It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
AA-miR164a-NAC100L1 mediates symbiotic incompatibility of cucumber/pumpkin grafted seedlings through regulating callose deposition
Grafting is one of the key technologies to overcome the obstacles of continuous cropping, and improve crop yield and quality. However, the symbiotic incompatibility between rootstock and scion affects the normal growth and development of grafted seedlings after survival. The specific molecular regulation mechanism of graft incompatibility is still largely unclear. In this study, we found that IAA-miR164a-NAC100L1 module induced callose deposition to mediate the symbiotic incompatibility of cucumber/pumpkin grafted seedlings. The incompatible combination (IG) grafting interface accumulated more callose, and the activity of callose synthase (CmCalS1) and IAA content were significantly higher than those in compatible combination (CG). Treatment with IAA polar transport inhibitor in the root of the IG plants decreased CmCalS activity and callose content. Furthermore, IAA negatively regulated the expression of Cm-miR164a, which directly targeted cleavage of CmNAC100L1. Interestingly, CmNAC100L1 interacted with CmCalS1 to regulate its activity. Further analysis showed that the interaction between CmNAC100L1 and CmCalS1 in the IG plants enhanced, but decreased the activity of CmCalS1 in the CG plants. Point mutation analysis revealed that threonine at the 57th position of CmCalS1 protein played a critical role to maintain its enzyme activity in the incompatible rootstock. Thus, IAA inhibited the expression of Cm-miR164a to elevate the expression of CmNAC100L1, which promoted CmNAC100L1 interaction with CmCalS1 to enhance CmCalS1 activity, resulting callose deposition and symbiotic incompatibility of cucumber/pumpkin grafted seedlings (Figure 1).
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References
Authors
Mingzhu Yuan, Tong Jin, Jianqiang Wu, Lan Li, Guangling Chen, Jiaqi Chen, Yu Wang, Jin Sun
Affiliations
College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University
Consider a group of new sociology students who are about to dive into a completely new subject. Half of them are fresh out of upper secondary school.
They need to settle into student life and get to know other students. They are about to embark on studies in a new field and must learn new ways of acquiring knowledge, regardless of their discipline.
They also need to come to grips with concepts such as legitimation, linguistic objectification, internalization and externalization. What on Earth do these terms mean and how are the students going to become familiar with them?
Textbooks and lecturers explain these new ideas, and the students will work on them in study groups. But the question still remains: how can students become familiar with new academic concepts and terms and understand how to use them correctly?
The sociology professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Aksel Tjora has both tested and studied new ways of teaching and learning.
“In lectures with 200 students or more, not many of them dare to ask questions, provide input or take part in discussions. We have now tested a number of different teaching methods in order to motivate the students,” Tjora says.
Building on American research on podcasts in teaching
Recent American research shows an increasing use of film, art and music in teaching sociology. Podcasts are also used in teaching sociology, but there is still limited knowledge of how subject managers use this tool.
In 2020, one researcher conducted a search in the American journal Teaching Sociology and found exactly zero articles or commentaries published since 2010 on the topic of podcasts.
Since then, other researchers have investigated the potential of using podcasts to teach sociology. Among other things, they found that podcasts seem to increase student engagement.
"We have explored this further, including by seeing what function podcasts can have in interaction-based learning," Tjora said.
Lectures are still the dominant form of teaching
Over the last 30–40 years, universities have paid more and more attention to how students learn best.
"We can see this as part of a specific development of the universities towards education of the masses and the production of study credits, and as a kind of industrial and mercantile approach in much of the sector," Tjora said.
University learning is largely associated with reading, listening, speaking and writing. Speaking and writing require the most active involvement on the part of students, and tend to fare rather poorly in relation to measurements of what students spend their time doing.
The preference for passive strategies contrasts with learning as an active process.
“There are many indications that universities and university colleges have a way to go when it comes to facilitating student learning. Lectures are still the dominant form of teaching,” says Tjora.
Active teaching methods can help integrate students into academic communities, increase motivation and involvement, and facilitate confidence in independent and critical thinking.
“There has been relatively little attention has been paid to how sociological theory should be taught, and there has been little research on the teaching of the subject,” says Tjora.
He and his sociology colleagues have taken a closer look at this by testing new ways of teaching, and evaluating these approaches in conjunction with the students.
Many more students passed the exam
They have investigated how students can be taught a sociological mindset through interaction-based learning, with emphasis on the function of podcasts.
