Castleton University

Healthy early childhood development unfolds in the context of relationships with important caregivers, including early educators. Grounded in the evidence on early relational health, the 8‐week Hand in Hand Foundations Course for Early Childhood Educators teaches a novel connection‐based approach to understanding and responding to young children's emotions. Educators learn five tools for bolstering connection during emotional experiences (Staylistening), increasing positive and playful interactions with children (Special Time, Playlistening), responding to challenging behavior (Setting Limits), and creating sustainable, peer‐supported reflective practice groups (Listening Partnerships). The goal is to foster stronger educator‐child relationships, improve well‐being for educators and children, and build a culture of connection and reflection in ECE. This mixed‐methods pilot study of the Foundations Course in the United States investigated educators’ experiences with the course, soliciting input on the feasibility of using the tools in the classroom and areas for improving the course. Educators reported that the theories resonated with them, they incorporated many of the tools, and they saw benefits for children and the ECE community. They also expressed a need for ongoing learning opportunities, implementation scaffolding, and organizational support. These findings have implications for supporting educator and child social‐emotional health and potential future revisions for the course.

As the 2022 Academy of Management conference (“Creating a Better World”) call for submissions notes: “there seems to be a growing awareness of the vital role of business organizations, managers, and stakeholders in tackling societal challenges including environmental sustainability; inter-generational trade-offs where future generations cannot make their voices heard today; and issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion” (AOM 2022). While the issues of poverty and inclusive management practices have been examined as management topics for decades, the global grand challenges of health pandemic, environmental sustainability, and worsening economic inequality have sharpened the need for a more scholarly-based exploration of what we might refer to “subsistence marketplaces” [SM]. Since the publication of the seminal edited volume (Viswanathan and Rosa 2007), which raised awareness of the need for a “bottom-up” approach to study the broad range of low-income consumers, entrepreneurs, communities and marketplaces around the world (Viswanathan, 2021), scholars from a wide range of management and social science disciplines have advanced our understanding of these communities. By “subsistence”, we are referring to the wide range of low-income communities—from extreme poverty to those at the cusp between low and lower-middle income. It essentially captures people and communities barely meeting basic conditions for living. We are also using the term “marketplaces” in the broadest and most diverse sense, meaning where goods, services, information, and ideas are exchanged, versus a meaning that restricts the focus to a physical marketplace. Such marketplaces captures different domains of subsistence, such as health, nutrition, education, and livelihood, different geographies, and different modes, such as physical and virtual. Over the past 15 years, a plethora of SM studies has advanced some foundational insights on how subsistence marketplaces function and how social innovations and organizations can foster well-being in subsistence communities (Gau et al, 2014; Sridharan et al, 2017; Steinfield and Holt, 2019). At the same time, given the global and diverse stakeholders involved in the subsistence marketplaces field, there remain important under representations in literature both in terms of geographical contexts, such as sub-Saharan Africa and transition economies, as well as substantive topics such as the intersectional disadvantages stemming from gender and disability. The purpose of this panel symposium is, therefore, to engage a group of panelists in a moderated and interactive discussion of (1) how best to define and understand subsistence marketplaces as a field in 2022; (2) what are some critical insights that could improve organizational theories about the work of organizations with these communities and best practices; (3) what are important under-represented or missing topics and stakeholders in the subsistence marketplaces literature and how best can scholars fill those gaps; (4) what might comparative analyses of subsistence marketplaces across geographies or institutional environments look like and (5) how is subsistence marketplaces as a field of study changing amidst the global pandemic, environmental sustainability, and other global grand challenges.

We investigate the effect of noisy feed rates on the behavior of a cubic autocatalytic chemical reaction model. By combining the renormalization group and stoichiometric network analysis, we demonstrate how externally adjustable random perturbations (extrinsic noise) can be used to select reaction pathways and therefore control reaction yields. This method is general and provides the means to explore the impact that changing statistical parameters in a noisy external environment (such as noisy feed rates and fluctuating reaction rates induced by noisy light) has on chemical fluxes and pathways, thus demonstrating how external noise may be used to control, promote, direct, and optimize chemical progress through a given reaction pathway.

The results in this paper demonstrate that Ishikawa endometrial monolayer cells become multinucleated by a process of nuclear “donation” from neighboring cells. As the resulting polyploid cell detaches from the colony in which it was formed, it is possible to detect mitonucleon(s) in the center of the cell. The mitonucleon is a transient mitochondrial superstructure surrounding aggregated chromatin (Fleming et al. 1998) with characteristics of the family of mitochondrial superstructures that are sometimes called spheroids or cup-shaped mitochondria (Fleming, 2016a). As was recently demonstrated gas vacuoles form within mitonucleons (Fleming, 2018). In the free-floating single cell, the retained gas creates a central vacuole, and the cell becomes a spheroid that floats above the monolayer. It resembles a “signet ring cell” in being characterized by a central vacuole and chromatin compressed against the vacuole membrane. The resulting structure is a spheroids that is hollow and unicellular, albeit polyploid. But whereas signet ring cells are assumed to be undergoing apoptosis, that is not the case for unicellular spheroids. Complete spheres with chromatin and cytosolic cell contents compressed against the cell membrane can be found floating independently above Ishikawa monolayers. When an isolated sphere settles back onto the surface of the petri dish, it is possible to observe dissipating gas bubbles within the now flattened sphere for a short period of time. When the gas is discharged the resulting cell looks like a typical giant polyploid cell.

Speech processing relies heavily on the integration of auditory and visual information, and it has been suggested that the ability to detect correspondence between auditory and visual signals helps to lay the foundation for successful language development. The goal of the present study was to explore whether children with ASD process audio-visual synchrony in ways comparable to their typically developing peers, and the relationship between preference for synchrony and language ability. Results showed that there are differences in attention to audiovisual synchrony between typically developing children and children with ASD. Preference for synchrony was related to the language abilities of children across groups.

Expanding populations and environmental changes can leave the plants we depend upon to meet our food and energy needs facing increasingly difficult growing conditions. Enhancing our understanding of the methods that plants naturally employ to overcome abiotic factors such as heat, drought, high salinity, or poor light will enable us to better select for plants that can succeed under challenging conditions. Here we examine At4g33666, a novel gene in Arabidopsis thaliana, which is thought to play a role in perceiving or overcoming abiotic stressors. In order to begin to understand the role of this gene in the stress response, we have examined expression at both an RNA and protein level. We extracted RNA from plants exposed to abiotic stress and performed quantitative PCR. To visualize phenotypic changes caused by the loss or overexpression of the gene, we measured the rate of germination of different genotypes under osmotic stress. This protein is hypothesized to be localized to the chloroplast, and to learn more about post translational modifications that might occur, we used immunoprecipitation to isolate protein for analysis via mass spectrometry. By studying the role of At4g33666, we can improve our understanding of plant stress responses and optimize success of the plants we depend upon.Support or Funding InformationThis research was supported by a Castleton University student research grant.

Plants respond to neighbor shade by increasing stem and petiole elongation. Shade, sensed by phytochrome photoreceptors, causes stabilization of PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR proteins and subsequent induction of YUCCA auxin biosynthetic genes. To investigate the role of YUCCA genes in phytochrome-mediated elongation, we examined auxin signaling kinetics after an end-of-day far-red (EOD-FR) light treatment, and found that an auxin responsive reporter is rapidly induced within 2 hours of far-red exposure. YUCCA2, 5, 8, and 9 are all induced with similar kinetics suggesting that they could act redundantly to control shade-mediated elongation. To test this hypothesis we constructed a yucca2, 5, 8, 9 quadruple mutant and found that the hypocotyl and petiole EOD-FR and shade avoidance responses are completely disrupted. This work shows that YUCCA auxin biosynthetic genes are essential for detectable shade avoidance and that YUCCA genes are important for petiole shade avoidance.

Plants respond to neighbor shade by increasing stem and petiole elongation. Shade, sensed by phytochrome photoreceptors, causes stabilization of PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR proteins and subsequent induction of YUCCA auxin biosynthetic genes. To investigate the role of YUCCA genes in phytochrome-mediated elongation we examined auxin signaling kinetics after an end-of-day far-red (EOD-FR) light treatment, and found that an auxin responsive reporter is rapidly induced within 2 hours of far-red exposure. YUCCA2, 5, 8, and 9 are all induced with similar kinetics suggesting that they could act redundantly to control shade-mediated elongation. To test this hypothesis we constructed a yucca2,5,8,9 quadruple mutant and found that the hypocotyl and petiole EOD-FR and shade avoidance are completely disrupted. This work shows that YUCCA auxin biosynthetic genes are essential for detectable shade avoidance and that YUCCA genes are important for petiole shade avoidance.