Scientific Interest Research Articles

University Biology Classrooms as Spaces for Anti-racist Work: Instructor Motivations for Incorporating Race, Racism, and Racial Equity Content.

Science is often portrayed as a meritocratic endeavor, but university biology programs exhibit high rates of student attrition, particularly among students of Color, despite similar interest and aptitude for science, technology, engineering,and mathematics (STEM) as White students. Culturally relevant pedagogy is associated with student persistence in STEM. One way to practice culturally relevant pedagogy in biology courses is to engage students in discussions of race, racism, or racial equity. Guidance exists to help instructors incorporate race-related topics into the biology curriculum, but the reasoning behind the decision of whether to adopt this practice is not well characterized. Understanding instructors' perceptions and experiences in implementing these topics will help identify supports and address barriers to instructor adoption. In this study, we examine university biology instructors' motivations for incorporating topics of race, racism, or racial equity in biology courses and contextual factors that influence this motivation. We found that the instructors were primarily motivated by intrinsic factors, desire to promote student learning and success, and social injustice events despite lacking external incentives. The instructors also held anti-racist perspectives when developing learning experiences for their students. How change agents can leverage these findings to promote rightful presence in biology courses is discussed.

Academic research contributions from Ibero-American countries to general knowledge, engineering, and computer science up to 2023 and COVID impact

Although commonly, competitive intelligence analysis is applied to companies, where new investments and operation expenditures are considered along with changes in the market, competitive intelligence can be applied to different countries' academic research production, which impacts science, technology and innovation making a difference in their competitiveness. This work shows the academic research production for all areas of knowledge, and also specifically for engineering and computer science, from all the Ibero-American countries, based on the SCOPUS database from 2001 to 2023. The results show that based on the volume of their academic production, for an affordable analysis, the Ibero-American countries can be classified into three groups, considering an order of magnitude difference for each group. The leading group is composed of countries producing between 200,000 and about 2 million documents, the second group of countries producing between 20,000 and 200,000 documents, and the third group of countries producing between 2,000 and 20,000 documents. The COVID pandemic impacted all the countries which showed a decrease in annual production over the last two years. The results also show the priority areas of knowledge that these countries invest in and the main countries that they collaborate with. The behavior of production for engineering and computer science is like that of general production, but there are some specific internal factors for specific countries such as in the case of Brazil, the country in which production fell most dramatically, followed by Spain and Colombia. On the other hand, Peru and Ecuador show a high interest in engineering and computer science. This work offers a high value decision-making tool to leaders in academic research, the principals of research driven institutions and investors from industry in Ibero-America. The academic production is related to the size of the GDP and the percentage of the GDP invested by a country in research development and innovation.

Burn your fat—a unique DIY board game about triacylglycerol breakdown

Understanding metabolic pathways is challenging for students due to their complex nature and intricate interdependencies. To address this problem, gamification has emerged as a promising approach to make scientific concepts accessible and engaging. We present a DIY educational activity focusing on lipid and glucose metabolism to clarify the basic principles of biochemical transformations and provide practical educational resources for lecturers. The activity is designed to be accessible and requires minimal resources, using physical media such as printed boards and dice. It consists of two parts: an introductory session where students build a triacylglycerol molecule and a board game where teams compete to metabolically break down triacylglycerols and obtain ATP. The process in governed by rules based on metabolic transformations, with players taking on roles as walkers, counters, transformers, and strategists to encourage cooperation. The game aligns with the theories of cognitivism and constructivism and emphasizes knowledge acquisition, the formation of mental structures, and active learning through experience. It promotes a socio-cultural perspective and the development of interpersonal skills by encouraging teamwork, cooperation, and problem-solving. The thematic focus on obesity provides real-world context, and the DIY concept, 3D printing capability, and potential for creating extensions encourage student engagement and customization. The activity effectively teaches metabolic networks to high school students, is helpful for graduate students in visualizing experimental problems, increased engagement in the classroom and interest in the life sciences. A simplified version has also been used for the general public at science fairs, highlighting its versatility and accessibility.

