Thematic Series Research Articles

Current Research Informing the Conceptualization of STEM Interventions for Students With LD: An Introduction to the Special Series

This article introduces and describes the studies that are part of the thematic special series aimed at exploring research questions for improving learning outcomes for students with learning disabilities (SLD) in science and mathematics. Special educators have the requisite knowledge and skills to meaningfully include these students in studies that focus on important disciplinary understandings; yet, to date, relatively few special educators develop and validate interventions for students with high incidence disabilities to learn about science or mathematical practices. Given the fact that most SLD receive instruction in the general education classroom, where there are reforms that call for increased rigor in instruction and meaningful problem-solving for all students, it is imperative that SLD receive effective supports for deep content learning. We hope the current articles spark readers’ interests in adding to this emerging body of research and invite others to build on the ideas shared in the special series.

Translating radiological research into practice-from discovery to clinical impact.

At the European Society of Radiology (ESR), we strive to provide evidence for radiological practices that improve patient outcomes and have a societal impact. Successful translation of radiological research into clinical practice requires multiple factors including tailored methodology, a multidisciplinary approach aiming beyond technical validation, and a focus on unmet clinical needs. Low levels of evidence are a threat to radiology, resulting in low visibility and credibility. Here, we provide the background and rationale for the thematic series Translating radiological research into practice-from discovery to clinical impact, inviting authors to describe their processes of achieving clinically impactful radiological research. We describe the challenges unique to radiological research. Additionally, a survey was sent to non-radiological clinical societies. The majority of respondents (6/11) were in the field of gastrointestinal/abdominal medicine. The implementation of CT/MRI techniques for disease characterisation, detection and staging of cancer, and treatment planning and radiological interventions were mentioned as the most important radiological developments in the past years. The perception was that patients are substantially unaware of the impact of these developments. Unmet clinical needs were mostly early diagnosis and staging of cancer, microstructural/functional assessment of tissues and organs, and implant assessment. All but one respondent considered radiology important for research in their discipline, but five indicated that radiology is currently not involved in their research. Radiology research holds the potential for being transformative to medical practice. It is our responsibility to take the lead in studies including radiology and strive towards the highest levels of evidence.Critical relevance statement For radiological research to make a clinical and societal impact, radiologists should take the lead in radiological studies, go beyond the assessment of technical feasibility and diagnostic accuracy, and-in a multidisciplinary approach-address clinical unmet needs.Key points• Multiple factors are essential for radiological research to make a clinical and societal impact.• Radiological research needs to go beyond diagnostic accuracy and address unmet clinical needs.• Radiologists should take the lead in radiological studies with a multidisciplinary approach.

Introduction to the Thematic Series: Use and consequences of family policies among migrants and their descendants in Europe

This article is the introduction to the Thematic Series Use and consequences of family policies among migrants and their descendants in Europe. The study contexts are countries in different Western European regions: Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy. Despite their differences with respect to welfare-state types in general and family policies in particular, these countries also vary when it comes to their immigration histories and current migrant populations. Yet, the fast-growing field of research on the effects of family polices on family and fertility behavior as well as work-family reconciliation has virtually overlooked migrants. To address this void in the existing literature, this Thematic Series raises two research questions: To what degree do family policies include, and are used by, migrants and their descendants? And, to what extent do such polices promote migrants’ integration into European societies? The collection contains six empirical articles investigating either eligibility or use and consequences of two specific family policy measures: parental leave and external childcare. Collectively, the studies show significant disadvantages among migrant groups in eligibility for family policy measures, and consequently in their use and impacts on further life-course patterns, compared to majority populations. They also demonstrate diverging patterns within migrant populations.

Transfer RNAs: A treasure trove that keeps on giving

Transfer RNAs are the adaptors in protein synthesis that provide the key link between the nucleic acid-based genetic blueprint and proteins. While the central role of tRNAs in protein synthesis has been known for over 60years, recent discoveries of their many non-canonical functions and therapeutic potential have heightened interest in tRNAs. In this thematic series, we highlight some of the developments presented at the recent biennial "International tRNA Workshop". The topics chosen reflect advances that were enabled by the latest technological breakthroughs in structure determination and small RNA sequencing and emphasize the prospects and challenges of tRNA-based medicines to treat human diseases.

