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\"The authors provide practical, research-informed, guidelines and detailed lesson plans that improve learning of chemical, physical, biological, and earth & space sciences. The context for learning is the myriad of exciting opportunities provided by informal science institutions such as zoos, museums, space centers and the outdoors. Many such institutions seek to educate the public and inspire budding scientists. Visits outside school help students relate science to everyday life, providing strong motivation to learn science for all abilities. This book shows the key to making such visits effective, is when they are linked to classroom learning using a learning management system, drawing upon modern students' fascination with digital technologies and mobile devices\"-- Provided by publisher.

Sponsoring joins brands with sports, the arts, and events in mutually beneficial partnerships. In the context of sports, the authors examine how sponsorship deal characteristics affect consumer inferences, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward a sponsor and a sport property in a partnership. The authors develop a conceptual framework that links a holistic set of sponsorship deal characteristics (i.e., contract length, regional proximity of the sponsor, sponsorship fee, and sponsorship type) to individual consumer perceptions. Study 1 tests the framework in a field study of 2,787 consumers across 44 sponsorships. Study 2 largely confirms the findings of the field study in an experimental study. Overall, the results show that regionally proximate and long-term partnerships benefit as consumers make positive inferences about partnership fit and sponsor motives. In contrast, consumers associate high sponsorship fees, international sponsors, and naming-rights relationships with calculative motives and perceive these factors negatively. For managers, finding that sponsorship deal characteristics matter is important not only for sponsor-property relationships but also for relationships between the sponsoring brands and consumers.

[Display omitted] •Retail crowding changes the composition of the shopping basket.•We use a unique large-scale field dataset on 15,000+ shopping trips.•Perceived crowding positively relates to the share of affect-rich (hedonic) products bought.•Perceived crowding positively relates to the share of national brands bought. Using data from a large-scale field study, we show that (perceptions of) crowding change(s) the composition of a consumer's shopping basket. Specifically, as shoppers experience more crowding, their shopping basket contains (a) relatively more affect-rich (“hedonic”) products, and (b) relatively more national brands. We offer a plausible dual-process explanation for this phenomenon: Crowding induced distraction limits cognitive capacity, increasing the relative impact of affective responses in purchase decisions. As we are the first to show that level of crowding relates to what shoppers buy (at both product and brand level), the implications of these effects for retailers are discussed.

Background Questionnaires are valuable data collection instruments in public health research, and can serve to pre-screen respondents for suitability in future studies. Survey non-response leads to reduced effective sample sizes and can decrease representativeness of the study population, so high response rates are needed to minimize the risk of bias. Here we present results on the success of different postal questionnaire strategies at effecting response, and the effectiveness of these strategies at recruiting participants for a field study on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep. Methods In total, we mailed 17 rounds of 240 questionnaires (total n  = 4080) to randomly selected households around Atlanta International Airport. Different mailing rounds were varied in the length of the questionnaire (11, 26 or 55 questions), survey incentive (gift card or $2 cash), number of follow-up waves (0, 2 or 3), incentive for participating in a 5-night in-home sleep study ($100, $150 or $200), and address personalization. Results We received completed questionnaires from 407 respondents (response rate 11.4%). Personalizing the address, enclosing a $2 cash incentive with the initial questionnaire mailing and repeated follow-up mailings were effective at increasing response rate. Despite the increased expense of these approaches in terms of each household mailed, the higher response rates meant that they were more cost-effective overall for obtaining an equivalent number of responses. Interest in participating in the field study decreased with age, but was unaffected by the mailing strategies or cash incentives for field study participation. The likelihood that a respondent would participate in the field study was unaffected by survey incentive, survey length, number of follow-up waves, field study incentive, age or sex. Conclusions Pre-issued cash incentives and sending follow-up waves could maximize the representativeness and numbers of people from which to recruit, and may be an effective strategy for improving recruitment into field studies.

Home ranges (HRs), the regions within which animals interact with their environment, constitute a fundamental aspect of their ecology. HR sizes and locations commonly reflect costs and benefits associated with diverse social, biotic, and abiotic factors. Less is known, however, about how these factors affect intraspecific variation in HR size or fidelity (the individual’s tendency to maintain the same HR location over time) or whether variation in these features emerge from consistent differences among individuals or among the sites they occupy. To address this knowledge gap, we used an extensive GPS-tracking data set of a long-lived lizard, the sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa), which included repeated observations of multiple individuals across years. We tested how three categories of predictors—(1) lizard characteristics (sex, aggressiveness, and parasitic tick counts), (2) environmental characteristics (precipitation, food, and refuge quality), and (3) social conditions (conspecific overlap and number of neighbors)—affected HR size and fidelity. We found that individuals differed consistently in the size and fidelity of annual HRs (with a repeatability of 0.58 and 0.33, respectively), and that all three categories of predictors affected both HR size and fidelity. For example, HRs were smaller in areas with more food, and males had larger HRs than females. In addition, more aggressive lizards tended to have larger HRs. Conspecific overlap and number of individuals that a lizard interacted with (social network degree) had an interactive effect on HR size where individuals whose HRs overlapped more with neighbors had larger HRs, and this effect was particularly strong for individuals that interacted with more neighbors. HR fidelity declined over time (HR locations drifted from year to year), but individuals differed consistently in this rate of drift. The fact that HR size was consistent despite drifting locations suggests that lizard HRs reflect individual traits (e.g., habitat choice criteria that differ among individuals), rather than simple heterogeneity among sites. Overall, these findings demonstrate (1) both strong, long-term, within-individual consistency and between-individual differences in space use and (2) combined effects of individual traits, social conditions, and environmental characteristics on animal HRs, with implications for diverse ecological processes.

