Knowledge Of Diversity Research Articles

All Hands on Deck: Coordinated approaches to Indigenous early career development

The Developing Indigenous Early Career Researchers Project is a three-year longitudinal study funded by the Australian Research Council investigating the experiences and perspectives of Indigenous early career researchers working in universities across Australia. In an earlier paper we explored self-identified needs of Indigenous early career researchers regarding the development of sound research trajectories and careers in the academy (Locke et al., 2022). This paper takes a step further in investigating, who is responsible and should be held to account for supporting the development of these Indigenous early carer researchers. Data collected from across all three stages (2020, 2021 and 2022) of this project suggests that Indigenous early career researchers consider that all university staff, including themselves have certain responsibilities towards developing their academic career trajectories. Some Indigenous ECRs also pointed out the roles that external agencies such as government and funding bodies play in guiding institutions to value and promote the diversity and wealth of knowledge that Indigenous academics bring to the academy. This paper engages an Indigenist research approach and employs relatedness theory in advocating the development of policies and programs to support the career trajectories of Indigenous Early Career Researchers, from an Indigenous epistemological standpoint. To close, this paper posits that to achieve optimum outcomes for Indigenous ECR’s there needs to be systematic and coordinated institutional approaches to developing career trajectories that ameliorate challenges and barriers to Indigenous ECR career progression.

Overcoming human exceptionalism: The role of ethical nature-culture relations in the developmental contexts of indigenous children.

Indigenous populations, including American Indians, Alaska Natives, First Nations, and other first peoples worldwide, have been largely overlooked in child development research. This commentary examines how Indigenous relationality intersects with developmental science, advocating for a shift from human exceptionalism to an interconnected relationality among people, land, and more-than-human beings. Drawing from diverse Indigenous knowledge and practices, The Six Pillars to Advance Indigenous Relationality among Children provides frameworks for integrating Indigenous worldviews emphasizing interconnected responsibilities and sustainability. Embracing Indigenous relationality-grounded in respect and reciprocity-dismantles inequitable systems, enhances socioecological well-being, and supports healthy Indigenous child development, fostering responsible relationships with the land and ensuring a sustainable future for generations.

Framework for Integrating Large Language Models with a Robotic Health Attendant for Adaptive Task Execution in Patient Care

The development of intelligent medical service robots for patient care presents significant challenges, particularly in integrating diverse knowledge sources and enabling robots to autonomously perform tasks in dynamic and unpredictable healthcare environments. This study introduces a novel framework that combines large language models with healthcare-specific knowledge and robotic operations to enhance autonomous task execution for a Robotic Health Attendant. Utilizing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the system processes structured information about patient care protocols and unstructured human inputs to generate context-aware robot actions. A prototype system was tested in a simulated patient room where the robot successfully performed both simple individual actions and complex tasks involving the execution of multiple actions, based on real-time dialogues with the language model and predefined task specifications. The results demonstrate the potential of language models to reduce the reliance on hardcoded logic and provide healthcare professionals with the ability to interact with robotic systems through natural language.

Metagenomic Analysis of Microbial Diversity in the Urban Air of Sofia (Bulgaria) during Spring and Winter

The main scientific interest for decades remained focused primarily on physical and chemical air pollutants, which severely limited our knowledge of microbial diversity in the atmosphere. The ecology of airborne microorganisms is poorly understood, even though they are a constant element of the air we breathe. Their exploration is very important for understanding health and ecological impacts, mainly in the highly urbanized cities. The main purpose of this study is to explore the biodiversity of microorganisms in the atmosphere over the densely populated centre of Sofia (Bulgaria) during spring and winter by Next-generation sequencing. The results showed that the most prevailing bacteria in the urban bioaerosols were representatives of phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroides, Actinobacteria. Many of the identified species were soil and leaf surface dwellers. Most of the detected fungal sequences belong to the phylum Ascomycota. Some pathogenic bacterial and fungal taxa were also found. This study provides the first information about microbial diversity in the outdoor air above Sofia and contributes to better understanding of urban airborne microbiota.