Guest Editorial of thematic series: YouCount: Action Research and Citizen Social Science

Guest Editorial of thematic series: YouCount: Action Research and Citizen Social Science

‘Get back to the kitchen, cos u talk s*** on tv’: gendered online abuse and trigger events in sport

ABSTRACT Research question Online abuse is prevalent in sport and can be the by-product of trigger events – reactive social media posts that motivate online hate. Little is known about what triggers online abuse, types of content, and how this impacts certain groups. The current research examined how online behaviour emerges, and evolves during a trigger event, through a gendered lens. Research methods This research employed a two phase, mixed methods approach of a digital netnography with participation observation through social network analysis and thematic content analysis of 1332 (N = 1332) tweets in the United Kingdom. The trigger event examined abusive content toward Karen Carney following post-match football commentary on 29 December 2020. Results and findings Results identified 590 individuals who formed two distinct groups. Directed network visualisation indicated Carney was the focus of the trigger event. Thematic time series analysis revealed emotional maltreatment (i.e. ridiculing, humiliating, belittling) progressing to overt gendered discriminatory maltreatment. Implications Findings support the need for safeguarding policies for target groups, as trigger events escalate quickly, and group affiliations impact abusive content. From a theoretical standpoint, in-group and out-group affiliations resulted in rhetoric highlighting persistent, gendered socio-normative issues within sport, amplified in an online environment.

The Phenomenon of Play in Boris Mikhailov’s Works of 1966–1980

The paper examines the game prerequisites of creativity and investigates the play in Boris Mikhailov’s (born August 25, 1938, Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR) works from 1966 to 1980. Analysis of the artist’s works and narrative interviews enables a historical periodisation of his legacy based on certain markers and principles. During the first, metaphorical stage of his creativity, B. Mikhailov figuratively denies and at the same time praises his current reality in search for the Ideal. The open photo series created by B. Mikhailov at this time have a form ofslide shows of overlays of two colour diapositive films and views of thematic series of photographic prints. The artist presents them during photographic seminars, clubs meetings, and private meetings. Artistic imagery by B. Mikhailov manifests itself in the unfinished transition from life to art and back. The photographer introduced the concept of carnivalization of photography into the theoretical discourse, with carnival images and folk-holiday forms of carnival-type laughter entering the art of photography. Mikhailov’slaughter at this stage is already carnival-like, i.e. ambivalent, universal and nationwide, it has a folk-celebratory nature and is aimed at everything and everyone. In the course of the study, biographical, conceptual, descriptive-phenomenological, hermeneutical, and comparative methods of analysis were applied.

