Reaching for the Cap and Gown: Progress Toward Success Boston's College Completion Goals for Graduates of the Boston Public Schools

A new report, prepared for Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Success Boston college completion initiative, shows a remarkable increase in both the percentage and the number of Boston Public Schools graduates who complete college within six years. The report also examines college completion for students with Success Boston coaches, a major intervention launched by the Boston Foundation and its partners, including the Boston Public Schools, in 2009. Success Boston, a citywide multi-sector college completion initiative, was launched in 2008 in response to a report that found that only 35% of the BPS Class of 2000 graduates who enrolled in college earned a degree within seven years of graduating high school. The initiative is guided by the Boston Public Schools, the Boston Foundation, UMass Boston, Bunker Hill Community College, and the Boston Private Industry Council, along with dozens of colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations. Among the initiative's ambitious goals was pushing members of the BPS Class of 2009 to a 52%six-year college completion rate. Today's report, "Reaching for the Cap and Gown: Progress Toward Success Boston's College Completion Goals for Graduates of the Boston Public Schools," finds that the six-year college completion rate of first-year college enrollees from the BPS Class of 2009 was 51.3%--within one percentage point of the 52% goal set in 2008. Equally impressive is the gain in the number of BPS graduates completing college within six years of high school graduation--1,314 from the Class of 2009, compared to 735 from the Class of 2000, the equivalent of a 79% increase. The study also finds that college completion, at 54.7%, is even higher than the goal for students who enrolled in the fall immediately after graduating from high school

Comments: The Duration of Temporary Restraining Orders in Federal Court

Rule 65(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that a temporary restraining order may issue for ten days and extend for an additional ten days #\u27good cause is shown. Most federal courts have held that if a TRO extends beyond twenty days without the consent of the restrained party, the TRO is transformed into a preliminary in/unction. However, since the TRO transformed into an injunction fails to satisfy the requirements of a preliminary injunction, the courts strike it as being improperly issued This comment examines this phenomenon, analyzes the conflicting positions among the circuit courts, and suggests that in certain circumstances TROs that extend beyond twenty days should remain TROs and not be transformed into invalid preliminary injunctions

A Scale of Heroic Cognition for Workplace Contexts

Interest in research on heroism has begun to increase during the past decade, but, despite the ancient roots of heroism embedded deeply in cultures around the world, empirical work on the subject is relatively sparse. Direct and explicit empirical study of heroism in organizational contexts, specifically, is especially rare. The lack of organizational heroism research is surprising. There is a preponderance of evidence that organizational wrongdoing is observed across many organizations, sometimes to great extremes that are in violation of federal law, and it can have profound social impact. Organizational members who become aware of extreme wrongdoing committed by others are likely to experience negative cognitive and emotional states. Such states may require innocent organizational members who are aware of wrongdoing committed by others to engage in courageous, risky, and self-sacrificial behaviors in an effort to expose and end misconduct, often without any external benefit for taking action. These courageous actors are often heroic. Although a better understanding of heroic decision-making in organizations has the potential to curtail organizational and larger societal harm, no measurement instrument exists to assess the heroic cognitions of organizational members that may predict the likelihood that they will engage in heroic behaviors. In response to this gap in the literature, the present research sought to develop and explore the dimensionality of a measure of heroic cognition for workplace contexts. Using principal axis factoring for exploratory factor analysis with oblique factor rotation, four factors were extracted, accounting for 27.46% of the variance. After dropping the fourth factor of no theoretical import, and the third factor due to low internal reliability, two factors remained: heroic self-efficacy and acceptance of self-sacrifice. Formal content validation with a jury of social psychological SMEs, however, failed across all items in the retained factors. Potential item content confounds, lengthy and complex item wording, and the direct assessment of single-method self-reported heroic cognitions limited both the interpretability of the results and the utility of the scale for future research. Future research should further develop measures of the retained heroic self-efficacy and acceptance of self-sacrifice scales to circumvent the issues cited by the content validation panel. Initial construct validation studies using the revised scales should borrow methodologies from the change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors literature, using a multi-trait multi-method approach that seeks to develop a nomological network for workplace heroic cognition. The present research provides the foundation for more targeted follow-up research efforts on heroic decision-making in organizations

