/pdf/citizen-science-a-study-of-people-expertise-and-sustainable-3po1jwi9qc.pdf

Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development

In this paper we argue that the new availability of digital data sets allows one to revisit Gabriel Tarde's (1843?1904) social theory that entirely dispensed with using notions such as individual or society. Our argument is that when it was impossible, cumbersome or simply slow to assemble and to navigate through the masses of information on particular items, it made sense to treat data about social connections by defining two levels: one for the element, the other for the aggregates. But once we have the experience of following individuals through their connections (which is often the case with profiles) it might be more rewarding to begin navigating datasets without making the distinction between the level of individual component and that of aggregated structure. It becomes possible to give some credibility to Tarde's strange notion of ?monads?. We claim that it is just this sort of navigational practice that is now made possible by digitally available databases and that such a practice could modify social theory if we could visualize this new type of exploration in a coherent way.

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'The whole is always smaller than its parts': a digital test of Gabriel Tardes' monads.

Although similar to any other organism, prokaryotes can transfer genes vertically from mother cell to daughter cell, they can also exchange certain genes horizontally. Genes can move within and between genomes at fast rates because of mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Although mobile elements are fundamentally self-interested entities, and thus replicate for their own gain, they frequently carry genes beneficial for their hosts and/or the neighbours of their hosts. Many genes that are carried by mobile elements code for traits that are expressed outside of the cell. Such traits are involved in bacterial sociality, such as the production of public goods, which benefit a cell's neighbours, or the production of bacteriocins, which harm a cell's neighbours. In this study we review the patterns that are emerging in the types of genes carried by mobile elements, and discuss the evolutionary and ecological conditions under which mobile elements evolve to carry their peculiar mix of parasitic, beneficial and cooperative genes.

What traits are carried on mobile genetic elements, and why?

Citizen science and sustainability transitions

As a model of communication and engagement, citizen science has the potential to promote individual and collective climate change action. This article systematically reviewed literature that jointly addressed climate change and nature-based citizen science and identified 23 reported learning outcomes. Overall, evidence related to learning outcomes was limited across reviewed studies, but documentation of outcomes that are directly relevant to collective climate action was particularly scarce. Findings suggest more research examining citizen science from a collective climate action perspective is needed. To support future research efforts, results link the 23 revealed learning outcomes to two potential evaluation frameworks.

A Role for Nature-Based Citizen Science in Promoting Individual and Collective Climate Change Action? A Systematic Review of Learning Outcomes:

Citizen science can raise people’s understanding of science while helping scientists conduct their research. Yet its potential for driving transformative learning is empirically underexplored. We p...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1075547016642241