Addressing the Anthropocene from the Global South: integrating paleoecology, archaeology and traditional knowledge for COP engagement

The triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss necessitates more holistic, comprehensive, and integrated public policy approaches. Within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this crisis highlights significant conflicts over forms of knowledge and conceptualization, affecting how international policies are formed. Indigenous knowledge systems have become increasingly acknowledged for their vital role in addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene. Conferences of the Parties institutions like the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change emphasize the critical, although not always recognized, importance of Indigenous territories, which contain eighty percent of the world’s biodiversity. Here, we show that research in paleoecology, archaeology and history demonstrates the long-term significance of traditional knowledge and Indigenous land management practices for contemporary ecosystem dynamics. Drawing from these varied studies and perspectives also reveal the socio-economic inequalities resulting from centuries of European colonialism. We showcase three case studies on; (i) pastoralism in eastern Africa, (ii) natural resource management in southeast Asia and (iii) adaptation to sea level rise in the Caribbean, which touch upon highly diverse human resilience strategies across space and time. Despite efforts at the COP28 to accelerate climate action and incorporate diverse knowledge systems, significant challenges remain. The need for a pluralistic knowledge, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, blending scientific language with artistic and narrative forms, is proposed as critical for fostering effective communication and developing more effective and equitable solutions for global environmental governance.

The potential of open innovation platforms: driving sustainable development goals through digital collaboration

ABSTRACT Open innovation is a pivotal driver of organisational growth. This concept involves engaging external partners and leveraging diverse knowledge sources, leading to significant advancements in sustainability. With the rise of digital platforms, the potential for open innovation to foster sustainable development has increased. However, the literature on the intersection of digitalisation, open innovation, and sustainability remains sparse and fragmented. This study aims to bridge this research gap by exploring how digital platforms facilitate open innovation practices and their impact on sustainability, particularly in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. By creating a comprehensive database from scientific literature published between 2019 and June 2024, this research compiles a wide range of applications, case studies, and proposed implementations of open innovation platforms. Exploratory analysis maps the landscape of these practices, focusing on their sectoral applications, technologies involved, and business impacts. Text mining techniques are employed to identify patterns and key elements within the dataset. This analysis reveals how open innovation platforms contribute to sustainability, highlighting areas where they are most effective and identifying gaps for future research. The findings offer theoretical and practical insights, providing a detailed understanding of the current state of open innovation in the digital age, and their implications for sustainable development. This study aims to inform practitioners and policymakers about leveraging digital platforms to enhance sustainability efforts.

Investigating The Factors Influencing Employees’ Psychological Capital and Mental Well-Being At Multinational Companies (MNCs) in Beijing

This study utilizes the job demands-resources model to examine the relationship between job resources (like organizational climate, co-worker support, authentic leadership, knowledge diversity, and work-life support practices), burnout, psychological capital, and mental health among employees at multinational companies in Beijing. An online survey was filled out by 173 people, and the data were analyzed with PLS-SEM. The results suggest that authentic leadership and work-life support practices had no impact on psychological capital, whereas a positive work environment, helpful co-workers, and a broad range of expertise did. In addition to having direct effects on mental health, psychological capital also indirectly affects mental health through burnout. This study adds to the current literature by examining the mental well-being of employees working for multinational firms in Beijing.

Population genomics of a specialized insect, Tetraopes texanus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), across a fragmented grassland system

AbstractSpecialist insects are especially susceptible to loss of genetic diversity in the face of habitat destruction and fragmentation. Implementing effective conservation practices for specialist insects will benefit from knowledge of population structure and genetic diversity. Because insects are hyper-diverse, characterizing the population structure of all species within the insect community is untenable, even if focused within a particular habitat type. Thus, concentrating on a single species specialized to a particular habitat type is needed to infer general trends. Here, we investigate the range-wide population genetics of Tetraopes texanus Horn 1878 (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), which provides a useful model of grassland insects due to its’ habitat specificity and unique biology. Tetraopes texanus occurs primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, into Northern Mexico, and possibly into eastern New Mexico but also occurs in Black Belt prairies of Mississippi and Alabama. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (RAD-seq) analysis identified two distinct population clusters of T. texanus corresponding to the Texas and Oklahoma population and the Mississippi and Alabama population. Demographic models indicate ongoing, though incomplete, isolation of the two populations, with estimated dates of divergence in the mid-Pleistocene, coinciding with the end of a glacial period and a shift in glacial interval. These results can inform conservation of grassland adapted insects and offers insight to the biogeography of the Gulf Coastal Plain.

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Articles Published in the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Journal (1976-2023).

