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A "New American High School" is a place that prepares students for a global, knowledge-based economy, helping them to be effective citizens, parents, and workers. Case histories are provided for 10 high schools that received awards for instructional innovation. These schools were chosen by the United States Department of Education and the National Center for Research in Vocational Education as leading examples of New American High Schools. This type of school, where students achieve high levels of academic and technical skills, prepares students for college and careers. The schools provide opportunities for learning by doing--in classrooms, in the workplace, or through community service. The students often learn in the context of a career major or other special interests. Students may work with teachers in small schools-within-schools, they may receive extra support from adult mentors, and they typically have the support of a caring community. The profiles examine the schools' philosophies, focusing on what they have done to fashion a curriculum that meets the needs of their students. Career exploration is an important part of these educational philosophies, creating an environment where students learn by doing. (RJM)

The ability to meet people, visit places around the globe, and make purchases online has added a new dimension to teaching children about the opportunities and accompanying risks that exist in everyday life. The Direct Marketing Association has created this guide to information use, behavior, and privacy on the Internet to help parents supervise their children's learning experiences, even for parents who do not understand the technology well enough to oversee their children's online use. Areas addressed include: (1) how common sense applies to the Internet, easy-to-use parental control technologies, and what the Internet offers; (2) a short quiz to see how much parents already know about the Internet and to get them prepared for other activities; (3) a guided tour, including e-mail, Listservs, World Wide Web, uniform resource locators, and encryption, for parents to follow in the workbook or online at the computer; (4) sample cases of real situations parents and children may encounter online, including issues of personal information, surveys, web stores, password, and directories, and the opportunity to discuss them; and (5) how to develop a set of rules and guidelines for enjoying cyberspace in families, which includes a family pledge document for each family member to sign. (SD)

Tidal marshes store large amounts of organic carbon in their soils. Field data quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks provide an important resource for researchers, natural resource managers, and policy-makers working towards the protection, restoration, and valuation of these ecosystems. We collated a global dataset of tidal marsh soil organic carbon (MarSOC) from 99 studies that includes location, soil depth, site name, dry bulk density, SOC, and/or soil organic matter (SOM). The MarSOC dataset includes 17,454 data points from 2,329 unique locations, and 29 countries. We generated a general transfer function for the conversion of SOM to SOC. Using this data we estimated a median (± median absolute deviation) value of 79.2 ± 38.1 Mg SOC ha−1 in the top 30 cm and 231 ± 134 Mg SOC ha−1 in the top 1 m of tidal marsh soils globally. This data can serve as a basis for future work, and may contribute to incorporation of tidal marsh ecosystems into climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies.

The Southern Ocean contributes substantially to the global biological carbon pump (BCP). Salps in the Southern Ocean, in particular Salpa thompsoni, are important grazers that produce large, fast-sinking fecal pellets. Here, we quantify the salp bloom impacts on microbial dynamics and the BCP, by contrasting locations differing in salp bloom presence/absence. Salp blooms coincide with phytoplankton dominated by diatoms or prymnesiophytes, depending on water mass characteristics. Their grazing is comparable to microzooplankton during their early bloom, resulting in a decrease of ~1/3 of primary production, and negative phytoplankton rates of change are associated with all salp locations. Particle export in salp waters is always higher, ranging 2- to 8- fold (average 5-fold), compared to non-salp locations, exporting up to 46% of primary production out of the euphotic zone. BCP efficiency increases from 5 to 28% in salp areas, which is among the highest recorded in the global ocean.

In conjunction with tides, storm surge is one major driver of coastal flooding associated with storm events. Because local inundation is strongly modulated by the local shape of the coastline and the bathymetric slope, accurate storm surge predictions using traditional numerical models require the use of very fine grids and are hence resource intensive. Therefore, the performance of a live prediction system based on such methods will likely be subject to a trade-off between prediction accuracy, prediction speed and cost., This study explores the use of data driven methods as an alternative to numerical models to reconstruct the daily storm surge maximum levels along the entire coast of New Zealand. Firstly, several atmospheric predictors are utilized that incorporate different variables, time lags and spatial domains, using 3 statistical models, in a selected number of locations in New Zealand, to find the combination that optimizes the reconstruction. Finally, the storm surge daily maxima are reconstructed with the different statistical models along the entire coast, using the best performing predictor., Results show very good performance for the best atmospheric predictor and statistical model, providing average values of 0.88 for the Pearson correlation coefficient and 4.3 cm for the root mean squared error metric (RMSE) (the average value for the RMSE in the 99% percentile is 8.2 cm). For the Kling–Gupta Efficiency (KGE; incorporating 3 sub-metrics: correlation, bias term and variability term), which is the metric used to rank the models, the average value is 0.82., Our results highlight the suitability of data driven models to simulate storm surge maximum levels, and prove the methodology is appropriate for finding a well performing atmospheric predictor that is able for reconstruct these values. Moreover, this methodology can be also applied to new variables, regions and problems, as there are no physical restrictions on the used predictors nor predictands.

