Destination Areas (DAs)
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Destination Areas provide faculty and students with new tools to identify and solve complex, 21st-century problems in which Virginia Tech already has significant strengths and can take a global leadership role. The initiative represents the next step in the evolution of the land-grant university to meet economic and societal needs of the world. DAs connect the full span of relevant knowledge necessary for addressing issues comprehensively. Humanistic, scientific, and technological perspectives are addressed in relationship to one another and they are treated as complementary to overcome traditional academic boundaries, such as those that separate the STEM fields and liberal arts. [http://provost.vt.edu/destination-areas.html]
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Browsing Destination Areas (DAs) by Content Type "Learning object"
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- Ecological and Human Health in Rural CommunitiesGohlke, Julia M.; Kolivras, Korine N.; Krometis, Leigh-Anne H.; Marmagas, Susan West; Marr, Linsey C.; Satterwhite, Emily M.; Angermeier, Paul L.; Clark, Susan F.; Ranganathan, Shyam; Schoenholtz, Stephen H.; Swarup, Samarth; Thompson, Christopher K. (2017-05-15)Environmental exposures to chemicals and microbes in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the objects we touch are now recognized to be responsible for 90% of all human illness. This suggests that well-documented health disparities within and between nations have significant geographic and ecological as well as socioeconomic dimensions that must be addressed in order to secure human well-being at local to global scales. While urbanization is a primary driver of global change, it is widely acknowledged that urbanization is dependent on large-scale resource extraction and agriculture in rural communities. Despite considerable evidence linking human industrial and agricultural activities to ecological health (i.e. health of an ecosystem including the non-human organisms that inhabit it), very little data are available directly linking exposure to environmental pollution and human health in rural areas, which have repeatedly been identified as subject to the most extreme health disparities...
- Integrating Cybersecurity and Agricultural InnovationDrape, Tiffany A.; Thompson, Cris; Johnson, Kellie; Brown, Anne M.; Simpson, Joseph; Oakes, Joseph; Duncan, Sue; Westfall-Rudd, Donna M. (Virginia Tech, 2022-08-10)This 1-2 credit undergraduate course, as presented, is designed to provide an interdisciplinary, experiential-learning-based background and exposure to working on and completing a team project in cyberbiosecurity in agriculture and the life sciences. These modules and capstone are designed for students to learn about cyberbiosecurity and how their agriculture knowledge can provide employment opportunities related to cyberbiosecurity. This course will provide knowledge and training on cyberbiosecurity, issues with online data and security, how we might protect our biological data, and ethical implications of biological data sharing and ownership. The course will teach critical thinking and problem-solving in a team environment, professional presentations, and writing skills in the context of completing the capstone project.
- Integrative Analyses of Environmental Factors Impacting Animal and Human Health Through Perturbations of Microbial CommunitiesCaswell, Clayton C.; Ahmed, S. Ansar; Sriranganathan, Nammalwar; Allen, Irving C.; Luo, Xin; Meng, Xiang-Jin; Theus, Michelle H.; Yuan, Lijuan; Hungerford, Laura L.; Pierson, Bill; Rist, Cassidy (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-15)The term ‘microbiome’ defines the vast microscopic communities collectively composed of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and eukaryotic protozoans that inhabit myriad niches, including environmental locales, as well as the surfaces and organ systems of animals and humans. Recent empirical evidence clearly demonstrates the substantial role that microbiomes play in facilitating the homeostasis of complex biological systems, and as such, perturbation of these microbial communities can lead to dysregulation of environmental ecosystems, significant declines in animal and human health, and the emergence of detrimental conditions, such as infectious diseases, inflammatory disorders, and neurodegenerative aliments. A variety of factors are involved in shifting the composition and complexity (i.e., the functionality) of microbiomes, including the contamination of soil, water, and food sources with toxicants, pharmaceuticals, and antimicrobial compounds...
- Managing Landscapes to Meet Emerging Global ChallengesBadgley, Brian D.; Daniels, W. Lee; Day, Susan D.; Eick, Matthew J.; Ervin, Erik H.; Steele, Meredith K.; Stewart, Ryan D.; Strahm, Brian D.; Xia, Kang; Zipper, Carl E. (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-15)Our vision is to create a program dedicated to accelerating innovation that improves the quality, efficiency, and resilience of human dominated landscapes, including our cities, farms, and industrial lands. Humans dramatically alter and manipulate the global landscape for food and fiber production, mineral extraction, urban development, waste disposal and many other purposes. Impacts to essential ecosystem functions and values range from local (e.g. mining and land development) to global (e.g. carbon emissions) with a clear need for development of appropriate management systems for their mitigation. By using a systems approach that interfaces environmental scientists and ecologists with relevant disciplines, this proposed signature area within Global Systems Science (GSS) will build upon existing group strengths in soil remediation, water quality, hydrology, urban soils, land reclamation, agroecosystem management, forest ecology, wetland restoration, soil-waste management and integrated modeling across multiple spatial and temporal scales to develop a more holistic approach to landscape management. We will also...