Virtual reality is entering the agricultural science classroom, and University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture researchers are helping teachers incorporate and create their own virtual reality resources.

With a $500,000 grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a faculty team in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications is building on their findings from a previously funded USDA grant project aimed to further develop efforts to train secondary school teachers and bring virtual reality (VR) to the classroom through the Agriscience Metaverse Academy.

A new study published in Animal Behaviour found that bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, that engage in risky human-centric foraging behaviors, such as taking bait or catch from fishing gear, scavenging discarded bait or fish, or approaching humans for food tend to associate more with other dolphins that use similar tactics. The study also found that severe harmful algal blooms, commonly known as red tides, altered the relationship between these foraging behaviors and dolphin social structure. 

The research was led by Kyra Bankhead of Oregon State University, with co-authors Mauricio Cantor of Oregon State University, Katherine McHugh and Randall Wells of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which is operated by Brookfield Zoo Chicago. 

 More than a quarter of women buying menstrual products also purchase pain relief at the same time—and those in lower-income areas are significantly less likely to do so—according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health by Dr. Victoria Sivill of the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues, which used supermarket loyalty card data to map menstrual pain disparities across England.