Purpose Incorporating biosolids into the soil improves plant yield compared with surface application, but it can result in the increased uptake of trace elements. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how different types of biosolids applications affect soil quality. We aimed to determine the effect of the type and rate of biosolids application on soil quality and the mobility of contaminants. Methods Soil quality was determined by soil fertility (inorganic N, exchangeable P, Mg, Ca, K), exchangeable trace and non-essential elements (Al, Mn, Zn, Cu and Cd) and biological activity (dehydrogenase activity). We measured the properties of soil pore water, bulk soil and rhizosphere in a pot and a rhizobox experiment, with increasing concentration of biosolids (equiv. 16 t ha− 1, 48 t ha− 1 and 145 t ha− 1 dry weight), applied on the surface, incorporated to 25 cm, or incorporated into a patch. Results and discussion The incorporation of biosolids into the soil increased the exchangeable Zn, Cu, Cr, Ni and Cd, compared with surface application. The surface application of biosolids increased the inorganic N in the soil compared with biosolids incorporation (680 mg kg− 1 vs. 380 mg kg− 1), and decreased soil pH by 1.1 units. This aligned with solubilisation of Al (43 mg kg− 1 vs. 6 mg kg− 1) and Mn (43 mg kg− 1 vs. 33 mg kg− 1) and explains the decreased microbial activity in the soil compared with the unamended soil. Incorporating biosolids in the soil increased the biological activity, likely due to biosolids-borne microbes. The root systems significantly increased microbial activity, pH, and the concentration of NH4+, NO3−, and exchangeable P, S, Mg, Na, Zn, Cu and Ni, and significantly decreased exchangeable concentration of Mn and Fe.

The molecular diversity of marine picocyanobacterial populations, an important component of phytoplankton communities, is better characterized using high-resolution marker genes than the 16S rRNA gene as they have greater sequence divergence to differentiate between closely related picocyanobacteria groups. Although specific ribosomal primers have been developed, another general disadvantage of bacterial ribosome-based diversity analyses is the variable number of rRNA gene copies. To overcome these issues, the single-copy petB gene, encoding the cytochrome b6 subunit of the cytochrome b6f complex, has been used as a high-resolution marker gene to characterize Synechococcus diversity. We have designed new primers targeting the petB gene and proposed a nested PCR method (termed Ong_2022) for metabarcoding of marine Synechococcus populations obtained by flow cytometry cell sorting. We evaluated the specificity and sensitivity of Ong_2022 against the standard amplification protocol (termed Mazard_2012) using filtered seawater samples. The Ong_2022 approach was also tested on flow cytometry-sorted Synechococcus populations. Samples (filtered and sorted) were obtained in the Southwest Pacific Ocean, from subtropical (ST) and subantarctic (SA) water masses. The two PCR approaches using filtered samples recovered the same dominant subclades, Ia, Ib, IVa, and IVb, with small differences in relative abundance across the distinct samples. For example, subclade IVa was dominant in ST samples with the Mazard_2012 approach, while the same samples processed with Ong_2022 showed similar contributions of subclades IVa and Ib to the total community. The Ong_2022 approach generally captured a higher genetic diversity of Synechococcus subcluster 5.1 than the Mazard_2012 approach while having a lower proportion of incorrectly assigned amplicon sequence variants (ASVs). All flow cytometry-sorted Synechococcus samples could be amplified only by our nested approach. The taxonomic diversity

We employed an untargeted volatile profiling approach in combination with spit off-odorant measurement procedure to investigate the fate of aroma compounds in mouth by determining how oral processing and intrinsic biological variables influence the overall volatile composition. A red wine before and after oral processing (expectorated wine), and control samples (expectorated water) were analyzed using GC-TOF-MS to determine as many volatile compounds as possible. We identified compounds in expectorated wines that originated in mouth from either an endogenous or exogenous source, while confirming that compounds might have metabolized by the action of salivary enzymes. Our data also show the changes in volatiles via hydrolysis from the corresponding molecules and may provide evidence of de novo formation of volatiles via transesterification reaction in mouth. While investigating the impact of intrinsic biological variables, we found age and gender specific differences in wine volatile composition due to oral processing and identified the key volatiles.

