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Active learning strategies have been shown to be effective for teaching science, but it is often challenging for new faculty to adopt these strategies. "Paired teaching" is a way to accomplish this: An instructor new to strategies for active learning and an instructor experienced in them teach a semester-long course together, with the goal of professional development for the new instructor. We present case studies of paired teaching in two departments (Physics & Astronomy, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences) at a large North American research-intensive university, which provided professional development experiences for 14 faculty members new to active learning. We interviewed faculty before and after paired teaching; we then coded these interviews for faculty perceptions of paired teaching and what and how they learned from the experience. Drawing from these data, we find that paired teaching can be effective in supporting a range of new faculty from two different disciplines to adopt active learning strategies. We offer recommendations to universities interested in establishing a pairedteaching program and to faculty members preparing to pair-teach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate teaching assistants (TAs) play an important role in undergraduate programs in our Earth Science Department. A course on teaching and learning was developed to train graduate students in student-centered pedagogy, in a discipline-specific context. The training course has been running for a decade and has been taken by over 100 graduate students. This article describes the development of the course and investigates the impact on graduate students' beliefs about science teaching and learning. Responses to the Beliefs About Reformed Science Teaching and Learning survey indicate that students who have taken the course hold beliefs that are more consistent with research-based principles of how people learn about science than students who have not taken the course. Data from course evaluations and pre- and postcourse surveys demonstrate that taking the course also improves confidence in teaching ability and impacts graduate students' approaches to teaching and their own learning. This course offers effective pedagogical training that gives graduate students the tools to develop and improve their teaching both as TAs and as future faculty members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we best support instructors to learn, practice, and retain student-centered, active-learning teaching strategies in their undergraduate courses? While approaches like professional development workshops may inspire some, permanent adoption of new pedagogy is rare. Here, we investigate "paired teaching" to achieve adoption and continued use of evidence-based practices. In this model, an instructor with little or no experience in student-centered teaching is paired with an experienced instructor in a semester-long course that has established student-centered pedagogy. This study evaluates information from eight pairs of instructors over a three-year period. Data was collected before, during, and after the paired teaching semester through interviews, written reflections, and teaching observations. Results indicate that paired teaching is beneficial as a professional development model for new instructors who have little teaching experience. The teaching practice of these instructors evolved to be increasingly student-centered, and they continued to use this pedagogy in subsequent classes. More established instructors who were less familiar with active learning showed lower tendencies to incorporate new pedagogies into their existing classes. We suggest best practices to maximize benefits and mitigate challenges associated with paired teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total population health is a key tenet of health care reform efforts, evident in initiatives such as the National Quality Strategy, shifts toward population-based payments, and community benefit requirements for tax-exempt hospitals. Representing total population health in a way that guides best practices and establishes shared accountability for geographic communities, however, remains a challenge in part because of differences in howstakeholders define populations. To better understand the landscape of potential denominators for population health, this study examined a selection of relevant geographic units. The approach included a comprehensive review of health services and public health research literature as well as recent pertinent health policy documents. Units were characterized based on whether they: exhibit "breadth" of coverage across the whole US population; are "accurate" or grounded in health care utilization patterns; are "actionable" with mechanisms for implementing funding and regulation; and promote "synergism" or effective coordination of public health and health care activities. Although other key components of a total population health unit may exist and no single identified unit possesses all of the aforementioned features, several promising candidates were identified. Specifically, healthcare coalitions link health care and public health domains to care for a geographic community, but their connection to utilization is not empiric and limited funding exists at the coalition level. Although Accountable Care Organizations do not uniformly incorporate public health or facilitate coordination across all payers or providers, they represent an effective mechanism to increase collaboration within health care systems and represent a potential building block to influence total population health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is mounting evidence that climate change is already having an impact on the wine industry, with effects being region specific. In order to understand the capacity of regional wine sectors to adapt to changing climate, it is useful to document the conditions that are important to producers and to identify adaptation and management strategies that are employed in the industry. This paper analyzes climatic conditions and adaptation strategies in the wine region of Prince Edward County Ontario, Canada. Wine producers identified the climate variables most important to their operations and described strategies they use to manage climate-related conditions. The identified variables were analyzed for trends over the study period 1987-2011, and interview data were analyzed in order to categorize adaptive strategies. Results indicate that the wine sector is very sensitive to climate, and the region is already experiencing the effects of climate change, especially with regard to increasing growing season mean minimum daily temperatures, increasing total summer rainfall, and later onset of fall frosts. Adaptive strategies employed by producers are largely learned though collaborative efforts and trial and error. The adaptations are mostly tactical and reactive in the short term, but with continued climate change, these strategies may develop into strategic, anticipatory measures. Climate change has the potential to present both challenges and opportunities to Prince Edward County wine producers, and adaptations will continue to require strong networking and collaborative efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada's land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative-or 'exemplar'-from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada's ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada's forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on climate change and the wine industry has been characterized by several themes. Studies have addressed the impacts of climate change on wine quality, impacts of climate change and variability on grapevine yield and phenology, and vineyard site suitability analyses in the context of terroir. This paper reviews the state of knowledge on the implications of climate change for viticulture and viniculture and suggests the vulnerability approach as a direction for future research. This approach will increase understanding of the adaptive capacity of the wine sector, with the ultimate goal of reducing the vulnerability of the industry to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]