Despite the important role of the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (APS) journal in the field of aesthetic plastic surgery, there is a notable absence of literature that focuses exclusively on the bibliometric analysis of this journal. In recognition of APS's 48 years of publishing, this study aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of the articles published in the APS (1976-2023). Articles published in the APS were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database. VOSviewer was employed to perform bibliometric analyses. Microsoft Excel was utilized to analyse the publication and citation trends. From 1976 to 2023, 5134 articles were published in the APS. These articles were contributed by 12,963 researchers from 3354 institutions across 91 countries. The USA and China were the leading contributors. The most prolific author is Luan Jie from China. The co-citation networks highlighted the influence of the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. We categorized the articles into four groups, and the results show that articles with the highest publications and citations in the APS are related to facial cosmetic surgery. In terms of specific surgical procedures, breast augmentation surgery has garnered consistent attention from researchers over the past 48 years, ranking first in both the number of publications and citations. The findings of this study indicate that the APS is a significant scientific journal, is widely utilized by global researchers in the field of aesthetic plastic surgery, and spans diverse knowledge domains. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

Exploring epistemological decentring in a language other than English classroom through pedagogical translanguaging

AbstractThis paper aims to explore the epistemological decentring in a language other than English classroom through pedagogical translanguaging and examine students’ attitudes toward translanguaging practices. Data were collected from a six‐week classroom observation with 20 French major undergraduates and interviews with the students in a comprehensive university in China. Analysis revealed that the teacher employs three forms of translanguaging pedagogy: form‐focused strategy, dual‐language substantiation, and multi‐semiotic strategy, which promote students’ understanding of epistemological decentring. The interviews indicated the advantages of translanguaging integrated with epistemological decentring including heightened engagement, the development of cross‐language awareness, and enhanced critical language awareness. The study shows how pedagogical translanguaging aligns with a decentring perspective, promoting the use of diverse knowledge systems, and highlighting the importance of creating a decentring space for multilingual education. It also underscores the need to challenge monolingual ideologies, question conventional approaches to multilingualism, and actively embrace a diverse range of meaning‐making systems.

Empowering Indigenous-Led Contaminant Monitoring through Collaborative Partnerships and Two-Way Capacity Sharing

Climate-driven landscape change, legacy waste and ongoing infrastructural investment are leading to concerns about contaminant release in Arctic Indigenous and Local communities. Sustainable development that considers threats posed by accelerating environmental change requires accessible, appropriate, and sustained environmental data to inform strategic decision-making. Collaborative partnerships and capacity sharing are necessary to promote resilient and sustainable environmental monitoring approaches, however effective collaboration has been hindered by mismatches in priorities and timelines between communities and research programs. We outline the development and later evolution of a community-based environmental research program focused on monitoring contamination threats posed by legacy infrastructure sourced from industry, transportation and domestic waste sites. Capacities and insights from diverse knowledge systems guided each stage of our research approach. Reflections provided by an Indigenous and non-Indigenous Early Career Researcher (ECR) share insights into different aspects of the research process. We highlight how cross-cultural partnerships and capacity sharing have enabled evolving and reflexive community-based contaminant monitoring. Our approach facilitates a structural shift from collaborative monitoring with external analysis to autonomous monitoring that supports equity in research outcomes. Appropriately considered and resourced co-development at regular points of the research process has been critical to developing a complete and effective Indigenous-led research project.

African Indigenous education in the postcolonial period: A critical reflection

This article examines African Indigenous education in the precolonial period in Southern Africa, focusing on its key elements, characteristics, and educational significance within the broader context of the decolonial education discourse. By delving into primary forms and practices of Indigenous African education, we aim to shed light on how these systems contribute to understanding the educational landscape and the challenges faced in the wake of colonialism. Additionally, we explore the transformative role played by Indigenous education in Southern Africa in addressing the hegemonic influence of Western education during the postcolonial era. Drawing on existing literature and critical analysis, we critically reflect on the nature of a decolonial turn in African Indigenous education. The examination aims at contributing to the ongoing discourse on decolonising education and providing insights into the potential benefits of embracing Indigenous knowledge systems in contemporary African societies by recognising the importance of valuing diverse knowledge systems in fostering inclusive and relevant educational practices.

Seasonal variations of microbial communities and viral diversity in fishery-enhanced marine ranching sediments: insights into metabolic potentials and ecological interactions

