Developing an adequate understanding of the nature of science includes developing an understanding of the uses and importance of models in science. General accounts of science aimed at university students, however, tend to neglect this aspect. A noticeable exception is the simple model of the key elements of a scientific result presented by Giere,…

Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses the science and engineering behind creating intelligent machines capable of tasks that typically rely on human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving. By analyzing vast amounts of data, identifying patterns, and making predictions that were once impossible, AI has…

Most existing solutions to the current replication crisis in science address only the factors stemming from specific poor research practices. We introduce a novel mechanism that leverages the experts' predictive abilities to analyze the root causes of replication failures. It is backed by the principle that the most accurate predictor is the most…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to untangle the influence of Linda Tuhiwai Smith's "Decolonizing Methodologies" on botanical gardens, particularly in the context of commemorating 25 years since its publication. By examining the intersections between decolonial theory and botanical practices, this article seeks to elucidate the…

This short paper presents an educational approach to teaching three popular methods for encoding DNA sequences: one-hot encoding, binary encoding, and integer encoding. Aimed at bioinformatics and computational biology students, our learning intervention focuses on developing practical skills in implementing these essential techniques for…

This article presents the life story of "Profile." The story is based on an ethnographic case study that aimed to understand the viewpoints of Profile's new writers and reviewers regarding the role of scientific journals in fostering communities in the knowledge society. To gather information, I relied on personal reflections from my…

The research mode that has gained prominence under the designation "transdisciplinary research" (TDR) has given rise to a multitude of definitions and critiques. While some posit that this research mode enables the sciences to address the mounting societal expectations to confront and potentially resolve significant societal challenges,…

In educational research, there is the general trade-off that empirical evidence should be generalizable to be applicable across contexts; at the same time, empirical evidence should be as specific as possible to be localizable in subject-specific educational interventions to successfully transfer the empirical evidence to educational practice.…

Despite decades of research and thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication written by a worldwide community of academics, a number of people in position of power, including security, justice and legal practitioners have embraced "body language" pseudoscience. This autoethnography aims to offer an otherwise…

Classroom interactions emerging from socioscientific argumentation may be incompatible with the traditional definitions of learning, thus creating tension and potentially undermining its implementation. Leveraging existing literature, we identify argumentative talk that shifts away from scientific content and toward subjective claims, as well as…

We report the design of a low-cost electrochemical workstation and open-source graphical user interface capable of performing a variety of electrochemical methods in an undergraduate teaching laboratory. The instrument--based on the popular Arduino microcontroller board--can be constructed from common components for $40 USD. The modular design of…

The forming of microplastics in the environment continues be a global problem with damaging risks to ecosystems and human health. Currently, most microplastic studies concentrate on water and air, while research focus on terrestrial samples such as soil still lags behind. This project reports the first results of our effort to develop and…

Molecular biology, broadly defined as the investigation of complex biomolecules in the laboratory, is a rapidly advancing field and as such the technologies available to investigators are constantly evolving. This constant advancement has obvious advantages because it allows students and researchers to perform more complex experiments in shorter…

The pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry has become the largest industrial sector for the employment of chemists, indicating a need for experiments with a pharmaceutical sciences context in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. In the pharmaceutical industry, testing drug dissolution is a key analytical task for solid oral dosage…

This guide offers a comprehensive handbook to scientific research methodology and experimental design, specifically for novice MA and PhD researchers in Education and Language Learning (TESOL/TEFL). It establishes scientific research as a systematic, objective inquiry focused on identifying cause-and-effect relationships through empirical data.…