Honey Bee and Varroa Destructor Population Dynamics

Over a decade ago, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) began to plague honey bee colonies in the United States. An identified contributor has been the Varroa destructor parasitic mite that infests honeybee cells in the early stages of development. Bees with this mite as a parasite are weakened and their lifespan decreases. A system of differential equations with a control on the mites was created to model the populations of the hive bee, forager bee, and mites. The different equilibrium points that result from the varying levels of the mites’ death rate is investigated. A bifurcation point at approximately 0.0165 was found. With a mite death rate less 0.0165, the hive and foragers bees, and mites coexist in a hive over the course of a year with an initial low mite population. These values are based on other set parameters: the daily laying rate of eggs by the queen, brood mortality, the transition rate from hive bee to forager bee, social inhibition, the death rate of foragers, the death rate of hive and forager bees due to mites, growth rate of the mite population, and the carrying capacity of the hive, all parameters which are found in literature

Natural Disasters Mental-Health Impacts on Australian, Greek, and United States Farmers

USDA NIFA Hatch Project 0989

Evaluating Psychometric Properties to Advance Agricultural Education Scholarship

Inquiries on instrument quality offers researchers evidence of the extent measurement attributes were examined, and thereby, assisting the researcher select the best instrumentation tool to use (Dillman et al., 2014). The authors systematically reviewed, using the five steps, all articles from Advancements in Agricultural Development (AAD), Journal of Agricultural Education (JAE), Journal of Extension (JOE), and The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension (TJAEE) from 2020 to 2022 to answer the research objectives. Authors reviewed five hundred thirty-one (N = 531) articles from the four refereed publications. Authors reported fewer construct items produced lower construct reliability coefficients and thus, producing the potential of higher levels of error (Cronbach, 1951). Results indicated the majority of our published scholarship has not utilized data collection instruments over the last three years. If the researchers who have, chose to implement smaller numbers of items to measure constructs.USDA Hatch Project TEX 0989

Evaluating Student Outcomes from a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Leadership Development Program

The Dr. Joe Townsend Leadership Fellows Program focuses on developing students in five specific areas, developing self, developing others, organizational management skills, vision, and values. Evaluations should assess the extent leadership programs are meeting outcomes and preparing students for post-graduate success. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the program through the use of Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model, Bloom’s taxonomy, and Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior. A summative evaluation was used to assess whether or not the program had been meeting its stated objectives. Students who once participated in the program since its inception was sent a survey through Qualtrics to determine the success rate of graduates through Kirkpatrick’s reaction, learning, behavior, and results domains. The data collected was then analyzed to determine if the objectives of the study were met. The participants scored statistically significant scores on all four portions of Kirkpatrick’s model. The overall effectiveness of the agricultural leadership program, per the data collected, was deemed successful, and the results from the participants were both positive and promising for the program. Recommendations for future practitioners and researchers, as well as other agricultural leadership programs, were delineated based on the study’s data and conclusions

Transformational Learning Results and Student Recruiting from Virtual Reality Interventions: The Relevance, Opportunities, and Influences of Research Informing Pedagogy

Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference [abstract presentation] on May 4, 2023 in Rudder 410 at Texas A&M UniversityThe presentation’s relevance is our research’s influence on teaching and the symbiotic connection to TAMU’s Strategic Plan. Enriching “transformational education and student’s success” (TAMU, 2020, p. 3) is the first of six priorities in TAMU’s current Strategic Plan 2020–2025. Industry 4.0 technologies include artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, IoT (internet of things), virtual reality (VR), big data/analytics, and cloud infrastructure. 5G networks have influenced the proliferation of Industry 4.0 technologies’ opportunities, use, and roles in day-to-day predictions of future outcomes. The increased technologies adoption by consumers and the increasing number of companies developing VR hardware and software have made the innovation more accessible and relevant than ever before. The relevancy of VR is the digital technology’s innovative and accessible attributes placing the technology at the forefront of future agricultural sciences dissemination. Gen Z students are digital natives to VR technology and will be better prepared to learn with the technologies than previous generations entering post-secondary education. Instructors should consider VR technologies for potential transformational learning opportunities to influence positive learning outcomes. The presentation’s objectives are; a) share VR transformational intervention experiences with high school youth that have visited our college, b) discuss the VR technologies used to educate and recruit high school youth to our academic programs, c) communicate results outlining transformational learning increases from contextualized content taught through two separate VR headsets and our labs Anatomage Table, and d) provide examples where our research informs revised or supplemental teaching pedagogy to improve student outcomes and attract students to Aggieland. The target audience for our presentation are faculty members with a teaching appointment, graduate students who desire to teach at the post-secondary level as a faculty member, and staff working with external groups seeking strategies to improve stakeholder engagement and learning outcomes. VR can be an opportunistic and influential asset for student outcomes due to knowledge transfer on societal issues such as global food security, immigration, consequences from reduced water and other climate issues, nutrition, and the unintended effects of war. VR allows people from all backgrounds to have immersive experiences at their leisure. Student learning outcomes, in VR environments, are simultaneously relevant contextually, opportunity driven, and the Industry 4.0 technology can be influential, based on our studies, in improving transformative learning. The featured innovative techniques will include demonstrations with a cardboard headset, Oculus headset, and the Anatomage Table of contextual examples including sustainable food production, community development, and climate impacts to outline VR best practice use

