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1. Zines as Reflective Evaluation Within Interdisciplinary Learning Programmes

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.675329  

   Brown, Autumn; Hurley, Mairéad; Perry, Sophie; Roche, Joseph (June 2021, Frontiers in Education)

   This paper presents a unique method for documenting and reflecting learning in interdisciplinary science learning settings, which prioritises the perspectives of marginalised learners and which may be used across cultural contexts. Short for “magazine” or “fanzine,” zines are small DIY booklets which can contain poetry, narrative, drawings, comics, collage and more. Often associated with radical or alternative cultures, they can become a kind of self-made soapbox for the creator, a material artifact that, by its very deconstructed and deconstructing nature, encourages a personalised remixing of ideas. Within this paper, we examine the practical and pedagogical positioning of zines within a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) context. As both a visual and text-based artifact, a zine is uniquely capable of capturing broad responses to diverse learning experiences which blur disciplinary boundaries and offers an inclusive and firmly emancipatory approach to reflective practice. 

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2. Talk Isn’t So Cheap

   https://doi.org/10.37282/991819.21.16  

   Aronoff, Mark; Rawski, Jonathan; Sandler, Wendy; Berent, Iris (May 2021, Inference: International Review of Science)

   null (Ed.)

   Spoken and signed languages differ because of the affordances of the human body and the limits of each medium. But can commonalities between the two be compared to find abstract language universals? 

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3. Demonstratives as attention tools: Evidence of mentalistic representations within language

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2402068121  

   Jara-Ettinger, Julian; Rubio-Fernandez, Paula (August 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Linguistic communication is an intrinsically social activity that enables us to share thoughts across minds. Many complex social uses of language can be captured by domain-general representations of other minds (i.e., mentalistic representations) that externally modulate linguistic meaning through Gricean reasoning. However, here we show that representations of others’ attention are embedded within language itself. Across ten languages, we show that demonstratives—basic grammatical words (e.g., “this”/“that”) which are evolutionarily ancient, learned early in life, and documented in all known languages—are intrinsic attention tools. Beyond their spatial meanings, demonstratives encode both joint attention and the direction in which the listener must turn to establish it. Crucially, the frequency of the spatial and attentional uses of demonstratives varies across languages, suggesting that both spatial and mentalistic representations are part of their conventional meaning. Using computational modeling, we show that mentalistic representations of others’ attention are internally encoded in demonstratives, with their effect further boosted by Gricean reasoning. Yet, speakers are largely unaware of this, incorrectly reporting that they primarily capture spatial representations. Our findings show that representations of other people’s cognitive states (namely, their attention) are embedded in language and suggest that the most basic building blocks of the linguistic system crucially rely on social cognition. 

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4. Transcriptional Regulation of Carotenoid Biosynthesis in Plants: So Many Regulators, So Little Consensus

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01017  

   Stanley, Lauren; Yuan, Yao-Wu (August 2019, Frontiers in Plant Science)
5. As above, not so below: Long‐term dynamics of net primary production across a dryland transition zone

   https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16744  

   Brown, Renée F.; Collins, Scott L. (May 2023, Global Change Biology)

   Abstract Drylands are key contributors to interannual variation in the terrestrial carbon sink, which has been attributed primarily to broad‐scale climatic anomalies that disproportionately affect net primary production (NPP) in these ecosystems. Current knowledge around the patterns and controls of NPP is based largely on measurements of aboveground net primary production (ANPP), particularly in the context of altered precipitation regimes. Limited evidence suggests belowground net primary production (BNPP), a major input to the terrestrial carbon pool, may respond differently than ANPP to precipitation, as well as other drivers of environmental change, such as nitrogen deposition and fire. Yet long‐term measurements of BNPP are rare, contributing to uncertainty in carbon cycle assessments. Here, we used 16 years of annual NPP measurements to investigate responses of ANPP and BNPP to several environmental change drivers across a grassland–shrubland transition zone in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. ANPP was positively correlated with annual precipitation across this landscape; however, this relationship was weaker within sites. BNPP, on the other hand, was weakly correlated with precipitation only in Chihuahuan Desert shrubland. Although NPP generally exhibited similar trends among sites, temporal correlations between ANPP and BNPP within sites were weak. We found chronic nitrogen enrichment stimulated ANPP, whereas a one‐time prescribed burn reduced ANPP for nearly a decade. Surprisingly, BNPP was largely unaffected by these factors. Together, our results suggest that BNPP is driven by a different set of controls than ANPP. Furthermore, our findings imply belowground production cannot be inferred from aboveground measurements in dryland ecosystems. Improving understanding around the patterns and controls of dryland NPP at interannual to decadal scales is fundamentally important because of their measurable impact on the global carbon cycle. This study underscores the need for more long‐term measurements of BNPP to improve assessments of the terrestrial carbon sink, particularly in the context of ongoing environmental change. 

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