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Inoculation theory as a design approach to game-based misinformation interventions: a review
Get PDFMisinformation has been demonstrated to pose a great risk to society, demanding action from policymakers and educators. Inoculation theory is a theory of resistance to influence, which in recent years has been a foundational theory for game-based interventions against misinformation. While many game-based interventions have been found to be efficacious, there is a lack of understanding of the underlying mechanisms which make them work. This review critically engages with the current state of game-based misinformation interventions, identifies gaps in game design and research, and investigates the relationship between inoculation theory and game design. We find that homogeneity in design has left some areas of game design underexplored, and discussion surrounding game design decisions—particularly the integration of inoculation theory components—is often superficial. We call for further research understanding the efficacy of different game designs and design processes, and more discussion of how inoculation mechanisms can be stimulated in game-based contexts
Navigating reflective academic leadership through SFHEA: An autoethnographic perspective from health sciences
No full textSenior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) is increasingly viewed as a benchmark of teaching excellence and leadership in UK academia. Yet the reflective journey towards SFHEA, especially under the revised 2023 Professional Standards Framework (PSF), is underexplored. This autoethnographic study examines one applicant’s experience, capturing motivations, challenges, and feedback’s role. Drawing on journal entries and drafts, the author (a health scientist-turned-educator) reflects on how values and career pressures shaped the application. Challenges included balancing workload with reflective writing, adapting to a new genre, and navigating the updated PSF, with its emphasis on inclusivity and digital pedagogy. Collegial feedback proved transformative, prompting a full rewrite and deeper critical reflection. The findings are situated within literature on academic identity, feedback literacy, and reflective development. This study argues that, when supported by authentic feedback and reflection, SFHEA can foster meaningful professional growth
Gender, race and their interplay with economic status: Intersectionality and asymmetric jeopardies in Brazilian education
No full textA large body of research has illustrated how inequalities in educational achievements globally are rooted in a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, the sources of educational disadvantages are too often considered in isolation, without addressing how they interplay with one another. Building upon the intersectionality and multiple jeopardy frameworks, in this paper we employ a sequential mixed-methods approach to analyse the role played by economic status, gender and race in shaping education attainment in Brazilian high-stakes secondary education exams. Our specific focus is on how economic status, conceptualised as comprising an absolute and a relative facet, interplays with gender and race. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the two components of economic status interplay symmetrically with gender but asymmetrically with race. Gender attainment gaps shrink with higher absolute and relative status. Race attainment gaps also shrink with higher absolute status, but they expand with higher relative status. We use the insights obtained from the literature as well as from our qualitative interviews to situate and explain these findings. Our work improves the understanding of the multifaceted disadvantage experienced by students from underprivileged households in Brazil, highlighting how economic inequality and discrimination hinder educational attainment and jeopardise social mobility
Global Framings of Pandemic Recovery: Insights Across Conservation, Development and Health Fields
No full textIn many contexts recovery from COVID-19 is ongoing. The impacts of the pandemic were diverse and their distribution uneven, which may in part explain the diversity in the ways in which its recovery has been framed. Numerous framings concerning what constitutes ‘recovery’, what its pursuit should entail, who (or what) it should target and whose vision the notion of recovery should represent have been expressed by various fields of study. An assessment of the way in which diverse fields (e.g. health, conservation and development) have represented the priorities of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is so far not available. This knowledge gap is important since understanding the threads in common, and those distinct between fields, may help move towards a more integrated appraisal of the multiple priorities salient to recovery. Integration however also involves representing diverse knowledges, values and lived experiences and supporting disaster-resilient communities requires being attentive to the voices of the most marginalized. Due recognition of and engagement with these groups is essential for enhancing the justice and equity of recovery-focused interventions, and can help ensure that interventions do not presume, misplace or misrepresent local priorities. With growing recognition of the need for decolonial, grounded and co-developed responses to processes of recovery, nature futures and global