Scientific societies fostering inclusivity through speaker diversity in annual meeting programming: a call to action.

Scientific societies aiming to foster inclusion of scientists from underrepresented (UR) backgrounds among their membership often delegate primary responsibility for this goal to a diversity-focused committee. The National Science Foundation has funded the creation of the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success (ACCESS), a meta-organization bringing together representatives from several such STEM society committees to serve as a hub for a growing community of practice. Our goal is to coordinate efforts to advance inclusive practices by sharing experiences and making synergistic discoveries about what works. ACCESS has analyzed the approaches by which member societies have sought to ensure inclusivity through selection of annual meeting speakers. Here we discuss how inclusive speaker selection fosters better scientific environments for all and identify challenges and promising practices for societies striving to maximize inclusivity of speakers in their scientific programming.

The ASPET Mentoring Network: Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion through Career Coaching Groups within a Scientific Society.

Over the past decades, two persisting priorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) training have been: 1) increasing the knowledge of and access to careers beyond academic scientist; and 2) increasing the diversity of the STEM workforce. Previous studies show that a uniquely constructed career coaching group provides strong support and progress for both priorities. This report extends this design into a more sustainable model that is positioned within the professional context of rising young scientists. This new model is based in the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET)-the ASPET Mentoring Network. Groups of PhD students and postdocs were assigned to an ASPET professional (academic or other career) member (the coach) with an initial meeting held the day before the society's annual meeting. The coaching groups interacted during the meeting and then virtually for a year. Extensive survey and interview evaluation data gathered from the first three cohorts (12 coaching groups) in 2016- 2018 provided strong evidence of the perceived and real benefits of the network. This new version of career coaching groups is both feasible and linked to career success due to its close association with a scientific society, peers, and coaches who share scientific identities and aspirations.

Scientific Societies Fostering Inclusive Scientific Environments through Travel Awards: Current Practices and Recommendations.

Diversity-focused committees continue to play essential roles in the efforts of professional scientific societies to foster inclusion and facilitate the professional development of underrepresented minority (URM) young scientists in their respective scientific disciplines. Until recently, the efforts of these committees have remained independent and disconnected from one another. Funding from the National Science Foundation has allowed several of these committees to come together and form the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success, herein referred to as ACCESS. The overall goal of this meta-organization is to create a community in which diversity-focused committees can interact, synergize, share their collective experiences, and have a unified voice on behalf of URM trainees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. In this Essay, we compare and contrast the broad approaches that scientific societies in ACCESS use to implement and assess their travel award programs for URM trainees. We also report a set of recommendations, including both short- and long-term outcomes assessment in populations of interest and specialized programmatic activities coupled to travel award programs.

Energy-dense, low-volume paediatric oral nutritional supplements improve total nutrient intake and increase growth in paediatric patients requiring nutritional support: results of a randomised controlled pilot trial.

Children with or at risk of faltering growth require nutritional support and are often prescribed oral nutritional supplements (ONS). This randomised controlled trial investigated the effects of energy-dense paediatric ONS (2.4 kcal/ml, 125 ml: cONS) versus 1.5 kcal/ml, 200 ml ONS (sONS) in community-based paediatric patients requiring oral nutritional support. Fifty-one patients (mean age 5.8 years (SD 3)) with faltering growth and/or requiring ONS to meet their nutritional requirements were randomised to cONS (n = 27) or sONS (n = 24) for 28 days. Nutrient intake, growth, ONS compliance and acceptability, appetite and gastro-intestinal tolerance were assessed. Use of the cONS resulted in significantly greater mean total daily energy (+ 531 kcal/day), protein (+ 10.1 g/day) and key micronutrient intakes compared with the sONS group at day 28 and over time, due to high ONS compliance (81% of patients ≥ 75%), maintained intake from diet alone and improved appetite in the cONS group, compared with the sONS group. Although growth increased in both intervention groups, results were significant in the cONS group (weight (p = 0.007), height (p < 0.001) and height z-score (p = 0.006)).Conclusions: This study shows that use of energy-dense (2.4 kcal/ml) low-volume paediatric-specific ONS leads to improved nutrient intakes, growth and appetite in paediatric patients requiring oral nutrition support compared with standard energy density ONS.Trial registration: The trial is registered at clinicaltrials.gov , identification number NCT02419599. What is Known: • Faltering growth is the failure of children to achieve adequate growth at a normal rate for their age and requires nutritional support, including the use of oral nutritional supplements (ONS). • Energy-dense, low-volume ONS have benefits over standard ONS in adults. What is New: • This is the first RCT to investigate the effects of energy-dense, low-volume ONS (2.4 kcal/ml, 125 ml) in children with faltering growth, showing significant improvements in total nutrient intake and increased growth. • Energy-dense, low-volume ONS can play a key role in the management of faltering growth.

Vitamin D and risk of CVD: a review of the evidence.

This review summarises evidence for an association between vitamin D status and CVD and the mechanisms involved. Vitamin D3 is predominantly provided by the action of UVB from sunlight on skin. Average UK diets supply 2-3 µg/d vitamin D but diets containing at least one portion of oily fish per week supply about 7 µg/d. Pharmacological doses of vitamin D2 (bolus injection of 7500 µg or intakes >50 µg/d) result in a smaller increase in plasma 25(OH)D than those of D3 but physiological doses 5-25 µg/d seem equivalent. Plasma 25(OH)D concentrations are also influenced by clothing, obesity and skin pigmentation. Up to 40 % of the population have plasma 25(OH)D concentrations <25 nmol/l in the winter compared with <10 % in the summer. The relative risk of CVD death is 1·41 (95 % CI 1·18, 1·68) greater in the lowest quintile of plasma 25(OH)D according to meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Acute deficiency may inhibit insulin secretion and promote inflammation thus increasing the risk of plaque rupture and arterial thrombosis. Chronic insufficiency may increase arterial stiffness. There is no evidence to support claims of reduced CVD from existing trials with bone-related health outcomes where vitamin D was usually co-administered with calcium. Although several trials with cardiovascular endpoints are in progress, these are using pharmacological doses. In view of the potential toxicity of pharmacological doses, there remains a need for long-term trials of physiological doses of D2 and D3 with CVD incidence as the primary outcome.

Juvenile hormone mediates a trade-off between primary and secondary sexual traits in stalk-eyed flies.

Trade-offs between developing body parts may contribute to variation in allometric scaling relationships in a variety of taxa. Experimental evidence indicates that both circulating levels of juvenile hormone (JH) and sensitivities of developing body parts to JH can influence morphology in polyphenic insects. However, the extent to which JH may regulate both the development of traits that scale continuously with body size and trade-offs between these traits is largely unknown. Here, I present evidence that the JH analog methoprene applied to final instar larvae of a stalk-eyed fly (Cyrtodiopsis dalmanni) can induce males to produce larger eye-stalks relative to their body size. Examination of testis growth, sperm transfer, and egg maturation indicates that JH induces a trade-off between eye-span and gonad development in adult males, but not females. Age at sexual maturity was unaffected by larval JH applications to either sex. Collectively, these results are consistent with JH-mediated allocation of resources to eye-span at the expense of testes, and indicate potential costs for the production of an exaggerated trait.

Sperm survival in female stalk-eyed flies depends on seminal fluid and meiotic drive.

Sperm competition is common in many insect species; however, the mechanisms underlying differences in sperm precedence are not well understood. In the stalk-eyed fly, Cyrtodiopsis whitei (Diptera, Diopsidae), sperm precedence is influenced by the presence of sex chromosome meiotic drive. When drive-carrying males compete with non-driving males for fertilizations within a female, the number of progeny sired by drive males is significantly fewer than predicted by sperm mixing alone. Thus, drive males apparently suffer not only a reduction in the number of viable sperm produced, but also a reduction in sperm competitive ability. In this study, we manipulated the amount and source of seminal fluid and sperm received by females by interrupting copulations before sperm, but after seminal fluid, was transferred. We find that seminal fluid from another male influences the number of progeny sired by a drive-carrying male when both males mate with the same female. Sperm viability staining reveals that sperm from drive males are incapacitated by seminal fluid from other males within the female reproductive tract. These results suggest that multiple mating by females enables seminal fluid products to interact differentially with sperm and may reduce the transmission advantage of the drive chromosome.