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This article advocates for mobilizing pathogen genomic surveillance to contain and mitigate health threats from infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), building upon successes achieved by large-scale genome sequencing analysis of SARS-CoV-2 variants in guiding COVID-19 monitoring and public health responses and adopting a One Health approach. Capabilities of laboratory-based surveillance and epidemic alert systems should be enhanced by fostering (i) universal access to real-time whole genome sequence (WGS) data of pathogens to inform clinical practice, infection control, public health policies, and vaccine and antimicrobial drug research and development; (ii) integration of diagnostic microbiology data, data from testing asymptomatic individuals, pathogen sequence data, clinical data, and epidemiological data into surveillance programs; (iii) stronger cross-sectorial collaborations between healthcare, public health, animal health, and environmental surveillance and research using One Health approaches, toward understanding the ecology and transmission pathways of pathogens and AMR across ecosystems; (iv) international collaboration and interconnection of surveillance networks, harmonization of laboratory methods, and standardization of surveillance methods for global reporting, including on pathogen genomic variant or strain nomenclature; (v) responsible data sharing between surveillance networks, databases, and platforms according to FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles; and (vi) research on genomic surveillance system implementation and its cost-effectiveness for different pathogens and AMR threats across different settings. Regional and global One Health policies and governance initiatives should foster the concerted development and efficient utilization of pathogen genomic surveillance to protect the health of humans, animals, and the environment.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) administers its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study once every three years to assess the scholastic performance of fifteen-year-old students in the field of mathematics, science and reading. This study is conducted among OECD member nations and select non-member nations. Results from the PISA study consistently show that, on average, the United States ranks poorly in mathematics when compared against most of the other OECD member nations. While disparity in math proficiency may exist between states and opinions may differ on the way samples were collected from each nation for the study, the generally poor proficiency in mathematics among students at the K-12 level has serious implications as they advance into undergraduate studies, especially in STEM fields. Students who lack strong fundamentals in mathematics at the K-12 level will find themselves struggling to overcome the steep learning curve in courses discussing the concepts of calculus and differential equations when they are also already grappling with simpler concepts such as basic trigonometry and linear algebra. This constant struggle could lead to demotivation among students and retention issues in STEM colleges. Various literature highlights the difficulties that students face when learning mathematics, and numerous pedagogical discussions were made with the hope that the teaching of mathematics can be done more efficiently and more effectively. Yet the fact that the United States, as a whole, shows little improvement, if any, in the PISA rankings for math proficiency in the past decade indicates that there are underlying problems which may not be solved by just proposing new teaching methods. In this paper, we inspect the merits of emphasizing the fundamentals of mathematics and how a solid grounding in mathematics can be founded on "trivial" methods, as well as how they can be invaluable to help students segue into developing their computational thinking skills. The factors that lead to an apparent stagnation in math proficiency among students are identified and discussed to ascertain whether new teaching methods are the answer to improving math proficiency among students. We consider the observations made by instructors from Texas Tech University about the apparently poor mastery of basic mathematical skills among freshmen engineering students. These instructors teach an introductory course that covers mathematical methods to solve problems on trigonometry, systems of linear equations, quadratic equations, sample statistics, vectors, etc. These observations, coupled with higher expectations by universities on their students, provide the motivation for the discussion that will follow in this paper. Finally, we discuss a path forward for engineering undergraduate students who are struggling to keep up with the mastery of pre-college mathematical skills needed prior to pursuing their engineering core courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students beginning a university degree program are often unaccustomed to the rigorous nature of collegiate homework assignments and may wait until the last possible moment to begin and complete their assignments despite forewarnings by their course instructors to start early. As students mature and gain more experience, many find beginning assignments earlier often results in a deeper understanding of the concepts and better overall assignment grades. With the increased use of digital systems to distribute and manage assignments several metrics including the first time a student views the assignment (starts) and when the student submits their solution (ends) are automatically tracked. Using such data, results from over 180 freshman engineering students enrolled in an introduction to engineering course are reviewed to explore the trend between submission times and scores received through assignment durations. Trends in the data show assignments submitted early fall into more favorable distributions based on score means and dispersions. Additionally, a relationship exists between the time of day the assignment is submitted and student performance. Data used to identify these relationships incudes 12 assignments from four course sections in the Spring 2013 semester, nine assignments from two course sections in the Spring 2014 semester, and seven assignments from four course sections in the Fall 2014 semester. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to pressure from state legislatures reducing credit hour limits coupled with a required set of core courses, science and engineering discipline curricula have optimized and downsized the topics covered in degree programs2. Many secondary skills such as computer programming, numerical methods, finite elements, and stochastic analysis have been dropped completely from the curricula or minimally covered through the use of industry standard software. While these skills are not specific to a particular discipline the authors opine they constitute fundamental knowledge, similar to calculus, in which all engineers should have competence. This paper explores the effect of phasing out these secondary skills has on students perceived understanding and ability to apply them in upper level engineering courses and graduate courses. Assessment data regarding secondary skill competency from a freshman engineering analysis class and from a graduate numerical methods class is presented and discussed. The authors conclude with a series of strategies they intend to employ with assessments in future course offerings to help students learn these secondary skills without covering them in a formal course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]