A research brief investigating educational television and U.S. children’s interest in science and world culture

ABSTRACT Research on educational television has overwhelmingly investigated the impact of viewing on children’s knowledge acquisition. However, this content might influence other important outcomes, such as children’s interest in learning about new topics. To investigate this possibility, we invited parents of 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 83) to answer three surveys over 1 month. The first survey included a video encouraging families to view a popular science program (Hero Elementary) or cultural program (Let’s Go Luna). The remaining surveys asked about children’s exposure to science and cultural programs, as well as their engagement with science and cultural topics in everyday conversation. Although our encouragement intervention had no impact on children’s exposure to science or cultural programs, viewing that content was associated with increased science and cultural talk over time. These findings suggest that educational television might motivate children to explore new topics of interest in non-mediated contexts.

Future-Oriented Science Learning and its Effects on Students’ Emotions, Futures Literacy and Agency in the Anthropocene

AbstractScience education bears the broader objective of nurturing students today to be scientifically-literate citizens of tomorrow who are able to foresee challenges, invent solutions and make responsible decisions for global issues. As a prelude to the new focus of agency in the Anthropocene, this paper presents an intervention on climate change with upper secondary students in a museum of natural history in England. Instructional strategies such as infusing scenarios and arts into scientific discussions were adopted to induce imagination, future-oriented thinking and emotional responses. Statistical results showed that the intervention significantly enhanced participants’ futures literacy, environmental agency and positive emotions. However, it did not increase their interests in learning science in out-of-school context. Implications of this study will shed light on futurising science and climate education in research and practice.

Noise‐Like Pulse Seeded Supercontinuum Generation: An In‐Depth Review For High‐Energy Flat Broadband Sources

AbstractAs the need for compact, cost‐effective, and reliable laser sources continues to rise, fiber lasers have gained widespread interest in science and technology. In recent years, passively mode‐locked fiber lasers (PMLFLs) have emerged as pivotal tools for generating ultrashort pulses, propelling advancements across various domains including communication, manufacturing, medicine, defense, and security. Amongst the various types of lasing states supported by a PMFL, the emphasis in this review is on the noise‐like pulses (NLP) and their potential applications in supercontinuum generation (SCG). Interestingly, the quasi‐stationary operation of the NLP envelope containing numerous chaotic sub‐pulses has facilitated relatively high energy and broad bandwidth compared to standard mode‐locked laser pulses. Moreover, the NLP generation goes beyond a specific cavity arrangement, the nature of mode‐locking or cavity dispersion. Therefore, through this review, the foremost aim is to report the differences in NLPs across various experimental settings reported so far and highlight the strategies beneficial for high‐energy and broadband NLP development directly from a fiber oscillator. Secondly, the application of NLP as a seed laser is examined to stimulate SCG in different types of fibers, underlining the improved supercontinuum characteristics over the conventional ultrashort pulse pumping schemes. Finally, the benefit of NLP‐seeded SCG for various bio‐medical and industrial applications are highlighted, thanks to the broader and flatter continuum achievable through compact experimental settings.

Inscribing Janaki Ammal: Biographies and the Act of Remembering

Abstract This paper examines the life and commemoration of E. K. Janaki Ammal, a groundbreaking Indian botanist and cytogeneticist. By analysing three biographical sources, the paper explores how these narratives portray Ammal as an exemplary female scientist, specifically by formulating a rigid picture of an ‘ideal female scientist’. While elucidating the career and gender-specific challenges faced by Ammal as a female scientist, the paper employs the methodological framework of feminist science studies to explore the creation, dissemination, and attribution of specific subjectivities. It examines how class, gender, and caste in India affected Ammal’s scientific career. Moreover, these biographies shed light on the role played by race in her scientific pursuits in nineteenth-century British India.

