Geoscience organizations shape the discipline. They influence attitudes and expectations, set standards, and provide benefits to their members. Today, racism and discrimination limit the participation of, and promote hostility towards, members of minoritized groups within these critical geoscience spaces. This is particularly harmful for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in geoscience and is further exacerbated along other axes of marginalization, including disability status and gender identity. Here we present a twenty-point anti-racism plan that organizations can implement to build an inclusive, equitable and accessible geoscience community. Enacting it will combat racism, discrimination, and the harassment of all members.

In previous studies a film of hydroxylapatite (HA) was coated onto the inner pore surfaces of reticulated alumina for bone substitutes with the use of a so-called thermal deposition method. In this process, the HA films must be sintered at high temperatures for a strong adhesion to the alumina substrate. It has been found that high-temperature sintering inevitably changes the crystallinity of the coated HA, and in turn affects its bioactivity. Therefore, in this study, in vitro experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of structural changes on the in vitro bioactivity. The factors dominating in vitro bioactivity of HA, including surface area, degree of crystallinity, and temperature, were identified. The activation energy for volume diffusion was calculated for different in vitro solution temperatures. Also discussed is the underlying mechanism of growth and dissolution processes during the in vitro test.

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Strophomenid brachiopods have long been interpreted as “snowshoe” strategists, with their flattened concavo-convex valves providing resistance to foundering in very soft sediments. There has been a sharp difference of opinion in whether the shells were oriented with their convex or their concave surface in contact with the sediment. This study, along with independent evidence from sedimentology, ichnology, and morphology, indicates that the strophomenids lived with their shells concave down (convex up). Experiments indicate the force required to push shells into soft cohesive muds is much greater for the convex up than for the convex down orientation. Forces also increase with shell curvature. All measured forces greatly exceed estimates of the downward force exerted by the weight of the shell, indicating that foundering resistance may not have been the key functional requirement. Instead, a convex up orientation would have provided resistance to overturning in currents, in particular if the valves gaped widely. The “snowshoe” may not be the relevant paradigm for the shell morphology of these forms. An alternative is that they functioned more as a tip-resistant base, similar to those of garden umbrellas or stanchions.

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