Assistive Technology Interventions and Equity Within Literacy Instruction

This study examines ways to provide assistive technology interventions within literacy courses for adolescents and young adults with disabilities. Instead of separating students from their peers during reading and writing assignments, literacy teachers who implement assistive technology can support equitable access to school curricula and technology-based learning resources. Unresolved questions about teacher training and accessibility led to the problem statement: What technology resources have special education service providers found useful during literacy instruction for students with support needs? Research reporting findings from intervention studies and/or interviews with educators showed differences between activity systems in secondary and post-secondary environments. Teachers' beliefs and expectations about student characteristics and the need for individual assistance could contribute to inequities in access to literacy instruction. The thematic analysis revealed practices within literacy classes that can decrease or maintain inequities for students with support needs.

Cracks in the Success Narrative: Rethinking Failure in Design Research through a Retrospective Trioethnography

What can design researchers learn from our own and each other's failures? We explore “failure” expansively—turning away from tidy success narratives toward messy unfoldings and reflexive discomfort—through retrospective trioethnography. Our findings reflect on failures we identified in six past design research projects: issues of relational labor of deployment, mismatched designer/participant imaginaries, burden of participation, and invisibility of researcher labor. Our discussion contributes to broader reflections on shifting design research practice: (a) methodological considerations inviting others to engage failures through retrospective trioethnography, (b) letting go as a mode of research care, (c) possibilities for more candid research reporting, and (d) how centering failure may contribute to design justice by providing a technique for attending to harm and healing in design research practices. Throughout, we call for challenging success narratives in design research, and underscore the need for systemic changes in design research practice.

Early Electrophysiological Markers of Navigational Affordances in Scenes

Scene perception and spatial navigation are interdependent cognitive functions, and there is increasing evidence that cortical areas that process perceptual scene properties also carry information about the potential for navigation in the environment (navigational affordances). However, the temporal stages by which visual information is transformed into navigationally relevant information are not yet known. We hypothesized that navigational affordances are encoded during perceptual processing and therefore should modulate early visually evoked ERPs, especially the scene-selective P2 component. To test this idea, we recorded ERPs from participants while they passively viewed computer-generated room scenes matched in visual complexity. By simply changing the number of doors (no doors, 1 door, 2 doors, 3 doors), we were able to systematically vary the number of pathways that afford movement in the local environment, while keeping the overall size and shape of the environment constant. We found that rooms with no doors evoked a higher P2 response than rooms with three doors, consistent with prior research reporting higher P2 amplitude to closed relative to open scenes. Moreover, we found P2 amplitude scaled linearly with the number of doors in the scenes. Navigability effects on the ERP waveform were also observed in a multivariate analysis, which showed significant decoding of the number of doors and their location at earlier time windows. Together, our results suggest that navigational affordances are represented in the early stages of scene perception. This complements research showing that the occipital place area automatically encodes the structure of navigable space and strengthens the link between scene perception and navigation.

Work Engagement: A meta-Analysis Using the Job Demands-Resources Model

Although the construct of work engagement has been extensively explored, a systematic meta-analysis based on a consistent categorization of engagement antecedents, outcomes, and well-being correlates is still lacking. The results of prior research reporting 533 correlations from 113 independent samples ( k = 94, n = 119,420) were coded using a meta-analytic approach. The effect size for development resources ( r = .45) and personal resources ( r = .48) was higher than for social resources ( r = .36) and for job resources ( r = .37). Among the outcomes and well-being correlates explored, the effect size was highest for job satisfaction ( r = .60) and commitment ( r = .63). Furthermore, moderation analysis showed that (a) concerning the occupational role, work engagement finds a low association with turnover intention among civil servants, volunteer workers, and educators; (b) collectivist cultural environments reported a greater association of feedback with engagement than individualistic environments; (c) the relationship between personal resources and engagement was stronger among workers with university degrees than workers with high school diplomas. Furthermore, the absorption dimension showed a lower effect with all variables under investigation than vigor and dedication.

Exploring the transformative potential of urban food

Urban food is a key lever for transformative change towards sustainability. While research reporting on the urban food practices (UFPs) in support of sustainability is increasing, the link towards transformative potential is lacking. This is because research on urban food is often place-based and contextual. This limits the applicability of insights to large-scale sustainability transformations. This paper describes UFPs that aim to contribute to transformative change. We present signposts for potential change based on the types of intended transformative changes as described in the reviewed literature based on the processes and outcomes of the urban food policies and programmes. Secondly, we classify diverse UFPs to elevate them beyond their local, place-based contexts. We find that UFPs carry a lot of potential to facilitate sustainability transformations. Based on that analysis, we provide insights on how urban food research can further contribute to harnessing the transformative potential of UFPs for actionable purposes.

