Authentic Research Research Articles

Influence of Metakaolin and glass powder on mechanical behaviour of concrete

Inclusion of industrial waste products in concrete for its enhancement of mechanical performance has gained significant attention in the construction sector. This has been a main area of research since decades to contribute a sustainable and durable infrastructure globally. Cement production poses an adverse impact on the environment due to the release of carbon dioxide during its manufacturing process has directed the research to focus more on sustainable concrete. The research on sustainability is predominantly in progress and abundant research has been done on incorporation of supplementary by-products such as copper slag, waste foundry sand, bagasse ash etc. in concrete as a replacement of cement to improve the interior core structure as well as the mechanical behaviour of concrete and the results were found to be highly considerable. The current work attempts to investigate the mechanical behaviour of concrete mixed with metakaolin and glass powder as mass substitutions for cement and sand respectively. Metakaolin (MK) rich in kaolinite, possesses pozzolanic characteristics which enhances the strength of concrete as validated by much of the previous authentic research. Glass powder being rich in silica could be the best replacement for sand to improve the internal reaction process that occurs for enhanced performance of concrete. Metakaolin has been used as a partial substitution for cement in varying proportions of 0%, 4%, 8%, 12% and 16% in combination with mass replacements of glass powder for sand in proportions of 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% and the specimens were investigated for compressive, flexural and split tensile strength. The test results obtained confirmed that the combined levels of metakaolin and glass powder exhibits significant improvement in strength over conventional concrete. A combined mix of 12% metakaolin with 10% glass powder has resulted in boosting the mechanical behaviour remarkably over other replacements levels.

Mentoring and engaging undergraduate students in authentic research in mammalogy

Abstract Undergraduate research is a high-impact educational practice that helps students develop essential professional and personal skills. These skills include tangible field methods and lab techniques, critical thinking, effective communication, integrated and complex problem-solving, metacognition, self-confidence, collegiality, information literacy, and identity development. Participation in undergraduate research experiences increases academic performance, program retention, degree completion, and the number and diversity of students pursuing postbaccalaureate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees. Mentors (faculty, postdoctoral fellow, and graduate students) also benefit from the undergraduate research process by generating publishable scholarship, improvement in leadership skills, and developing rich personal mentoring relationships. Further, a university or college itself benefits from increased institutional reputation and visibility within the scientific community. Nonetheless, many barriers impede students from pursuing research experiences, including a lack of awareness of research opportunities, unfamiliarity with the benefits of a research experience, personal or financial constraints, noncompetitive grade point averages, financial and family needs, maturity, and imposter syndrome. To help mitigate these issues and build a culture of undergraduate research, pathways for implementing undergraduate research in the field of mammalogy are discussed, in addition to advice on mentorship.

Student experiences with authentic research in a remote, introductory course-based undergraduate research experience in physics

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Participation in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) has been identified as an important way of increasing undergraduate retention, interest, and identity within the sciences. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been shown to have similar outcomes to UREs but can reach a larger number of students at one time and are accessible to any student simply through enrollment in a course. One key component of a CURE is that students must participate in authentic scientific discovery in which they answer a question where the answer is initially unknown to both students and the scientific community. Here, we present student experiences with authentic research in a large, introductory physics CURE conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use student responses to a closed ended survey question, as well as written responses to an open-ended end-of-course assignment to investigate what aspects of real research students felt that they participated in and the extent to which students felt that they participated in authentic research. Most students in the course felt like they engaged in real-world research during the course and a large number of students highlighted their experience with authentic research when asked to describe their experience in the course more broadly. We discuss which elements of the course may have contributed to the students’ experiences of authentic research.Received 14 November 2022Accepted 3 March 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.010124Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasEpistemology, attitudes, & beliefsInstructional materials developmentInstructional strategiesProfessional TopicsLower undergraduate studentsPhysics Education Research

Increasing Student Confidence in Writing: Integrating Authentic Manuscript Writing into an Online 8-Week Research Program.

