Over the course of three sessions, students act as agricultural engineers and learn about the sustainable pest control technique known as soil biosolarization in which organic waste is used to help eliminate pests during soil solarization instead of using toxic compounds like pesticides and fumigants. Student teams prepare seed starter pots using a source of microorganisms (soil or compost) and “organic waste” (such as oatmeal, a source of carbon for the microorganisms). They plant seeds (representing weed seeds) in the pots, add water and cover them with plastic wrap. At experiment end, students count the weed seedlings and assess the efficacy of the soil biosolarization technique in inactivating the weed seeds. An experiment-guiding handout and pre/post quizzes are provided.

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:

"Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common, painful disorder that – by definition – lacks clear physical pathology, and its symptoms are often influenced by psychological factors like intense worry and hypervigilance. In fact, brain-targeted treatments like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) have been effective at reducing IBS symptoms. However, little is known about the impact of the pre-treatment gut microbiome or if CBT influences the gut-microbiome-brain axis. Thus, researchers recently explored those questions in patients undergoing a CBT regimen designed to treat IBS. Patients who would later have a significant reduction in IBS symptoms had a distinct microbiome from patients who did not respond to treatment, and a random forests classifier based on the most prevalent bacterial groups could accurately predict the response to CBT..."

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

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, visit a water treatment plant and learn how water from a local reservoir is turned into drinking water.

This activity focuses on getting students to think about bacteria, water quality and water treatment processes. Students develop and test their hypotheses about the "cleanliness" of three water samples prepared by the teacher. Then they grow bacteria in Petri dishes from the water samples. They learn how private septic systems and community sewage and wastewater treatment plants work, the consequences to the surrounding environment and wildlife from human wastewater, and what measurements of the released "clean" water are monitored to minimize harm to receiving rivers and lakes.