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The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) embarked on a comprehensive mathematics pathways project in October 2015 with a move from design to implementation in spring 2017. The VCCS Mathematics Pathways Project (VMPP) aimed not only to develop strategies to improve retention and completion, but also to address foundational barriers to students' success. This grassroots effort involved collaboration among all 23 community colleges, over 200 mathematics faculty, and staff from career and technical support departments. Collaboration extended to the K-12 and university sectors, professional organizations, publishers, and foundations. VMPP goals focused on creating structured mathematics pathway courses for all program levels, implementing co-requisite opportunities for students, collaborating with K-12 and four-year institutions regarding mathematics readiness, developing multiple measures of placement, and improving Virginia's placement instruments. While the decisions made throughout this project were informed by research, how Virginia's organization, processes, stakeholder collaboration, and communication laid the foundation to successfully implement this comprehensive project at scale is the focus of this discussion.

Penguins are the only extant family of flightless diving birds. They currently comprise at least 18 species, distributed from polar to tropical environments in the Southern Hemisphere. The history of their diversification and adaptation to these diverse environments remains controversial. We used 22 new genomes from 18 penguin species to reconstruct the order, timing, and location of their diversification, to track changes in their thermal niches through time, and to test for associated adaptation across the genome. Our results indicate that the penguin crown-group originated during the Miocene in New Zealand and Australia, not in Antarctica as previously thought, and that Aptenodytes is the sister group to all other extant penguin species. We show that lineage diversification in penguins was largely driven by changing climatic conditions and by the opening of the Drake Passage and associated intensification of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Penguin species have introgressed throughout much of their evolutionary history, following the direction of the ACC, which might have promoted dispersal and admixture. Changes in thermal niches were accompanied by adaptations in genes that govern thermoregulation and oxygen metabolism. Estimates of ancestral effective population sizes (N e ) confirm that penguins are sensitive to climate shifts, as represented by three different demographic trajectories in deeper time, the most common (in 11 of 18 penguin species) being an increased N e between 40 and 70 kya, followed by a precipitous decline during the Last Glacial Maximum. The latter effect is most likely a consequence of the overall decline in marine productivity following the last glaciation.

Caregiving in the South Asian context is often assumed by family automatically for the person with cancer (PWC). In this paper, we applied the disclosure decision-making model (DD-MM) to understand the motives behind cancer prognosis disclosure (or not) by caregivers to the PWC. Fifty caregivers participated in semi-structured interviews; and data were analyzed using Framework Approach. For the disclosing caregivers, some of the themes that emerged were consistent with the DD-MM framework while others were not. In particular, the theme "recipient assessment" was part of the DD-MM framework, while others such as unmet communication needs, caregiver self-reflection, and family support were outside of the framework. In contrast, for the non-disclosing caregivers, the reasons for nondisclosure fit very concisely into the DD-MM framework, particularly with information assessment, recipient assessment, and (non) disclosure efficacy. This study has significant implications for development of communication skills trainings around holding family meetings in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative importance of genetic drift and local adaptation in facilitating speciation remains unclear. This is particularly true for seabirds, which can disperse over large geographic distances, providing opportunities for intermittent gene flow among distant colonies that span the temperature and salinity gradients of the oceans. Here, we delve into the genomic basis of adaptation and speciation of banded penguins, Galápagos (Spheniscus mendiculus), Humboldt (Spheniscus humboldti), Magellanic (Spheniscus magellanicus), and African penguins (Spheniscus demersus), by analyzing 114 genomes from the main 16 breeding colonies. We aim to identify the molecular mechanism and genomic adaptive traits that have facilitated their diversifications. Through positive selection and gene family expansion analyses, we identified candidate genes that may be related to reproductive isolation processes mediated by ecological thermal niche divergence. We recover signals of positive selection on key loci associated with spermatogenesis, especially during the recent peripatric divergence of the Galápagos penguin from the Humboldt penguin. High temperatures in