In various formats, students at the secondary and postsecondary levels participate in multiweek authentic science research projects. There have been many papers explaining the operations of such programs, but few have provided explicit instruction on how to incorporate authentic communication practices into the student research process. In this paper, we describe how we integrated primary literature into an 8-week online research program for 8th to 11th graders. Each week, students were introduced to a specific section of a primary research article reflecting different stages of their research project, and they were guided on how to write that specific section for their own research paper. By the end of the program, students had an outline or first draft of a primary research paper based on their research. Following completion of the program, student participants reported greater self-efficacy and confidence in scientific writing. Here, we describe our approach and provide an adaptable framework for integrating primary literature into research projects.

Student‐focused, career‐driven exploration in natural history museums through experiential education and mentorship: A model to intentionally increase the racial and ethnic diversity of students

AbstractBeing immersed in the processes of research can develop undergraduate students’ science identities and support their persistence in pursuing science careers. However, it can be difficult for students to find opportunities for engaging in authentic scientific research. The professional staff and scientific objects in natural history museums provide such an opportunity that can create relationships through which both undergraduate students and museums benefit. Students require authentic practical experiences to better understand their academic fields and career trajectories, and museums require assistance curating and managing collections. This can be accomplished through mentorship, training, and research experience in a formal course. At the University of Florida, I developed and taught a course titled “Introduction to Natural History” that engaged students in projects in museum collections. Discussion sessions replaced lectures by introducing topics such as the concept of research, distinction between predictions and hypotheses, understanding of the nature of science, and how to conduct literature reviews. In 2019 and 2020, students completed a pre‐ and postcourse survey to gauge their understanding of science and their anticipated career trajectory. My results demonstrate that mentorship and authentic experiential science opportunities using museum collections enable students to realize a passion, sense of purpose, and better understanding of science and careers in science.

End-to-end deep speaker embedding learning using multi-scale attentional fusion and graph neural networks

As an attractive research in biometric authentication, Text Independent Speaker Verification (TI-SV) problem aims to specify whether two given unconstrained utterances come from the same speaker or not. As state-of-the-art solutions, end-to-end approaches using deep neural networks seek to learn a highly discriminative speaker embedding space.In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end approach for speaker embedding learning by focusing on two crucial factors: speaker embedder architecture and objective function. The proposed module in the speaker embedder is composed of an Efficient Multi-resolution feature Representation (EMR) block followed by a Multi-scale Channel Attention Fusion (MCAF) block. The EMR effectively addresses the issue of fixed resolution convolutional kernels which commonly used in most embedder architectures. Moreover, the MCAF significantly improves the simple summation-based feature fusion used in residual embedder networks. Regarding the objective function, we conduct the speaker embedding space towards learning the embedding-to-embedding relations, in addition to only embedding-to-training class relations employed by most previous methods. So, we propose to employ a dynamic graph attention network, on top of the proposed embedder to learn all informative relations between embeddings, and then learn both embedder and graph-based networks in an end-to-end manner.We conduct various experiments on a large-scale benchmark dataset called VoxCeleb1&2. The effectiveness of all proposed components is verified through an ablation study. We show the superior or competitive performances of the proposed approach compared to seven well-known embedding architectures and 32 SV systems, regarding two evaluation metrics, EER and minDCF, as well as the number of embedder parameters.

Authentic research experience through mock grant application roleplay

Many universities resort to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a challenging endeavour, especially in Biology courses that require lab access. Mock grant application roleplay is one alternative to lab-based activities. Although using mock grant applications as an assessment tool is not new, there have been few studies on students’ opinions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that it has been used in place of lab-based exercises and in conjunction with virtual lab modules. Students are engaged in three aspects: (i) targeted literature review, (ii) research proposal writing and (iii) 5-min project pitching. The design of this module is flexible, and other lab-based courses can adopt it. This module encourages undergraduate students to explore the lab techniques and concisely present their research proposals. Compared to the previous semester before COVID-19, the number of students that achieved the “Distinction” grade or higher increased by 6.3%, whilst the failures decreased by 3.2%. A similar trend was observed in 2021, the second year this activity was carried out. A survey amongst students who took this unit reported that student satisfaction with this unit has improved by 11.1%. This improvement could be attributed to this mock grant activity because the format and difficulty level of the student assessments had remained constant. Furthermore, qualitative analysis conducted via focus group interviews indicated that students agreed that the mock grant proposal assessment was useful in preparing them for future careers and was relevant to the course learning outcomes. Several participants pointed to the assessment’s potential usefulness for careers in research. In conclusion, this roleplay module can fulfil the learning objectives of this course whilst providing an authentic research experience without lab-based activities.