Tjora studied this with Inga Marie Hansen Hoøen and Rebekka Ravn Lysvik, both of whom have been student assistants for the introductory course in sociology. This introductory course was used as a case study.
The introductory course was restructured in autumn 2018, and steps were taken to facilitate the students’ active, creative and collective learning through the use of group work and compulsory attendance in small seminar groups, interactivity in lectures, and academic social gatherings.
The exam was changed to a portfolio consisting of compulsory group-based submissions such as podcasts and blogs. This required significant follow-up from Tjora and his teaching assistants, but increased successful completion (meaning passing the exam) by as much as 36 per cent compared with the previous year.
Before the restructuring took place, the course comprised traditional lectures, voluntary seminars in large groups, individual semester assignments and a 5-hour written exam. A report from 2016 highlighted low levels of interactivity in lectures.
“Dared to raise my hand for the first time”
The empirical basis of the study that Tjora and his two colleagues conducted in 2021 includes the evaluation of the introductory course in sociology (a survey), reference group meetings and a sample of podcast submissions. In all, 166 out of a total of 224 students registered for exams responded to the survey.
The analysis addressed three main topics: (1) a physical student community, (2) group collaboration and (3) podcasts as means of academically thinking aloud.
Physical student community: Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the autumn of 2021, NTNU conducted physical lectures and compulsory seminars for introductory courses throughout most of the autumn. The goal was to get students back on campus.
The evaluation shows that the students experienced increased confidence through getting to know their fellow students at compulsory seminars. Each seminar group consisted of 10–20 students, in contrast to the lectures involving up to 220 students, which some found to be socially challenging.
In the evaluation, many students mentioned that they dared to ask questions and participate in academic discussions when they feel comfortable in the social setting. One of the participants writes:
“I have been a student for one year, but the introductory course in sociology was the first time I dared to raise my hand and answer a question out loud.”
Learning by thinking aloud together
Podcasts were tested as a tool for academically thinking aloud.
“Academically thinking aloud is the starting point for introducing podcasts as a compulsory exercise. The intention is to force students to talk about the subject and get them to relax. Everyone in the group has to participate in the conversation because it becomes very obvious if individuals do not speak or participate,” says Tjora.
Groups of 3–4 students were given the task of producing a podcast in which they discussed social institutions using sociological terms. A social institution might be a family, a job, a festival, or a leisure activity, for example.
The students had to use relevant terminology and link it to everyday situations. Some chose Halloween as the topic, others chose residence halls, dating or social media.
Putting on sociology glasses
“We found out how students use sociological terms in their day-to-day lives. They put on ‘sociology glasses’. Listening to the podcasts, it is very clear that they were experimenting with using sociology terms, a little unsophisticatedly and spontaneously, but they did respond to each other’s input and comments,” Tjora said.
The answers were more refined in written group work, he said
The students statesaidthat they “learn a lot of sociology just by having conversations with other fellow students” and that “working together in groups means that you have to practice arguing for your academic point of view.”
“In our observation of the students’ work and in their own feedback, it became clear that learning through more spontaneous thinking aloud is key,” says Tjora.
From scepticism to learning
The fact that the teaching contained a good deal of compulsory group work was not immediately met with great enthusiasm.
“In the beginning, we experienced a general scepticism towards group work. This was a little surprising because it is something they have been used to doing at upper secondary school,” says Tjora.
However, in the evaluations after the students had completed the semester, it appeared that the group work provided good learning outcomes.
The students felt that they gained “insight into how others understand specific tasks”, that there was a “low threshold for asking questions” and “someone to talk to regarding assignments and the syllabus”.
According to the students’ evaluation, experiencing that they can explain something to others using their own words gave them a sense of achievement:
“Having other people explain their perspectives and opinions creates a more nuanced picture where I feel I gain broader insight. It has also helped in explaining difficult theories to others using just a few, understandable words. I also learn from myself when I am forced to understand in order to explain things to others.”
It has been important for the educators that the students become accustomed to talking academically among themselves as a learning process, but also to free themselves from the need to only talk to lecturers when they perceive something in their studies as academically challenging.
Fewer free riders on podcasts
Group work also has problematic aspects, especially when it comes to written group assignments.
This is related to asymmetrical effort, where students find that they “learned the most and remember most of what I myself have written or said,” partly because each group tends to distribute tasks among the individual members rather than working on them together. This meant that the students felt they learned more from working on an entire assignment alone, or that group members who are given the most challenging subtasks learn the most.
