Cross-disciplinary Science Research Articles

Mitochondrial NAD Profile in a Rat Model of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Mitochondria require nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) to satisfy cellular energy needs. Mitochondrial stress has been reported in skeletal muscle tissue of humans with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. NAD deficiency may indicate mitochondrial stress that can be assessed through NAD concentration assays and Western blotting of Nampt and Sirtuin 3 (SIRT3) proteins. Nampt is the rate-limiting enzyme in intracellular NAD recycling, while SIRT3 is an NAD-dependent protein deacetylase that regulates mitochondrial mass and activity. The objective of this study was to investigate skeletal muscle and liver tissues of rat strains that exhibit behaviors associated with ADHD. We hypothesized that tissues from rat models with ADHD-like behavior (Lewis and F344 strains) would have lower NAD concentrations and reduced Nampt and SIRT3 protein expression relative to the control strain (Sprague Dawley). To examine this hypothesis, we performed fluorescence tissue NAD concentration assays. We found a significant difference in liver NAD between Sprague Dawley and F344 rats (Sprague Dawley, 0.14 ± 0.07 mM/mg [mean ± standard deviation], F344, 0.22 ± 0.11; p < 0.05). Western blot analysis for Nampt and SIRT3 proteins revealed a significant difference between the F344 and Sprague Dawley rats for Nampt protein in the extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscle (Sprague Dawley, 1043930 ± 303677 arbitrary units [AU], F344, 1729014 ± 553568 AU; p < 0.05). Our results indicate minor differences in tissue NAD concentration and Nampt protein expression in rat models with ADHD-like behaviors. This could be indicative of differential mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle or liver tissues. Further studies will examine the implications of increasing nicotinamide riboside in the skeletal muscles to observe the effects of NAD functioning. This work was supported by funds provided by the Cross-Disciplinary Science Institute at Gettysburg College (X-SIG) (HMS, JB) and a Gettysburg College Professional Development Grant (JB). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Maternal and Child Health Habitus in Coastal Areas

This research explores the health habits of mothers and children in coastal communities. Habitus is interpreted as habits carried out by mothers and children to improve health status. This research uses a qualitative approach. The aim of collecting qualitative data is to explore the health habits of mothers and children in coastal communities, especially in the Dompak sub-district area. Qualitative data collection used in-depth interview procedures with officials and native housewives (not immigrants) on Dompak Island. The selection of informants was based on purposive sampling procedures, this was with the aim of exploring more deeply the research questions with native female informants on Dompak Island. This research contributes to the development of cross-disciplinary science in the social sciences, especially the science of health sociology regarding the health habits of mothers and children in coastal areas. This scientific contribution is theoretically useful when the results of this research are published in the form of scientific publications. This research is planned to be published in the reputable national journal Sinta. In addition to publication output, this research is expected to be an academic contribution as a recommendation for policy makers, especially in health policy, to understand community culture in the health sector so that they can take a more appropriate approach so that the goals of health policy are accepted by the community.

Social Mapping in Batam City for Urban Development

This study explores social mapping for urban communities with the aim of city development. The success of sustainable urban planning lies in achieving environmental, economic, and social sustainability in urban areas. However, the requirements for a socially sustainable city are still unclear. This paper aims to bridge the existing concept of urban social sustainability in its implementation in Batam City regarding socially sustainable urban planning. This study uses a qualitative approach. The purpose of collecting qualitative data is to explore social planning for communities in Batam City. Qualitative data collection uses in-depth interview procedures with the government and communities living in Batam City, both indigenous and immigrant communities. The selection of informants is based on a purposive sampling procedure, this is intended to explore research questions more deeply to informants in Batam City. This study contributes to the development of cross-disciplinary science in the social sciences, especially the Sociology of Development, where this scientific contribution is theoretically useful when the results of this study are published in the form of scientific publications.. In addition to publication outputs, this research is expected to be an academic contribution as a recommendation for policy makers, especially in development policies to understand sustainable urban planning through a social lens to obtain a complete picture of social sustainability scenarios and investigate how these themes can be addressed in future urban planning prospects.