Citizen Science Toward Transformative Learning

/pdf/regional-analysis-of-social-ecological-systems-7kiqu2rprp.pdf

Regional analysis of social-ecological systems

Sharing scientific knowledge in conflict zones may not sound as a priority. Still science communicators can contribute to address social issues by inviting people to experience the research practice, engaging them in scientific questioning and constructive dialog. Do nails grow at the same speed on each finger? Why does the moon seem to move with us as we walk at night, while stars stay still? Why, as girls, do we have to cover our heads? These questions were raised by kids in 2013 in Palestinian schools, during questioning workshops we facilitated2 during the Science Days of Palestine. Through these workshops, young Palestinians questioned their environment and daily experience, including the ongoing regional troubles, and were guided to seek for rational answers by themselves. This is the same very first step as in any scientific journey. Such questioning scaffolds research practice, together with rejection of arguments based on authority and criticism of established ideas based on reproducible proofs. We contend that these practices shared by members of the research community are similar to those that grounded our modern democracies. Thus, letting people experience scientific research and its values can be used as a tool for empowerment. This is particularly relevant whenever the target population is experiencing poverty, segregation, ongoing conflicts or their aftermath, and needs to collectively find answers to their problems. In this context, we take advantage of the relative neutrality of science, while having a realistic vision of science. We acknowledge that scientific research is not ideal and is also affected by misconducts and ethical abuses. Scientific research coexists with other knowledge systems, which altogether guide societal choices. However scientific questioning invites us to adopt intellectual attitudes that prevent from running straight into emotional conflicts. 10 years of experience support our claim and we foresee that this “tool” has an untapped potential. It can be implemented by practitioners of scientific research, from natural sciences 1All authors contributed equally, ranked by alphabetical order. 2How to stimulate open questions?, workshop tools. JCOM 13(02)(2014)C05 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 2 L. Perié, L. Riboli-Sasco and C. Ribrault and humanities, and actors from scientific institutions. For example, science centres and museums could contribute to address social issues, by inviting youth and citizens to experience scientific investigation [1, 2]. We first experimented this approach when creating the Science Académie program.3 It offers internships in research labs to high-school students from impoverished suburbs of France. We select participants based only on their motivation, in order to reach those who may not fit with the school system but express great curiosity. During a week, mentored by PhD students, they take part in the daily life of the lab (experiments, data analysis, lab meeting, coffee breaks, etc.). This provides a transparent vision on the way research proceeds, both in terms of pure management and intellectual challenges. Evaluation of this program revealed that some participants show empowerment as they set up NGO’s, become social entrepreneurs or join political action. Though we lack a control population to rigorously demonstrate efficiency of this program, these empowered participants cite participation to Science Académie as a key determinant of their social commitment. Following these internships, they are offered the possibility to perform science communication workshops in a festival in France4 or abroad. We observe that sharing passion for science with a wide audience strengthens self-confidence on a long term.5 This approach gets close to what the Exploratorium in San Francisco has been doing since 1969,6 with its explainers being recruited among youth who have abandoned their home or dropped out of school. Using research-based activities to empower people is complementary to other approaches addressing social and political issues: for instance, in 2009 in Vukovar — a Croatian city where young Serbs & Croats still live quite apart — we performed research-based activities which fruitfully combined with sport and theatre activities.7 Although we consider research-based activities to be relevant to address exclusion and conflict, these activities need to be finely tailored to each context: there is no ready-to-use universal “tool”. This shall not be understood as a limitation, but rather as a fantastic driver for innovation in science communication and science education. For instance, we are experimenting at a European scale a process of co-creation of new fundamental research programs. The co-creation involves professional scientists and citizens, youth and adults, in particular from poor or isolated communities, such as favelas in Lisbon suburbs.8 In addition, it should be noted that going towards populations living in conflictual or deprived areas does not imply simplification of scientific knowledge for mere entertainment or cultural purposes, but rather sharing the essence of the production of this knowledge. It allows new knowledge to be produced, meaningful for these communities. Incidentally, this approach, far from requiring technological or fashionable tools, merely relies on old-style genuine human interactions. 3Science Académie: http://www.scienceacademie.org. 4Festival in France: http://www.paris-montagne.org. 5Bilans: http://paris-montagne.org/science-academie/bilans. 6Program overview: http://explainers.exploratorium.edu/highschool/program. 7http://www.con-sol.org. 8Nouveaux Commanditaires — Science: http://www.joursavenir.org/ncs/en. Straight into conflict zones, scientific research empowers the minds 3 In order to engage more communities into a similar path we have performed capacitybuilding workshops for community educators, teachers, and university students from Europe and Middle-East.9 One crucial aspect highlighted in these workshops is the absolute necessity to involve active researchers. Indeed the process relies on mobilizing the values that are at the core of the research practice and kept alive by the research community. These researchers shall also be trained to avoid a “deficit model” stand and to face skepticism when communicating their involvement in conflict zones to their institutions. In addition, developing such activities also requires lots of patience, for both scientists and participants to scaffold an indispensable reflexivity about science. Last but not least, we must be careful when claiming to promote social inclusion. Claiming its achievement too early may lead to disappointment, and damage the necessary trust relationship with the targeted communities. Hopefully standard schemes of evaluation shall be produced in the next years, as more initiatives may take place. We will close this brief note with the words of Albert Camus, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Even if strengthening peace in conflict areas is a difficult task, the community of science workers can have an impact through research-based activities, maybe small, but which will be bring some happiness for those involved.

/pdf/straight-into-conflict-zones-scientific-research-empowers-9rnyrybtuh.pdf

Straight into conflict zones, scientific research empowers the minds

The current debate over extending inheritance and its evolutionary impact has focused on adding new categories of non-genetic factors to the classical transmission of DNA, and on trying to redefine inheritance. Transmitted factors have been mainly characterized by their directions of transmission (vertical, horizontal, or both) and the way they store variations. In this paper, we leave aside the issue of defining inheritance. We rather try to build an evolutionary conceptual framework that allows for tracing most, if not all forms of transmission and makes sense of their different tempos and modes. We discuss three key distinctions that should in particular be the targets of theoretical and empirical investigation, and try to assess the interplay among them and evolutionary dynamics. We distinguish two channels of transmission (channel 1 and channel 2), two measurements of the temporal dynamics of transmission, respectively across and within generations (durability and residency), and two types of transmitted factors according to their evolutionary relevance (selectively relevant and neutral stable factors). By implementing these three distinctions we can then map different forms of transmission over a continuous space describing the combination of their varying dynamical features. While our aim is not to provide yet another model of inheritance, putting together these distinctions and crossing them, we manage to offer an inclusive conceptual framework of transmission, grounded in empirical observation, and coherent with evolutionary theory. This interestingly opens possibilities for qualitative and quantitative analyses, and is a necessary step, we argue, in order to question the interplay between the dynamics of evolution and the dynamics of multiple forms of transmission.

Mapping Biological Transmission: An Empirical, Dynamical, and Evolutionary Approach.

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PHOTO: BRAVOBRAVO/[ISTOCKPHOTO.COM][2]

How do colors affect attention and learning? Could repainting a classroom improve the learning of the students within? These were the questions asked by students of Molins de Rei High School in Catalunya, Spain. After seeing an online video

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/350/6260/518.2.full.pdf

Livio Riboli-Sasco

Papers

Citizen Science Toward Transformative Learning

Regional analysis of social-ecological systems

Straight into conflict zones, scientific research empowers the minds

Mapping Biological Transmission: An Empirical, Dynamical, and Evolutionary Approach.

Repainting citizen science