Several students reported in the evaluation that they felt that they did most of the work and that they have had to carry the load because of little initiative within the group. This was said to be particularly challenging when it came to producing a piece of written work together.
However, thinking aloud together when producing podcasts and complying with academic requirements was an exercise in which everyone had to contribute. As a result, there were fewer free riders and more involvement, spontaneity – and learning.
“We found that many students developed the ability to academically think aloud, where they were able to understand their own everyday experiences and surroundings sociologically. From an empirical perspective, the podcasts in particular show this most clearly,”
Aksel Tjora giving a lecture at the Holberg Prize Teacher Seminar.
CREDIT
Photo: Thor Brødreskift.
Sociology festival
NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
For the last ten years, Professor Aksel Tjora has organized a sociology festival where new sociology students, master's students and fellows meet across the board to discuss subjects. The event is held outside a traditional academic setting. "I notice that these kinds of gatherings are worth their weight in gold," Tjora told Universitetsavisa, the online newspaper that covers NTNU, during the 2023 sociology festival.
Diets rich in plant protein may help women stay healthy as they age
A new Tufts University-led study found women who ate more plant-based protein developed fewer chronic diseases and were generally healthier later in life
Women who consume higher amounts of protein, especially protein from plant-based sources, develop fewer chronic diseases and are more likely to be healthier overall as they age, according to a study led by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University and published Jan. 17 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Analyzing self-reported data from more than 48,000 women, the researchers saw notably less heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, and cognitive and mental health decline, in those who included more protein in their diets from sources such as fruits, vegetables, bread, beans, legumes, and pasta, compared to those who ate less.
“Consuming protein in midlife was linked to promoting good health in older adulthood,” said Andres Ardisson Korat, a scientist at the HNRCA and lead author of the study. “We also found that the source of protein matters. Getting the majority of your protein from plant sources at midlife, plus a small amount of animal protein seems to be conducive to good health and good survival to older ages.”
Findings were derived from the seminal Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study, which followed female health care professionals from 1984 to 2016. The women were between the ages of 38 and 59 in 1984 and deemed to be in good physical and mental health at the start of the study.
Ardisson Korat and fellow researchers, including senior author Qi Sun of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined thousands of surveys collected every four years from 1984 to 2016 on how frequently people ate certain foods to pinpoint dietary protein and its effects on healthy aging. They calculated protein intake by multiplying the number of times each food item was consumed by its protein content and then, using the Harvard University Food Composition Database, totaling the amount of protein across all food items.
The researchers then compared the diets of women who didn’t develop 11 chronic diseases or lose a lot of physical function or mental health, with the diets of those who did. Women who ate more plant-based protein, which in 1984 was defined as protein obtained from bread, vegetables, fruits, pizza, cereal, baked items, mashed potatoes, nuts, beans, peanut butter, and pasta, were 46 percent more likely to be healthy into their later years. Those who consumed more animal protein such as beef, chicken, milk, fish/seafood, and cheese, however, were 6 percent less likely to stay healthy as they aged.
“Those who consumed greater amounts of animal protein tended to have more chronic disease and didn’t manage to obtain the improved physical function that we normally associate with eating protein,” said Ardisson Korat.
Animal protein was modestly tied with fewer physical limitations in older age, but plant protein had a stronger, more consistent correlation across all observed models, and was more closely linked with sound mental health later in life. For heart disease in particular, higher plant protein consumption came with lower levels of LDL cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol), blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity, while higher animal protein intake was tied to higher levels, along with increased insulin-like growth factor, which has been detected in multiple cancers.
Dairy protein alone (mainly milk, cheese, pizza, yogurt, and ice cream) was not significantly associated with better health status in older adulthood.
The team acknowledged that the benefits of plant protein might derive from components in plant-based food, rather than the protein—compared to animal foods, plants contain a higher proportion of dietary fiber, micronutrients, and beneficial compounds called polyphenols that are present in plants, rather than exclusively protein.
Ardisson Korat also said data from other groups is needed, as the Nurses’ Health Study surveyed primarily white females working in health care. “The data from the study tended to be very homogeneous in terms of demographic and socioeconomic composition, so it will be valuable to follow up with a study in cohorts that are more diverse. It’s a field that is still evolving,” said Ardisson Korat.
But the team’s findings so far support the recommendation that women eat most of their protein in the form of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, although they should also consume some fish and animal protein for their iron and vitamin B12 content.
