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1. Aspects of Inquiry Applied in Japan and Australia

   https://doi.org/10.58021/S54S3V  

   Cense, Barry ( January 2022 , Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE))

   Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)

   The author reflects on his experience as a participant in the Professional Development Program (PDP) in 2005 and 2006 and how he has implemented elements of inquiry learning in his curriculum. He taught courses in Japan and Australia and touches on his perception of how the students in his units learned, and what the effects of (learning) culture are on inquiry learning. Through his experiences, the author found that in the first stages of a learning process, inquiry learning can help to engage and motivate students. In the end stage of learning, inquiry learning can help students to demonstrate their ability to think and work independently. One should carefully consider the learning background of students before implementing aspects of inquiry learning, as it can be affected by the culture in which they grew up. 

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2. A tutorial on the physics of light and image shading

   https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695241279929  

   Todd, James_T ( September 2024 , i-Perception)

   This paper provides an overview of the many different ways that light interacts with surfaces in the natural environment to provide useful information for visual perception. It begins with a discussion of how the concept of light has evolved over the course of human history. It then considers a wide variety of optical phenomena including Lambert's laws of illumination, the effects of microscopic surface structure on patterns of reflection, the bidirectional reflectance distribution function, the refraction of transmitted light, chromatic dispersion, thin film interference, sub-surface scattering, the Fresnel effects, indirect illumination from multiple reflections, caustics, and the structure of the light field. The primary goal of this discussion is to provide the necessary background information to help students and young researchers more easily understand the scientific literature on the perception of 3D shape and material properties from patterns of image shading.

    

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3. A case study approach to understanding a remote undergraduate research program

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2021.pr.Zohrabi_Alaee  

   Zohrabi Alaee, Dina ; Zwickl, Benjamin M. ( October 2021 , Physics Education Research Conference 2021)

   Due to the growing concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities either canceled or remotely hosted their 2020 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs. This analysis is part of a larger study examining the impact of these fully remote experiences on professional and psychosocial factors such as mentees' sense of belonging, identity, and self-efficacy and their retention in STEM degree programs. We present a single-student case study and describe the dramaturgical analysis which centers on identifying five fundamental constructs within the data: objectives, conflicts, tactics, attitudes, and emotions. These items investigate what the participant in the remote REU program experienced and how this experience changed the ways in which he thinks about his future career decision-making. Our analysis explored four different sub-narratives: lack of community in virtual REU, mentor support, perception of the "real" nature of the experience in a virtual format, and future career decision-making. The mentee reported that this experience was highly beneficial and that he developed a sense of belonging and identity, despite working remotely -- often from his own bedroom. 

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4. Plant community data collected by Robert H. Whittaker in the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon and California, USA

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3764  

   Whittaker, Robert H. ; Damschen, Ellen I. ; Harrison, Susan ( July 2022 , Ecology)

   In 1949–1951, ecologist Robert H. Whittaker sampled plant community composition at 470 sites in the Siskiyou Mountains (Oregon and California; also known as Klamath or Klamath‐Siskiyou Mountains). His primary goal was to develop methods to quantify plant community variation across environmental gradients, following on his seminal work challenging communities as discrete entities. He selected the Siskiyous because of their diverse and endemic‐rich flora, which he attributed to geological complexity and an ancient stable climate. He chose sites to span gradients of topography, elevation, geologic substrate, and distance from the coast. He used the frequencies of indicator species in his data to assign sampling locations to positions on the topographic gradient, nested within the elevational and substrate gradients. He originated in this study the concept of diversity partitioning, in which gamma diversity (species richness of a community) equals alpha diversity (species richness in homogeneous sites) times beta diversity (species turnover among sites along gradients). Diversity partitioning subsequently became highly influential and new developments on it continue. Whittaker published his Siskiyou work covering paleohistory, biogeography, floristics, vegetation, gradient analysis, and diversity partitioning inEcological Monographsin 1960. Discussed in 2 pages of his 60‐page monograph, diversity partitioning accounts for >95% of its current >4300 citations. In 2006, we retrieved Whittaker's Siskiyou data in hard copy from the Cornell University archives and entered them in a database. We used these data for multiple published analyses, including some based on (re)sampling the approximate locations of a subset of his sites. Because of the continued interest in diversity partitioning and in historic data sets, here we present his data, including 359 sampling locations and their descriptors and, for each sample, a list of species with their estimated percent cover (herbs and shrubs) and numbers by diameter at breast height (DBH) category (trees). Site descriptors include the approximate location (road, trail, or stream), elevation, topographic aspect, geologic substrate (serpentine, gabbro, or diorite), and dominant woody vegetation of each location. For 111 sites, including the small number chosen to represent the distance‐to‐coast gradient, we could not locate his data. There are no copyright restrictions and users of these data should cite this data paper in any publications that result from its use. The authors are available for consultations about and collaborations involving the data.

    

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5. Cluster Preface: Electrochemical Synthesis and Catalysis

   https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0039-1689970  

   Kawamata, Yu ; Baran, Phil S. ( May 2019 , Synlett)

   null (Ed.)

   Yu Kawamata was born in Japan in 1988, and he completed his undergraduate education at Kyoto University. He obtained his master’s degree and his Ph.D. at the same university under the supervision of Professor Keiji Maruoka, and he undertook a short-term internship at The Scripps Research Institute working on natural product synthesis with Professor Phil S. Baran. Upon completion of his doctoral studies, he returned to the Baran laboratory as a research associate and currently is pursuing his postdoctoral studies on organic electrochemistry.Phil S. Baran was born in New Jersey in 1977 and completed his undergraduate education at New York University in 1997. After earning his Ph.D. at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in 2001, he pursued postdoctoral studies at Harvard University until 2003, at which point he returned to TSRI to begin his independent career. He was promoted to the rank of professor in 2008 and is currently the Darlene Shiley Professor of Chemistry. The mission of his laboratory is to educate students at the intersection of fundamental organic chemistry and translational science. 

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