What Happens When Undergraduate Biology Students Meet with Professional Scientists to Discuss Research? An Exploratory Investigation into Scientific Discourse, Motivation, and Sense of Belonging.

Engagement in scientific discourse is an essential part of becoming a scientist. In this exploratory study, we aim to examine the scientific discourse (and resulting benefits) between undergraduate biology students and professional scientists. We developed a novel method for engaging in scientific discourse, grounded in the theory of legitimate peripheral participation, where undergraduate biology students participate in communities of practice within their own departments.

Reading the repertoire: Progress in adaptive immune receptor analysis using machine learning.

The adaptive immune system holds invaluable information on past and present immune responses in the form of B and T cell receptor sequences, but we are limited in our ability to decode this information. Machine learning approaches are under active investigation for a range of tasks relevant to understanding and manipulating the adaptive immune receptor repertoire, including matching receptors to the antigens they bind, generating antibodies or T cell receptors for use as therapeutics, and diagnosing disease based on patient repertoires. Progress on these tasks has the potential to substantially improve the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, as well as advance our understanding of fundamental immunological principles.

The Professional Identity of STEM Faculty as Instructors of Course-based Research Experiences.

The professional identity of scientists has historically been cultivated to value research over teaching, which can undermine initiatives that aim to reform science education. Course-Based Research Experiences (CRE) and the inclusive Research and Education Communities (iREC) are two successful and impactful reform efforts that integrate research and teaching. The aim of this study is to explicate the professional identity of instructors who implement a CRE within an established iREC and to explore how this identity contributes to the success of these programs.

A proposed methodology for the definition of background and reference values for trace elements in fluvial sediments.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) mandates member states to consider trace element background values when establishing environmental quality standards (EQS) for sediments. This study proposes defining the "background" value as the trace element concentration that is consistently present in the unaltered natural environment, and the "reference" value as an upper limit of variation of naturally occurring concentrations, suggestive of anthropogenic enrichment if exceeded. We argue that background and reference values can be computed as the upper limits of the one-sided 95 % confidence interval for the median and for the 90th percentile, respectively.

High photosynthetic thermal tolerance in the Mediterranean halophyte .

The general increase in temperature, together with sudden episodes of extreme temperatures, are increasingly impacting plant species in the present climate change scenario. is a halophyte from the Mediterranean Basin, exposed to broad daily and seasonal changes in temperature and extreme high temperatures. We studied the photosynthetic responses (chlorophyll fluorescence dynamics and gas exchange) of leaves exposed to temperatures from -7.