“Dietary protein intake, especially plant protein, in midlife plays an important role in the promotion of healthy aging and in maintaining positive health status at older ages,” Ardisson Korat said.
Research reported in this article was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and by the National Institutes of Health under award numbers UM1CA186107 (National Cancer Institute), P01CA87969 (National Cancer Institute), R01DK120870 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), U2CDK129670 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), R01DK127601 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), R01HL060712 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), R01HL034594 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), R01HL035464 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), and R01HL088521 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute). Andres Ardisson Korat was supported by training grant KL2TR002545 from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Complete information on authors, funders, limitations and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the National Institutes of Health.
Rockville, MD (January 16, 2024) – To educate physicians and other health care professionals on the fundamentals of nutrition, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has launched a new article series titled Nutrition for the Clinician. The effort supports the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and its directives to expand nutrition knowledge of health care providers, an effort long supported by the American Society for Nutrition. Nancy Krebs, MD, MS, Professor of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, is the Associate Editor for the series.
Through case-based learning, Nutrition for the Clinician provides continuing education that enhances clinical reasoning and use of the best nutrition evidence in practice. Each clinical case will feature a clearly identified nutrition problem and defined learning objectives. Cases will be published in the journal’s regular issues periodically throughout the year.
“Nutrition plays a pivotal role in health and disease,” stated Christopher Duggan, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “By presenting nutritional challenges seen in hospital and outpatient care and describing evidence-based treatment approaches, we hope physicians will gain a deeper understanding of how nutrition significantly impacts patient outcomes, as well as see firsthand the clinical reasoning process of top clinicians.”
Titled “A Perfect Storm in a Pandemic – A Child with Complex Medical History and Special Diet Encounters COVID,” the inaugural case highlights a six-year-old child with undernutrition and acute COVID-19 infection.
Authors Nancy Krebs, MD and Stephanie Waldrop, MD (University of Colorado) provide medical history, laboratory results, and clinical findings and offer commentary and questions to guide readers through the case. The authors analyze the differential diagnosis and treatment considerations at the outset and reassess them as new data emerges over the course of care.
The case is freely accessible at the following link: https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)66234-3/fulltext. The American Society for Nutrition is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The ASN designates this activity for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. For details on claiming CME credit for reading Nutrition for the Clinician, click here.
“Having knowledge of nutrition is important for all medical specialists, yet studies have shown that nutrition education and training in medical schools and residency programs is lacking,” expressed Kevin Schalinske, PhD, President, American Society for Nutrition. “We hope this new resource will pique the interest of physicians and advanced practice providers and inspire them to learn more about nutrition care in clinical practice.” Dietitians also may find interest in the range of medical scenarios and accompanying nutritional diagnostics and therapies presented.
The AJCN welcomes contributions to this new series from both individual providers and interprofessional teams. Prospective authors can direct pre-submission inquiries to ajcn.editorialoffice@jjeditorial.com.
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About The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, one of the most influential journals in biology and medicine, publishes research in human nutrition and fosters the application of science into clinical practice. Topics include high-impact clinical, observational, public health, and epidemiologic studies in all areas of nutrition including obesity and metabolism; micronutrients; body composition; and nutrition in clinical settings. Genetic and novel precision nutrition approaches are featured. Visit us online at ajcn.nutrition.org or follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @AJCNutrition #AJCN.
About the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) The American Society for Nutrition (ASN) is the preeminent professional organization for scientists and clinicians around the world. Founded in 1928, the society brings together the top nutrition researchers, medical practitioners, policy makers and industry leaders to advance the science, education, and practice of nutrition, reaching more than 55 million people annually. ASN publishes four peer-reviewed journals and provides education and professional development opportunities year-round. Since 2018, the American Society of Nutrition has presented NUTRITION, the leading global annual meeting for nutrition professionals. Visit us at www.nutrition.org.
ITHACA, N.Y. – People may form inaccurate impressions about us from our social media posts, finds new Cornell University research that is the first to examine perceptions of our personalities based on online posts.
An analysis of Facebook status updates found substantial discrepancies between how viewers saw the authors across a range of personality traits, and the authors’ self-perceptions. Viewers rated the Facebook users on average as having lower self-esteem and being more self-revealing, for example, than the users rated themselves.
Status updates containing photos, video or links in addition to text facilitated more accurate assessments than those with just text, the researchers found. Overall, they said, the study sheds light on the dynamic process by which a cyber audience tries to make sense of who we are from isolated fragments of shared information, jointly constructing our digital identity.
