Bacteria residing in the human gastrointestinal tract has a symbiotic relationship with its host. Animal models have demonstrated a relationship between exercise and gut microbiota composition. This was the first study to explore the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness (maximal oxygen consumption, VOmax) and relative gut microbiota composition (Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio [F/B]) in healthy young adults in a free-living environment. Twenty males and 17 females (25.7 ± 2.2 years), who did not take antibiotics in the last 6 months, volunteered for this study. VOmax was measured using a symptom-limited graded treadmill test. Relative microbiota composition was determined by analyzing DNA extracted from stool samples using a quantitative polymerase chain reaction that specifically measured the quantity of a target gene (16S rRNA) found in Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Relationships between F/B and potentially related dietary, anthropometric, and fitness variables were assessed using correlation analyses with an appropriate Bonferroni adjustment (p < .004). The average F/B ratio in all participants was 0.94 ± 0.03. The F/B ratio was significantly correlated to VOmax (r = .48, p < .003), but no other fitness, nutritional intake, or anthropometric variables (p > .004). VOmax explained ∼22% of the variance of an individual's relative gut bacteria as determined by the F/B ratio. These data support animal findings, demonstrating a relationship between relative human gut microbiota composition and cardiorespiratory fitness in healthy young adults. Gastrointestinal bacteria is integral in regulating a myriad of physiological processes, and greater insight regarding ramifications of exercise and nutrition on gut microbial composition may help guide therapies to promote human health.

Instructor Talk—noncontent language used by instructors in classrooms—is a recently defined and promising variable for better understanding classroom dynamics. Having previously characterized the Instructor Talk framework within the context of a single course, we present here our results surrounding the applicability of the Instructor Talk framework to noncontent language used by instructors in novel course contexts. We analyzed Instructor Talk in eight additional biology courses in their entirety and in 61 biology courses using an emergent sampling strategy. We observed widespread use of Instructor Talk with variation in the amount and category type used. The vast majority of Instructor Talk could be characterized using the originally published Instructor Talk framework, suggesting the robustness of this framework. Additionally, a new form of Instructor Talk—Negatively Phrased Instructor Talk, language that may discourage students or distract from the learning process—was detected in these novel course contexts. Finally, the emergent sampling strategy described here may allow investigation of Instructor Talk in even larger numbers of courses across institutions and disciplines. Given its widespread use, potential influence on students in learning environments, and ability to be sampled, Instructor Talk may be a key variable to consider in future research on teaching and learning in higher education.

Racial discrimination has been linked to allostatic load (i.e., cumulative biological stress) among African American women. However, limited attention has been given to psychosocial processes involved in the stress response—critical for understanding biological pathways to health—in studies examining racial discrimination as a social determinant of health. We examined whether the superwoman schema (SWS), a multidimensional culture‐specific framework characterizing psychosocial responses to stress among African American women, modifies the association between racial discrimination and allostatic load. We used purposive sampling to recruit a community sample of African American women ages 30–50 from five San Francisco Bay Area counties (n = 208). Path analysis was used to test for interactions while accounting for the covariance among SWS subscales using both linear and quadratic models. Significant interactions were observed between racial discrimination and four of the five SWS subscales. Feeling obligated to present an image of strength and an obligation to suppress emotions were each protective whereas feeling an intense motivation to succeed and feeling an obligation to help others exacerbated the independent health risk associated with experiencing racial discrimination. Our findings affirm the need to consider individual variability in coping and potentially other psychosocial processes involved in the stress response process, and offer several insights that may help elucidate the mechanisms by which racial discrimination gets “under the skin.”

In December 2019, the European Commission announced The European Green Deal, a plan to facilitate a transition to sustainability with the goal of making Europe climate neutral by 2050 (1). Green Deal objectives include preserving and restoring biodiversity and reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases (1). The EU Parliament adopted a resolution supporting these environmental goals in January (2). Lisbon, Portugal's capital, has been designated the European Green Capital 2020 for spearheading sustainability efforts (3). However, Lisbon's airport has reached capacity, and plans to build an additional airport are at odds with Green Deal objectives. The proposed location for the new airport is a peninsula at the heart of the Tagus estuary (4), a vast coastal wetland of key importance for breeding, wintering, and passing migratory birds in the East Atlantic Flyway (5, 6). This wetland is a major hub linking Palearctic and Nearctic breeding areas with Afro-tropical wintering areas for an estimated 300,000 waterbirds and many other migratory bird species. The region is protected under national legislation, EU directives, and international conventions (5-7). However, the privately funded proposed airport received an environmental license in early 2020 (8), and, despite the aviation sector facing unprecedented reductions in activity due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Edited by Jennifer Sills pandemic (9), the Portuguese government reiterated in July its intentions to go forward with this new infrastructure (10). By expanding its airport capacity, this EU member state will deliver a negative contribution toward climate targets by neither retiring nor halting new infrastructure (11), as well as threaten biodiversity through negative, permanent, and irreversible effects on bird species in an EU-designated protected area. These species already face massive declines globally [(e.g., (12)]. We urge the Portuguese government and the European Union to put the Green Deal into action by abandoning this project.

