Graduates from life sciences, including nutrition, will be at the forefront of promoting environmental, social, and food systems sustainability. The requisite competencies for their future roles include systems thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and effective communication, which are essential to navigating the complex interrelationship between human health and the environment [1,2]. To address this need, a 'Living Laboratory’ (LL) within a higher education (HE) food service setting could enrich the traditional laboratory experience, allowing students to cultivate these skills through experiential learning. This project aimed to i) scope the published literature to characterise LL examples within a HE food environment and ii) explore the understanding and perceptions of a LL concept in a food service setting for final year student research projects among students and academics at King’s College London.

A systematic scoping review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines (Registration OSF:d7y96). Two databases were searched (PubMed/Medline, Web of Science) from January 2010 to July 2024 to identify articles reporting the design, implementation or evaluation of LL in HE food service settings. A narrative synthesis was performed, and the resulting themes were used to inform focus groups (KCL Ethics:LRM-23/24-42657) with academic staff (two groups, nine participants) and students (four groups, seven postgraduate and nine undergraduate participants). Focus group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic approach [3].

Twenty-one articles were included in the scoping review. Common terms used to describe the LL concept included ‘innovation’, ‘collaboration’, ‘diverse stakeholders’, ‘enabling students’ and ‘practical learning experiences’. Recommendations for implementing LLs were provided in six articles and included engagement and outreach with stakeholders; managing conflicts; assessing impact; and establishing ethical and governance frameworks. The focus group findings indicated that both students and academics view the LL concept as a dynamic, real-world setting, emphasizing engagement and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Academics perceived the educational benefits of LLs as fostering experiential learning and perceived the barriers to implementation as including a lack of resources, scheduling conflicts, insufficient stakeholder engagement and unclear governance frameworks. Students highlighted the importance of aligning projects with taught programme content. and identified challenges such as limited awareness, unequal engagement across disciplines, time constraints, and concerns about inclusivity and equity across campuses. Students agreed that the LL provided opportunities to develop skills and knowledge in sustainability, science communication and real-world evidence studies, opening new career options after graduation. Lastly, altruism to improve food environments for peers and future students was a significant driving factor in student engagement.

Implementing LLs in HE food service settings requires input from multiple stakeholders. This scoping project identified key considerations from both academic staff and students to inform the co-design of a LL in a HE food service setting.

In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011, construction at Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado (USA) revealed a nearly continuous, lacustrine/wetland sedimentary sequence that preserved evidence of past plant communities between ~140 and 55 ka, including all of MIS 5. At an elevation of 2705 m, the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site also contained thousands of well-preserved bones of late Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, horses, camels, deer, bison, black bear, coyotes, and bighorn sheep. In addition, the site contained more than 26,000 bones from at least 30 species of small animals including salamanders, otters, muskrats, minks, rabbits, beavers, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds. The combination of macro- and micro-vertebrates, invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils, a detailed pollen record, and a robust, directly dated stratigraphic framework shows that high-elevation ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are climatically sensitive and varied dramatically throughout MIS 5.

Thirty-two Prosopis accessions were studied and biomass production (dry matter) determined for 27 of them, which were irrigated when the soil moisture tension reached 60, 200, or 500 kPa. Three seasons after transplanting (i.e. after 2½ years) the trees were harvested, weighed, and sub-sampled for moisture content determinations. Little difference was observed in productivity among irrigation treatments. A 20-fold range in biomass productivity occurred among accessions; Prosopis chilensis (0009) from Argentina gave the greatest production of 13.4 t ha−1 a−1. The water use efficiency of US rangeland accessions ranged from 2300–2600 kg H2O kg dry matter−1. P. chilensis (0009) in the driest irrigation treatment had a water use efficiency of 345 kg H2O kg dry matter−1.

The action of intravenous infusion of the βagonist cimaterol(2.5 mg/d) on whole-body N retention and protein synthesis in peripheral tissues was examined in growing sheep. Wool growth was determined from skin patch clippings and adjusted to total fibre production. Protein synthesis was measured, using sequential large dose injections of [ l-I3C]valine, leucine and phenylalanine and then [ring-d,]-phenylalanine, on biopsy samples from skin and m. longissirnus dovsi taken before β-agonist administration, at day 3 and day 15 of cimaterol infusion, and 15 d after withdrawal of the drug. Cimaterol increased total N retention by 1.9–2.3 g N/d (P < 0.01) over three successive 5 d periods. In contrast, wool growth was significantly reduced by 0.7 g N/d (P < 0.001) and the proportion of total N retained in wool declined from 0.71 to 0.25 (P < 0.01). The reduction in woo1 growth was accompanied by a decrease in protein fractional synthesis rate (FSR) in skin (11.6 v. 6.3%/d, P < 0.01). Muscle protein FSR, on the other hand, was markedly stimulated during cimaterol infusion (1.45 v. 3.01 %/d, P < 0.001) as was RNA concentration (P < 0.001), RNA:protein (P < 0.001) and protein:DNA (P < 0.05). The estimated increase in total protein synthesis in muscle (+ 24 to 30 g/d) due to cimaterol administration was counterbalanced by reductions for skin (-25 to 27 g/d); this may account for the lack of changes in whole-body protein synthesis following β-agonist administration reported in other studies. Although N retention rapidly returned to control values following withdrawal of the drug, both wool growth and skin protein synthesis remained depressed, while muscle protein FSR declined, but not to pre-treatment values. These results suggest a persistent action of cimaterol, but whether this is a function of residue concentrations or long-term metabolic responses is not known

A method is given for evaluating matrix elements of three particle operators in many nucleon states of [44…4] symmetry.

A general method is given for the determination of diagonal matrix elements of relative state operators in shell model states of a given supermultiplet and SU3 symmetry, for states in s, p and sd shells, and for cross-terms between these shells, enabling the excitation energies of particle–hole configurations to be evaluated.