“The impression people form about us on social media based on what we post can differ from the way we view ourselves,” said Qi Wang, professor of psychology and director of the Culture & Cognition Lab. “A mismatch between who we are and how people perceive us could influence our ability to feel connected online and the benefits of engaging in social media interaction.”
Prior research has focused on perceptions of personality traits gleaned from personal websites, such as blogs or online profiles, finding that readers can assess them accurately. The Cornell researchers believe their study is the first to investigate audience perceptions of social media users through their posts, on platforms where users often don’t share cohesive personal narratives while interacting with “friends” they may know only a little or sometimes not at all.
Interestingly, the study found that Facebook status updates generated perceptions of users that were consistent with cultural norms in offline contexts concerning gender and ethnicity – even though viewers were blind to their identities. For example, female Facebook users were rated as more extraverted than male users, in line with general findings that women score higher on extraversion. White Facebook users were seen as being more extraverted and having greater self-esteem than Asian users, whose cultures place more emphasis on modesty, Wang said.
“We present ourselves in line with our cultural frameworks,” she said, “and others can discern our ‘cultured persona’ through meaning making of our posts.”
The scholars said future research should explore this “outsourced meaning-making process” with larger samples of posts, and on other popular platforms such as Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter.
Wang said the findings could help developers design interfaces that allow people to express themselves most authentically. For users, misunderstandings about who they are on social media might not cause direct harm, she said, but could hinder their efforts to foster good communication and relationships.
“If people’s view of us is very different from who we actually are, or how we would like to be perceived,” Wang said, “it could undermine our social life and well-being.”
According to the research authors, a ‘global polycrisis’ occurs when crises in multiple systems interact in ways that greatly magnify their threat to humanity’s well being.
The polycrisis concept is valuable for understanding the interaction between crises and helping address them.
Researchers have identified five key properties of global systems that help generate polycrises while hampering crisis mitigation: multiple causes, non-linearity, hysteresis, boundary permeability, and “black swan outcomes”.
They also identified five key global systems currently undergoing radical change: the Earth’s environmental system, the global human energy system, the international security system, the global economic system, and the information system.
The climate crisis and its ties to other global systems show just how urgent that call is.
Climate change is already threatening food production by altering growing conditions and generating increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events. The resulting dilemma shows just how entangled our problems have grown. Food production could adapt by deepening its dependence on industrial methods and converting further ecosystems into farmlands, but these strategies will increase greenhouse gas emissions while threatening biodiversity, placing even further stress on food systems. Yet food production will have to expand to reliably feed a still growing human population.
A worldwide transition to renewable energy sources could help reduce agricultural and other emissions, but such a transformation requires immense amounts of cement, plastic, and steel, none of which can yet be produced in the quantities needed without consuming large amounts of fossil fuels.
Lead author of the new research, Dr. Michael Lawrence of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, said: “The concept of polycrisis highlights several difficult features of contemporary global crises: specifically, that their combined effects are different than those the crises would have separately; they lack single causes and thus have no simple solutions; and they stem, in part, from the dense interconnectivity within and between global systems, which makes them especially difficult to understand and manage.
“The growing popularity of the term polycrisis indicates that more and more people recognise that the world's problems require new ways of thinking and acting. Orthodox responses are not up to the task.
“Above all else, the polycrisis concept emphasises that crises interact with one another in highly consequential ways that are grossly underappreciated by academic and policymaking institutions that study those crises individually, in separate silos.”
Looking forward
The researchers made three policy recommendations based on their findings.
Focus on crisis interactions, not isolated crises.
Address systems architecture, not just events.
Exploit high-leverage intervention points.
In considering polycrisis, it is vital to remember that a single, well-formulated solution might ease several crises simultaneously – meaning, it might do multiple good things. A global effort to keep climate heating under 2°C (if not 1.5°C) could limit extreme weather, the disruption of ecosystems, pernicious health effects, and climate-propelled migration, significantly improving humanity’s prospects.
Research co-author, Prof. Ortwin Renn of the Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, said: “The complex and interconnected world creates major challenges and problems, but it also provides new opportunities.
“If we are able to understand the key triggers that are responsible for releasing a whole set of interdependent consequences, we may also be able to use them prudently to induce positive changes with many positive repercussions.”
JOURNAL
Global Sustainability
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Content analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement
