establishing a soil indicator system)

Stratigraphie combinée de radiolaires et ammonites du Jurassique supérieur de la péninsule Antarctique : implications pour la stratigraphie des radiolaires

New biostratigraphic data from cooccurring radiolarians and ammonites in Upper Jurassic sequences of the Antarctic Peninsula (Byers Peninsula on Livingston Island and Longing Gap, Graham Land), permit a revised and more refined regional stratigraphy. The new data also allow a revision of the chronostratigraphic assignment of some American radiolarian zones established by Pessagno and collaborators: the boundary of Zone 34 is assigned to the latest Kimmeridgian, contrasting the former assignment to the early/late Tithonian boundary. The boundary between Subzone 4 beta and 4 alpha is assigned to the early Tithonian, but was usually correlated with the early late Tithonian/late late Tithonian boundary. The new chronostratigraphic data from Antarctica are used together with recent results of Baumgartner and collaborators to revise the age assignment of the North American Late Jurassic radiolarian zones.De nouvelles données biostratigraphiques obtenues à partir de co-occurences de radiolaires et ammonites dans les séries du Jurassique supérieur de la péninsule Antarctique (péninsule Byers sur l'île de Livingston et de Longing Gap, Graham Land), permettent de réviser et affiner une stratigraphie régionale. Les nouvelles données permettent aussi une révision des attributions chronosrratigraphiques de quelques zonations de radiolaires américaines établies par Pessagno et ses collaborateurs : la limite de la zone 3-4 est assignée au Kimméridgien le plus tardif, contrastant ainsi avec la précédente assignation à la limite Tithonien précoce-tardif. La limite entre la sous-zone 4 beta et 4 alpha est assignée au Tithonien inférieur mais fut habituellement correlée avec la limite entre les parties inférieure et supérieure du Tithonien supérieur. Les nouvelles données chronostratigraphiques de l'Antarctique sont utilisées en même temps que les résultats récents de Baumgartner et ses collaborateurs pour réviser les attributions d'âge des zones à radiolaires du Jurassique supérieur d'Amérique du Nord.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y MuseoUniversidad de Buenos Aire

Doxorubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity in Collaborative Cross (CC) Mice Recapitulates Individual Cardiotoxicity in Humans.

Anthracyclines cause progressive cardiotoxicity whose ultimate severity is individual to the patient. Genetic determinants contributing to this variation are difficult to study using current mouse models. Our objective was to determine whether a spectrum of anthracycline induced cardiac disease can be elicited across 10 Collaborative Cross mouse strains given the same dose of doxorubicin. Mice from ten distinct strains were given 5 mg/kg of doxorubicin intravenously once weekly for 5 weeks (total 25 mg/kg). Mice were killed at acute or chronic timepoints. Body weight was assessed weekly, followed by terminal complete blood count, pathology and a panel of biomarkers. Linear models were fit to assess effects of treatment, sex, and sex-by-treatment interactions for each timepoint. Impaired growth and cardiac pathology occurred across all strains. Severity of these varied by strain and sex, with greater severity in males. Cardiac troponin I and myosin light chain 3 demonstrated strain- and sex-specific elevations in the acute phase with subsequent decline despite ongoing progression of cardiac disease. Acute phase cardiac troponin I levels predicted the ultimate severity of cardiac pathology poorly, whereas myosin light chain 3 levels predicted the extent of chronic cardiac injury in males. Strain- and sex-dependent renal toxicity was evident. Regenerative anemia manifested during the acute period. We confirm that variable susceptibility to doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity observed in humans can be modeled in a panel of CC strains. In addition, we identified a potential predictive biomarker in males. CC strains provide reproducible models to explore mechanisms contributing to individual susceptibility in humans

Unified Treatment of Asymptotic van der Waals Forces

In a framework for long-range density-functional theory we present a unified full-field treatment of the asymptotic van der Waals interaction for atoms, molecules, surfaces, and other objects. The only input needed consists of the electron densities of the interacting fragments and the static polarizability or the static image plane, which can be easily evaluated in a ground-state density-functional calculation for each fragment. Results for separated atoms, molecules, and for atoms/molecules outside surfaces are in agreement with those of other, more elaborate, calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Verification of micro-scale photogrammetry for smooth three-dimensional object measurement

By using sub-millimetre laser speckle pattern projection we show that photogrammetry systems are able to measure smooth three-dimensional objects with surface height deviations less than 1 μm. The projection of laser speckle patterns allows correspondences on the surface of smooth spheres to be found, and as a result, verification artefacts with low surface height deviations were measured. A combination of VDI/VDE and ISO standards were also utilised to provide a complete verification method, and determine the quality parameters for the system under test. Using the proposed method applied to a photogrammetry system, a 5 mm radius sphere was measured with an expanded uncertainty of 8.5 μm for sizing errors, and 16.6 μm for form errors with a 95 % confidence interval. Sphere spacing lengths between 6 mm and 10 mm were also measured by the photogrammetry system, and were found to have expanded uncertainties of around 20 μm with a 95 % confidence interval

Parkinson-related parkin reduces α-Synuclein phosphorylation in a gene transfer model

α-Synuclein aggregates in Lewy bodies and plays a central role in the pathogenesis of a group of neurodegenerative disorders, known as "Synucleinopathies", including Parkinson's disease. Parkin mutations result in loss of parkin E3-ubiquitin ligase activity and cause autosomal recessive early onset parkinsonism