The 0FD factor of BaciUlus subtilis is required for the transcription of the flagellin and motility genes as well as for wild-type chemotaxis. Southern blot and sequence analyses demonstrate that the structural gene for SFD, sigD, is located immediately downstream of a region of DNA originally identified as the chemotaxis (che) locus and now renamed thefla/che region. In fact, sigD appears to be part of a very large operon (>26 kb) containing genes which encode structural proteins that form the hook-basal body complex as well as regulatory proteins required for chemotaxis. Transposon insertions up to 24 kb upstream of sigD, within several of the genes for the hook-basal body components, give rise to only a moderate decrease in sigD expression. The transposon insertions, however, block CrD activity as demonstrated by the lack of flagellin expression in strains bearing these insertions. These effects appear to arise from two types of regulation. In cis the transposon insertions appear to introduce a partial block to transcription of sigD from upstream promoter elements; in trans they disrupt genes whose gene products are required for oD activity. It appears that sigD transcription is initiated, at least in part, by a promoter many kilobases upstream of its translation start site and that transcription of the flagellin gene by SFD is dependent on the formation of a functional hook-basal body complex. The possibility that sigD is part of the Ia/che operon was further tested by the integration of an insertion plasmid, containing strong transcription terminators, 1.6 and 24 kb upstream of the sigD gene. In both cases, the introduction of the terminators resulted in a greater decrease of sigD expression than was caused by the plasmid sequences alone. These results indicate that wild-type transcription of sigD is dependent on promoter sequences >24 kb upstream of its structural gene and that the entirefla/che region forms a single operon.

Active-learning pedagogies have been repeatedly demonstrated to produce superior learning gains with large effect sizes compared with lecture-based pedagogies. Shifting large numbers of college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty to include any active learning in their teaching may retain and more effectively educate far more students than having a few faculty completely transform their teaching, but the extent to which STEM faculty are changing their teaching methods is unclear. Here, we describe the development and application of the machine-learning-derived algorithm Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART), which can analyze thousands of hours of STEM course audio recordings quickly, with minimal costs, and without need for human observers. DART analyzes the volume and variance of classroom recordings to predict the quantity of time spent on single voice (e.g., lecture), multiple voice (e.g., pair discussion), and no voice (e.g., clicker question thinking) activities. Applying DART to 1,486 recordings of class sessions from 67 courses, a total of 1,720 h of audio, revealed varied patterns of lecture (single voice) and nonlecture activity (multiple and no voice) use. We also found that there was significantly more use of multiple and no voice strategies in courses for STEM majors compared with courses for non-STEM majors, indicating that DART can be used to compare teaching strategies in different types of courses. Therefore, DART has the potential to systematically inventory the presence of active learning with ∼90% accuracy across thousands of courses in diverse settings with minimal effort.active learning | evidence-based teaching | science education | lecture | assessment C urrent college STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teaching in the United States continues to be lecture-based and is relatively ineffective in promoting learning (1, 2). Undergraduate instructors continue to struggle to engage, effectively teach, and retain postsecondary students, both generally and particularly among women and students of color (3, 4). Federal analyses suggest that a 10% increase in retention of undergraduate STEM students could address anticipated STEM workforce shortfalls (5). Replacing the standard lecture format with more active teaching strategies has been shown to increase

In work by others, CodY has been implicated in the nutritional repression of several genes. Analysis of a codY mutant bearing a hag-lacZ reporter revealed that flagellin expression is released from nutritional repression in this strain, whereas mutations in the transition state preventor genes abrB, hpr, and sinR failed to elicit a similar effect during growth in complex medium. Therefore, the CodY protein appears to be the physiologically relevant regulator of hag nutritional repression in B. subtilis.

Three promoters have been identified as having potentially important regulatory roles in governing expression of the fla/che operon and of sigD, a gene that lies near the 3 end of the operon. Two of these promoters, fla/che P A and P D-3 , lie upstream of the >26-kb fla/che operon. The third promoter, P sigD , lies within the operon, immediately upstream of sigD. fla/che P A , transcribed by E A , lies >24 kb upstream of sigD and appears to be largely responsible for sigD expression. P D-3 , transcribed by E D , has been proposed to participate in an autoregulatory positive feedback loop. P sigD , a minor A -dependent promoter, has been implicated as essential for normal expression of the fla/che operon. We tested the proposed functions of these promoters in experiments that utilized strains that bear chromosomal deletions of fla/che P A , P D-3 , or P sigD . Our analysis of these strains indicates that fla/che P A is absolutely essential for motility, that P D-3 does not function in positive feedback regulation of sigD expression, and that P sigD is not essential for normal fla/che expression. Further, our results suggest that an additional promoter(s) contributes to sigD expression.Motility and chemotaxis functions in Bacillus subtilis are encoded within the fla/che operon. This large (Ͼ26-kb) operon includes both structural and regulatory components required for motility (6,19,32). The proximal region of the operon includes genes that encode the hook and basal body (HBB) complex, a structure that is required for tethering the flagellar filament to the cell. The distal-most region of the fla/che operon encodes the flagellum-specific sigma factor, D (19). D activity is required for transcription of the genes encoding flagellin (hag) and for the motA and motB genes, which encode the motor proteins that drive flagellar rotation (21,22 (11,15). It is believed that FlgM activity is also controlled by export through the HBB in B. subtilis (5,21,24). Expression of the fla/che operon thus controls motility in a complex manner. First, HBB components are expressed concurrently with D . Subsequent assembly of the HBB structure allows export of FlgM. This activates D to promote transcription of D -dependent motility genes. Recent studies have implicated three promoters in the expression of the fla/che operon and the sigD gene (1, 6) (see schematic, Fig. 1A). One of these promoters, P sigD , is located within the fla/che operon, immediately upstream of the sigD gene. Transcription from P sigD is dependent upon A , the major, vegetative sigma factor in B. subtilis. Previous studies indicated that P sigD contributed only weakly to overall expression of the sigD gene (1). However, genetic data suggested that this slight level of expression might be required to control temporal regulation of the entire fla/che operon (1). This requirement would presumably be indirect, since the location of P sigD precludes it from directly promoting transcription of the fla/che operon (see schematic in Fig. 1A).Two additional promoters, fla/ch...