Citizen Science in Vegetable Garden Cultivar Evaluation in Tennessee

Edible food production is a growing area of horticultural interest that can engage multiple generations of rural to urban residents with varying levels of experience. Residential or community garden food production can provide many benefits, including the production of healthy produce, establishment of community or social connections, and increased physical activity. Regardless of experience, food gardeners are interested in growing crops and cultivars well-suited to their region and which provide both productivity and crop quality. This means that cultivar selection is a common question for gardeners. However, formal cultivar evaluation is relatively rare in the non-commercial food production sector due to the number of cultivars, the challenges of replicated trial management, and the scarcity of public researchers focused on consumer horticulture. This limits the information available to support new gardeners, which lowers the chances of overall success including high-quality harvests. Such crop and variety selection questions are common for Extension personnel in the United States as well as many others who work with gardeners. Even with this high level of interest, funding for consumer garden trials is limited and the cost of replicated trials across various geographical sites is high. To fill this gap in research and address the need for high-quality data to support education, University of Tennessee Extension and research faculty have developed a citizen science approach called the Home Garden Variety Trial (HGVT) program. The HGVT is a collaborative effort between Extension and research faculty and educators, who select trials, provide seeds, and compile data, and citizen scientists around the state, who conduct the trials using their usual gardening practices in their own home or community gardens. Beginning in 2017, the collaborators have conducted five years of research involving over 450 individual gardeners in more than half of the counties in Tennessee. The HGVT is a novel and effective tool to introduce gardeners to new crops and cultivars while providing previously unavailable data to researchers. Together, researchers and home gardeners collect and compile data that supports residential and community food production success while engaging new and experienced gardeners in participatory science research.

The Sustainability of Institutional Policies Starts with “Know Thyself”

In the present research, faculty at a university in the Middle East were asked to report their attitudes towards learning and grades through the LOGO: F scale. At the selected university, faculty are required to apply a student-centered approach to instruction, which is expected to be driven by active learning of key academic and professional competencies. Although the institutional policies explicitly emphasize active learning, the broader educational system in which the university is embedded puts a premium on grades to assess students’ academic success. The present research examined how faculty might respond to these institutional inconsistencies, which are typical of universities across the globe. Participants were the faculty of a university located in Saudi Arabia, which conforms to a US curriculum and a student-centered instructional model. The evidence collected underscored the faculty’s struggle between emphasizing learning and recognizing the undeniable relevance of grades in the educational marketplace. The usefulness of the evidence collected is discussed from the perspectives of the institution and individual faculty with an eye on sustainable objectives and outcomes.

Dental Education in the COVID-19 Era: Challenges, Solutions and Oppor- tunities

Objective: The COVID-19 crisis has caused considerable disruption to medical education and has stimulated creative and rapid changes in the way technology is adopted and utilized for education. This change is accompanied by many challenges related to education, patient care, research, faculty development and collaboration, finances, and the psychological well-being of stakeholders. Methods: A review of the literature on dental education during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted. Published articles addressing the challenges, solutions and opportunities in dental education during the COVID-19 era were assessed. Results: COVID-19 was a catalyst for a significant amount of change in dental education. Despite the magnitude of the challenges, this pandemic has influenced many positive solutions and opportunities in dental education. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic forced dental educators to rethink models of curricular delivery, as it disrupted traditional delivery methods. The use of technology was adapted to ensure the continuity of education. With that, a number of challenges surfaced that were tackled creatively. Reflecting over the whole experience with COVID-19, the multiple opportunities that have been identified can improve the way we educate our students in the future.

An interview with Swathi Arur

Swathi Arur is an Associate Professor for the Department of Genetics at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA, where she uses multidisciplinary approaches to understand female germline development and fertility. She has received numerous accolades, including the MD Anderson Distinguished Research Faculty Mentor Award in 2017. In 2020, she was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Swathi joined the team at Development as an Academic Editor in 2020, and we met with her over Zoom to hear more about her life, her career and her love for C. elegans.

La Historia del Arte Argentino a la luz de los Estudios Decoloniales.

At the end of the last century, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial studies set in motion a “detachment” from the dominant modes of knowledge acquisition in the social sciences and humanities. In the 1990s, Latin American intellectuals debated the colonial side of modernity and the cultural, theoretical and practical hegemony that the central countries maintained. In the field of art, this resulted in the problematization of the Eurocentric canons present in the artistic system and the lack of independent theoretical and visual thinking. In light of these problems, this article investigates one of the features of coloniality in force in the Histories of the Visual Arts “with capital letters” in Latin America and particularly in Argentina; that is, the neutralization of diversity in the construction of a national art. To this end, we have used the transdisciplinary qualitative methodology, which articulates different areas of knowledge (history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, art history) from a decolonial interpretive perspective. In the theoretical analysis and historiographical reflection, a decentration is observed in the history of national art promoted by the Institute of Aesthetic Research (Faculty of Arts, National University of Tucumán), which interrupts the disciplinary canon favoring the emergence of the American, in both the folkloric and the ancestral.

Improving Patient\Population Health: Using ‘Why’ to Develop a Transformative Research Center

Introduction Novel approaches to address the most vexing problems facing patients and vulnerable populations are needed. The purpose of this project was to establish an innovative research Center based on the principles of transformational organizations. Methods A new Center formed included faculty members with expertise in cancer, serious illness, and population health. Applying Sinek’s “why, how, and what” framework, members developed and refined a purpose statement and strategic objectives. The Center now includes members representing diverse disciplines. Year 1 accomplishments included a refined mission and vision statement, two funded research proposals, one submitted training grant, one administrative hire, and active recruitment of two-research faculty to support Center activities. Conclusions The newly-formed Center for Improving Patient and Population Health has enabled scholars within a research-intensive school of nursing to forge new partnerships to compete successfully for larger, complicated grant proposals on shorter deadlines. Opportunities exist to integrate students and research staff more fully into Center operations.

Open Access Journals: A Boon or Bane for Early Career Researchers in India

Background : It is demonstrated that for a junior research faculty in India, a proper guidelines and funding resources are required to publish research articles in the Open Access (OA) journals. Recently, many of the important scientific journals are turned out to be OA journals. When we need to publish in an OA journal, the funding support for article processing charge (APC) is uncertain due to the limited funds or absence of institutional level support. Objective: To find out the total number of open access and subscription based articles published from the top ten countries in the scientific journals up to July 2020. Materials and Methods: For the data collection a keyword of “Chemistry” was used in all fields in the “Scopus database” on 07 July 2020. Results: From the articles published by top ten countries, it was found that USA has published more number of publications (open access plus subscription based) followed by China, Japan, Germany, UK, India, France, Canada, Italy, and Russian Federation. However, if we carefully look at the total numbers of OA publications up to July 2020, Japan (33.47%) has published more percentage of OA documents compared to UK (26.92%), Germany (24.63%) and USA (24.53%). In this list, India (13.02%) and Russian Federation (10.14%) have published lowest numbers of OA publications compared to other countries.