Care-full and reproducible research: Teaching research skills and ethics to undergraduate researchers using critical replication studies

Course-based replication studies facilitate broad student participation in science, allowing early-career researchers a direct and fast route to impactful research questions and high-quality methods and analyses. They also provide students opportunities for exciting hands-on experience engaging with contemporary research questions as both theorists and experimentalists. However, reproducibility requires thoughtful attention to generalizability, and new scholars must be taught to critically consider study motivations, assumptions and goals. Teaching reproducibility in this way promotes public trust in science as well as productive skepticism. We discuss a reproducibility-focused undergraduate course where the goal is to provide a meaningful, authentic, and responsible research experience for students. While a heavy emphasis on replication can lead to an uncritical reproduction of harmful science, the present course emphasizes a more inclusive approach to knowledge production, where research skills development is inseparable from education on responsible conduct of research, social justice, and open science values and practices. We cover topics including: selecting a study for replication, intentional development of students’ collaboration skills, finding a balance between replication and extension, students’ reflexivity practice and positionality, human participants considerations, the responsible dissemination of students’ research, course learning outcomes and assessment, and research mentoring “at scale.”

Crisscrossing Learning Experiences in an Undergraduate Research-Based Laboratory Course to Promote Reciprocal Peer Learning

In an effort to improve student learning, authentic research experiences have been incorporated into introductory laboratory courses as a means to teach students scientific inquiry and engage them in the scientific process. Here, we describe the development and implementation of a novel undergraduate research-based laboratory course for first-year students where students swap projects midsemester. Swapping research projects establishes reciprocal peer learning partnerships, thereby empowering students to simultaneously be both peer teachers and active learners in an introductory laboratory course. Our Crisscrossing Learning Experience (CCLE) course was designed to promote a high level of collaboration, sense of ownership, and science identity among first-year students through the learning by teaching paradigm and close mentoring.

Role models’ influence on student interest in and awareness of career opportunities in life sciences

ABSTRACT The call to increase student interest in science and related careers continues to receive national attention in the United States. While many current efforts have focused on infrastructure support and innovative pedagogies to better reach and engage students, research suggests that having a career role model can influence adolescents’ interest in and choices of science courses and career pathways. This exploratory study investigated the impact of a week-long online biotechnology program called Biotech in Action (BIA) that featured career role modeling and authentic science learning. Students were engaged in career modeling sessions with multiple professionals working in related STEM fields while learning life sciences within authentic biotechnology research contexts. In total, over 400 high school students participated in BIA. The results showed that students felt they developed a better understanding of the biotechnology field and became more cognizant about steps to achieve their future career goals after BIA. Many students reported that the interactions with career role models and learning about their educational and professional pathways helped demystify science career fields. Overall, this research provides new insights to curriculum designers and researchers on integrating career role modeling and authentic learning to spark and sustain student interest in science.

Reflective Keys of Integrative Research Studies in A Graduate Design Management Program, Thailand

This research aims to investigate the keys of research learning based on advanced-case studies in the graduate Design, Business and Technology Management (DBTM) program, Thammasat University, Thailand. Specifically, these advanced case studies are previously completed theses selected to represent certain research typologies that reflect the program goals. The program takes a novel approach in motivating students to creatively pursue their own research questions by engaging them with in-depth group discussions, content presentations from academic and practitioner experts, authentic, project-based practices in collaboration with different private and public-sector stakeholders, and the advanced research case studies. The methodology of this paper follows a qualitative research approach that relies on Stufflebeam’s CIPP model consisting of context, input, process and product elements. Along with class activities, the context of programs and learning types are first explored in relation to class and research inputs from 7 advanced case studies (theses) that focus on different components of the DBTM program. Then, the process of using focus groups in the classes to provide the students with exposure to authentic research experiences, culminating in their own research proposal presentations is discussed. Each of the student’s research proposals must include elements of multi-context research and are evaluated by a faculty committee and external experts, based on the study themes of DBTM and learning types. Most students tend to focus more on design and business concepts in their research proposals with less emphasis on the technology and management fields. A reflective key of the case study approach is the learning of a combination of cognitive, meaning and connectivism concepts to improve research understanding. To support this pedagogical approach, class activities are delivered through a combination of short lectures, sharing discussions for meaning learning, and well-rounded literature review for connectivism learning. These key findings contribute directly to the sustainable development of the master’s curriculum in the Design, Business and Technology Management program.