Likert Versus Cronbach's Psychometric Thresholds: Reducing Error and Maximizing Agricultural Education's Scholarship Impacts

Instrumentation is a critical function in measuring social and behavioral science impacts on stakeholders, teachers, and change agents. Internal validity and reliability have long been considered social sciences’ quality gatekeepers. A systematic review uses a comprehensive search based on explicit protocols to review existing literature with a synthesis of data focusing on key questions. Systematic reviews are five steps; identify the critical question, formulate search parameters, systematically search databases, analyze data, and data summary interpretation (Lee et al., 2021). Using the five steps, authors systematically reviewed all articles from Advancements in Agricultural Development (AAD), Journal of Agricultural Education (JAE), Journal of Extension (JOE), and The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension (TJAEE) from 2018 to 2022. The authors reviewed eight hundred ninety-six (N = 896) articles from the four publications. Fewer items produced lower construct reliability coefficients and thus, produced higher levels of error. Much of agricultural education’s, broadly defined, published scholarship has not utilized instruments to collect data over the last five years; when they have, smaller numbers of items measured constructs. Likert’s convention in his quintessential work on measuring social variables suggested that for measurements to be reliable an alpha of .9 should be achieved. Researchers should include a maximum number of statements and questions and eliminate those that do not contribute to reliability and add additional questions when acceptable levels of reliability are not achieved.USDA NIFA Hatch Project 09890 “The Adoption Impact of Food and Agricultural Sciences Curricula on Public Health.

Improving positive food waste behaviors: An egocentric network analysis evaluation of leading women in agriculture’s advice networks

The multidimensionality of COVID-19’s consequences on food access and food waste behaviors was not immune to one gender versus another. The role of agricultural women leaders in alleviating food security concerns is not widely understood. An egocentric network analysis was conducted to assess the attributes possessed by social network peers and to discover variables that impact women’s food waste behavior. Researchers found that women’s advice networks were composed primarily of family or friends, known for more than five years, communicate weekly, can be described as an opinion leader, and share mutual trust. The density of women’s networks needs to be researched further to determine a strategic plan to expose women leaders to new information and other social networks. Data indicated women’s food waste behavior was influenced by their perceptions of COVID-19 as an opportunity for food waste change, innovation, and reputation enhancement. The need to develop current and future women agricultural leaders to improve food access and food sovereignty within global communities cannot be overstated.United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Project TEX 0989

Evaluating Brazilian Agriculturalists’ IoT Smart Agriculture Adoption Barriers: Understanding Stakeholder Salience Prior to Launching an Innovation

The study sought to: (1) evaluate agriculturalists’ characteristics as adopters of IoT smart agriculture technologies, (2) evaluate traits fostering innovation adoption, (3) evaluate the cycle of IoT smart agriculture adoption, and, lastly, (4) discern attributes and barriers of information communication. Researchers utilized a survey design to develop an instrument composed of eight adoption constructs and one personal characteristic construct and distributed it to agriculturalists at an agricultural exposition in Rio Grande do Sul. Three-hundred-forty-four (n = 344) agriculturalists responded to the data collection instrument. Adopter characteristics of agriculturalists were educated, higher consciousness of social status, larger understanding of technology use, and more likely identified as opinion leaders in communities. Innovation traits advantageous to IoT adoption regarding smart agriculture innovations were: (a) simplistic, (b) easily communicated to a targeted audience, (c) socially accepted, and (d) larger degrees of functionality. Smart agriculture innovation’s elevated levels of observability and compatibility coupled with the innovation’s low complexity were the diffusion elements predicting agriculturalists’ adoption. Agriculturalists’ beliefs in barriers to adopting IoT innovations were excessive complexity and minimal compatibility. Practitioners or change agents should promote IoT smart agriculture technologies to opinion leaders, reduce the innovation’s complexity, and amplify educational opportunities for technologies. The existing sum of IoT smart agriculture adoption literature with stakeholders and actors is descriptive and limited, which constitutes this inquiry as unique