Examining the role of traditional masculinity and depression in men’s risk for contracting COVID-19

Background: In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and claims that traditional masculinity may put some men at increased risk for infection, research reporting men’s health behaviors is critically important. Traditional masculine norms such as self-reliance and toughness are associated with a lower likelihood to vaccinate or follow safety restrictions. Furthermore, infection risk and traditional masculinity should be investigated in a differentiated manner including gender role orientation, underlying traditional masculine ideologies and male gender role conflict. Methods: In this pre-registered online survey conducted during March/April 2021 in German-speaking countries in Europe, 490 men completed questionnaires regarding contracting COVID-19 as confirmed by a validated test, fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19S), and experience of psychological burden due to COVID-19. In addition, depression symptomatology was assessed by using prototypical internalizing and male-typical externalizing depression symptoms. Furthermore, self-identified masculine gender orientation, endorsement of traditional masculine ideologies, and gender role conflict were measured. Results: A total of 6.9% of men (n = 34) reported having contracted COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Group comparisons revealed that men who had contracted COVID-19 exhibited higher overall traditional masculine ideology and gender role conflict. Logistic regression controlling for confounders (age, income, education, and sexual orientation) indicated that only depression symptoms are independently associated with the risk of having contracted COVID-19. While prototypical depression symptoms were negatively associated with the risk of having contracted COVID-19, male-typical externalizing depression symptoms were positively associated with the risk of having contracted COVID-19. Conclusion: For traditional masculinity, no robust association for an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 could be established, while higher male-typical externalizingdepression symptoms were associated with an increased risk of having contracted COVID-19.

350 Nutrient Movement in the Environment: Confined versus Grazing Systems

Grazing systems perform multiple ecosystem services including food production, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, and erosion control. Ruminants can also express their natural behaviors on pasture, with recent research revealing that dairy cows were more motivated to go outside for grazing than stay indoors consuming fresh TMR offered immediately after the afternoon milking. In addition, consumers often associate grazing systems with “healthier and happier cows” and are willing to pay premiums for “grass-fed” dairy products. However, milk production and nutrient utilization generally decrease in pasture-based compared with confinement systems, which may reduce farm profitability depending on milk pay prices. It should be noted that there is limited research reporting milk N efficiency (milk N/N intake) or methane emissions in confined versus grazing dairy cows using data collected from the same experiments. Therefore, our overarching objective was to build data sets to compare nutrient utilization in dairy cows under confinement or grazing management where milk N efficiency or methane emissions or both were reported in the same study. Dietary strategies to mitigate methane emissions in grazing dairy systems such as the use of high-quality forages (e.g., brassicas, perennial ryegrass), concentrate and seaweed supplementation, and forage species and management will be explored. For instance, Jersey cows grazing forage canola offered at 40% of the total DM emitted 31% less methane than those kept indoors and fed TMR (419 vs. 289 g/d, respectively) in an experiment conducted at the University of New Hampshire. Methane yield and methane intensity also decreased (P < 0.001) by 29.3% and 23.4%, respectively, in the same study. Irish researchers reported that methane production (-37%), yield (-11.5%), and intensity (-13%) decreased significantly in Holstein-Friesian cows offered perennial ryegrass herbage versus TMR. Data from whole-farm models comparing confinement and grazing systems will be presented and discussed.

Fibrillar-Level Strain Gradients Across the Calcified Bone-Cartilage Interface

The bone-cartilage interface (BCI) and underlying calcified plate is a universal feature in diarthrodial joints. The BCI is an important mechanically-graded interface subjected to shear and compressive strains, and changes at the BCI have been linked to osteoarthritis progression. Here we report the existence of a physiological internal strain gradient (pre-strain) across the BCI at the ultrastructural scale of the extracellular matrix constituents, specifically the collagen fibril. We use X-ray scattering that probes changes in the axial periodicity of fibril-level D-stagger of tropocollagen molecules in the matrix fibrils, as a measure of microscopic pre-strain. We find that mineralized collagen nanofibrils in the calcified BCI are in tension pre-strain relative to the underlying trabecular bone. This behaviour contrasts with the previously accepted notion that fibrillar pre-strain (or D-stagger) in collagenous tissues always reduces with mineralization due to reduced hydration and associated swelling pressure. Within the calcified tissue, a finer-scale gradient in pre-strain over ~50μm is likely linked to the tidemark. The increased fibrillar pre-strain at the BCI is linked to prior research reporting large tissue-level residual strains under compression. The findings may have biomechanical adaptative significance: higher in-built molecular level resilience/damage resistance to physiological compression, and the disruption of the molecular-level pre-strains during remodelling of the BCI may be a potential factor in osteoarthritis-based degeneration.