Proceedings for the NSEC 2017 National Conference

Abstracts and presentations from the NSEC 2017 National Conference. The conference is for representatives from campus STEM Education Centers or Centers for Teaching and Learning that have a STEM agenda, or those who work closely with these centers. The focus is specifically on centers engaged in improving undergraduate STEM education, including teacher preparation and broader impacts in STEM. It is opportunity for center staff to learn from one another.

Interactions Between Human-Driven and Autonomous Vehicles on Public Roads

To achieve the level of safety and efficiencies promised by autonomous vehicles (AVs), understanding of interactions between human driven vehicles and AVs is crucial. The limited access to publicly available AV data in the field has been the main source of challenge to explore these questions. Using recently released annotated AV data released by Waymo, we investigate interactions between AVs with Human-driven manual vehicles (MVs) in a public road environment. A scalable methodology is presented to study interactions between AVs and MVs. This research reports two main findings (a) AVs tend to be more conservative than MVs at higher speeds on arterials and at lower speeds on freeways (b) No statistical differences in the mean reaction times between MVs and AVs, however, MVs following MVs were found to have statistically significantly lower variance in reaction times. These findings demonstrate the broader impacts of AVs on traffic flow and capacity.

Respite, renewal, retirement and tensions: Australian Men's Sheds and the impact on significant others

The health and wellbeing benefits of Men's Sheds to the men who participate have had significant research attention for over a decade. However, there has been little research into the broader impacts of Men's Sheds, particularly in relation to the impacts on significant others in the lives of the men who participate. Our paper aims to redress this lack of research by focusing on the interrelated perceptions and experiences of men and those closest to them in four Men's Sheds in regional Victoria, Australia. The research shows that the partners and carers of ‘shedders’ reported that the men's participation not only benefited the men but also had benefits for their significant others. The study also showed that the partners of shedders in the study found that their individual and joint adjustment to retirement was in some cases assisted by the men enjoying the social and structured environment of the Men's Shed, while in other cases it was seen by partners as an over-commitment and impacting negatively on the marriage. The findings also shed some important light on some tensions experienced by the partners associated with carer burden and adjustments to retirement.

Become a Public Educator

Even though your prime duty is to your research, becoming a public educator can serve both one’s research and the information needs of the public. It also serves your field as a whole. Public education can mean teaching a science appreciation course, giving public lectures, registering with the institution’s speakers bureau, and advising the media on science and technology. Working with local schools, mentoring young people, and helping science centers create exhibits are also productive activities and bring professional benefits. These activities teach valuable communication skills, meet the Broader Impacts Criterion of federal grants, highlight one’s own department and institution, and bring you visibility.

The Informal Seed Business: Focus on Yellow Bean in Tanzania

This article explores the informal seed business, focusing on the yellow bean in Tanzania. The yellow bean is a major bean type traded, yet little is known about the seed supply that fuels it. The survey research in 2019 encompassed larger grain traders, informal seed traders, and retailers, covered major production, distribution and sale hubs, and was complemented by GIS mapping of seed and grain flows and DNA fingerprinting of yellow bean samples. Results showed that traders buy and sell grain and informal seed: it is not one business or the other, but both. Informal seed is an important moneymaker, representing between 15 and 40% of trader business in non-sowing and sowing periods, respectively. In the year monitored, 100% of the yellow bean seed was drawn from the informal sector, amounting to $US 4.35 million just among those sampled. Nevertheless, the informal and formal sectors are clearly linked, as over 60% of the beans sampled derived from modern varieties. Informal traders prove key for: sustaining the grain business, serving the core of the seed business, and moving varieties at scale. More explicit efforts are needed to link the informal sector to formal research and development partners in order to achieve even broader impacts.

Creative arts workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: Social imaginaries in lockdown

The arts and creative industries are among those most affected by government measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. This article discusses a qualitative survey study, open between August and October 2020, with creative arts workers living in Victoria, Australia. The study explored experiences of disruptions to work and broader impacts on daily lives during the pandemic. In this article, we examine how participants discuss their work and circulate pre-existing and create new intensified social imaginaries of a devalued and ignored arts sector in Australia. Our analysis points to how people understand their lives, work and communities amidst a global pandemic in relation to and entangled with particular social imaginaries of the creative arts.