Biomimicry Architecture for Healthy Built Environment: A Review of Existing Literature

Health issues in the 21st century have become essential in addition to sustainable development issues. Health is an urgent need to find solutions to problems so that human health is always maintained. Health issues are also influenced by the built environment, one of which is studied in the concept of healthy building. A healthy building has several criteria that can be a point of view to see if the building is healthy or unhealthy. Physiological, psychological and disease transmission problems are the main problems faced by users who use unhealthy buildings. Biomimicry architecture emerged due to technological and scientific advances, in which cross-disciplinary science has become the power of knowledge today. Biomimicry architecture is a design approach that uses nature to solve human problems. Health problems and the need to produce healthy buildings can use biomimicry architecture as a problem-solving method. This paper uses a descriptive qualitative content analysis method on various written references related to biomimicry architecture and how biomimicry architecture produces healthy buildings. The conclusion of this study shows that biomimicry architecture is an approach to using natural inspiration to solve human problems, one of which is building health. Implementing principles found in nature delivers buildings designed with a biomimicry architectural approach to be healthier. That is due to the successful application of natural traits that are always adaptive, efficient, effective and live in line with the environment in the built environment.

Application of PBL combined with traditional teaching in the Immunochemistry course

BackgroundThe problem-based learning (PBL) model has been widely carried out in many fields of medical colleges and universities. Immunochemistry as a cross-disciplinary science plays a vital role in preventing the occurrence of diseases and bridging the development of Life Science and Medicine. But now the Immunochemistry course still lacks the teaching practice in PBL. To explore the significance of PBL applied in the Immunochemistry course, the effect of the PBL model on the learning of undergraduates majoring in Chemicobiology was systematically evaluated.MethodsThe teaching objects were the undergraduates majoring in Chemicobiology from Guizhou Medical University. The PBL model was applied in the Immunochemistry course. 62 undergraduates in Grade 2018 were set as the control group and adopted the traditional expository model. 93 undergraduates in Grades 2019–2020 were separately set as the experimental groups, which adopted the PBL model based on traditional lecture-based learning. In the PBL model, six cases related to course contents were designed for the students to complete. The final exams of the undergraduates in Grades 2018–2020 were analyzed by the score ranges (< 60 points, 60–69 points, 70–79 points, and ≥ 80 points) and nonparametric test. Finally, the questionnaire survey about the teaching evaluation was performed in Grades 2019–2020.ResultsIn Grades 2019 and 2020, the excellent rates (≥ 80 points), pass rates (≥ 60 points), fail rates (< 60 points), and average scores of the undergraduates were separately about 29%, 91.11% and 93.75%, 6.25%, and 8.89%, and 72.55 and 74.45 points. But in Grade 2018, the excellent rate, pass rate, failure rate, and average score of the undergraduates were separately 9.68%, 59.68%, 40.32%, and 62.55 points. By the statistical analysis, it was found that the excellent rates (χ2 = 8.317, P < 0.005) and pass rates (χ2 = 24.52, P < 0.0001) in Grades 2018–2020 were different, of which Grade 2020were the highest (29.17%, 93.75%) and Grade 2018 was the lowest (9.68%, 59.68%). The average score, excellent rate, and pass rate in Grade 2018 had significant differences with Grade 2019 (P < 0.0001, P < 0.0167) and Grade 2020 (P < 0.001, P < 0.0167). The questionnaire survey also showed that the student’s learning interests, independent problem-solving ability, knowledge structure system, and scientific thought and teamwork awareness were enhanced. In Grades 2019 and 2020, the ICC (95% CI) of criterion validity and inter-rater reliability were separately 0.42/0.34 and 0.81/0.80 (P < 0.0001).ConclusionThe combination of PBL and traditional expository models played positive roles in the student’s learning in the Immunochemistry course.

Complexity leadership in action: a team science case study.

This team science case study explores one cross-disciplinary science institute's change process for redesigning a weekly research coordination meeting. The narrative arc follows four stages of the adaptive process in complex adaptive systems: disequilibrium, amplification, emergence, and new order. This case study takes an interpretative, participatory approach, where the objective is to understand the phenomena within the social context and deepen understanding of how the process unfolds over time and in context. Multiple data sources were collected and analyzed. A new adaptive order for the weekly research coordination meeting was established. The mechanism for the success of the change initiative was best explained by complexity leadership theory. Implications for team science practice include generating momentum for change, re-examining power dynamics, defining critical teaming professional roles, building multiple pathways towards team capacity development, and holding adaptive spaces. Promising areas for further exploration are also presented.

