This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Phosphorus is essential for life to function. It is a critical component of the energy metabolism molecules, genetic materials, and cell structures of all life. Phosphorus only enters natural ecosystems through the slow weathering of stone. Then microbes help maintain and regulate phosphorus by cycling it between its organic and inorganic forms. Understanding microbial phosphorus cycling is critical to many fields of study, like ecology and agriculture. However, researchers lack a comprehensive understanding of the phosphorus cycling genes microbes use, but the recently developed curated phosphorus cycling database (PCycDB) could help close that gap. PCycDB covers 10 phosphorus metabolic processes and 139 gene families, including several that have been missed elsewhere. Testing PCycDB with simulated datasets revealed high annotation accuracy, positive predictive value, sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Students investigate the accuracy of sundials and the discrepancy that lies between "real time" and "clock time." They track the position of the sun during the course of a relatively short period of time as they make a shadow plot, a horizontal sundial, and a diptych sundial. (The activity may be abridged to include only one or two of the different sundials, instead of all three.)

Students experience the engineering design process as they design and build accurate and precise catapults using common materials. They use their catapults to participate in a game in which they launch Ping-Pong balls to attempt to hit various targets.

The earliest explorers did not have computers or satellites to help them know their exact location. The most accurate tool developed was the sextant to determine latitude and longitude. In this activity, the sextant is introduced and discussed with the class. Students will learn how a sextant can be a reliable tool that is still being used by today's navigators and how computers can help assure accuracy when measuring angles. Also, this activity will show how computers can be used to understand equations even when knowing how to do the math is unknown.

This module is an introduction to Accuracy, Precision, and Sig figs.  It includes how to count the number of significant digits and defining accuracy versus precision.  

To navigate, you must know roughly where you stand relative to your designation, so you can head in the right direction. In locations where landmarks are not available to help navigate (in deserts, on seas), objects in the sky are the only reference points. While celestial objects move fairly predictably, and rough longitude is not too difficult to find, it is not a simple matter to determine latitude and precise positions. In this activity, students investigate the uses and advantages of modern GPS for navigation.

Working as if they are engineers aiming to analyze and then improve data collection devices for precision agriculture, students determine how accurate temperature sensors are by comparing them to each other. Teams record soil temperature data during a class period while making changes to the samples to mimic real-world crop conditions—such as the addition of water and heat and the removal of the heat. Groups analyze their collected data by finding the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. Then, the class combines all the team data points in order to compare data collected from numerous devices and analyze the accuracy of their recording devices by finding the standard deviation of temperature readings at each minute. By averaging the standard deviations of each minute’s temperature reading, students determine the accuracy of their temperature sensors. Students present their findings and conclusions, including making recommendations for temperature sensor improvements.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Since the 1970s, 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing has been the primary means of identifying bacteria in environmental samples of unknown composition. Among the most powerful tools for this sequencing is the Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) package whose newest release, QIIME 2, boasts one of the highest classification accuracies for simulated metagenomes from the human gut, ocean, and soil. But a recent study suggests that even more powerful tools are available namely Kraken 2 and Bracken. Compared with QIIM2, Kraken 2 and Bracken were up to 100 times faster in generating the well-known Greengenes and SILVA 16S rRNA databases and up to 300 times faster at classification while using 100 times less RAM. Overall, Kraken 2 and Bracken produced more accurate 16S rRNA profiling results than QIIME2. Extremely fast, efficient, and accurate, Kraken 2 and Bracken could provide robust solutions for identifying and classifying bacterial species from a variety of environmental samples..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Flooding affects nearly 21 million people and costs over 96 billion dollars worldwide every year. And South Asia is one of the hardest hit areas. If flood conditions were better forecasted, then at-risk communities might have a chance at avoiding flood disasters. But adequate preparation requires at least 5 to 10 days advance notice of a flood, and in South Asia, a lack of information on rainfall and river conditions is an ongoing forecasting challenge. Now, researchers have created a model that can provide earlier warning of flood conditions using easy-to-access data. The model, named ReqSim , tracks key features of basin hydrology using the principle of requisite simplicity to balance modeling complexity and utility. Using rainfall data, basin topography, and day-to-day persistence of river conditions, the model offers greater insight into the likelihood of flooding than other commonly used approaches..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.