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Contemplative Practices for Sustaining Wellness: priorities for research and education presents what we learned from research on wellness, intense emotions and health issues together with uses of complementary medicine, mindfulness practices, and interventions for self-care, and caring for others.

\"Eventful Learning: Learner Emotions provides cutting edge research on emotions and learning that are new and highly relevant to classroom researchers, teachers in pre-k-12 and college classrooms, and teacher educators. Event-oriented inquiry is appealing in that it emphasizes transformative potential of research while providing unique insights into everyday problems faced by teachers and teacher educators. The social and cultural theories used in the research blur disciplinary boundaries and support novel activities such as breathing meditation and cogenerative dialogue to provide students with greater autonomy and responsibility to regulate emotional intensity and enhance learning\"-- Provided by publisher.

This book consists of 19 chapters on heuristics - reflexive tools, designed to heighten awareness of actions and catalyze desired changes. Thirty-three heuristics address six foci: teaching and learning, learning to teach, emotions, wellness, contemplative activities, and harmony.

This study applied the exponential filter to produce an estimate of root-zone soil moisture (RZSM). Four types of microwave-based, surface satellite soil moisture were used. The core remotely sensed data for this study came from NASA's long-lasting AMSR-E mission. Additionally, three other products were obtained from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (CCI). These datasets were blended based on all available satellite observations (CCI-active, CCI-passive, and CCI-combined). All of these products were 0.25° and taken daily. We applied the filter to produce a soil moisture index (SWI) that others have successfully used to estimate RZSM. The only unknown in this approach was the characteristic time of soil moisture variation (T). We examined five different eras (1997–2002; 2002–2005; 2005–2008; 2008–2011; 2011–2014) that represented periods with different satellite data sensors. SWI values were compared with in situ soil moisture data from the International Soil Moisture Network at a depth ranging from 20 to 25 cm. Selected networks included the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program (25 cm), Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN; 20.32 cm), SNOwpack TELemetry (SNOTEL; 20.32 cm), and the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN; 20 cm). We selected in situ stations that had reasonable completeness. These datasets were used to filter out periods with freezing temperatures and rainfall using data from the Parameter elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). Additionally, we only examined sites where surface and root-zone soil moisture had a reasonably high lagged r value (r > 0. 5). The unknown T value was constrained based on two approaches: optimization of root mean square error (RMSE) and calculation based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value. Both approaches yielded comparable results; although, as to be expected, the optimization approach generally outperformed NDVI-based estimates. The best results were noted at stations that had an absolute bias within 10 %. SWI estimates were more impacted by the in situ network than the surface satellite product used to drive the exponential filter. The average Nash–Sutcliffe coefficients (NSs) for ARM ranged from −0. 1 to 0.3 and were similar to the results obtained from the USCRN network (0.2–0.3). NS values from the SCAN and SNOTEL networks were slightly higher (0.1–0.5). These results indicated that this approach had some skill in providing an estimate of RZSM. In terms of RMSE (in volumetric soil moisture), ARM values actually outperformed those from other networks (0.02–0.04). SCAN and USCRN RMSE average values ranged from 0.04 to 0.06 and SNOTEL average RMSE values were higher (0.05–0.07). These values were close to 0.04, which is the baseline value for accuracy designated for many satellite soil moisture missions.

The soil-borne fungal disease coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) is prevalent across the southwestern United States (US). Previous studies have suggested that the occurrence of this infection is associated with anomalously wet or dry soil moisture states described by the “grow and blow” hypothesis. The growth of coccidioidomycosis is favored by moist conditions both at the surface and in the root zone. A statistical analysis identified two areas in Arizona and central California, with a moderate-to-high number of coccidioidomycosis cases. A Wavelet Transform Coherence (WTC) analysis between El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), coccidioidomycosis cases, surface soil moisture (SSM; 0 to 5 cm) from European Space Agency-Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI), and shallow root zone soil moisture (RZSM; 0 to 40 cm depth) from Soil MERGE (SMERGE) was executed for twenty-four CA and AZ counties. In AZ, only SSM was modulated by ENSO. When case values were adjusted for overreporting between 2009 to 2012, a moderate but significant connection between ENSO and cases was observed at a short periodicity (2.1 years). In central CA, SSM, RZSM, and cases all had a significant link to ENSO at longer periodicities (5-to-7 years). This study provides an example of how oceanic-atmospheric teleconnections can impact human health.

\"Key Works in Critical Pedagogy: Joe L. Kincheloe comprises sixteen papers written within a twenty-year period in which Kincheloe inspired legions of educators with his incisive analyses of education. Kincheloe was a prolific thinker and writer who produced an enormous number of books and chapters and journal articles. In a career cut short by his untimely death, Kincheloe led the way with an approach to research and pedagogy that incorporated multiperspectival approaches that examined a wide range of topics including schooling, cultural studies, research bricolage, kinderculture, Christotainment, and capitalism. In these works Kincheloe used accessible, elegantly produced language to capture his emotional yet scholarly ways of engaging with the world. He was a champion of the disenfranchised and his writing consistently examined social life from the perspective of participants who were often treated harshly because of their marginalization. The articles in this book were selected to encompass Kincheloe's impressive scholarly career and to draw attention to the necessity for educators to take a critical stance with respect to the enactment of education to reproduce disadvantage. Among the theoretical frameworks included in the works are critical pedagogy, research, hermeneutics, phenomenology, cultural studies, and post-formal thought. Key Works in Critical Pedagogy is a comprehensive introduction to the scholarly contributions of one of the foremost educational researchers of our time. The selected chapters and associated scholarly review essays constitute a reference resource for researchers, educators, students of education -- and all of those with an interest in adopting a deeper view of ways in which policies and practices shape education and social life to produce privilege and disadvantage simultaneously in ways that are often hidden from view. The critical perspective that permeates these works constitute ways of thinking and being in the world that others can adopt as a framework for analyzing their engagement in education as researchers, teacher educators, policymakers, students, parents of students, and members of the community at large. Responding to each of Kincheloe's chapters is a scholar/teacher who is intimately familiar with the works, theories, and epistemologies of this unique scholar.\"--Publisher's website.

Eventful Learning: Learner Emotions provides cutting edge research on emotions and learning that are new and highly relevant to classroom researchers, teachers in pre-k-12 and college classrooms, and teacher educators.