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Naireen Asim,* Ianna Alberto* Medical School, St George’s, University of London, London, UK*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Naireen Asim, Email m1501540@sgul.ac.uk

Naireen Asim,* Ianna Alberto* Medical School, St George’s, University of London, London, UK*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Naireen Asim, Email m1501540@sgul.ac.uk

While visual literacy has been identified as a foundational skill in life science education, there are many challenges in teaching and assessing biomolecular visualization skills. Among these are the lack of consensus about what constitutes competence and limited understanding of student and instructor perceptions of visual literacy tasks. In this study, we administered a set of biomolecular visualization assessments, developed as part of the BioMolViz project, to both students and instructors at multiple institutions and compared their perceptions of task difficulty. We then analyzed our findings using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analysis was used to answer the following research questions: (1) Which assessment items exhibit statistically significant disparities or agreements in perceptions of difficulty between instructors and students? (2) Do these perceptions persist when controlling for race/ethnicity and gender? and (3) How does student perception of difficulty relate to performance? Qualitative analysis of open-ended comments was used to identify predominant themes related to visual problem solving. The results show that perceptions of difficulty significantly differ between students and instructors and that students’ performance is a significant predictor of their perception of difficulty. Overall, this study underscores the need to incorporate deliberate instruction in visualization into undergraduate life science curricula to improve student ability in this area. Accordingly, we offer recommendations to promote visual literacy skills in the classroom.

Scientific professional societies are reviewing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and policies in response to recent calls for much-needed change. Organizations like scientific professional societies contribute to establishing disciplinary norms, and can influence the diversity of disciplinary workforces in multiple ways through both action and inaction. This paper examines these issues using the American Elasmobranch Society (AES), a medium-sized professional scientific society, as a case study. It consists of three parts: (1) an analysis of the demographics of AES members, leaders, and award winners; (2) an evaluation of a diversity initiative created by the society which includes a survey of program alumni focusing on potential improvements to the program; and (3) a synthesis of recommendations of steps that AES and similarly sized societies can take to better support DEI goals. AES’s membership in recent years is more than half women, but 71.5% of all leadership positions in the Society’s history (including all but two Presidents) have been held by men since the society was founded in 1983. AES’s membership has significantly fewer Black/African-American members than the United States scientific workforce overall, with just 1 member out of over 400 identifying as Black in 2019, and 86.6% of Society leadership positions have been held by white-presenting members. The Society’s diversity initiative has led to some limited professional benefits for awardees, but could benefit from additional resources and support to enact suggested expansions and improvements. We provide a series of actionable recommendations that will make the annual meetings of societies like AES, and the field of chondrichthyan science, safer and more inclusive.

This paper analyzes Game Theory (GT) from the point of view of moral psychology and makes explicit some of its assumptions regarding the human person as a moral agent, as well as the ends of human action, and reciprocity. Using a largely philosophical methodology, we will argue that GT assumes an instrumental form of rationality underpinned by a logic of self-interest, hence placing individuals, communities, and their social practices in service of external goods and their maximization. Because of this, GT is not adequate to describe the entirety of human social existence and interaction. Nevertheless, by revealing these assumptions, GT can be amplified with another form of rationality based on realist ethics and a personalist anthropology reinforced by the logic of gift. This rationality values the singularity of each person as a holistic unity, as the center of the social realm and as an end in herself called to growth and flourishing with others, nurturing the human community through giving and receiving. We will thus provide a wider philosophical framework for GT with a series of non-mathematical axioms of what can be called a Game Metatheory (GMt). These axioms refer to society as a complex system, not to particular interactions. GMt axioms are not a model of social games, but rather an axiomatic description of social life as a game, revealing its systematic character, complexity, and possible deterioration.