Is It Always Advisable to Promote Geodiversity and Geoheritage in a Traditional Recreational Area? A Case Study from Brno Reservoir and Its Surroundings (Czechia)

Geodiversity and geoheritage represent an important resource for geotourism and subsequent economic development both in remote natural areas and in traditional, frequently visited recreational areas. Identification, assessment, and suitable management of particular geosites may contribute to the development of sustainable forms of tourism and attract more people to the topics of geodiversity and geoheritage. However, if there is only one aim represented by geotourism development, there can be a danger of overexploitation of geoheritage, especially if the sites are promoted less adequately and not provided suitable protection. This paper is focused on the assessment of particular sites, in terms of their Earth science interest, regarding their geotourist and geoeducational potential; it is also focused on an assessment of possible risks and threats which may be related to the higher promotion and more intensive use of these sites. Based on this, proposals for sustainable management, both for geotourism and geoeducational development and nature conservation, are presented and discussed.

High-entropy engineering improved the corrosion resistance of rare earth tantalates

High-entropy RETa3O9 ceramics have garnered significant interest in materials science due to their impressive high melting points and lower thermal conductivity. This study focuses on three types of these ceramics: (La0.2Ce0.2Nd0.2Sm0.2Dy0.2)Ta3O9, (La0.2Ce0.2Nd0.2Sm0.2Tm0.2)Ta3O9, and SmTa3O9.The results indicate that the coefficient of thermal expansion (TEC) for RETa3O9 ceramics remains in the range of approximately 5.94×10-6 K-1 to 6.05×10-6 K-1 when subjected to temperatures from room temperature up to 1400°C. This TEC is notably similar to that of silicon carbide ceramic matrix composites (SiC-CMC), which is essential for compatibility in applications where these materials are used together.Moreover, the study highlights an important finding: after 20 hours of exposure to a CMAS (calcium-magnesium-alumino-silicate) environment at 1300°C, the high-entropy tantalates exhibit significantly reduced susceptibility to corrosion compared to traditional single-component tantalate ceramics. While single-component materials, including SmTa3O9, showed greater degradation, the high-entropy RETa3O9 ceramics maintained their original morphology, free from porosity and cracking.This impressive resistance to CMAS corrosion indicates that the high-entropy design is beneficial in enhancing the durability of tantalates in extreme environments. Consequently, these findings suggest that high-entropy RETa3O9 ceramics hold promise for use as thermal/environmental barrier coating (T/EBC) materials in applications involving SiC-CMCs, potentially leading to improved performance and longevity in high-temperature applications.

Advancing Behavioral Medicine: The International Pursuit of Science for 30 Years.

Advancing Behavioral Medicine: The International Pursuit of Science for 30 Years.

Changing dominance of invasive Phragmites australis and native plant colonization with variation in management, wildfires, and soils in a desert wetland

Abstract Among the most widely distributed species globally, common reed (Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud.) has generated extensive interest in invasive plant science and management because its introduced strains are highly invasive and often form monocultures that alter ecosystem properties. In desert wetlands in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, where management goals included reducing hazardous P. australis fuels and increasing native plant diversity, we assessed variation in P. australis cover, the degree of native plant colonization, and soil seed banks after P. australis management treatments (cutting, glyphosate-imazapyr herbicide) and wildfires across gradients in soil properties. Based on change in P. australis cover during six measurement events over 24 months, 24 study sites formed three groups: 1) decreasing cover, where initially high P. australis cover (60-85%) decreased to < 5% following multiple cutting or herbicide treatments; 2) sustaining low cover, where wildfire or clearing was associated with initially low P. australis cover which remained low (< 30%) after multiple herbicide applications; and 3) sustaining high cover (45-100% initially and remaining 30-100%), including sites unmanaged or treated/burned only once. High soil salinity correlated with low post-management P. australis cover. No native plants were detected in the sustaining high P. australis cover group, despite natives occurring in the seed bank. Where management reduced P. australis cover, minimal native plant colonization did occur. Secondary invasion by other non-native plants was nearly absent. Our results suggest that if P. australis can be initially cleared, multiple herbicide applications can persistently keep cover low, especially on drier, saline soils. Slow native plant colonization suggests that a phased approach may be useful to initially reduce P. australis cover, keep it low via repeated treatments, and actively revegetate sites with native species tailored to the moisture-salinity gradient across P. australis-invaded habitats.