tropical habitats may have favored selection on loci associated with spermatogenesis to maintain sperm viability, leading to reproductive isolation among young species. Our results suggest that genome-wide selection on loci associated with molecular pathways that underpin thermoregulation, osmoregulation, hypoxia, and social behavior appears to have been crucial in local adaptation of banded penguins. Overall, these results contribute to our understanding of how the complexity of biotic, but especially abiotic, factors, along with the high dispersal capabilities of these marine species, may promote both neutral and adaptive lineage divergence even in the presence of gene flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have a limited understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of evolutionary changes in the size and proportion of limbs. We studied wing and pectoral skeleton reduction leading to flightlessness in the Galapagos cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi). We sequenced and de novo assembled the genomes of four cormorant species and applied a predictive and comparative genomics approach to find candidate variants that may have contributed to the evolution of flightlessness. These analyses and cross-species experiments in Caenorhabditis elegans and in chondrogenic cell lines implicated variants in genes necessary for transcriptional regulation and function of the primary cilium. Cilia are essential for Hedgehog signaling, and humans affected by skeletal ciliopathies suffer from premature bone growth arrest, mirroring skeletal features associated with loss of flight.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the significance of Land-Atmosphere (L-A) interactions and feedback mechanisms and their importance for weather and climate prediction. Soil moisture plays a critical role in mediating L-A interactions; therefore, this research assesses the impact of different soil moisture datasets on the classification and distribution of L-A coupling regimes. Using SMAP Level 3 (SMAPL3) and SMAP Level 4 (SMAPL4) soil moisture data, we examine the persistence of dry and wet coupling regimes over two decades (2003–2022), exploring how soil moisture influences coupling classification. An inherent challenge in assessing the significance of soil moisture in L-A coupling classification lies in the need for consistent and unbiased observations of the atmospheric state, represented through metrics such as Convective Triggering Potential (CTP), offering insights into atmospheric stability and Humidity Index (HI), which quantifies moisture within the atmosphere. The study utilizes a Triple Collocation-based merging process to address this issue and combines three reanalysis datasets for CTP and HI. Despite significant correlated errors within the individual reanalysis datasets, the merged product demonstrates enhanced performance, showcasing increased accuracy in capturing atmospheric conditions. When combined with the merged CTP and HI for coupling classification, a higher lag-correlation between soil moisture and the CTP-HI metrics contribute to the persist coupling behaviour, potentially suggesting that temporal consistency is a leading factor. SMAPL4 demonstrates stronger persistence of the wet and dry coupling regimes as compared to SMAPL3. The stronger persistence is partially due to the higher observation count, though it may partially be linked to the unique characteristics of the SMAPL4's assimilation process. This suggests that SMAPL4's approach may offer a robust approximation when assessing land-atmosphere interactions, highlighting the inherent differences between SMAPL3 and SMAPL4 datasets. These findings lay the groundwork for understanding the sensitivity of drought evolution to soil moisture variations by gaining insight into the quantification of coupling strength, thereby providing critical insights for future drought modelling and prediction efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the mechanisms driving the extraordinary diversification of parasites is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Co-speciation, one proposed mechanism that could contribute to this diversity is hypothesized to result from allopatric co-divergence of host-parasite populations. We found that island populations of the Galápagos hawk (Buteo galapagoensis) and a parasitic feather louse species (Degeeriella regalis) exhibit patterns of co-divergence across variable temporal and spatial scales. Hawks and lice showed nearly identical population genetic structure across the Galápagos Islands. Hawk population genetic structure is explained by isolation by distance among islands. Louse population structure is best explained by hawk population structure, rather than isolation by distance per se, suggesting that lice tightly track the recent population histories of their hosts. Among hawk individuals, louse populations were also highly structured, suggesting that hosts serve as islands for parasites from an evolutionary perspective. Altogether, we found that host and parasite populations may have responded in the same manner to geographical isolation across spatial scales. Allopatric co-divergence is likely one important mechanism driving the diversification of parasites.