Environmental stresses can compromise the interactions of plants with beneficial microbes. In the present review, experimental results showing that stresses negatively affect the abundance and/or functionality of plant beneficial microbes are summarized. It is proposed that the environmental interference of these plant-microbe interactions is explained by the stress-mediated induction of plant signalling pathways associated with defence hormones and reactive oxygen species. These plant responses are recognized to regulate beneficial microbes within plants. The direct negative effect of stresses on microbes may also contribute to the environmental regulation of these plant mutualisms. It is also posited that, in stress situations, beneficial microbes harbour mechanisms that contribute to maintain the mutualistic associations. Beneficial microbes produce effector proteins and increase the antioxidant levels in plants that counteract the detrimental effects of plant stress responses on them. In addition, they deliver specific stress-protective mechanisms that assist to their plant hosts to mitigate the negative effects of stresses. Our study contributes to understanding how environmental stresses affect plant-microbe interactions and highlights why beneficial microbes can still deliver benefits to plants in stressful environments.

To find renewable and sustainable alternatives to reduce the severe environmental impact of single-use synthetic plastic packaging, glucose-crosslinked gelatin films containing different amounts of chitin nanowhiskers (CNWs) were prepared. CNWs were first prepared by acid hydrolysis of chitin from shrimps, and characterized (morphological and thermal properties), before their addition into film-forming formulations. The films were heat-treated to promote the chemical crosslinking Maillard reaction (MR), between glucose and gelatin. The films then became less soluble (from 100% to ∼10%), thermally more stable, had a notably improved UV–vis light absorption capacity, and presented significantly enhanced tensile strength (from 42 to 77 MPa) and Young's modulus (from 1476 to 2921 MPa), however, they also became less flexible (from 17% to 7%) and transparent. These property alterations were mainly related to changes in crystallinity, the MR and to a lesser extent, to the formation of noncovalent (electrostatic and hydrogen bonding) interactions between CNWs and gelatin. Furthermore, due to the formation of MR products, the films turned yellow/dark brown and released antioxidant compounds (inhibition ∼33%) while immersed in water, which gave the films their active properties (stabilization of free radicals). These films have considerable potential as reinforced active packaging films for renewable food packaging applications.

Analysing temporal patterns in plant communities is extremely important to quantify the extent and the consequences of ecological changes, especially considering the current biodiversity crisis. Long-term data collected through the regular sampling of permanent plots represent the most accurate resource to study ecological succession, analyse the stability of a community over time and understand the mechanisms driving vegetation change. We hereby present the LOng-Term Vegetation Sampling (LOTVS) initiative, a global collection of vegetation time-series derived from the regular monitoring of plant species in permanent plots. With 79 data sets from five continents and 7,789 vegetation time-series monitored for at least 6 years and mostly on an annual basis, LOTVS possibly represents the largest collection of temporally fine-grained vegetation time-series derived from permanent plots and made accessible to the research community. As such, it has an outstanding potential to support innovative research in the fields of vegetation science, plant ecology and temporal ecology.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) presently holds enough ice to raise global sea level by 4.3 m if completely melted. The unknown response of the WAIS to future warming remains a significant challenge for numerical models in quantifying predictions of future sea level rise. Sea level rise is one of the clearest planet-wide signals of human-induced climate change. The Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to a Warming of 2 °C (SWAIS 2C) Project aims to understand past and current drivers and thresholds of WAIS dynamics to improve projections of the rate and size of ice sheet changes under a range of elevated greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere as well as the associated average global temperature scenarios to and beyond the +2 °C target of the Paris Climate Agreement. Despite efforts through previous land and ship-based drilling on and along the Antarctic margin, unequivocal evidence of major WAIS retreat or collapse and its causes has remained elusive. To evaluate and plan for the interdisciplinary scientific opportunities and engineering challenges that an International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP) project along the Siple coast near the grounding zone of the WAIS could offer (Fig. 1), researchers, engineers, and logistics providers representing 10 countries held a virtual workshop in October 2020. This international partnership comprised of geologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, geophysicists, microbiologists, climate and ice sheet modelers, and engineers outlined specific research objectives and logistical challenges associated with the recovery of Neogene and Quaternary geological records from the West Antarctic interior adjacent to the Kamb Ice Stream and at Crary Ice Rise. New geophysical surveys at these locations have identified drilling targets in which new drilling technologies will allow for the recovery of up to 200 m of sediments beneath the ice sheet. Sub-ice-shelf records have so far proven difficult to obtain but are critical to

These guidelines have been developed for the use of advertisers and advertising agencies and for the self-regulatory mechanism which these groups have established, the National Advertising Division, to help ensure that advertising directed to children is truthful, accurate, and fair to children's perceptions. Preliminary sections set forth basic principles which underlie the guidelines and discuss interpretation of the guidelines and their scope. The guidelines deal with eight aspects of advertising: social and moral values portrayed; type of presentation; promotion by program character, editorial character, or personal endorsement; comparative product claims; pressure to purchase; ways in which products are shown being used; claim substantiation; and the use of premiums in advertising. (GW)