A course-based undergraduate research experience for bioinformatics education in undergraduate students.

With rapid development of sequencing technology and the continuous accumulation of biological big data, people who are capable of using bioinformatic skills to analyze omics data and work out biological problems are urgently needed in the workforce, which highlights the importance of developing bioinformatics skills early in the undergraduate curriculum. Meanwhile, course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) courses have been proved to be an effective teaching format that have many advantages over traditional labs and lectures. Here we introduced an implementation of CURE course of bioinformatics data analysis and visualization for undergraduate students in major of bioinformatics and evaluated the learning outcomes. We were able to address 10 out of 15 core competencies identified by Network for Integrating Bioinformatics into Life Sciences Education. Besides, results evaluated by Laboratory Course Assessment Survey demonstrated the goals of collaboration, discovery and relevance, and iteration were accomplished in our course. Meanwhile, a significant increase in scores of final examinations and a long-term improvement on students' research ability on bioinformatics data analysis and visualization were also observed. In summary, this CURE course is useful for undergraduate students learning related knowledge and participate in authentic research in the field of bioinformatics.

Creating Meaningful Learning Opportunities through Incorporating Local Research into Chemistry Classroom Activities

Incorporating real-life context through connections to research early in the curriculum can create meaningful learning opportunities that encourage students to engage deeply with classroom content to construct chemistry knowledge. Course-based undergraduate research experiences have been successful at integrating real-life context, but are often only incorporated into upper-level courses. To provide an additional pathway to foster interaction with research, four activities from an introductory chemistry discussion class were created to incorporate authentic research connections. Care was taken to incorporate metacognitive questions designed to help students make connections between their preexisting knowledge and course content. Marzano’s taxonomy was used to analyze the cognitive complexity of tasks, which increased in the revised activities, allowing for more opportunities for knowledge construction. Audio and written work of student groups as they worked through activities was collected. Qualitative analysis of student engagement revealed that control over the content of activities to incorporate opportunities for knowledge construction is not enough to facilitate students consciously engaging in meaningful learning. If instructors wish to promote students integrating chemistry knowledge into their existing framework, course instructors, including graduate teaching assistants, need to be trained on how to properly facilitate classroom experiences to increase the likelihood of success.

How a Power Differential Between Clinicians and Researchers Contributes to the Research-to-Practice Gap.

The purpose of this article is to contend that there is a power differential between researchers and clinicians where researchers are the primary creators of knowledge and clinicians are the primary consumers of knowledge. Rooted in a sociological model illustrating interacting levels of power at macro-, meso-, and microlevels, we argue that authentic research-practice partnerships and clinician-researcher collaborations can mitigate this power differential. Clinicians and researchers in our field have vastly different responsibilities and priorities that impact our ability to work collaboratively to solve the most pressing problems for the clients we serve. Although some current research practices may reinforce a power differential causing clinicians to feel less than and to only consume knowledge, there are examples of successful collaborations where this power differential is mitigated. These examples can contribute meaningfully to the dialogue on research-practice partnerships, with the goal of improving outcomes for the clients we serve.

The BASIL cure: Using structure to predict function in protein biochemistry.