Diversifying a community requires outreach, recruitment, and retention which in this case targets the science communication (SciComm) workforce. Establishing a strategy to accomplish such diversification includes designing, launching, and sustaining the new intervention. Here we review the 6-years history of the DiverseScholar SciCommDiversity Travel Fellowship. This intervention was designed to build a community of minority science communicators that would interact with experienced professionals at the ScienceWriters conference. The travel fellowship reduces the financial burden of conference attendance while introducing the fellows to mentors who facilitate networking and knowledge-building during the event's professional development opportunities. The first two years of the fellowship were catalyzed by Idea Grants from the National Association of Science Writers—producers of the ScienceWriters event. Two strategies were used to engage potential fellowship applicants. First, we sought minority journalists interested in STEM topics who wished to extend beyond their standard reporting beats (tech, politics, etc.). Such student and professional journalists were found by networking with and producing conference panels at the National Association of Black Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association annual events. For the second strategy, we found minority scientists who were interested in exploring how to convert their social media and blogging activities to professional writing/reporting careers. We attracted such individuals through our activities at annual conferences such as the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science as well as the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. Overall, one particular challenge of an intervention is financial sustainability once catalytic (grant) funds end. Here, we describe our model for a sustainable and synergistic intervention that positions the SciCommDiversity Travel Fellowship within the overall program of DiverseScholar's doctoral recruiting services. The fellowship is now funded internally from advertising sales revenue from the DiverseScholar MinorityPostdoc.org career portal. The website, though, is more than just a job board since the travel fellows contribute original reporting to the online magazine. Thus, beyond just reducing financial barriers, the fellowship's mentoring, and publishing opportunities can advance a fellow's entry into the SciComm profession.

The standard seedling seedbox test (SSST) is the most prevalent phenotyping test in research on the genetics and breeding of planthopper-resistant rice. Using 16 rice lines that included plants susceptible, resistant and tolerant to the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens), we compared the SSST to modified seedling seedbox tests (MSSTs) and the days-to-wilt (DTW) test. We also conducted a series of performance tests to assess nymph survival and development; adult longevity and egg-laying; egg survival; honeydew production; and plant weight loss. We also assessed the relative costs of the different phenotyping tests to better recommend test protocols that are suitable for high-throughput phenotyping. The SSST was found to be highly robust but fails to identify late-stage resistance; tolerance; or ovicidal responses. MSSTs improved phenotyping by identifying plants with low damage from planthoppers at later growth stages. Herbivore performance tests such as population or biomass build-up tests reduce space requirements and reduce setup and evaluation costs compared with bulk tests. They can also facilitate the assessment of plant tolerance; albeit with added costs. The DTW test most clearly segregates resistant and susceptible plants, thereby facilitating gene discovery and marker-assisted selection. We recommend that bulk testing be improved by switching from the SSST to a suitable MSST and that donor variety and pre-release lines be assessed for the nature of rice–planthopper interactions using biomass build-up tests—including the DTW test.

Se propone una teoría de juegos antropológica centrada en la noción de don, con la esperanza de que pueda dar fundamento antropológico a las teorías económicas y sociales en la línea de las relaciones interpersonales. Concretamente se propone una teoría de juegos axiomática, que orienta la acción humana en el ámbito social respondiendo a la noción de persona propuesta por Leonardo Polo. Los axiomas son: 1) se juega; 2) los jugadores (y las jugadas) son distintos; 3) hay reglas; 4) se gana jugando; 5) no se juega solo; 6) la siguiente jugada es la mejor; 7) hay un terreno de juego; 8) al jugar se juega más.

Debido a la gran facilidad con que las microalgas pueden capturar el CO2 del medio ambiente, resulta interesante evaluar la cantidad y tiempo de ingreso de éste a los cultivos masivos, con la fi nalidad de aumentar la densidad celular. El objetivo del presente estudio fue evaluar los tiempos de inyección del mencionado gas, durante la producción de biomasa que conlleve a una mayor densidad celular, evaluando además, la variación del pH sin alterar la calidad del cultivo. A partir de seis cepas obtenidas del Banco de Germoplasma del Instituto del Mar del Perú, se realizaron cultivos tipo batch de 300L en invernadero, el tiempo de cultivo de la fase exponencial donde se realizaron las pruebas fue de tres días. Los datos se procesaron mediante el análisis del parámetro pendiente de la regresión lineal. Los resultados mostraron que la densidad celular es inversamente proporcional al tiempo de inyección de CO2 al cultivo. La mayor densidad celular, en las diferentes cepas, se obtuvo a los 5min, excepto para las cepas Chaetoceros gracilisy Nannochloris maculata, las cuales obtienen la mayor densidad a los 10 y 15min, respectivamente. La variación de pH tendió hacia la acidez, en un rango de 8 a 4, sin alterar la densidad celular, por el contrario, los cultivos permanecieron libres de contaminantes. En conclusión, los resultados permiten establecer tiempos adecuados de inyección del CO2, los cuales fortalecen la fase de crecimiento exponencial aumentando la densidad poblacional en un 30% sobre lo establecido en esta fase.