This study experimentally evaluated the performance of a wall confluent jet (WCJ) cooling system in a greenhouse under real summer and autumn weather conditions. It examined the effects of indoor air temperature setpoint (Tspt), number of nozzle rows (n) on the WCJ diffuser, and external wall shading on WCJ’s cooling performance. Thermocouples and constant-current anemometers measured air and surface temperatures and air velocity, while pyranometers measured solar radiation. The WCJ system dynamically regulated inlet air temperature between 14 °C and 25 °C to counter solar and conductive heat gains, maintaining indoor air temperature within ±1.5 °C of the setpoint. Increasing Tspt by 4 °C reduced inlet cooling demand by 25% but increased indoor air temperature by 20–25% and raised ceiling, wall, and floor surface temperatures by 17%, 20%, and 16%, respectively. Increasing n reduced surface temperatures by up to 8% and indoor air temperature by 6%. External wall shading reduced solar heat gain, lowering interior surface temperatures by 10–30%, peak and mean indoor air temperatures by up to 35% and 15%, and net power peaks by 40%. Autumn conditions reduced cooling loads by 50% relative to summer. Overall, WCJ cooling demonstrates strong potential as an alternative or complementary system for greenhouse thermal regulation without increasing primary energy demand.

In a longitudinal quasi-field setting, we develop and test a compensatory process model of social network closure over time on the development of a transactive memory system (TMS) in groups. Although a great deal of research examines the effects of closure on organizational outcomes, that research does not describe the microprocesses that explain when, and under what conditions, closure is beneficial or detrimental. Results from our analysis of the microprocesses associated with TMSs revealed a negative direct effect of closure over time on TMS development and a simultaneous positive indirect effect of closure over time on TMS development driven by a transitive triadic social network structure. It is important to note that the mediating effect of the number of transitive triads on the relationship between closure and a TMS was predictive of subsequent group performance. Results from our study suggest that closure may be a double-edged sword and that the microprocesses associated with TMS development can explain closure’s disparate performance consequences.

The prediction of river planimetric evolution and related interactions with anthropic activities and public safety is one of the most critical aspects in the planning of a sustainable land‐use. Since the beginning of the past century, a large number of theoretical and experimental studies have focused on the investigation of river meandering dynamics, coming to sometimes contrasting conclusions in the forecast of the associated bend sequence pattern. Drawing inspiration from the phenomenological equivalence between fluid‐dynamic and morpho‐dynamic dispersion within the river floodplain, the present contribution proposes an explicit analytical solution in terms of scale‐dependent and equilibrium sinuosity. Such analytical solution, which reveals the strong dependence of river equilibrium planform on valley bank‐full velocity distribution, is successfully validated on the basis of a field data set provided via a restoration pilot project by Basilicata Region Environment and Energy Department (Italy), and further discussed by related lagrangian simulations. Moreover, the governing equation from which the equilibrium solution originates is shown to be compatible with the interpretation of near‐equilibrium dynamics highlighted by stochastic numerical experiments documented in the literature.

Evidence from four studies suggests that the moral opposition toward genetically modified (GM) foods impedes the perception of their benefits, and critically, marketers can circumvent this moral opposition by employing subtle cues to position these products as being \"man-made.\" Specifically, if consumers view the GM food as man-made, and if they understand why it was created, moral opposition to the product diminishes, and the GM food's perceived benefits increase, which subsequently increases purchase intentions for the product. This effect is replicated in the field (in both controlled and naturalistic settings), in a laboratory experiment, and with an online consumer panel. The results suggest that marketers can help consumers better consider all information when assessing the merits of GM foods by using packaging and promotion strategies to cue consumers to view the GM food for what it is (i.e., a man-made object created with intent). The findings have implications for the recent GM food labeling debate.

OBJECTIVES: Quick returns (<11 hours of rest between shifts) have been associated with shortened sleep length and increased sleepiness, but previous efforts have failed to find effects on sleep quality or stress. A shortcoming of most previous research has been the reliance on subjective measures of sleep. The aim of this study was to combine diary and actigraphy data to investigate intra-individual differences in sleep length, sleep quality, sleepiness, and stress during quick returns compared to day-day transitions. METHODS: Of 225 nurses and assistant nurses who wore actigraphy wristbands and kept a diary of work and sleep for seven days, a subsample of 90 individuals with one observation of both a quick return and a control condition (day-day transition) was extracted. Sleep quality was assessed with actigraphy data on sleep fragmentation and subjective ratings of perceived sleep quality. Stress and sleepiness levels were rated every third hour throughout the day. Shifts were identified from self-reported working hours. Data was analyzed in multilevel models. RESULTS: Quick returns were associated with 1 hour shorter sleep length [95% confidence interval (CI) -1.23– -0.81], reduced subjective sleep quality (-0.49, 95% CI -0.69– -0.31), increased anxiety at bedtime (-0.38, 95% CI -0.69– -0.08) and increased worktime sleepiness (0.45, 95%CI 0.22– 0.71), compared to day-day transitions. Sleep fragmentation and stress ratings did not differ between conditions. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of impaired sleep and increased sleepiness highlight the need for caution when scheduling shift combinations with quick returns.