We have developed an undergraduate biochemistry lab curriculum based on authentic inquiry. This course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) allows a large number of students to gain skills often learned only in the traditional one-on-one mentor-student research model by bringing a research project into the undergraduate teaching lab. The Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) uses a combined computational and wet lab approach to study proteins of known structure but unknown function. Over 3800 structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) have unknown function. Students following the BASIL curriculum use a combination of sequence and structure alignment tools to study these structures with the goal of identifying possible enzymes. They then use molecular docking to predict what model substrates fit near a proposed active site. Students can produce the target enzymes in the lab using standard wet-lab biochemistry techniques for expression and purification, and they then perform kinetic assays with model substrates selected from their docking studies. We have successfully used this curriculum in biochemistry lab courses for majors and non-majors. The curriculum is modular and can be used as a whole or individual parts may be incorporated into an existing course - either lecture or lab. Curriculum materials are available free-of-charge at basilbiochem.org. We are currently investigating how this curriculum can be used in a variety of academic settings, and we welcome new collaborators. We can offer synchronous support via virtual meetings and asynchronous support via Slack. This project is supported in part by NSF IUSE 2141908.

Identifying esterase and lipase activity in proteins of unknown function.

Over 3800 structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) have unknown function. The Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) curriculum uses authentic inquiry to teach students to use structural bioinformatics tools to compare these structures to known enzymes and predict a function. We have predicted esterase or lipase function for several structures after performing both global and local structure alignments to identify similar structures in the PDB as well as specific amino acids that may be active site motifs. This function was supported by sequence alignment data from BLAST and PFam. SwissDock was then used for ligand docking to determine ester and lipid substrates to use for testing activity. Students in the biochemistry lab next used standard wet-lab biochemistry techniques to express and purify the target enzymes and performed kinetic assays using p-nitrophenyl acetate to test for esterase activity. After completing the BASIL curriculum, students continued with independent research projects to develop assays to test for lipase function. We have focused our efforts on the protein structures with PDB IDs 2O14 and 4Q7Q, as they showed the most promise through initial enzymatic testing. Both proteins show significant esterase activity in hydrolyzing both p-nitrophenyl acetate and p-nitrophenyl butyrate. Additionally, both proteins are able to hydrolyze p-nitrophenyl dodecanoate when sodium deoxycholate is present in the buffer solution for solubility of the substrate. We have also incorporated the p-nitrophenyl dodecanoate in DMPC vesicles, and testing of substrate hydrolysis with these vesicles is underway. We have also tested pancreatic lipase under all these conditions as a positive control for the experiments. Students will be creating a Proteopedia page for each protein. This project has been supported in part by NSF IUSE 1709355 and 2141908.

Authenticity and interest in virtual reality: Findings from an experiment including educational virtual environments created with 3D modeling and photogrammetry

Virtual Reality (VR) and photogrammetry are emerging technologies that facilitate and shape the ongoing digital transformation of education. VR offers new opportunities for creating immersive and interactive educational experiences. Photogrammetry enables new ways to create lifelike educational virtual environments and is becoming an alternative to manual 3D modeling with graphics software. The manner in which VR affects the authenticity of educational experiences has been addressed in previous educational and psychological research. Empirical papers have so far focused on the authenticity of educational VR environments created by 3D modeling. However, little is known about the authenticity of educational VR environments developed with photogrammetry. Given that VR provides rich multi-sensory experiences and interests can be stimulated by engaging contexts, educational VR environments also possess great potential to support interest development. What is still unknown regarding this topic are the beneficial characteristics of VR environments and the individual variables required to trigger and explain interest development. Consequently, we conducted an experiment following up on the mentioned authenticity and interest research questions in the context of higher education. A two-group between-subjects design was used and N = 64 educational science and psychology university students gathered information about a railroad bridge wearing a head-mounted display (HMD). The control group encountered an educational virtual environment created with 3D modeling. The intervention group was presented with the same educational virtual environment but the main object of the railroad bridge was generated by photogrammetry. Situational interest was measured in the pretest and the posttest; authenticity-related variables (i.e., presence and representation fidelity) were assessed in the posttest. Concerning authenticity, there were no significant group differences. Photogrammetry might thus not affect authenticity in educational contexts in which participants focus on gathering information. Regarding interest development, there were two main findings. First, interest in VR for learning increased from pretest to posttest, supporting that interest can be induced in VR. Second, a large share of posttest interest was explained by presence and pretest interest, highlighting the importance of these variables.

