Search

NuVu is an off-the-grid, independent "micro-school" in Massachusetts, whose 60 students are stretching the boundaries of what constitutes education in America. Instead of switching between subject-driven classes that teach a common curriculum, they follow a fluid schedule in two-week blocks, and apply math, reading, problem-solving, and other skills to the project at hand. With the help of visiting experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), they bring their ideas to life on the milling machines and 3-D printers that fill the materials lab. Such boutique programs offer highly personalized environments on a tiny scale, in a tech-enabled reinvention of the one-room schoolhouse that eschews lockstep schedules and standard curricula for student-led learning. They represent a handful of private schools in the country today, but their rapid growth and embrace of sought-after "deeper learning" goals raise important questions about how to scale and democratize the approach. Education futurists have predicted the disintegration of the 19th-century model of American schooling for many years, but the barriers to that transformation have been limited by both the intransigence of the current system and a lack of imagination about what might replace it. Micro-schooling and its teacher-led, entrepreneurial spirit might solve both of these problems, by evading the old habits, sclerotic bureaucracies, cultural biases against experimentation, antiquated labor arrangements, and low tolerance for risk that prevail in traditional schools. The ground-up genesis of the micro-school movement, however, offers as many challenges as it does opportunities. Perhaps the most pressing question is whether or not micro-schools and their offshoots can ever serve all children, regardless of their incoming academic skills and ability to pay tuition. This article addresses the equity and scale challenges facing micro-schools and discusses how micro-schools empower students and teachers.

We document the first New England records of the bee Perdita bequaerti Viereck. Perdita bequaerti is a specialist on Asteraceae flowers, especially Helianthus, and is native to much of eastern North America, where it is often associated with predominantly sandy habitats. Previous records indicated P. bequaerti reached the northeastern extent of its range in the state of New York, but in August 2019, during a survey of bees on Helianthus, we collected five specimens of P. bequaerti at two sites in western Massachusetts. Both sites were located on small-scale farms with abundant non-native Helianthus, on soils characteristic of sandy outwash plains and silty floodplains. These records constitute an extension of P. bequaerti's known range into New England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L). Carr.) is a late-successional species found across the northeastern United States of America that is currently threatened by the exotic pest, hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand). Because whole-tree physiological characteristics may scale to influence ecosystem processes, we considered whole-tree hydraulic controls in eastern hemlock and the replacement species black birch (Betula lenta L.). Through a series of misting perturbations, whole-tree resistances (R), capacitances (C) and time constants (tau) were determined from time series sap flux data in eastern hemlock and black birch. Black birch trees responded more rapidly to environmental perturbations than eastern hemlock. Utilizing the step function after applied treatments, whole-tree tau ranged between 9.4 and 24.8 min in eastern hemlock trees compared with 5.9 to 10.5 min in black birch. Species was not a significant predictor of R or C when controlling for tree size. In both species, R decreased with sapwood area and C increased. Our tau results indicate that the loss and replacement of eastern hemlock by black birch will decrease the lag between transpiration and absorption of water from the soil and potentially alter the diurnal pattern of carbon and water uptake.