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Increasing emphasis is being placed by granting agencies on the need for specialists who support the translation of research into societal benefits. This societal benefit is often referred to as broader impacts (BI), and BI is important for acquiring grant funding and fulfilling land-grant university missions, among other benefits. However, few career paths lead directly to becoming a BI professional, so individuals moving into BI work need to transition from another career, which requires learning about BI. This case study examines the experiences of four former classroom teachers making the transition to both teacher educator (a teacher of teachers) and BI professional, and the ways in which their transition was supported using the Center for Advancing Research Impacts in Society (ARIS) BI Toolkit. Implications for onboarding using this toolkit are described and recommendations are made for how to use the ARIS BI Toolkit for transitioning BI professionals. 

The collective influence of animals on the processes shaping the Earth’s surface remains largely unknown, with most studies limited to individual species and well-known exemplars. To establish the global geomorphic significance of animals, we systematically reviewed and synthesized evidence across freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Over 600 animal taxa had reported geomorphic effects. For the 495 wild animals and 5 livestock identified to species level, we estimated their global abundance, and collective biomass and energy. While our census is global in scope, a lack of research in the tropics and subtropics, and on less visible animals, leaves them underrepresented in analyses. Most reported species are globally widespread, but some are rare, endemic, and/or threatened, leading to risks that key geomorphic processes cease before we fully understand them. We estimate the collective biomass in wild animal geomorphic agents at ≈0.2 Mt Carbon, equating to a biological energy content of ≈7.6 million GJ. If a conservative minimum 1% of this energy contributes to geomorphic work annually, this yields an energy contribution from wild animal geomorphic agents of ≈76,000 GJ—equivalent to the energy of hundreds of thousands of extreme floods. Uncertainties in biomass estimates and energy partitioning mean this value could credibly be an order of magnitude higher, and countless species remain unreported or undiscovered. The livestock estimates exceed the wild animals estimates by three orders of magnitude. The geomorphic energy of animals is far more influential than previously recognized and future losses, dispersal and introductions of zoogeomorphic species may induce substantive landscape changes. 

We present dAuth, an approach to device authentication in private cellular networks which refactors the responsibilities of authentication to enable multiple small private cellular networks to federate together to provide a more reliable and resilient service than could be achieved on their own. dAuth is designed to be backwards compatible with off-the-shelf 4G and 5G cellular devices and can be incrementally deployed today. It uses cryptographic secret sharing and a division of concerns between sensitive data stored with backup networks and non-sensitive public directory data to securely scale authentication across multiple redundant nodes operating among different and untrusted organizations. Specifically, it allows a collection of pre-configured backup networks to authenticate users on behalf of their home network while the home network is unavailable. We evaluate dAuth’s performance with production equipment from an active federated community network, finding that it is able to work with existing systems. We follow this with an evaluation using a simulated 5G RAN and find that it performs comparably to a standalone cloud-based 5G core at low load, and outperforms a centralized core at high load due to its innate load-sharing properties. 

Abstract Course‐based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) can be a powerful tool in broadening participation in undergraduate research. In this paper, we review the benefits of and barriers to undergraduate research experiences and explore how CUREs can mitigate some of those issues. As a part of the NSF‐supported Biological Collections in Ecology and Evolution Network (BCEENET) activities, a series of network meetings produced a set of recommendations to increase the accessibility of CUREs for all students at all institution types. We use BCEENET CUREs that focus on digitized natural history collections data to illustrate how leveraging adaptable open educational resources that use freely available data and analysis tools can increase accessibility of undergraduate research. We also discuss how inclusive networks of educators and research collaborators can support broadening CURE implementation.