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Instructional practices that attend to students’ cultural motivations and strengths can play an important role in mitigating educational inequities. However, educators increasingly experience backlash for efforts to address educational inequities, raising moral questions about how educators should engage students. Through a national study, we explored how educators’ likelihood of implementing culturally responsive practices (CRPs) (i.e., practices focused on affirming students’ cultural backgrounds) varied according to educators’ individual moral frameworks (i.e., multicultural and colorblind diversity ideologies) and the contextual moral frameworks they encountered among their administrators (i.e., support for educational equity work) and local communities (i.e., DEI sentiment). When their communities were permissive of DEI, teachers who strongly endorsed multiculturalism implemented CRPs frequently, regardless of their administrators’ support for equity work. In DEI-opposed communities, however, pro-multiculturalism educators only implemented CRPs frequently when their administrators supported equity work. In contrast, regardless of community-level DEI sentiment, CRP implementation among educators with weaker endorsement of multiculturalism depended upon administrators’ support for equity work. Results suggest that educators with less well-defined individual moral frameworks about diversity rely upon contextual frameworks to determine their practices, while those with more codified moral frameworks rely upon contextual frameworks primarily when their individual moral frameworks conflict with their community’s. 

Abstract Kerr microcombs have drawn substantial interest as mass-manufacturable, compact alternatives to bulk frequency combs. This could enable the deployment of many comb-reliant applications previously confined to laboratories. Particularly enticing is the prospect of microcombs performing optical frequency division in compact optical atomic clocks. Unfortunately, it is difficult to meet the self-referencing requirement of microcombs in these systems owing to the approximately terahertz repetition rates typically required for octave-spanning comb generation. In addition, it is challenging to spectrally engineer a microcomb system to align a comb mode with an atomic clock transition with a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. Here we adopt a Vernier dual-microcomb scheme for optical frequency division of a stabilized ultranarrow-linewidth continuous-wave laser at 871 nm to an ~235 MHz output frequency. This scheme enables shifting an ultrahigh-frequency (~100 GHz) carrier-envelope offset beat down to frequencies where detection is possible and simultaneously placing a comb line close to the 871 nm laser—tuned so that, if frequency doubled, it would fall close to the clock transition in¹⁷¹Yb⁺. Our dual-comb system can potentially combine with an integrated ion trap towards future chip-scale optical atomic clocks. 

Abstract Although microbes are the major agent of wood decomposition - a key component of the carbon cycle - the degree to which microbial community dynamics affect this process is unclear. One key knowledge gap is the extent to which stochastic variation in community assembly, e.g. due to historical contingency, can substantively affect decomposition rates. To close this knowledge gap, we manipulated the pool of microbes dispersing into laboratory microcosms using rainwater sampled across a transition zone between two vegetation types with distinct microbial communities. Because the laboratory microcosms were initially identical this allowed us to isolate the effect of changing microbial dispersal directly on community structure, biogeochemical cycles and wood decomposition. Dispersal significantly affected soil fungal and bacterial community composition and diversity, resulting in distinct patterns of soil nitrogen reduction and wood mass loss. Correlation analysis showed that the relationship among soil fungal and bacterial community, soil nitrogen reduction and wood mass loss were tightly connected. These results give empirical support to the notion that dispersal can structure the soil microbial community and through it ecosystem functions. Future biogeochemical models including the links between soil microbial community and wood decomposition may improve their precision in predicting wood decomposition.