Molecular Approaches in Soil Microbial Analysis: Forensic Perspective

The growing field of soil microbial forensics provides the legal answer to how microorganisms play a crucial role in criminal investigations. It is an advanced crossdisciplinary science capable of offering significant physical evidence with considerable interest in criminal investigations, environmental crime, and counterterrorism. Microbial forensics of soil consists of different techniques to identify and evaluate microbial abundance, their complexity, and their interaction with soil and surrounding objects. The present review highlights various microbial analysis techniques such as Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, Temperature/Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis, Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis, Length Heterogeneity PCR, Phospholipid-derived fatty acids, Fluorescence in situ hybridization, Stable-isotope probing and metagenomics using nextgeneration sequencing. This article also summarises the challenges faced in soil microbial forensics, various statistical approaches, reference databases commonly used in forensic soil studies, and different methodological approaches used in forensic laboratories. Literature was studied using various online bibliographic databases like Google Scholar, Web of Science, Pub Med, Scopus, and several other search engines. Conclusive evidence generated by this paper signifies the importance of soil microbes to assist forensic scientists and researchers in selecting adequate methods to differentiate soil samples. The present comparative study concluded that targeted molecular analysis of microbes as a forensic soil typing tool has a lot of potential and should be investigated further.

Collaborative leadership in team science: dynamics of sense making, decision making, and action taking.

To help cross-disciplinary science teams navigate through internal and external complexities, this perspective article explores the application of three conceptual frameworks: Theory U, Divergence-Convergence Diamond, and Strategic Doing. These frameworks enable science teams to avoid common pitfalls by operationalizing collaborative leadership as iterative cycles of distributed sense making, decision making and action taking. Implications for team science practices include facilitating the process, prototyping the future and applying dynamic roles and responsibilities.

ANALISIS PREFERENSI WISATAWAN DALAM PEMILIHAN PRODUK WISATA UNTUK PERENCANAAN AGROWISATA PIAT MANGUNAN-GIRIREJO UNIVERSITAS GADJAH MADA

Pusat Inovasi Agro Teknologi Mangunan-Girirejo UGM (PIAT Magir UGM) in Mangunan and Girirejo villages is a forest area managed by an educational institution, Gadjah Mada University (UGM). PIAT Magir UGM has various natural and cultural attractions needed to become an education / education-based agro-tourism directed to a living laboratory for cross-disciplinary science developed at UGM and as one of the agro-tourism with icons in the form of 3S fruit plants (Sawo, Soursop, Srikaya ). With such large land potential, natural beauty and the support of the surrounding community, PIAT Magir UGM is also expected to be able to become a fruit garden that can support the quality and quantity improvement of all aspects of agriculture, especially the diversity of tropical fruits. This study aims to analyze the preferences of tourists on the potential of tourism products for agro-tourism planning at PIAT MAGIR UGM. This study uses a quantitative descriptive method using Crosstab and Chi-Square analysis on the IB SPSS Statistic 23 application. This method was chosen to determine the significant relationship between tourist ages and agro-tourism product preferences. Using the accidental purposive sampling technique to determine the type of respondents, 123 respondents who visited the Mangunan tourism areas and tourists who had visited agro-tourism were selected. The results of this study indicate that: (1) PIAT MAGIR UGM has a variety of potential tourism products that can be developed for agro-tourism planning; (2) Most of the tourists visiting agro-tourism are tourists in the 26 - 33 years age group (63.4%), in which this age group is categorized as the millennials generation; (3) The preferences of tourists for the components of tourism products that have a significant relationship are the 26-33 years age group with tourist attractions in the form of festivals / events, accessibility in the form of bicycle for agro-tourism tours, and amenities in the form of camping and the welcome gate design in the form of an agro-tourism icon fruits statue. The palnning of tourism products based on tourist preferences are holding event, create special cycling track/paths, build the campgrounds, and make a welcome gate in the form of fruits sculpture design.