Experimental narratives: A comparison of human crowdsourced storytelling and AI storytelling

The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing fictional prompts as a novel tool for investigating cultural artifacts and social biases in storytelling both by humans and generative AI. The study analyzes 250 stories authored by crowdworkers in June 2019 and 80 stories generated by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in March 2023 by merging methods from narratology and inferential statistics. Both crowdworkers and large language models responded to identical prompts about creating and falling in love with an artificial human. The proposed experimental paradigm allows a direct and controlled comparison between human and LLM-generated storytelling. Responses to the Pygmalionesque prompts confirm the pervasive presence of the Pygmalion myth in the collective imaginary of both humans and large language models. All solicited narratives present a scientific or technological pursuit. The analysis reveals that narratives from GPT-3.5 and particularly GPT-4 are more progressive in terms of gender roles and sexuality than those written by humans. While AI narratives with default settings and no additional prompting can occasionally provide innovative plot twists, they offer less imaginative scenarios and rhetoric than human-authored texts. The proposed framework argues that fiction can be used as a window into human and AI-based collective imaginary and social dimensions.

Study of Wordwall Web Based Learning Media to Increase Student Learning Interest in Science Learning

This research aims to find out the study implementation of Wordwall web-based learning media to increase student learning interest in Natural and Social Science (IPAS) learning. This research is qualitative descriptive research, and did not aim to test a learning model by providing a certain stimulus, but to provide an in-depth description of changes in student interest in learning when obtaining web-based media in the students’ learning process. This research was conducted in SDN 08 Wanarejan which is located at St. Kerinci Taman, Rt 3/RW 3, Wanarejan, Taman, South Wanarejan, Wanarejan Sel. There are several kinds of games in Wordwall-based learning media that can be implemented. The implementation can be adjusted to the situation and conditions as well as the facilities and infrastructure of both schools and teachers and students personally as a form of flexibility in learning time.

Undergraduate Research Science Capital: Measuring capacity to engage in research.

Undergraduate research has been identified as a high-impact educational practice. However, despite the body of evidence on the outcomes of undergraduate research, few studies have focused on the influences students face regarding participation. Developed using Science Capital and Social Cognitive Career Theory, a survey comprised of potential influences to undergraduate science research participation was disseminated to science majors at four R1 institutions in the Southeastern United States. Participation rates across several demographic factors and effect of participation influences were analysed. Results reveal a significantly greater proportion of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Plus (LGBTQ+) and disability communities indicating participating in research than their peers. Additionally, fourteen participation influences were identified as having a significant difference in their level of influence to the ability to participate in research between researchers and non-researchers. These include professor influence, interest in research, interest in science, coursework in the major, and major all being rated as opportunities with a significant difference of effect between researchers and those who have not yet participated in research. The results of this study will be beneficial for science departments and their respective institutions to improve the equity of access to their undergraduate research experiences.

Situating data stories in space to entice new audiences to engage with science

ABSTRACT Science communication predominantly engages individuals who already possess a pre-existing interest in science, thereby limiting its reach to a broader and more diverse audience. Situated approaches that intertwine content with spatial design may overcome interest barriers as it allows for spontaneous encounters with science. This paper describes the design of a multi-modal physicalisation coined Star Listener as the result of a collaboration between scientific experts (in astrophysics), design researchers and media professionals. Star Listener consists of different sensory engagement modalities, including textual information panels, speakers that distribute sonified data of stars, two public video displays with an animated explainer and interactive touchscreens with a mini-game. Star Listener was placed in an entryway of a public library for a period of 2 months. We evaluated this set-up by observing and interviewing passersby, both in an in-the-wild study and as a controlled in-the-wild study. We present design recommendations for the design of situated data representations and narrative physicalisations to support engagement of varied audiences with science.