Impact of Brexit and Subsequent Food Regulatory Divergence on the Irish Food and Drink Industry

On 24 June 2016, the majority of the UK voted to leave the European Union and formally departed the EU on 31 December 2020. With this departure, the UK started diverging from EU law. Some of the major divergences are the UK’s animal export ban, identifying gene editing separately from genetic modification, the new UKCA mark, rules of origin requirements, not banning Titanium Dioxide, removing radioactivity restrictions on food imports from Japan, and not following the EU’s reduction of permissible Arsenic level by 80%. According to the Windsor Framework, the products destined for the Republic of Ireland, or any EU location will undergo the "red lane" process, which includes customs declarations and specific inspections. UK has introduced a Border Target Operating Model, which categorizes the food imported into the UK based on the risk and requires pre-notifications and an Export Health Certificate for high-risk Sanitary and Phytosanitary goods. The UK landbridge can be still utilized, but with increased requirements and documentary checks, potentially leading to higher costs and possible delays. Even with all those challenges, 95% of Irish food businesses are optimistic about growth, and in 2022, the UK remained Ireland's primary agri-food export destination, with a value of €6.7 billion

Nonlinear absorption spectroscopy of bulk semiconductors and nanocrystalline silicon quantum dots

My Ph.D work is on investigating the nonlinear absorption spectra of bulk semiconductors and nanocrystalline semiconductor quantum dots with the aim of understanding the limitations and potential applications of bulk semiconductors in photonic applications and of nanocrystalline semiconductor quantum dots for biological imaging. I studied two-photon absorption in these materials using three nonlinear optical techniques. First, in Chapter 2, I performed open-aperture Z-scan measurements of gallium phosphide to measure the degenerate two-photon absorption coefficient and the anisotropy parameter. However, as this technique required high light intensities, self-focusing and free-carrier absorption can complicate analysis. This lead to the development of a pump-probe modulation spectroscopy experiment in Chapter 3, which I performed on gallium phosphide, gallium arsenide, and silicon. This allowed complete characterization of the degenerate imaginary part of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility tensor and analysis of the response dynamics which was crucial for rejection of anomalous cases due to non-instantaneous responses, phase gratings, or other effects. In Chapter 4, I measured the size-dependence of two-photon excited photoluminescence in nanocrystalline silicon quantum dots at a single excitation wavelength by calibrating to one-photon excited photoluminescence. My collaborators also demonstrated biological imaging of mouse cells using one- and two-photon excited photoluminescence confocal microscopy with nanocrystalline silicon quantum dots encapsulated in liposomes. Lastly, in Chapter 5 I measured two-photon excited photoluminescence spectra of nanocrystalline silicon quantum dots of two different sizes calibrated to a reference standard. I also simulated their efficiency at two-photon excited photoluminescence imaging in biological tissues to compare to other quantum dots and molecular fluorophores to aid in the selection and optimization of biological imaging agents. I measured nonlinear optical properties not previously reported in these materials and developed the experiments required to make these measurements during the course of these projects. This work opens the door to further investigation, especially in semiconductor quantum dots and other low-dimensional structures and their wide-ranging applications.Physic

Microdistributional variability of larval caddisflies in Mediterranean-climate streams in northern California