Plant-pollinator Interaction Data: A case study of the WorldFAIR project

Biodiversity is a data-intensive science and relies on data from a large number of disciplines in order to build up a coherent picture of the extent and trajectory of life on earth (Bowker 2000). The ability to integrate such data from different disciplines, geographic regions and scales is crucial for making better decisions towards sustainable development. As the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) community tackles standards development and adoption beyond its initial emphases on taxonomy and species distributions, expanding its impact and engaging a wider audience becomes increasingly important. Biological interactions data (e.g., predator-prey, host-parasite, plant-pollinator) have been a topic of interest within TDWG for many years and a Biological Interaction Data Interest Group (IG) was established in 2016 to address that issue. The IG has been working on the complexity of representing interactions data and surveying how Darwin Core (DwC, Wieczorek 2012) is being used to represent them (Salim 2022). The importance of cross-disciplinary science and data inspired the recently funded WorldFAIR project—Global cooperation on FAIR data policy and practice—coordinated by the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA), with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) as a major partner. WorldFAIR will work with a set of case studies to advance implementation of the FAIR data principles (Fig. 1). The FAIR data principles promote good practices in data management, by making data and metadata Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (Wilkinson 2016). Interoperability will be a particular focus to facilitate cross-disciplinary research. A set of recommendations and a framework for FAIR assessment in a set of disciplines will be developed (Molloy 2022). One of WorldFAIR's case studies is related to plant-pollinator interactions data. Its starting point is the model and schema proposed by Salim (2022) based on the DwC standard, which adheres to the diversifying GBIF data model strategy and on the Plant-Pollinator vocabulary described by Salim (2021). The case study on plant-pollinator interactions originated in the TDWG Biological Interaction Data Interest Group (IG) and within the RDA Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD) Community of Practice. IGAD is a forum for sharing experiences and providing visibility to research and work in food and agricultural data and has become a space for networking and blending ideas related to data management and interoperability. This topic was chosen because interoperability of plant-pollinator data is needed for better monitoring of pollination services, understanding the impacts of cultivated plants on wild pollinators and quantifying the contribution of wild pollinators to cultivated crops, understanding the impact of domesticated bees on wild ecosystems, and understanding the behaviour of these organisms and how this influences their effectiveness as pollinators. In addition to the ecological importance of these data, pollination is economically important for food production. In Brazil, the economic value of the pollination service was estimated at US$ 12 billion in 2018 (Wolowski 2019). All eleven case studies within the WorldFAIR project are working on FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIPs), which capture comprehensive sets of FAIR principle implementation choices made by communities of practice and which can accelerate convergence and facilitate cross-collaboration between disciplines (Schultes 2020). The FIPs are published through the FIP Wizard, which allows the creation of FAIR Enabling Resources. The FIPs creation will be repeated by the end of the project and capture results obtained from each case study in order to advance data interoperability. In the first FIP, resources from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI) were catalogued by the Plant-Pollinator Case Study team, and we expect to expand the existing FAIR Enabling Resources by the end of the project and contribute to plant-pollinator data interoperability and reuse. To tackle the challenge of promoting FAIR data for plant-pollinator interactions within the broad scope of the several disciplines and subdisciplines that generate and use them, we will conduct a survey of existing initiatives handling plant-pollinator interactions data and summarise the current status of best practices in the community. Once the survey is concluded, we will choose at least five agriculture-specific plant-pollination initiatives from our partners, to serve as targets for standards adoption. For data to be interoperable and reusable, it is essential that standards and best practices are community-developed to ensure adoption by the tool builders and data scientists across the globe. TDWG plays an important role in this scenario and we expect to engage the IG and other interested parties in that discussion.

The Case for a New Frontiers–Class Uranus Orbiter: System Science at an Underexplored and Unique World with a Mid-scale Mission

Abstract Current knowledge of the Uranian system is limited to observations from the flyby of Voyager 2 and limited remote observations. However, Uranus remains a highly compelling scientific target due to the unique properties of many aspects of the planet itself and its system. Future exploration of Uranus must focus on cross-disciplinary science that spans the range of research areas from the planet’s interior, atmosphere, and magnetosphere to the its rings and satellites, as well as the interactions between them. Detailed study of Uranus by an orbiter is crucial not only for valuable insights into the formation and evolution of our solar system but also for providing ground truths for the understanding of exoplanets. As such, exploration of Uranus will not only enhance our understanding of the ice giant planets themselves but also extend to planetary dynamics throughout our solar system and beyond. The timeliness of exploring Uranus is great, as the community hopes to return in time to image unseen portions of the satellites and magnetospheric configurations. This urgency motivates evaluation of what science can be achieved with a lower-cost, potentially faster-turnaround mission, such as a New Frontiers–class orbiter mission. This paper outlines the scientific case for and the technological and design considerations that must be addressed by future studies to enable a New Frontiers–class Uranus orbiter with balanced cross-disciplinary science objectives. In particular, studies that trade scientific scope and instrumentation and operational capabilities against simpler and cheaper options must be fundamental to the mission formulation.

Political Theory of Nation-Building:Case of the Failed State of Afganistan in 2021: Part 1

Why is it important to get social science methodology correct? It is important because invalid social science theory may be used to formulate governmental policies which are wrong – incompetent and even harmful. A modern (and tragic) example of invalid social theory with bad policy is the case of America’s 20-year effort in ‘nation-building’ by occupying Afghanistan. In 2021, the policy ended dramatically with the rapid fall of the Afghan government and the triumph again of the Taliban. Afghanistan was a failed state, after a history of a series of invasions. In this research, we analyze the theory of nation-building, which can be verified by this historical event. The cross-disciplinary social science theory of nation-building is that it should be a two-directional process: with both up-and-down perspectives on building a nation from a state. This theory was analyzed empirically in a previous paper by the author, to explain the failure of nation-building in Lebanon. (Betz, 2020) Here we analyze use the theory of nation-building to explain a historical case of policy failure in Afghanistan. This theory of two strategic directions of nation-building, top-down and bottom-up, are validated in the histories of two different societies. Social science theory verified in two or more societal histories is likely to be generalizable to any modern society.

Evaluating the Impact of a Comprehensive Canadian Science-Art Residency Program on the Participating Scientist, Artist and the Public

Science-art residencies can provide opportunities for insightful cross-disciplinary collaborations, science communication, and engagement with the general public. Currently, there are few formal ways for artists and scientists to collaborate in Canada, and even fewer publications on how these experiences can impact learning in informal settings. Art the Science (a Canadian non-profit organization facilitating cross-disciplinary relationships between artists and scientists) piloted a comprehensive multiphase science-art residency program. Phase 1 informed the artist’s work through a full-time experience in a scientific laboratory at an academic institution, Phase 2 showcased the artist’s final artwork, Between the Sand at an off-campus local community event, and Phase 3 published an interactive online version of the work for global exhibition. Residency evaluation in each phase was conducted through the use of qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, concept mapping, video diaries, and surveys. The artist, scientist and lab members gained new perspectives and inspiration about their respective fields. The artist was able to incorporate theories and processes from the research group into their artistic practice. On the other hand, the scientist saw renewed enthusiasm and curiosity within their research lab, and the lab members reported new ways of thinking about how to communicate their research. Both exhibitions proved to be engaging informal learning experiences for 66.2% of survey participants, and revealed several major learning themes. Despite promoting both events as artwork exhibitions, 79.2% of survey participants considered Between the Sand as both an artwork and a science communication product suggesting that science-based art may have the potential to communicate science, even when it is not presented as a science communication effort. Public responses revealed that public perception of funding is not skewed to either discipline and instead seems to call upon both science and arts grants to fund such interdisciplinary initiatives. Providing comprehensive artist residencies in science labs may have a valuable impact on everyone involved: the artist, the research group, and the public.

Observing Arctic Sea Ice

Our understanding of Arctic sea ice and its wide-ranging influence is deeply rooted in observation. Advancing technologies have profoundly improved our ability to observe Arctic sea ice, document its processes and properties, and describe atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions with unprecedented detail. Yet, our progress toward better understanding the Arctic sea ice system is mired by the stark disparities between observations that tend to be siloed by method, scientific discipline, and application. This article presents a review and philosophical design for observing sea ice and accelerating our understanding of the Arctic sea ice system. We give a brief history of Arctic sea ice observations and showcase the 2018 melt season within the context of five observational themes: spatial heterogeneity, temporal variability, cross-disciplinary science, scalability, and retrieval uncertainty. We synthesize buoy data, optical imagery, satellite retrievals, and airborne measurements to demonstrate how disparate data sets can be woven together to transcend observational-scale issues. The results show that there are limitations to interpreting any single data set alone. However, many of these limitations can be surmounted by combining observations that cross spatial and temporal scales. We conclude the article with pathways toward coordinating across observational platforms in order to: (1) optimize the scientific, operational, and community return on observational investments, and (2) facilitate a richer understanding of Arctic sea ice and its role in the climate system.

Current Biomaterial-Based Bone Tissue Engineering and Translational Medicine.

