Fake News and Information Literacy in the 21st Century

The concept of fake news has been around for centuries but it has seen a resurgence in the last few years. Social media, the prevalence of online information, and divisive social issues have created an atmosphere that forces us to reassess the way we teach information literacy skills for lifelong learning. This lightning session will focus on the development and delivery of a course centered around the analysis of fake news through the lens of information literacy concepts

Contribution of Dissolved Organic Carbon Leaching to the Annual Carbon Budget of a Dairy Farm

Soils are the largest terrestrial store of carbon (C) and changes in this store of C can impact on soil quality and atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Research on C budgets at paddock to national scales has focused most attention on the processes of respiration and photosynthesis in determining the net loss or gain of carbon from an ecosystem. However, leaching of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a potentially important component of the carbon budget that is rarely measured when developing carbon budgets, and as a consequence, is often estimated or excluded. Much of the literature indicates that while DOC leaching is important, the loss of DOC from the terrestrial ecosystem may only be small. In the vasose zone DOC that is leached may be adsorbed on to soil and stabilised or may be mineralised, effectively preventing it from leaching from the ecosystem. The objectives of this thesis were to determine if DOC leaching from the soil of a dairy farm was an important contribution to the carbon budget. To measure this, soil leachate was collected from five paddocks using 100 suction cup lysimeters. These were installed within the footprints of two eddy covariance towers on a dairy farm in Waharoa, Waikato, New Zealand. In general samples were bulked over paddocks, with 10 mL of water from each suction cup contributing to the overall bulked sample. Water extracted from the suction cups was analysed for DOC, total nitrogen, and nitrate. DOC concentration measurements were coupled to the volume of water draining through the soil. The volume of drainage was obtained from a water balance model using measurements of evaporation and precipitation. Leaching from the soil started in mid-May continuing through till mid-November. The total amount of water draining through the soil for the year was calculated to be 990 mm, with a mean concentration of 4.5 ± 0.8 mg L-1 (mean ± SE). The mass of DOC leached was 38 ± 4 kg C ha-1 yr-1 (mean ± SE). The concentration of DOC showed no monthly variation, while the mass of DOC showed a strong seasonal trend, with the greatest mass of DOC leaching during the wet winter period. Ultimately the main driver of DOC leaching at this site was the volume of water draining through the soil, because DOC concentration changed very little. In order to understand the suite of processes that influence the fate of DOC the subsoil, internal cycling process including mineralisation and sorption of DOC were investigated in the laboratory. Results showed that DOC leached to a depth of 0.65 m could be mineralised by soil microbes lower in the profile, converting it to CO2. The total C respired over a week (12.81 µg CO2-C-1 g soil-1) was 11 times greater than the C added (1.18 µg C-1 g soil-1). In a repeat of the same study the amount of CO2 respired was 25 times greater than the addition of DOC. Additionally sorption experiments indicated that the concentration of DOC lost to the groundwater would be less than the concentration of DOC measured at 0.65 m. Soil water solution with a concentration of 7 mg L-1 DOC mixed with subsoil had a 50% reduction in concentration when shaken for four hours with Te Puninga soil. Similar results were found in the Piarere soil with a 34% reduction in DOC concentration. In contrast when both soils were shaken with DOC (4 mg L-1) in a second experiment, there was a small amount of net desorption. There was potential for the soils at this site to reduce the concentration of DOC leached from 0.65 m, through adsorption of DOC onto the soil. Subsequently sorption would have caused a reduction in the DOC mass lost. While results from laboratory studies were variable it was clear that both sorption and mineralisation in subsoils will moderate leaching losses of DOC to groundwater. In the context of a paddock scale C budget, where the atmospheric exchange of C through respiration and photosynthesis was about -880 kg C ha-1yr-1, leaching of 38 kg C ha-1 yr-1, represents 4.5% of the total exchange. Compared to the net ecosystem carbon budget, which included farm inputs and outputs, of a similar intensive grazed system, DOC leaching is equal to 3-15% of the total. However as DOC leaching at 0.65 m does not accurately represent a leaching loss from the system, as sorption and mineralisation can further alter the mass leached, the contribution of DOC loss through leaching to the carbon budget is comparably small and does not represent a significant component of the C budget at this site

The Power of Stories: Using Fiction & Nonfiction to Develop Information Literacy Skills

