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1. Social dimensions of fertility behavior and consumption patterns in the Anthropocene

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1909857117  

   Barrett, Scott; Dasgupta, Aisha; Dasgupta, Partha; Adger, W. Neil; Anderies, John; van den Bergh, Jeroen; Bledsoe, Caroline; Bongaarts, John; Carpenter, Stephen; Chapin, F. Stuart; et al (March 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   null (Ed.)

   We consider two aspects of the human enterprise that profoundly affect the global environment: population and consumption. We show that fertility and consumption behavior harbor a class of externalities that have not been much noted in the literature. Both are driven in part by attitudes and preferences that are not egoistic but socially embedded; that is, each household’s decisions are influenced by the decisions made by others. In a famous paper, Garrett Hardin [G. Hardin, Science 162, 1243–1248 (1968)] drew attention to overpopulation and concluded that the solution lay in people “abandoning the freedom to breed.” That human attitudes and practices are socially embedded suggests that it is possible for people to reduce their fertility rates and consumption demands without experiencing a loss in wellbeing. We focus on fertility in sub-Saharan Africa and consumption in the rich world and argue that bottom-up social mechanisms rather than top-down government interventions are better placed to bring about those ecologically desirable changes. 

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2. How Do Students Talk About Intelligence?: An Investigation of Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Mindsets in Computer Science

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339413  

   Gorson, Jamie; O'Rourke, Eleanor (January 2019, Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)

   Undergraduate programs in computer science (CS) face high dropout rates, and many students struggle while learning to program. Studies show that perceived programming ability is a significant factor in students' decision to major in CS. Fortunately, psychology research shows that promoting the growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence grows with effort, can improve student persistence and performance. However, mindset interventions have been less successful in CS than in other domains. We conducted a small-scale interview study to explore how CS students talk about their intelligence, mindsets, and programming behaviors. We found that students' mindsets rarely aligned with definitions in the literature; some present mindsets that combine fixed and growth attributes, while others behave in ways that do not align with their mindsets. We also found that students frequently evaluate their self-efficacy by appraising their programming intelligence, using surprising criteria like typing speed and ease of debugging to measure ability. We conducted a survey study with 103 students to explore these self-assessment criteria further, and found that students use varying and conflicting criteria to evaluate intelligence in CS. We believe the criteria that students choose may interact with mindsets and impact their motivation and approach to programming, which could help explain the limited success of mindset interventions in CS. 

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3. Using Visual Representations: How using visual representations may provide teacher leaders with a tool for supporting sustained teacher learning

   Placa, Nicora; Koellner, Karen; Seago, Nanette (December 2023, NCSM journal of mathematics education leadership)

   This paper highlights two teachers that participated in two different professional development (PD) experiences who sustained new teaching practices and learning five years after participating. Both PD projects focused on visual representations (VRs) and encouraged and modeled ambitious teaching practices. Teachers provided video clips and participated in interviews to illustrate and describe changes that took place in their learning and practice. Our qualitative analysis showed that (1) the teachers’ use of VRs appears to be strongly connected to teachers' own active learning of VRs in PD, (2) VRs appears to be a key factor that supported the teachers’ use of other ambitious teaching practices in their classroom and (3) that the two teachers remembered and continued to use ambitious practices and VRs in their classrooms in ways that not only aligned to the goals and intention of the PD, but also adapted and extended representations to different mathematical domains and settings. Implications for mathematics education leaders suggest that a focus on VRs may be one tool to anchor learning to deepen teachers’ abilities to engage in ambitious teaching practices. 

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4. Relationships between fluid mixing, biodiversity, and chemosynthetic primary productivity in Yellowstone hot springs

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16340  

   Fernandes‐Martins, Maria_C; Colman, Daniel_R; Boyd, Eric_S (January 2023, Environmental Microbiology)

   Abstract The factors that influence biodiversity and productivity of hydrothermal ecosystems are not well understood. Here we investigate the relationship between fluid mixing, biodiversity, and chemosynthetic primary productivity in three co‐localized hot springs (RSW, RSN, and RSE) in Yellowstone National Park that have different geochemistry. All three springs are sourced by reduced hydrothermal fluid, but RSE and RSN receive input of vapour phase gas and oxidized groundwaters, with input of both being substantially higher in RSN. Metagenomic sequencing revealed that communities in RSN were more biodiverse than those of RSE and RSW in all dimensions evaluated. Microcosm activity assays indicate that rates of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) uptake were also higher in RSN than in RSE and RSW. Together, these results suggest that increased mixing of reduced volcanic fluid with oxidized fluids generates additional niche space capable of supporting increasingly biodiverse communities that are more productive. These results provide insight into the factors that generate and maintain chemosynthetic biodiversity in hydrothermal systems and that influence the distribution, abundance, and diversity of microbial life in communities supported by chemosynthesis. These factors may also extend to other ecosystems not supported by photosynthesis, including the vast subterranean biosphere and biospheres beneath ice sheets and glaciers. 

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5. Informal Mentoring of Adolescents about Computing: Relationships, Roles, Qualities, and Impact

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159475  

   Ko, Andrew J.; Hwa, Leanne; Davis, Katie; Yip, Jason C. (January 2018, ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   Influencing adolescent interest in computing is key to engaging diverse teens in computer science learning. Prior work suggests that informal mentorship may be a powerful way to trigger and maintain interest in computing, but we still know little about how mentoring relationships form, how mentors trigger and maintain interest, or what qualities adolescents value in informal mentors. In a 3-week career exploration class with 18 teens from underrepresented groups, we had students write extensively about their informal computing mentors. In analyzing their writing, we found that most teens had informal computing mentors, that mentors were typically teachers, friends, and older siblings (and not parents or school counselors), and that what teens desired most were informal mentors that were patient, helpful, inspiring, and knowledgeable. These findings suggest that computing mentors can come in many forms, that they must be patient, helpful, and inspiring, but that they also require content knowledge about computing to be meaningful. Future work might explore what knowledge of computing is sufficient to empower teachers, parents, peers, and family to be effective computing mentors. 

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