Bone defects cause significant socio-economic costs worldwide, while the clinical “gold standard” of bone repair, the autologous bone graft, has limitations including limited graft supply, secondary injury, chronic pain and infection. Therefore, to reduce surgical complexity and speed up bone healing, innovative therapies are needed. Bone tissue engineering (BTE), a new cross-disciplinary science arisen in the 21st century, creates artificial environments specially constructed to facilitate bone regeneration and growth. By combining stem cells, scaffolds and growth factors, BTE fabricates biological substitutes to restore the functions of injured bone. Although BTE has made many valuable achievements, there remain some unsolved challenges. In this review, the latest research and application of stem cells, scaffolds, and growth factors in BTE are summarized with the aim of providing references for the clinical application of BTE.

Ethnobotanical study of some wild edible plants in Hujran Basin, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ethnobotany is a cross-disciplinary science at the confluence of the natural sciences, social economics and ecological studies, all within political and society framework. Ethnobotanical activities are an important component in the natural resources and ecosystem services, and play a key role in the human life development. In this context, the traditional knowledge has always been transferred from generation to generation throughout the natural course of everyday life, and in most cases is not written down anywhere. The present study was carried out during seasons (spring, summer, and fall) at (2018), in order to investigate and record the local traditional knowledge about the wild plants used in the food and medicine of Erbil Hujran Basin and its surroundings, Because of that Hujran Basin locate inside the Zagros area. The site study is located to the right of the main Salahaddin-Shaqlawa road, around 40 km far from the Erbil city and surrounded by Sefin Mountain and Hujran hills. Here This study involved interviews of 68 individuals, those with, maximum possible divers age, education level and gender categories to cover the traditional knowledge of the wild edible plants uses in this Basin area. Interestingly, a wide variety of plant species (87), belong to genera (67), families (25), used as wild edibles in Hujran area. The most dominant plant families were Fabaceae (13 taxa), Asteraceae (12 taxa), Brassicaceae and Rosaceae 10 taxa). For all these wild edible plant species, we have provided there scientific and local names, frequency occurrences, part used, purposes use. Of these total plant species, 66 were herbaceous species while only 12 and 9 were shrubs and trees, respectively. Overall, these wild edible plants were harvested according to different part uses and stages (seedling stage, leaves, shoot, fruit, flowers, bulbs, gum). The most striking result to emerge from the data is that the wild edible plants were found to be used for various purposes (Dolma, spice, salad, boiled and fried with egg, jam, eaten raw, etc.). The findings of this research study have important implications for developing a global biological conservation strategy to preserve simultaneously the remarkable biodiversity and ethnobotanical heritages of the Kurdistan Region known by its high multicultural and multiethnic communities.

Cross-NASA divisional relevance of an Ice Giant mission.

Robotic space exploration to the outer solar system is difficult and expensive and the space science community works inventively and collaboratively to maximize the scientific return of missions. A mission to either of our solar system Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune, will provide numerous opportunities to address high-level science objectives relevant to multiple disciplines and deliberate cross-disciplinary mission planning should ideally be woven in from the start. In this review, we recount past successes as well as (NASA-focused) challenges in performing cross-disciplinary science from robotic space exploration missions and detail the opportunities for broad-reaching science objectives from potential future missions to the Ice Giants.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Future exploration of ice giant systems’.

Tackling the Challenges of 21st-Century Open Science and Beyond: A Data Science Lab Approach

SummaryIn recent years, there has been a drive toward more open, cross-disciplinary science taking center stage. This has presented a number of challenges, including providing research platforms for collaborating scientists to explore big data, develop methods, and disseminate their results to stakeholders and decision makers. We present our vision of a “data science lab” as a collaborative space where scientists (from different disciplines), stakeholders, and policy makers can create data-driven solutions to environmental science's grand challenges. We set out a clear and defined research roadmap to serve as a focal point for an international research community progressing toward a more data-driven and transparent approach to environmental data science, centered on data science labs. This includes ongoing case studies of good practice, with the infrastructural and methodological developments required to enable data science labs to support significant increase in our cross- and trans-disciplinary science capabilities.

Building a Culture of Safety and Trust in Team Science

An Arctic research team of 150 members that implemented a culture of safety, inclusion, and trust as the foundation for cross-disciplinary science shares lessons from its experiences.

Maxwell Frank Cooper Day 1915–2017

Max Day (1915–2017) entomologist, scientific diplomat and conservationist, was a national scientific leader across the twentieth century, a time that spanned the rise of the idea of the environment and of concern about ecological limits. He was a pioneer in Australia of integrated, cross-disciplinary science and an important advocate of evidence-based policy-making. His fundamental disciplinary work in entomology, virology, ecology and forestry focused on nationally significant problems and their international context.