Building motivationally supportive course-based research experiences for undergraduates: a self-determination theory perspective

ABSTRACT Many institutions have turned to course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) to involve more students in authentic research. However, research is lacking on how to best support and nurture student motivation in CUREs. Motivation is a critical construct to understand at the undergraduate level as lack of motivation has been identified as contributory to lower achievement as well as reduced interests in STEM college degrees and careers. Using mixed methods and self-determination theory (SDT), the purpose of the current study was to determine how students’ basic psychological needs were supported or frustrated during CURE activities. Findings suggested that student motivation was potentially reduced during all CURE activities (i.e. scientific practices, collaboration, discovery, and iteration). Furthermore, students reported that autonomy was the least supported motivational construct during the CURE. Considering these challenges, the authors recommended specific strategies to increase choice, support competence, improve collaboration, inspire discovery, and create more opportunities for iteration during CUREs.

An Equity-Focused Redesign of an Introductory Organismal Biology Lab Course To Develop Foundational Scientific Practices.

Laboratory courses can serve as important avenues to equitably support introductory biology students to develop foundational scientific literacy skills while experiencing the authentic research process. We present a model for an equity-focused redesign of an introductory organismal biology laboratory course at a teaching institution with limited research infrastructure. We incorporated elements of inquiry, structure, and climate into our three redesigned course components: weekly research investigations, skill-building assignments, and student-designed group projects. Students were trained in the research process through weekly experiments using locally relevant model organisms, collecting and analyzing novel data and writing brief results sections in the conventions of a research journal article. Student groups then collaborated to complete a student-designed research project and poster presentation using one of the model organisms. Through weekly inquiry labs and practice in skill-building assignments, most students in the sample mastered skills in analyzing, graphing, and writing about experimental results. Notably, students mastered skills that were practiced more frequently throughout the lab course, demonstrating the value of repeated and scaffolded practice. Students reported significant gains in self-efficacy and science identity, as well as sense of project ownership. Student gains were influenced by instructor but not their major or the semester in which they took the course, and growth occurred across students regardless of their incoming score on the presemester survey. This intentional course design model, combined with consistent expectations for instructors across multiple sections, has the potential to equitably support students with a range of prior knowledge and experiences to make meaningful gains in science literacy skills during an introductory semester.

A research program-linked, course-based undergraduate research experience that allows undergraduates to participate in current research on mycobacterial gene regulation.

Undergraduate instructional biology laboratories are typically taught within two paradigms. Some labs focus on protocols and techniques delivered in "cookbook" format with defined experimental outcomes. There is increasing momentum to alternatively employ student-driven, open-ended, and discovery-based strategies, often via course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) using crowd-sourcing initiatives. A fraction of students also participate in funded research in faculty research labs, where they have opportunities to work on projects designed to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. These experiences are widely recognized as valuable but are not scalable, as most institutions have many more undergraduates than research lab positions. We sought to address this gap through our department's curriculum by creating an opportunity for students to participate in the real-world research process within a laboratory course. We conceived, developed, and delivered an authentic, guided research experience to students in an upper-level molecular biology laboratory course. We refer to this model as a "research program-linked CURE." The research questions come directly from a faculty member's research lab and evolve along with that research program. Students study post-transcriptional regulation in mycobacteria. We use current molecular biology methodologies to test hypotheses like "UTRs affect RNA and protein expression levels," "there is functional redundancy among RNA helicases," and "carbon starvation alters mRNA 5' end chemistries." We conducted standard assessments and developed a customized "Skills and Concepts Inventory" survey to gauge how well the course met our student learning outcomes. We report the results of our assessments and describe challenges addressed during development and execution of the course, including organizing activities to fit within an instructional lab, balancing breadth with depth, and maintaining authenticity while giving students the experience of obtaining interpretable and novel results. Our data suggest student learning was enhanced through this truly authentic research approach. Further, students were able to perceive they were participants and contributors within an active research paradigm. Students reported increases in their self-identification as scientists, and a positive impact on their career trajectories. An additional benefit was reciprocation back to the funded research laboratory, by funneling course alumni, results, materials, and protocols.