Atmospheric footnotes: Ada Lovelace on climate

This article brings to light correspondence between Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852) and Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871) from the Royal Society archives. The 1848 letters reveal the extent of her contribution to an article authored by her husband, William King, Lord Lovelace (1805–1893), on the role of climate on crop growth. This involvement uncovers little-known facets of her scientific pursuits: her interest in the application of photography to meteorological instrumentation, her budding study of astronomy, and her development of mathematical treatments to model the environmental conditions required for plants to grow. The exchange situates Ada Lovelace in the larger context of Victorian science and reflects more widely on the complicated access of women to institutional science.

Suppression of quantum dissipation: a cooperative effect of quantum squeezing and quantum measurement.

The ability to isolate a quantum system from its environment is of fundamental interest and importance in optical quantum science and technology. Here we propose an experimentally feasible scheme for beating environment-induced dissipation in an open two-level system coupled to a parametrically driven cavity. The mechanism relies on a novel, to the best of our knowledge, cooperation between light-matter coupling enhancement and frequent measurements. We demonstrate that, in the presence of the cooperation, the system dynamics can be completely dominated by the effective system-cavity interaction, and the dissipative effects from the system-environment coupling can be surprisingly ignored. This work provides a generic method of dissipation suppression in a variety of quantum mechanical platforms, including natural atoms and superconducting circuits.

Impact of Robotics Workshops on Secondary School Students' Interest in Science and Technology Fields

Impact of Robotics Workshops on Secondary School Students' Interest in Science and Technology Fields

STEM ATTITUDE DISPARITY: THE IMPACT OF LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN VOCATIONALLY-ORIENTED POLYTECHNIC AND UNIVERSITY ON STUDENTS’ SELF-EFFICACY, EXPECTANCY-VALUE, AND CAREER INTEREST

Learning experiences are widely recognized as crucial in developing students’ attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Vocationally-oriented polytechnics and universities provide distinct learning experiences that may significantly influence students’ STEM self-efficacy, expectancy-value and career interest. The study explores how the unique learning experiences shape students' STEM attitudes among 487 students during their fourth semester at vocationally-oriented polytechnic and university. The S-STEM survey was adopted as the measurement instrument. The result showed that university students displayed a more favorable overall STEM attitude compared to students enrolled in vocational-oriented polytechnic. University students demonstrated greater STEM self-efficacy than polytechnic students, but no significant difference in STEM expectancy-value was detected between the two groups. From the perspective of inter-group comparison, university education consistently fostered students a heightened sense of STEM self-efficacy, expectancy-value and career interest in science, whereas vocationally-oriented polytechnic education boasted its unique strengths in cultivating robust attitudes and career interests towards science and engineering/technology. However, students in both institutions exhibited a relatively less positive attitude towards learning mathematics. The findings highlight the importance of learning experiences in shaping students' STEM attitudes and career interests. Keywords: career interest, expectancy-value, learning experiences, self-efficacy, STEM attitude

Bifunctional Nitrogen-Rich Heterocyclic Compounds: Synthesis, Photoluminescence and Energetic Properties.

Nitrogen-rich heterocyclic frameworks have attracted enormous interest in organic chemistry and materials science. However, their potential for developing photoluminescent materials remains underexplored due to their relatively low molecular stabilities. In this work, two tricyclic fused nitrogen-rich fluorescent heterocycles were synthesized and characterized. The photophysical properties of the synthesized 4 and 5 were investigated through theoretical and experimental studies. In addition, their physicochemical and energetic properties and the performance as an additive to the perovskite absorption layer of the perovskite solar cell were also studied.