Knowing how physical and biogenic habitat characteristics affect microspatial variability of larval caddisflies is important to understanding potential population distributions and local species assemblages. We show that larval caddisfly densities and assemblages vary between study reaches and streams on the Angelo Coast Range Reserve in northern California and that species abundance patterns are associated with specific habitat variables. Dicosmoecus gilvipes and Psychoglypha spp. were most dense in 4th-order reaches of the south fork of the Eel River (SFE) and rare or absent in shallow 2nd- and 1st-order reaches of the Elder and Fox Creek tributaries, respectively. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) suggested D. gilvipes densities were associated with water depth, as microdistributions were restricted to depths \u3e40 cm. Microdistributions were also associated with Rivularia-dominated algal patches, but it is doubtful grazingD. gilvipes tracked these cyanobacteria. Psychoglypha spp. were typically found between roughness elements (stones) in relatively deep waters, and MDS suggested that densities of Psychoglypha spp. were related to current velocity. Lepidostoma sp. was densest in Fox Creek, and densities of this detritivore were associated with benthic organic matter (BOM). Glossosoma spp. densities were similar among streams (~25 larvae ⋅ m–2) and did not configure around any of the habitat variables used in MDS.Neophylax (likely rickeri), Heteroplectron, Ecclisomyia, and Hydatophylax hesperus were uncommon and found only in either Elder or Fox creeks. Our work shows that larval caddisfly assemblages are more diverse in SFE tributaries than in the mainstem and that species traits and microdistributions are related to local-scale habitat variables in these Mediterranean-climate streams.Es importante conocer de qué manera las características del hábitat físico y biogénico afectan la variabilidad microespacial de la larva de las frigáneas para comprender la posible distribución local y cómo están compuestos los grupos de especies locales. Demostramos que las densidades y los grupos de las larvas de las frigáneas varían entre los fragmentos del arroyo y entre los arroyos que se encuentran en Angelo Coast Range Reserve en el norte de California y que los patrones de abundancia de las especies se asocian con variables específicas del hábitat. Las especies Dicosmoecus gilvipes y Psychoglypha registraron una mayor densidad en las extensiones del 4° orden de South Fork del Eel River (SFE) y su densidad disminuyó o se extinguió en las extensiones de menor profundidad del 2° y del 1° orden de sus afluentes, los arroyosElder y Fox respectivamente. El escalamiento multidimensional (EMD) sugirió que la densidad de D. gilvipes se asoció con la profundidad del agua, ya que la microdistribución se limitó a profundidades \u3e40 cm. La microdistribución también se asoció a zonas con predominancia de algas de Rivularia, pero no es seguro que D. gilvipes haya rastreado estas cianobacterias. La especie Psychoglypha se encontró típicamente entre elementos ásperos (piedras) en aguas relativamente profundas y el EMD sugirió que su densidad se relacionaba con la velocidad de la corriente. La especieLepidostoma fue la más densa en el arroyo Fox y la densidad de este detritívoro se asoció con la materia orgánica bentónica (BOM). La densidad de la especie Glossosomafue similar entre los arroyos (~25 larvas ⋅ m–2) y no determinó ninguna de las variables del hábitat utilizadas en el EMD. Neophylax (probablemente rickeri), Heteroplectron,Ecclisomyia y Hydatophylax hesperus fueron poco comunes y sólo se encontraron en el arroyo Elder o en el Fox. Nuestra investigación demuestra que los grupos de larvas de las frigáneas son más diversos en los afluentes del SFE que en la corriente principal, y que las características y la microdistribución de las especies se relacionan con variables del hábitat a escala local en estos arroyos de clima mediterráneo

New loci for body fat percentage reveal link between adiposity and cardiometabolic disease risk

To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of adiposity and its links to cardiometabolic disease risk, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of body fat percentage (BF%) in up to 100,716 individuals. Twelve loci reached genome-wide significance (P<5 × 10−8), of which eight were previously associated with increased overall adiposity (BMI, BF%) and four (in or near COBLL1/GRB14, IGF2BP1, PLA2G6, CRTC1) were novel associations with BF%. Seven loci showed a larger effect on BF% than on BMI, suggestive of a primary association with adiposity, while five loci showed larger effects on BMI than on BF%, suggesting association with both fat and lean mass. In particular, the loci more strongly associated with BF% showed distinct cross-phenotype association signatures with a range of cardiometabolic traits revealing new insights in the link between adiposity and disease risk

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead