Twelve Stones portrays the heart of Heifer's work - Passing on the Gift ÂŽ - and shows the transformation of a community of women in Nepal from helplessness to hope through Heifer International. This is a preview clip of a documentary produced by Sandy Smolen.

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:

"The Journal of Materials Research is proud to announce the 2019 Gordon E. Pike JMR Paper of the Year Award. This award recognizes excellence in advancing materials knowledge through written scholarship. This year’s honors go to a team of researchers from China and the US for their report on a new form of flexible and rechargeable supercapacitor wire, which was published in the September 14, 2019 issue of Journal of Materials Research. With the rapid growth of portable and wearable electronics, researchers face many important challenges. They’re tasked with fabricating devices that are smaller, lighter, and more flexible than ever—all while delivering the same or higher levels of performance. Wire-shaped supercapacitors are among the most promising technologies developed to address these challenges. These flexible devices store and deliver energy in the form of tightly wound fibers of electrochemically active materials, such as carbon nanotubes..."

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

This guide takes the reader through the 3D Printing for Repair (3DP4R) process. It consists of guidelines and tools to create a 3D printable version of spare parts needed for a product repair. 3D printing a spare part is more than just printing the original part. Instead, it is an iterative process in which the part is analysed, redesigned, manufactured, and tested, in order to come to a final part. This guide will describe these four phases in detail. The guide is meant for anybody who is interested in trying to manufacture spare parts with 3D printing technologies, remakers, tinkerers, volunteer repairers, professional repairers, and everyone who is interested in repair initiatives.

This lesson is designed as a supplement or extension to the 5th grade Smithsonian Science for the Classroom module titled How Can We Provide Freshwater to Those in Need?  This lesson can be taught as an extension following Lesson 2: WATER FOOTPRINT.  This lesson is designed to facilitate student learning about sustainable design and green chemistry principles. 

This lesson is designed as a supplement or extension to the 5th grade Smithsonian Science for the Classroom module titled How Can We Identify Materials Based on Their Properties?  This lesson can be taught as an extension following Lesson 3: PLANT PRODUCTS or Lesson 6: CHEMISTS MAKE SOLUTIONS.This lesson is designed to facilitate student learning about sustainable design and green chemistry principles.  

Using the article "Stop Raising Awareness Already" by Cristiano and Neimand and a six-step template, students create a plan to show how they apply the knowledge learned throughout the term to make a broader impact. The students are asked to very narrowly choose a single action they want a group of stakeholders to take and develop a multiple-step plan to accomplish the action. The students are required to select and justify a targeted stakeholder, develop an action, identify a messenger that can influence their targeted stakeholder to take the action, develop a sticky message relating the "ask" to the goal of the campaign, and document their key assumptions imbedded in their action plan.

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This assignment is a 10-hour, out-of-class project where each student
designs and carries out an action plan to enhance sustainability.
Students select from a large suite of alternative actions, most of which
can be quantified for reductions in CO2 and energy consumption, as well
as in dollar savings.

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This short activity (10--15 minutes) for Unit 1 introduces students to the general relationship between economic development and resource use, and, particularly with the follow-up homework, the relationship among growing populations, increasing economic development, and natural resource extraction. The activity is intended to be completed by individuals or small groups but could also be used for a guided class discussion. This activity serves as a transition to Unit 2.

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Changes in rechargeable battery technology have dictated the supply and demand of commodities such as lithium, cobalt, cadmium, nickel, and lead. Students will study the changing technologies and other societal factors (such as human health) to see their impacts on mineral extraction and processing.

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This activity is based on the global supply and demand relationships of rare earth elements (REE). Students will work in small groups to analyze China's role in global REE production and supply, and how REE production, supply, and demand control REE price.

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Mined phosphorus is considered essential for agriculture, especially with the need to feed the ever growing population. However, there are consequences of phosphate mining and use, including pollution at mine sites and fertilizer processing plants, heavy metal accumulation in soil where fertilizers are used, national security issues intertwined with Morocco's dominance of the world supply, and eutrophication that comes with alteration of the phosphorus cycle. Students will consider these issues, their own roles in the problem, and possible solutions in this jigsaw activity.

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This activity asks students to investigate different aspects of gold mining and think critically about the perceived and real needs for this mineral resource as well as the impacts (both positive and negative) that both gold mining and recycling can have. It integrates concepts and terminology from earlier in the course into real-world situations and personal decision making.
This exercise is set up as a small-group jigsaw activity.

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This contemplative practice inquires into the complex web of interdependencies linking global climate change, the War on Terror, Afghan poppy production, opiate addiction, and food security through the lens of systems theory. The exercise challenges students to consider these linkages not only conceptually but also somatically and emotionally.

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Our human society consists of many intertwined Large Scale Socio-Technical Systems (LSSTS), such as infrastructures, industrial networks, the financial systems etc. Environmental pressures created by these systems on Earth‰ŰŞs carrying capacity are leading to exhaustion of natural resources, loss of habitats and biodiversity, and are causing a resource and climate crisis. To avoid this sustainability crisis, we urgently need to transform our production and consumption patterns. Given that we, as inhabitants of this planet, are part of a complex and integrated global system, where and how should we begin this transformation? And how can we also ensure that our transformation efforts will lead to a sustainable world? LSSTS and the ecosystems that they are embedded in are known to be Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). According to John Holland CAS are "...a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing. The control of a CAS tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized. If there is to be any coherent behavior in the system, it will have to to arise from competition and cooperation among the agents themselves. The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment" by many individual agents. Understanding Complex Adaptive Systems requires tools that themselves are complex to create and understand. Shalizi defines Agent Based Modeling as "An agent is a persistent thing which has some state we find worth representing, and which interacts with other agents, mutually modifying each other‰ŰŞs states. The components of an agent-based model are a collection of agents and their states, the rules governing the interactions of the agents and the environment within which they live." This course will explore the theory of CAS and their main properties. It will also teach you how to work with Agent Based Models in order to model and understand CAS.

The Algae-in-a-Bottle Experiment provides an engaging and flexible high-impact teaching tool for helping students to know, understand, and apply a number of concepts related to the biology and ecology of aquatic plants and their environments.

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Alternative futures studies are a valuable yet resource-intensive way in which environmental scientists try to conduct informed debates about policies for specific geographic regions. These studies require modeling what the future would look like if different stakeholder groups had their way. The modeling is carried out by applying historical trend data to future projections that are rooted in the preferences of the different groups. Alternative future studies can be controversial due to the limitations of modeling and to the extent to which the models represent fully the different possible scenarios. Yet, they can be especially valuable for decision making about which areas in the region would be most appropriate and most acceptable for the applications of different policies such as development and restoration. Through a series of hands-on classroom activities that are the culmination of a variety of field trips, case studies, and analyses of GIS data about river systems and river restoration options, the students build deep understanding about what alternative futures studies entail and what are the applications of such studies to specific rivers in the Puget Sound area.

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An exercise to analyze trends in global oil reserves, production, and consumption.

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Students are given a choice of sources from which to choose an article relevant to the course (Sustainability Science) for review, including connection to other course content. Integration of article content with other course materials is an important component.

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An exercise assessing the water demand of New York City and population dynamics underlying that demand is provided. Visualization of first order water resource estimates using precipitation data and a known water storage volume are used to draw conclusions about drought risk and the sustainability of NYC water supplies.

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