(The Neurogenomic Paradigm. Anthropological Dimensions and Freedom in the Care of the Patient)The experimental scientific method disengages the body from the mind and the spirit. Ascertaining the meaning of each individual may overcome the methodological limitations within the current scientific paradigm. The noetic clues afforded by Neurogenomics via an integrative anthropological perspective should pave the way to heal the individual who feels ill, at the heart of his or her disease.

This paper explores an understanding of the Postmodern crisis through Greek mythology and philosophy of history. A revival of the interior fear as a colective phenomenon of contemporary society that characterize our cultural situation and that appeared with the modernity origin specially from Hobbes, Luther and Machiavelli influence. Finally, a overcoming alternative is proposed from an oppeness to God through Anthropology as a method.

This articles suggests that the root of the current crisis in modern scientific innovation is mainly due to the method that science applies towards the real world. The scientific method reduces its possibilities by not considering the comprehensiveness of the human person, i.e. science is impersonal. Philosophers of science in the 20th century have identified this anthropological reductionism and further detected the limits of the scientific method. The lack of alternative solutions leads science into a cul-de-sac. The notion of crisis, recently pointed out by Leonardo Polo’s Transcendental Anthropology, allows us to detect the limit, to abandon that limit and to open knowledge to further dimensions of unrestricted novelty such as freedom or love. Here we highlight the following distinctions: firstly, the state of crisis and the critical conscience, secondly, the ‘desperate vs. puzzle-solver’ critical conscience, thirdly, the limit of science and its abandonment.

En este artículo queremos abordar la familia desde la intimidad personal, ver sus manifestaciones y entresacar aquellos rasgos comunitarios que la caracterizan, así como las virtudes que fomentan esos rasgos comunitarios. Comenzaremos por exponer, brevemente, la propuesta que sobre los trascendentales personales hace Leonardo Polo, con la finalidad de entender que es la intimidad personal. A continuación veremos la manifestación de la familia desde cada uno de esos trascendentales. Finalmente, entresacamos de los trascendentales personales los rasgos comunitarios que caracterizan a la familia. Esto nos permitirá considerar una definición de familia anclada en la intimidad personal, así como la distinción que puede hacerse entre familia e Institución familiar, bien sea si hablamos de la intimidad personal o del ámbito manifestativo de esa intimidad. Comenzaremos con una breve descripción de esos trascendentales y, posteriormente, desde un carácter sistémico abordaremos los rasgos comunitarios que caracterizan a la Institución familiar.

Education in society especially in Mexico, seems to be a powerful instrument of intergenerational social mobility to produce individuals with "capabilities and functions" allowing them to obtain a greater well-being. "Education as schooling," in the first instance, improves the individuals living conditions, since this is a path to a better way of living and a privileged way to achieve a higher economic and social position within a society. However, education's purpose is not only to be thought as schooling for economic well-being, but also as an element of cultural integration and general well-being within a society. Based on that, we have studied the educational inequality in two states in Mexico during the years 2008 and 2010. To this end, we have incorporated into a model of multi-dimensional logistic regression, and index of educational inequality. This index, consist of three focal variables: educational backwardness, access to technologies of information and communication, and family education spending. These variables allowed us to quantify more accurately this form of inequality. The observed results are worrisome, even more because; this derives other inequalities for the families of these societies, including reducing opportunities for better employment, and thus provoking lower standards in health, housing, nourishment, and social participation among others. Educational inequality is, therefore, another factor that originates poverty in the society.

While molecular visualization has been recognized as a threshold concept in biology education, the explicit assessment of students' visual literacy skills is rare. To facilitate the evaluation of this fundamental ability, a series of NSF-IUSE-sponsored workshops brought together a community of faculty engaged in creating instruments to assess students' biomolecular visualization skills. These efforts expanded our earlier work in which we created a rubric describing overarching themes, learning goals, and learning objectives that address student progress toward biomolecular visual literacy. Here, the BioMolViz Steering Committee (BioMolViz.org) documents the results of those workshops and uses social network analysis to examine the growth of a community of practice. We also share many of the lessons we learned as our workshops evolved, as they may be instructive to other members of the scientific community as they organize workshops of their own.

The Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) network is a newly forming national community of practice that engages diversity, equity, and inclusion stakeholders in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. iEMBER was initiated with incubator funding from the National Science Foundation program for Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education. In June 2017, biology education researchers, social scientists, biologists, and program and policy administrators, all with interests in diversity, equity, and inclusion, met to lay the foundation for the iEMBER network. iEMBER provides a distinct forum to coordinate efforts through networking, professional development, and the initiation of collaborative research. iEMBER advances science, technology, engineering, and mathematics reform focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion through the initiation of research teams at the iEMBER biennial conference and outreach efforts at discipline-specific meetings and conferences. The focus of iEMBER is on understanding how to create inclusive, supportive, and engaging environments to foster the success of all biology students and trainees. This report focuses on the structure of the iEMBER network, two takeaways that emerged from the 2017 conference (interdisciplinary networking/collaboration and intradisciplinary broadening participation strategies), and ways for prospective members to engage in ongoing dialogue and future events. Learn more at http://iember.org.

BackgroundMultiple sequence alignments are a fundamental tool for the comparative analysis of proteins and nucleic acids. However, large data sets are no longer manageable for visualization and investigation using the traditional stacked sequence alignment representation.ResultsWe introduce ProfileGrids that represent a multiple sequence alignment as a matrix color-coded according to the residue frequency occurring at each column position. JProfileGrid is a Java application for computing and analyzing ProfileGrids. A dynamic interaction with the alignment information is achieved by changing the ProfileGrid color scheme, by extracting sequence subsets at selected residues of interest, and by relating alignment information to residue physical properties. Conserved family motifs can be identified by the overlay of similarity plot calculations on a ProfileGrid. Figures suitable for publication can be generated from the saved spreadsheet output of the colored matrices as well as by the export of conservation information for use in the PyMOL molecular visualization program. We demonstrate the utility of ProfileGrids on 300 bacterial homologs of the RecA family – a universally conserved protein involved in DNA recombination and repair. Careful attention was paid to curating the collected RecA sequences since ProfileGrids allow the easy identification of rare residues in an alignment. We relate the RecA alignment sequence conservation to the following three topics: the recently identified DNA binding residues, the unexplored MAW motif, and a unique Bacillus subtilis RecA homolog sequence feature.ConclusionProfileGrids allow large protein families to be visualized more effectively than the traditional stacked sequence alignment form. This new graphical representation facilitates the determination of the sequence conservation at residue positions of interest, enables the examination of structural patterns by using residue physical properties, and permits the display of rare sequence features within the context of an entire alignment. JProfileGrid is free for non-commercial use and is available from . Furthermore, we present a curated RecA protein collection that is more diverse than previous data sets; and, therefore, this RecA ProfileGrid is a rich source of information for nanoanatomy analysis.