In this presentation, we will outline our experiences crafting new credit-bearing courses that integrate information literacy skills using non-traditional materials. Through the use of fiction and films based on real women, science fiction, and popular nonfiction, we will share how we built courses that satisfy university information literacy curriculum requirements. One challenge of credit-bearing information literacy courses can be providing authentic context for students. Students may not understand how skills transfer outside of the artificial contexts provided. We will address ways course content can be used to provide authentic context by asking students to use non-traditional materials to consider research. We will demonstrate the way that course content has impacted our design decisions, assessment, and instructional activities while adhering to common objectives. Course A uses fictional depictions of real women in fiction and film to engage students in discussions of authority. Students research the real women whose stories are told fictionally. This research forces them to grapple with what authority means in both fictional and non-fictional contexts. Course B uses science fiction to understand complex, technical science concepts. By combining active learning with science fiction stories and films, students can identify the role of science in a story, problems and solutions in modern science, and pseudoscience. Science fiction helps students communicate scientific concepts clearly, value forms of science journalism, and explore “forbidden knowledge,” the scientific method, transparency, and peer review. Course C uses popular nonfiction to consider scholarship as a conversation. Using Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, students are asked to consider the larger conversation that Ansari is part of. By considering the book’s research, students consider academic privilege and how we determine authority. Through stand-up comedy and Ansari’s Netflix show students evaluate how purpose impacts production and product, and how conversations are constructed as accessible or inaccessible

Doxycycline-inducible overexpression of NANOG in bovine fibroblasts and nuclear transfer embryos

Naïve pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ES cells) have the ability to give rise to all cell types including functional gametes. These cells have been well established in mice and rats. The potential for biomedical and agricultural applications of pluripotent stem cells in livestock are vast. Having this resource will make in vitro techniques more achievable for research purposes and commercial use. Their use for chimera formation will increase the production of high quality embryos, resulting in a faster inclusion of desirable traits in breeding lines. The aim of this study was to investigate the molecular characteristics of pluripotency in bovine embryos. This is an incremental step to aid our understanding of the greater system which will encourage the derivation of ES cells within the bovine species. An initial target was the key pluripotency transcription factor NANOG. Nanog has thousands of targets and orchestrates the regulation of the naïve pluripotent molecular environment. This thesis will investigate the overexpression of NANOG with a doxycycline-inducible system in bovine female fibroblasts and nuclear transfer (NT) embryos derived from these. It was hypothesised that the overexpression of NANOG would stimulate the pluripotency network, increasing pluripotency. It has previously been recognised that the re-activation of the X-chromosome in females is an indicator of naïve pluripotency in mouse. Notably, the gene Xist which is important for the inactivation of the X-chromosome is directly repressed by Nanog. It was hypothesised that this would hold true in the bovine system. Both the cell line and embryos were analysed for mRNA and protein expression of ectopic NANOG using quantitative PCR (qPCR) and immunocytochemistry. Eight pluripotency-related genes (endogenous NANOG, OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, PDGFRα, SOX17, SOCS3 and FGF4) were quantified using qPCR to investigate the impact of increased NANOG in the NT embryo at day 8. Expression of XIST mRNA was analysed using qPCR and the inactive X-chromosome was identified using immunocytochemistry to understand the role of NANOG in the re activation of the X-chromosome in the bovine system. It was found that the inducible system significantly increased the expression of ectopic NANOG mRNA and protein within the fibroblasts used for NT. A two-fold significant increase of total NANOG mRNA was achieved in the NT embryo, although no additional NANOG protein was identified. The increased NANOG had no effect on the eight pluripotency-related genes investigated. The increased NANOG had no effect on the expression of XIST in the bovine system. No inactive X-chromosomes were identified via immunocytochemistry during this project. Subsequent to this research, details of an alternative overexpression technique using CRISPR technology were published. Use of this system will make research in this field achievable to a higher quality in a shorter timeframe

Self-pain enmeshment: Future possible selves, sociotropy, autonomy and adjustment to chronic pain

The aims of this study were to replicate and extend previous observations on the relationship between enmeshment of the self and pain and measures of adjustment [Morley et al., Possible selves in chronic pain: self-pain enmeshment, adjustment and acceptance, Pain 2005;115:84–94], and to test the hypothesis that individual variation in motivational preferences interacts with enmeshment. 82 chronic pain patients completed standardized self-report measures of depression, anxiety, acceptance and the possible selves interview which generated measures of their hoped-for (own and other perspectives) and feared-for selves. They made judgments about the conditionality of each self on the continuing presence of pain as a measure of self-pain enmeshment. A series of hierarchical regression analyses, that adjusted for demographics, pain characteristics and disability, confirmed the relationship between self enmeshment and depression and acceptance. When anxiety was considered, there was no main effect for any of the self aspects but there were specific interactions between the hoped-for (own) and (other) selves and two motivational preferences – autonomy and sociotropy