development there is a need to understand how COVID-19 recovery has been conceived and articulated across fields, and crucially, the extent to which it has included the perceptions of socially, economically and politically marginalized groups. We analyzed 30 papers (10 per field), and asked (1) How does COVID-19 recovery tend to be framed within these fields, including the representation of intersecting risks? (2) Where is there divergence and congruence in recovery discourses across these fields, and what would an integrated understanding of recovery look like? (3) To what extent are local voices reflected or acknowledged in these international framings? We found that while perspectives differed, all highlighted how COVID-19 exposed pre-existing interconnected crises. Many framed the root cause as flawed economic growth models, which was considered in need of various degrees of transformation combined with more integrated governance. Crucially, few framings had strong representation of local, or marginalized voices and relatively few papers actively grounded their calls, or prominently advocated for such practices. Our findings point to a need for more co-created knowledge generation and agenda setting for COVID-19 recovery, and disaster recovery more broadly
Atomic basis for functional evolution of plant lanosterol synthase
No full textLanosterol synthase (LAS) and cycloartenol synthase (CAS) use 2,3-oxidosqualene as their substrate to produce lanosterol and cycloartenol for biosynthesis of essential sterols in animals and fungi (lanosterol) and plants (cycloartenol), respectively. Although LASs are also found in plants, their evolutionary origin and the question of whether their catalytic mechanism aligns with animal/fungal LAS remain unresolved. In this study, we use QM/MM MD simulations to reveal the atomic-level catalytic mechanisms of LASs from all three lineages. Our simulations reveal a dominant reaction path from a C8 cation intermediate to lanosterol for plant LASs, which is different from the reaction path for animal and fungal LASs. Phylogenetic and microcollinearity analyses demonstrate that plant LASs evolved from an ancestral plant CAS and are restricted to eudicots. Combining these findings with mechanistic insights, we demonstrate that plant LASs have undergone convergent evolution with their animal and fungal counterparts, independently acquiring a role in root development. This study establishes the lanosterol biosynthesis pathway as a remarkable example of convergent evolution across eukaryotes, having arisen independently in plants, animals, and fungi. By defining the role of plant LAS in root development, this research provides key molecular targets for breeding stress-resilient crops
Visiting ‘our Slavic brothers’: Football tours and turbulent Soviet-Yugoslav relations in the early Cold War
No full textSymbiosis signalling genes negatively regulate root responses to salt stress via the CCaMK-IPD3 module in Medicago truncatula
No full textLegumes are important sources of dietary protein and are key crops for sustainable agriculture because they fix atmospheric nitrogen via symbiotic interactions with rhizobia bacteria. However, legume plants are particularly sensitive to salt stress, with salinity negatively affecting development of the root nodule symbiosis. Genes that control salt-symbiosis crosstalk or trade-offs are largely unknown and poorly characterised. To assess the role of symbiosis signalling genes in salt stress, we analysed wildtype and symbiosis signalling mutants of Medicago truncatula grown in the presence of NaCl, sorbitol and/or rhizobia bacteria. We assessed root growth, plant biomass, nodule number and gene expression responses in plants exposed to stress. Our findings demonstrate that several symbiosis signalling genes play a previously undescribed role in regulating root responses to salt stress, including a calcium- and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CCaMK) and its interacting partner and downstream transcription factor, IPD3. Our results also show that the identified responses to salt stress are due to sodium toxicity rather than osmotic stress. We conclude that symbiosis signalling genes, including the CCaMK-IPD3 signalling module, may mediate signalling crosstalk between salt stress and symbiosis. These findings open new research avenues to explore how the environment regulates the legume-Rhizobium symbiosis
Unruly subjects: Migration, solidarity and resistance in Greece
No full textUnruly Subjects takes readers to the epicentre of Europe's intensifying border struggles-the Aegean islands in Greece, where thousands of 'undesirable' migrants have been warehoused and violently abandoned in EU-funded refugee camps. Drawing on nearly a decade of research, Ludek Stavinoha reveals the subterranean corners in which resistance brews and solidarity takes hold, tracing migrants' everyday struggles for dignity and their rights, alongside grassroots volunteers who have built vital infrastructures of support. At the heart of the book are the creative, if precarious and ambivalent, solidarities forged between volunteers and refugees, citizens and non-citizens, as they unsettle racialised boundaries and logics of control, in defiance of state-sanctioned violence, criminalisation, and neglect. Urgent and compelling, Unruly Subjects illuminates how people navigate and subvert Europe's increasingly hostile border regime, and the alternative imaginaries of more just futures their struggles embody