Farm Fields as Toxic Sinkhole

This book, dedicated “to all who have mixed their hands with the soil,” is the latest publication in the University of California Press series Critical Environments, which explores “the political forms of life and ecologies that emerge from histories of capitalism, militarism, racism, colonialism, and more.” Romero explains that he had originally wanted to study toxicology as an environmental scientist, to help regulate agricultural pollutants for farm workers. “I tell you this because I want you to know that when I picked up the first volume of the Journal of Economic Entomology,” the flagship journal on pest control, “I did so not just as a geographer or a historian in need of a new project, but as someone who has always been keen to figure out why agriculture in the United States is so dependent on poisonous chemicals” (2). Romero leafed through the entire set of the Journal of Economic Entomology and realized what ultimately became the thesis of his book. His argument, succinctly captured in each chapter, is “that the transition to chemical agriculture was as much a story about trying to get rid of industrial waste as it was about using chemicals to mass produce food” (3). So, rather than frame industrial waste as an economic externality, this history of capitalism illustrates how industrial by-products led to entirely new agricultural applications. (A close comparison, of course, is the meatpacking industry.) Romero argues that economic poisons displaced the problems of industrial waste by broadcasting them on the farm.The book opens with a retrospective letter to Rachel Carson. The epistolary preface recaps the environmental movement that she helped initiate. He praises her message, yet informs Ms. Carson that her critique could have gone further. She was not opposed to the discriminate use of pesticides, but Romero is. The author touches on the deaths caused by industrial poisons and expresses distrust for the stories and policies that justify their continued promotion. Romero sees the chemicalization of American agriculture as being quite different from the need to produce food. This basic message resonates throughout the book. As his letter asserts: “We have the right to know that despite some laboratory testing, we are the real guinea pigs” when it comes to ubiquitous pesticide use and residues (xiii).Chapter 1 follows arsenic waste from the copper smelters in the United Kingdom to developments in the American West. The chapter begins by stating that, as a toxic chemical for pest control, arsenic usage peaked in the mid-1940s. The chapter then goes back in time to explain the engineering of copper smelting in Cornish mines in the eighteenth century and the nineteenth-century development of white arsenic, being separated from copper in the manufacturing process. The deadly powder became popular in American agriculture in the 1860s as the copper-arsenic-based compound Paris Green, principally used to combat the potato beetle. Romero transitions to the copper deposits in Michigan and then Montana, as the American West became the “world's largest producer of arsenic waste” (29). Again, Romero shows how the arsenic supply resulted from the copper production process and not from demand for more arsenic. Legal edicts in the United States forced companies to install scrub stacks to recover arsenic from the flues of copper-roasting ovens. What to do with the growing piles of toxic pollution? Spread it on the crops! By the 1920s, arsenic dusts laced the apple groves of the western United States as a cheap pesticide for codling moths. The chapter diverges into the development of an insoluble version of the poisonous spray and concludes with the fall of the US copper industry after World War II. All in all, the chapter offers a wide-ranging education on mining and engineering, topics often neglected by agricultural historians drawn more to crops than to industrial chemistry.In chapter 2, Romero turns to cyanide fumigation, arguing that chemical pest control is an act of war. Here he recalls the work of Edmund Russell, yet only to “push beyond the coevolution of war and agriculture” or their shared infrastructure (52). Romero uses the language of warfare literally, asking if the chemical war on pests is a just war—a line of reasoning that takes the intent of insects into account. As recurs throughout Economic Poisoning, the chapter focuses on California and the development of its commercial orange groves. Entomologists looked to address the damage caused by white scale, a widespread infestation on citrus trees by the 1880s. The US Department of Agriculture experimented with fumigation tents—an apparatus placed over the entire tree—to gas the scale and their eggs with cyanide. Romero shows how nocturnal cyanide fumigation became standard practice and the subject of an invalidated patent. Fruit from fumigated groves brought higher market prices with less post-harvest processing. Fumigation also brought more pests. “With the control of one pest,” Romero explains, “others realigned their life histories to fill the abruptly vacant niches that chemical war continuously brought to the industrial citrus ecosystem” (64). This serial substitution of pests is essentially how toxic chemicals became conventional practice in American agriculture. Romero concludes by asking why we continue to poison crops and if the response is justified even in times of war. The chapter holds up as a good stand-alone read, especially for historians versed in the citrus literature.Chapter 3 covers the development and deployment of oil-based sprays, also in California citrus groves. “Despite the proven efficacy of cyanide fumigation, some citrus growers had turned to oil because it was so incredibly cheap” in the 1910s, Romero explains (76). The chapter focuses on Hunter Volck, a graduate from the University of California, Berkeley (as is Romero), who took a job at the UC experiment station and was sent to investigate the commercial groves of Southern California. Citrus growers used oil-based sprays to control those populations of scale not killed by fumigation but also to counter the associated spread of red spider mites. Volck realized that spraying refinery wastes on citrus trees had erratic results, given the uncertain toxicology of fuel oil from which it was derived. In 1907, Volck and a partner started the company Cal-Spray to manufacture the Ortho brand of on-farm chemical treatments. The chapter highlights the growth of Cal-Spray and the use of the patent system to profit from public research money. Within a few decades, oil sprays became complementary to other pesticides, and Cal-Spray went into debt, only to be bought by Standard Oil during the Great Depression. “What these companies began to recognize was that all parts of oil could be put to use if only a use for them could be found,” Romero writes (96). Agriculture became a convenient sector in which to find uses for patented products from petrochemical waste.Chapter 4 continues a theme from the previous chapter—the private capture of public funds—through a case study of the Crop Protection Institute (CPI). Unusual for its time, the CPI aimed to coordinate private funding for pesticide research at state agricultural experiment stations. Romero insists that CPI's biggest impact was the development of R&D infrastructure that “helped make toxicity-based repair the solution to agriculture's pest problems” (99). The chapter returns to World War I and the formation of the National Research Council (NRC) as a governmental hub of scientific activity. Romero describes how the wartime spirit for scientific progress found a way to strengthen the cooperative fight on American farmlands. Lack of standardized toxicological data was a problem for the agricultural chemical industry because poisons required standardized laboratory procedures for commercialization. “By the 1920s the CPI was evolving into an organization at which individual companies could get their poisons tested without having to give up propriety rights,” a shift that Romero contrasts with NRC contract policy (111). The institutional history focuses on two early projects of the CPI: first, the development of DN-Dust, a pesticide by the Dow Chemical Company in the late 1930s, and second, the first synthetic herbicide used in the United States in the early 1940s. Consequently, the CPI seemed to have served its purpose of coordinating public-private partnerships, one that, as summarized by Romero—with echoes of Jim Hightower and Jack Kloppenburg—“allowed chemical companies to benefit from publicly subsidized research” (121).1Readers might be familiar with the content of chapter 5 because Romero published an earlier version in Agricultural History.2 Within the context of the book, the story of a toxic fumigant being injected into the topsoil of a declining California crop field is a brilliant presentation of the overall argument. The soil fumigant DD, named after two novel chlorinated chemicals from Shell's petroleum waste, killed nematodes in the soil. Romero shows how the synthetic disinfectant restored crop yields; in this case, the continuous production of a single crop without rotation would not be possible” otherwise (136). The chapter also explains how Shell mechanized the application of DD through parallel developments with ammonia fertilizer. Romero provides a succinct history of industrial nitrogen fixation and the Haber-Bosch process, a history that feeds into Shell's patented technology for delivering fertilizer via irrigation water and, subsequently, directly into the subsoil through an injection method. The chemical fumigant and anhydrous ammonia were combined into a single application in 1944, epitomizing to Romero an “underground chemical warfare that revolutionized agriculture” by extending monocultures in time (137).Romero's central thesis that agriculture became a burial site for dissipating piles of cheap poisonous by-products should have a major impact on how historians discuss the topic. If crop abundance was a problem, as it often was with American agriculture in the decades before World War II, the systematic adoption of chemicals to achieve greater yields requires an explanation other than food sufficiency. Romero offers a compelling explanation. How farmers' own accounts relate to this history of chemicalization, however, is not captured by the book's institutional emphasis. As for alternative solutions, Romero worries that “we have gotten farther and farther away from the possibility of an agricultural system not built on the assumption of widespread chemical control” (142). Although it was not inevitable during the first half of the twentieth century, he wonders if it is inevitable today. Systematic change at this point would require an end to the insecticidal war.The text itself is substantiated by a heavy dose of references. The endnotes begin on page 145, yet the final pagination is 251. This speaks to one of the strengths of the monograph. In making the argument that chemical pest control was an offshoot of industrial waste, Romero has to explain many aspects of industrial manufacturing—each time with each chemical in each chapter. He meets the challenge. Every chapter has fewer notes than the previous one. Oddly, the book lacks a list of abbreviations, which would be helpful for a book chockablock with chemical compounds and administrative bodies. The date ranges covered per chapter are also difficult to find. Economic Poisoning sometimes reads like a thematic series of historical case studies. This compositional structure could be construed as a weakness or could indicate a problem of narrative coherence, but I find that the collection-of-essays approach fits with contemporary reading habits. The book asks each chapter to stand on its own merits with original content that supports a bigger argument, which Romero altogether delivers.

BJPsych Open: a summary of growth and vision for my second innings as editor-in-chief.

As my second 5-year term as its editor-in-chief begins, it is important to review what BJPsych Open has accomplished, its areas of growth and what should be our future vision for the Journal. The keyword throughout this editorial is growth, with emphasis on growth in quality, for meaningful growth can only exist with increased quality. The original remit remains the correct long-term direction for the Journal, with the important modifier 'relevance' added to ensure quality - a general psychiatric journal with high-quality, methodologically rigorous and relevant publications, with relevance to the advancement of clinical care, patient outcomes, the scientific literature, research and policy. During this second term, I desire to expand the editorial board to fill expertise and diversity gaps; increase editorials and commentaries highlighting specific articles and timely events with psychiatric themes; focus on thematic series driven by the editorial board; and address under-represented topics.

A temporal-spectral value and shape change detection method integrating thematic index information and spectral band information.

Satellite imagery time series change detection methods are effective in avoiding pseudochange due to vegetation phenology to a certain extent. Traditional time series change detection methods use thematic indexes (e.g., NDVI, RVI) to obtain time series information for corresponding change detection. However, change detection methods using several thematic index time series may not make full use of other spectral band information in remotely sensed images and may still suffer from over- and under-detections. To address this challenge, a temporal-spectral value and shape change detection method integrating thematic index information and spectral band information (TISB) is proposed. Possible clouds and cloud shadowing phenomena are removed according to the changes in the spectral values of the remotely sensed images to avoid the generation of pseudochanges in clouds. The spectral and time series information is used to obtain change information from the value perspective, and then, further possible enhanced change regions from a shape perspective to obtain the final change detection results through the expectation-maximization (EM) method. Experiments with Landsat images have shown that the TISB method improves detection results by approximately 1-4% compared to the comparison method.

Issue Information

Restoration EcologyVolume 31, Issue 2 e13728 ISSUE INFORMATIONFree Access Issue Information First published: 02 February 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13728AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume31, Issue2Special Issue: Thematic Series: Arid LandsFebruary 2023e13728 Restoration Ecology - Message to authors, reviewers, editorial board During this time of mass disruption, be advised that we appreciate there will be a slower pace for all. Restoration Ecology understands that reviews and decisions may be delayed; responses from authors may be delayed. There are no consequences for delays. We ask all to be patient. The EIC and Managing Editor work remotely as is (in different countries) so we already work from ‘home’. We are attempting to add this message to our communications (not as easy because the Editors don’t have total editing rights) and reduce the normal reminder emails to reflect this uncertain time. If you receive our normal email correspondence reminding you of deadlines, we are waiving these and asking only that you let us know, if possible, of delays exceeding a month. Stephen Murphy, EIC RelatedInformation

Good practices in simulation-based education in Ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part I: Initiating and maintaining simulation-based training

Good practices in simulation-based education in Ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part I: Initiating and maintaining simulation-based training

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology. A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part III: Curriculum development for simulation based education in ophthalmology training programs

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology. A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part III: Curriculum development for simulation based education in ophthalmology training programs

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part II: Faculty development for simulation-based education in ophthalmology

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part II: Faculty development for simulation-based education in ophthalmology

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part IV: Recommendations for incorporating simulation-based education in ophthalmology training programs

Good practices in simulation-based education in ophthalmology – A thematic series. An initiative of the Simulation Subcommittee of the Ophthalmology Foundation Part IV: Recommendations for incorporating simulation-based education in ophthalmology training programs

The centrality of proteoglycan research: Expect the unexpected

Welcome to our new Journal dedicated to the thriving field of Proteoglycan Research (Figure 1). Launching a new journal is an exciting challenge, and all of us, the editorial board, and our publisher Wiley have high ambitions for this new venture. My first exposure to the proteoglycan world was in Seattle in the late seventies, when I began a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Tom Wight in the Department of Pathology of the University of Washington. The beauty and complexity of proteoglycan and glycosaminoglycan biology had a deep impact on me and rapidly sealed my decision to become a basic scientist. I was very fortunate to gain experience and knowledge in various techniques and basic laboratory skills that eventually led to an appointment to an Ivy League School, The University of Pennsylvania, and to my rapid ascension to a tenure professorship at Thomas Jefferson University. Without the training in Seattle, I would not be where I am now. Throughout the next several decades I dedicated all my efforts on unraveling proteoglycan biology and advancing the field of proteoglycans in cancer, angiogenesis, and autophagy. I have also benefited greatly from the highly collegial nature of the proteoglycan field and look forward to serving our community as editor of this new journal. The world of proteoglycan research has been continuously expanding over the past several decades. Currently, PubMed lists >55,000 articles using “proteoglycans” as a search word, >44,000 articles using “hyaluronan” and >111,000 articles using “heparin”. Notably, papers on heparin have dominated the field with a constant output of about 3500 papers per year (Figure 2). However, papers focusing on hyaluronan have progressively increased and have now surpassed heparin (Figure 2). Key evidence for the stature and scientific growth of the proteoglycan research field is that we have an established and very successful Gordon Research Conference on Proteoglycans since 1984 which is consistently oversubscribed. Realizing the continuous progression of the field, we established an International Conference on Proteoglycans in 2000 which has been successfully held outside the United States during the odd-numbered years in various countries, including: England, Japan, Germany, Italy, Sweden, France, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, and China. In addition, we have an established International Society for Hyaluronan Science (ISHAS) with biennial meetings throughout the world. Despite this success, there are currently no journals dedicated to proteoglycan research. The papers on proteoglycans are currently scattered throughout different journals and, thus, may not receive the proper exposure to expert readers they rightfully deserve. We believe Proteoglycan Research will fill an important niche for our “proteoglycanology” community that is not currently well represented by the existing publications. This will be the first journal where all the research on proteoglycans throughout the world will have a true “home.” We are determined to make this Journal a quality and friendly forum for researchers on proteoglycan biology. Biology of hyaluronan and their receptors, structure/function of heparin and related molecules. Genetic, cellular, molecular biology of proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans. Structural and bioinformatic studies, chemical biology, synthetic chemistry, and biological physics related to the protein core and/or glycosaminoglycan chains. Enzymes involved in the biosynthesis and degradation of proteoglycans/glycosaminoglycans including: heparanase, hyaluronan synthases, hyaluronidases, sulfatases, sulfotransferases, kinases, phosphatases, O-linked glycosylation enzymes, a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs, and matrix metalloproteinases. Congenital or acquired diseases where some of these enzymes are deficient. Novel animal mutants where proteoglycan-encoding genes or biosynthetic genes are perturbed. Interaction of proteoglycans with bioactive proteins, growth factors, receptors, and downstream signaling. Transcriptomics, proteomics, glycoproteomics, and glycomics of proteoglycans. Advances in glycosaminoglycan sequencing, mimetics, diagnostic technologies, and biomechanics. Biomarkers, therapeutics, exosomes, angiogenesis, autophagy, and biotechnological applications. Stem cell biology, morphogen signaling, regenerative medicine, biomaterials, and tissue injury and repair. Nervous system plasticity, memory, neural regeneration inhibition and scarring, coagulation. Developmental biology including studies in model organisms such as Drosophila, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Zebrafish. Pathological roles of proteoglycans in cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, inflammatory, infectious, genetic, neoplastic, neurodegenerative, ocular, psychiatric, aging, fibrotic, and reproductive diseases. Proteoglycan Research will consider both mechanistic and correlative papers. However, papers considered for in-depth peer review and ultimately for publication must contain significant novelty and scientific advance. We welcome original research articles, brief reports, full-length and mini-reviews especially in emerging fields of research, perspectives, method papers, and technical advances. For reviews and mini-reviews, the Editor-In-Chief should be consulted before submission. Please view our Guide to Authors for additional information. Proteoglycan Research is supported by a topically and geographically diverse advisory board of leading scientists reflecting the active nature of our vibrant research Community. The Senior Advisory Board is composed of 12 prominent scientists in the field whose main purpose is to advise me on direction, special issues, and thematic review series. The Associate Editors include 15 established scientists with expertise in various subfields of proteoglycan research. They will be directly involved in handling the papers and will have decision-making ability on all the submitted manuscripts handled by them. The Editorial Board includes 56 highly regarded specialists from all over the world including the United States, Canada, France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Australia, and China. Our prestigious editorial board panel and I are fully committed to offer you the highest scientific standards and rigor. I hope to have conveyed to all of you the reasons and motivations for starting a new journal in our beloved field of research. The success of all the national and international conferences and the increased number in publications focused on proteoglycan biology are good prognosticators for a successful journal. For this to happen, we are depending on your contribution and hope that you embrace this challenge with us! Please, submit your best research to Proteoglycan Research.

Restoration ecology of arid lands (RE‐AL) thematic series

Restoration ecology of arid lands (<scp>RE‐AL</scp>) thematic series

Remote Sensing Extraction of Agricultural Land in Shandong Province, China, from 2016 to 2020 Based on Google Earth Engine

Timely and effective access to agricultural land-change information is of great significance for the government when formulating agricultural policies. Due to the vast area of Shandong Province, the current research on agricultural land use in Shandong Province is very limited. The classification accuracy of the current classification methods also needs to be improved. In this paper, with the support of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and based on Landsat 8 time series image data, a multiple machine learning algorithm was used to obtain the spatial variation distribution information of agricultural land in Shandong Province from 2016 to 2020. Firstly, a high-quality cloud-free synthetic Landsat 8 image dataset for Shandong Province from 2016 to 2020 was obtained using GEE. Secondly, the thematic index series was calculated to obtain the phenological characteristics of agricultural land, and the time periods with significant differences in terms of water, agricultural land, artificial surface, woodland and bare land were selected for classification. Feature information, such as texture features, spectral features and terrain features, was constructed, and the random forest method was used to select and optimize the features. Thirdly, the random forest, gradient boosting tree, decision tree and ensemble learning algorithms were used for classification, and the accuracy of the four classifiers was compared. The information on agricultural land changes was extracted and the causes were analyzed. The results show the following: (1) the multi-spatial index time series method is more accurate than the single thematic index time series when obtaining phenological characteristics; (2) the ensemble learning method is more accurate than the single classifier. The overall classification accuracy of the five agricultural land-extraction results in Shandong Province obtained by the ensemble learning method was above 0.9; (3) the annual decrease in agricultural land in Shandong Province from 2016 to 2020 was related to the increase in artificial land-surface area and urbanization rate.

The War in Ukraine and Academic Challenges

Russia’s military invasion of and war against Ukraine has caused enormous human suffering and material destruction. The situation also raises a number of academic and scholarly issues. This editorial describes the context for Arctic Review on Law and Politics’ plans for a special, thematic series devoted to these matters.

Functional and stylistic differentiation of language within integrative paradigm

The relevance of the work is due to the need to study sociolects as socially marked variants of a language that have similarities and differences in the lexico-semantic and word-formation systems. In this regard, its purpose is to analyze and describe similar and contrasting elements in the sociolects of traders and criminals on the material of Russian and English languages. In the course of the study, the method of sociological observation, experiment, questioning, the method of cognitive semantics, the method of cognitive derivation, the method of questioning and associative experiment was used. The results obtained include: similarity (the presence of the same names of thematic series, the use of morphological, lexico-semantic methods of word formation), the presence of contrasts (consisting in the composition of thematic series of vocabulary, the presence of many polysemantic words, homonyms in the sociolect of criminals, phraseological units, ambiguous in origin) and stylistic affiliation, in the difference in the methods of word formation used in the sociolect of traders (abbreviation, acronymization, truncation). An integrative approach has been applied to the study of the sociolects of traders and criminals, based on expansionist, functional and anthropocentric principles. The use of the anthropocentric principle manifested itself in the description of the specifics of the social groups of criminals and traders. Expansionism was expressed in the use of methods of various sciences (cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, contrastive linguistics). The use of the principle of functionalism consists in describing the functions of the compared sociolects, in identifying their similar and different functions. It is concluded that the sociolects of traders and criminals are indeed socially marked variants of the language, since the compared subsystems of the language have a specific system of lexical units, that manifest themselves in the ways of word formation, and various functions due to the social characteristics of their speakers. It is noted that the article is notable for its novelty, since the study of the sociolects of traders and comparative aspect is carried out for the first time. The study of compared sociolects within the framework of the integrative methodological paradigm is also new.