While visual literacy has been identified as a foundational skill in life science education, there are many challenges in teaching and assessing biomolecular visualization skills. Among these are the lack of consensus about what constitutes competence and limited understanding of student and instructor perceptions of visual literacy tasks. In this study, we administered a set of biomolecular visualization assessments, developed as part of the BioMolViz project, to both students and instructors at multiple institutions and compared their perceptions of task difficulty. We then analyzed our findings using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analysis was used to answer the following research questions: (1) Which assessment items exhibit statistically significant disparities or agreements in perceptions of difficulty between instructors and students? (2) Do these perceptions persist when controlling for race/ethnicity and gender? and (3) How does student perception of difficulty relate to performance? Qualitative analysis of open-ended comments was used to identify predominant themes related to visual problem solving. The results show that perceptions of difficulty significantly differ between students and instructors and that students' performance is a significant predictor of their perception of difficulty. Overall, this study underscores the need to incorporate deliberate instruction in visualization into undergraduate life science curricula to improve student ability in this area. Accordingly, we offer recommendations to promote visual literacy skills in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Most autoinflammatory diseases are caused by mutations in innate immunity genes. Previously, four variants in the RHO GTPase CDC42 were discovered in patients affected by syndromes generally characterized by neonatal-onset of cytopenia and auto-inflammation, including hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and rash in the most severe form (NOCARH syndrome). However, the mechanisms responsible for these phenotypes remain largely elusive. Here, we show that the recurrent p.R186C CDC42 variant, which is trapped in the Golgi apparatus, elicits a block in both anterograde and retrograde transports. Consequently, it favours STING accumulation in the Golgi in a COPI-dependent manner. This is also observed for the other Golgi-trapped p.*192 C*24 CDC42 variant, but not for the p.Y64C and p.C188Y variants that do not accumulate in the Golgi. We demonstrate that the two Golgi-trapped CDC42 variants are the only ones that exhibit overactivation of the STING pathway and the type I interferon response, and elicit endoplasmic reticulum stress. Consistent with these results, patients carrying Golgi-trapped CDC42 mutants present very high levels of circulating IFNα at the onset of their disease. In conclusion, we report further mechanistic insights on the impact of the Golgi-trapped CDC42 variants. This increase in STING activation provides a rationale for combination treatments for these severe cases.

Abstract Structuring sensory events in time is essential for interacting with the environment and producing adaptive behaviors. Over the past years, the microstructure of temporality received increasing attention, recognized as a fundamental factor influencing cognitive, affective, and social abilities, whose alteration can underlie the etiopathogeneses of some clinical symptoms in psychiatric disorders. The present research investigated multisensory temporal processing in individuals with schizophrenia (N = 21), bipolar disorder (N = 20) and healthy controls (N = 21) in order to explore a plausible link between multisensory alterations in the temporal order of events and the psychopathological dimensions underlying psychosis. We asked participants to temporally order audio-tactile, visual-tactile, and audio-visual stimuli, and we administered different psychopathological scales to explore depressive, manic and psychotic symptoms. Results demonstrated that both subjects with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are less precise in temporal order judgment independently of the sensory modalities involved. Interestingly, reduced precision in temporal processing of patients is positively associated with the presence and severity of positive symptoms. Our findings support the hypothesis that low-level sensory alterations in temporal structure may contribute to the emergence of clinical symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized behaviors.

Abstract Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks among the most prevalent malignancies worldwide, driving a quest for comprehensive characterization methods. We report a characterization of the ex vivo autofluorescence lifetime fingerprint of colorectal tissues obtained from 73 patients that underwent surgical resection. We specifically target the autofluorescence characteristics of collagens, reduced nicotine adenine (phosphate) dinucleotide (NAD(P)H), and flavins employing a fiber-based dual excitation (375 nm and 445 nm) optical imaging system. Autofluorescence-derived parameters obtained from normal tissues, adenomatous lesions, and adenocarcinomas were analyzed considering the underlying clinicopathological features. Our results indicate that differences between tissues are primarily driven by collagen and flavins autofluorescence parameters. We also report changes in the autofluorescence parameters associated with NAD(P)H that we tentatively attribute to intratumoral heterogeneity, potentially associated to the presence of distinct metabolic subpopulations. Changes in autofluorescence signatures of malignant tumors were also observed with lymphatic and venous invasion, differentiation grade, and microsatellite instability. Finally, we characterized the impact of radiative treatment in the autofluorescence fingerprints of rectal tissues and observed a generalized increase in the mean lifetime of radiated adenocarcinomas, which is suggestive of altered metabolism and structural remodeling. Overall, our preliminary findings indicate that multiparametric autofluorescence lifetime measurements have the potential to significantly enhance clinical decision-making in CRC, spanning from initial diagnosis to ongoing management. We believe that our results will provide a foundational framework for future investigations to further understand and combat CRC exploiting autofluorescence measurements.