BackgroundThe ecosystems of marine ranching have enhanced marine biodiversity and ecological balance and have promoted the natural recovery and enhancement of fishery resources. The microbial communities of these ecosystems, including bacteria, fungi, protists, and viruses, are the drivers of biogeochemical cycles. Although seasonal changes in microbial communities are critical for ecosystem functioning, the current understanding of microbial-driven metabolic properties and their viral communities in marine sediments remains limited. Here, we employed amplicon (16S and 18S) and metagenomic approaches aiming to reveal the seasonal patterns of microbial communities, bacterial-eukaryotic interactions, whole metabolic potential, and their coupling mechanisms with carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S) cycling in marine ranching sediments. Additionally, the characterization and diversity of viral communities in different seasons were explored in marine ranching sediments.ResultsThe current study demonstrated that seasonal variations dramatically affected the diversity of microbial communities in marine ranching sediments and the bacterial-eukaryotic interkingdom co-occurrence networks. Metabolic reconstruction of the 113 medium to high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) was conducted, and a total of 8 MAGs involved in key metabolic genes and pathways (methane oxidation - denitrification - S oxidation), suggesting a possible coupling effect between the C, N, and S cycles. In total, 338 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs) were identified, all possessing specific ecological characteristics in different seasons and primarily belonging to Caudoviricetes, revealing their widespread distribution and variety in marine sediment ecosystems. In addition, predicted virus-host linkages showed that high host specificity was observed, with few viruses associated with specific hosts.ConclusionsThis finding deepens our knowledge of element cycling and viral diversity in fisheries enrichment ecosystems, providing insights into microbial-virus interactions in marine sediments and their effects on biogeochemical cycling. These findings have potential applications in marine ranching management and ecological conservation.DRyDF7ykR-XALqAtu34uZtVideo

Mitigating Grand Challenges in Life Cycle Inventory Modeling through the Applications of Large Language Models.

The accuracy of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies is often questioned due to the two grand challenges of life cycle inventory (LCI) modeling: (1) missing foreground flow data and (2) inconsistency in background data matching. Traditional mechanistic methods (e.g., process simulation) and existing machine learning (ML) methods (e.g., similarity-based selection methods) are inadequate due to their limitations in scalability and generalizability. The large language models (LLMs) are well-positioned to address these challenges, given the massive and diverse knowledge learned through the pretraining step. Incorporating LLMs into LCI modeling can lead to the automation of inventory data curation from diverse data sources and to the implementation of a multimodal analytical capacity. In this article, we delineated the mechanisms and advantages of LLMs to addressing these two grand challenges. We also discussed the future research to enhance the use of LLMs for LCI modeling, which includes the key areas such as improving retrieval augmented generation (RAG), integration with knowledge graphs, developing prompt engineering strategies, and fine-tuning pretrained LLMs for LCI-specific tasks. The findings from our study serve as a foundation for future research on scalable and automated LCI modeling methods that can provide more appropriate data for LCA calculations.

Co‐production in action: Navigating the research‐to‐implementation space in wildlife conservation through a Community of Practice

AbstractEffective conservation practices require addressing the divide between research and implementation. Co‐production, which emphasizes collaboration and diverse knowledge exchange, is increasingly recognized as valuable in conservation to address this challenge, yet empirical insights remain limited. This case study explores using a Community of Practice (CoP) as an avenue for facilitating co‐production in shorebird conservation. Centering researchers and practitioners within implementation initiatives, we evaluate factors enabling a successful CoP and barriers hindering members' experiences. Capacity emerged as the predominant barrier, while the leading factors contributing to CoP success were having a dedicated space to support labor division, relationship building, and informal learning among CoP members. Leveraging our evaluation insights, we offer practical recommendations for structuring a CoP to optimize these benefits and advance the integration of CoPs and co‐production principles in conservation practice.

Geodesign to advance boundary work in urban planning: A study in Stockholm focused on nature-based solutions.

Geodesign supports collaborative urban planning by managing 'boundaries' between diverse knowledge holders. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence of its contribution to 'boundary work'. This paper aims to evaluate how a geodesign process facilitates knowledge co-production through boundary work and to assess the scientific credibility, politicalsaliency, and procedural legitimacy of its outputs in urban planning. We propose a replicable geodesign framework to assess boundary work, and test it in a case study on urban transformations with nature-based solutions in the Skarpnäck district of Stockholm, Sweden. Findings indicate that all geodesign steps facilitated communication by promoting collective reasoning. Participants acknowledged contributions to knowledge co-production and decision-making by mediating between different perspectives. However, data quality and modeling simplicity were identified as critical factors affecting the outputs' perceived credibility. Future applications should include co-designing the geodesign process, improving capacity and skills, and facilitating more integrated planning.

The role of innovation strategies in balancing growth and profit: evidence from Colombian firms

ABSTRACT Research highlights the significant impact of exploratory, exploitative, and ambidextrous innovation strategies on firm performance. Ambidextrous innovation is particularly effective, enhancing performance in both emerging and developed markets. However, the differential effects on growth and profitability in resource-constrained emerging markets are still not fully understood. This study employs panel data regression to analyze the influence of these innovation strategies on 1047 Colombian manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2018, with a specific focus on the moderating role of diverse knowledge sources. Findings indicate that ambidextrous innovation positively correlates with both growth and profitability. In contrast, firms focusing solely on either exploratory or exploitative strategies experience negative impacts on domestic growth. The integration of a broad range of knowledge sources further amplifies the positive effects of ambidextrous innovation. This research provides valuable insights for effectively leveraging innovation strategies in emerging markets, offering a strategic framework for firms and policymakers in resource-constrained environments.

Remote science at sea with remotely operated vehicles

Conducting sea-going ocean science no longer needs to be limited to the number of berths on a ship given that telecommunications, computing, and networking technologies onboard ships have become familiar mechanisms for expanding scientists’ reach from onshore. The oceanographic community routinely works with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and pilots to access real-time video and data from the deep sea, while onboard a ship. The extension of using an ROV and its host vessel’s live-streaming capabilities has been popularized for almost 3 decades as a telepresence technology. Telepresence-enabled vessels with ROVs have been employed for science, education, and outreach, giving a greater number of communities viewing access to ocean science. However, the slower development of technologies and social processes enabling sustained real-time involvement between scientists on-ship and onshore undermines the potential for broader access, which limits the possibility of increasing inclusivity and discoveries through a diversity of knowledge and capabilities. This article reviews ocean scientists’ use of telepresence for ROV-based deep-sea research and funded studies of telepresence capabilities. The authors summarize these studies findings and conditions that lead to defining the use of telepresence-enabled vessels for “remote science at sea.” Authors define remote science at sea as a type of ocean expedition, an additional capability, not a replacement for all practices by which scientists conduct ocean research. Remote science for ocean research is an expedition at-sea directed by a distributed science team working together from at least two locations (on-ship and onshore) to complete their science objectives for which primary data is acquired by robotic technologies, with connectivity supported by a high-bandwidth satellite and the telepresence-enabled ship’s technologies to support the science team actively engaged before, during, and after dives across worksites. The growth of productive ocean expeditions with remote science is met with social, technical, and logistical challenges that impede the ability of remote scientists to succeed. In this article, authors review telepresence-enabled ocean science, define and situate the adjoined model of remote science at sea, and some infrastructural, technological and social considerations for conducting and further developing remote science at sea.

UCC: A unified cascade compression framework for vision transformer models

In recent years, Vision Transformer (ViT) and its variants have dominated many computer vision tasks. However, the high computational consumption and training data requirements of ViT make it challenging to be deployed directly on resource-constrained devices and environments. Model compression is an effective approach to accelerate deep learning networks, but existing methods for compressing ViT models are limited in their scopes and struggle to strike a balance between performance and computational cost. In this paper, we propose a novel Unified Cascaded Compression Framework (UCC) to compress ViT in a more precise and efficient manner. Specifically, we first analyze the frequency information within tokens and prune them based on a joint score of their both spatial and spectral characteristics. Subsequently, we propose a similarity-based token aggregation scheme that combines the abundant contextual information contained in all pruned tokens with the host tokens according to their weights. Additionally, we introduce a novel cumulative cascaded pruning strategy that performs bottom-up cascaded pruning of tokens based on cumulative scores, avoiding information loss caused by individual idiosyncrasies of blocks. Finally, we design a novel two-level distillation strategy, incorporating imitation and exploration, to ensure the diversity of knowledge and better performance recovery. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our unified cascaded compression framework outperforms most existing state-of-the-art approaches, compresses the floating-point operations of ViT-Base as well as DeiT-Base models by 22 % and 54.1 %, and improves the recognition accuracy of the models by 3.74 % and 1.89 %, respectively, significantly reducing model computational consumption while enhancing performance, which enables efficient end-to-end training of compact ViT models.

Cytospora anacardii (Cytosporaceae, Diaporthales): A new endophytic species from Anacardium occidentale of the Brazilian savanna

Cytospora species are mainly found as phytopathogens but are also reported as endophytes and saprophytes in several host plants. During a study of the diversity of endophytic fungi associated with Anacardium occidentale in an area of the Brazilian savanna (Cerrado), isolates of Cytospora were identified and differentiated from other species by morphological and phylogenetic analyses (ITS, act, rpb2, tef1, and tub2). Cytospora anacardii has been proposed as a new endophytic species, and it has pycnidia and conidiogenous cells smaller than those of the phylogenetically related species Cytospora phitsanulokensis. Our data highlight the importance of investigating endophytes as important economic hosts and expand our knowledge of global Cytospora diversity and distribution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of Cytospora being an endophyte of Anacardium occidentale.