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Alongside the increasing popularity of distance education is a growing body of literature on anti-oppressive pedagogies (Breunig, 2009). Our critical review of literature explored and critiqued how educators enact anti-oppressive pedagogies in online classrooms. Our search and screen process yielded 2952 studies and a final set of 10 that met our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Four findings emerged from our critical analysis. Anti-oppressive online educators sought to legitimate students' epistemologies, foster reflection and discussion, establish expectations of critical awareness, and democratize educator and student roles. We recommend educators and researchers consider how technologies work for and against anti-oppressive aims and ensure their anti-oppressive frameworks are clearly and purposefully connected to pedagogical decision-making. Considering scarce empirical literature on online educators' enactments anti-oppressive pedagogies and general lack of support in institutions where educators develop their work, the studies in this review constitute an advancement in the field of distance education.

The societal response to the COVID-19 pandemic moved much human interaction online, increasing the risk of widespread cybercrime victimization. We were interested in measuring the changes in the online behaviors of Floridians in December 2020. A survey of 3,000 residents assessed their vulnerability to and experiences with cybercrime during the pandemic. Two visual vignettes were designed to assess the respondents’ willingness to interact with online scams, with each vignette presenting different levels of engagement. In addition to asking about victimization, we assessed the stressors of dealing with the pandemic – health, finances, and communication – on various behaviors and negative online experiences. Results found that higher job stress caused by the pandemic, poor cyber hygiene, and more engagement with social media and streaming sites predicted engagement with the vignette posts. In general, the study demonstrates that the added stressors brought about by a worldwide pandemic heighten the susceptibility to becoming a victim of a cybercrime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study conservation of Castilleja levisecta Greenm., a globally endangered species was addressed through in vitro cryopreservation of shoot tips. In vitro cultures were successfully established using seedlings received from British Columbia, Canada. Shoot tips excised from in vitro propagated plants were cryopreserved using a droplet-vitrification method following optimization of individual protocol steps such as pre-culture, treatment with vitrification solutions, and unloading. The highest plant regrowth after cryopreservation (66%) was achieved when shoot tips were pre-cultured in 0.3 M sucrose for 17 h followed by 0.5 M sucrose for 4 h, incubated in an osmo-protectant solution (17.5% [v/v] glycerol and 17.5% [w/v] sucrose) for 20 min, exposed to vitrification solution A3 (37.5% [v/v] glycerol plus 15% [v/v] dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) plus 15% [v/v] ethylene glycol (EG) plus 22.5% [w/v] sucrose) on ice for 40 min, and unloaded in 0.8 M sucrose solution for 30 min. Healthy plants were developed from cryopreserved shoot tips and propagated in vitro using nodal segments. Plants derived from in vitro culture and from cryopreserved tissues were successfully rooted and acclimated in a greenhouse with 100% survival rate. Acclimatized plants were reintroduced in a naturalized propagation area at the Conservation Nursery at Fort Rodd Hill, Canada. Twenty of 94 reintroduced plants (21%) survived the transit from lab to field and some had started to flower. This is the first report for cryopreservation of C. levisecta, an important step in conserving and re-introducing this critically imperiled species in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a method of estimating impactors of cognitive function (ICF) - such as anxiety, sleep quality, and mood - using computational voice analysis. Clinically validated questionnaires (VQs) were used to score anxiety, sleep and mood while salient voice features were extracted to train regression models with deep neural networks. Experiments with 203 subjects showed promising results with significant concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) between actual VQ scores and the predicted scores (0.46 = anxiety, 0.50 = sleep quality, 0.45 = mood).