Four strategies to increase the likelihood of creating and sustaining successful research teams

Modern scientific expertise rests heavily upon work carried out by teams, rather than scholars working on their own. Proper preparation is key, with some research suggesting that the effectiveness of collaborative work is determined before any of the work is carried out. Howard Aldrich and Akram Al-Turk have identified four structural elements that increase the likelihood of creating and sustaining collaborative relationships. These cover the importance of focused definitions of a project’s scope; explicit agreement on individual responsibilities; cast-iron deadlines and timely feedback; and innovative coordination mechanisms

Analytic Optimization Modeling of Anti-Reflection Coatings for Solar Cells

The world’s dependence on oil cannot continue indefinitely. As reserves dwindle and demand continues to increase, prices will soar to new highs and fundamentally change the way society deals with energy generation and consumption. Use of oil and other carbon-based fuels also have detrimental effects on human health, as pollution that arises from the combustion of these fuels necessitates treating respiratory problems in millions of people annually. Moreover, evidence that climate change is anthropogenic has become undeniable and has been proven to be direct related to dependence on carbon-based fuels. Renewable energy offers clean and dependable alternatives for electricity, heating and transport. In particular, solar energy looks to be the most promising owing to its sheer abundance and ubiquity. The main obstacle hindering the adoption of solar cell technology en masse is cost. One of the ways to reduce cost is to fabricate thinner solar cells, but this compromises efficiency due to lower optical absorption that results, especially in silicon. In order to become a serious competitor in the energy market, highly absorptive solar cells must be developed at reduced material costs, which is the essence of light-trapping. In this study, two of the most common ways to trap light by reducing reflection were investigated: the application of anti-reflection coatings and surface texturing in silicon. Analytic models were created to optimize optical design in both single-junction and multi-junction solar cells. The single-junction silicon models accounted for non-normal incidence, which allowed angle-averaged calculations to be made for planar and textured surfaces. Single-junction GaAs models included a GaInP window layer whose optical effects were considered in anti-reflection coating optimization. The multi-junction GaAs-on-silicon (GaAs/Si) and AlGaAs-on-silicon (AlGaAs/Si) models that were created clearly demonstrated the need to adjust individual subcell thicknesses in order to optimize optical design.Master of Applied Science (MASc

On A Quiet Evening At Home

With Ukulele arrangement. Contains advertisements and/or short musical examples of pieces being sold by publisher.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/7028/thumbnail.jp

Automated detection of Diabetic Retinopathy in Three European Populations

Objective: Currently 1/12 of the world’s population has diabetes mellitus (DM), many are or will be screened by having retinal images taken. This current study aims to compare the DAPHNE software’s ability to detect DR in three different European populations compared to human grading carried out at the Moorfields Eye Hospital Reading Centre (MEHRC). Participants: Retinal images were taken from participants of the HAPIEE study (Lithuania, n=1014), the PAMDI study (Italy, n=882) and the MARS study (Germany, n=909). Methods: All anonymized images were graded by human graders at MEHRC for the presence of DR. Independently, and without any knowledge of the human grader’s results, the DAPHNE software analysed the images and divided the participants into DR and no-DR groups. Main outcome measures: The primary outcomes were sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of the DAPHNE software with regards to the identification of DR or no-DR on retinal images as compared to the human grader as reference standard. Results: A total of 2805 participants were enrolled from the three study sites. The sensitivity of the DAPHNE software was above 93% in all three studies specificity was above 80%, the PPV was above 28% and the NPV was not below 98.8% in any of the studies. The DAPHNE software did not miss any vision-threatening DR. The areas under the curve (AUC) for all three studies were above 0.96. DAPHNE reduced manual human workload by 70% but had a total false positive rate of 63%. Conclusions: The DAPHNE software showed to be reliable to detect DR on three different European populations, using three different imaging settings. Further testing is required to see scalability, performance on live DR screening systems and on camera settings different to these studies

Topological concepts and their relation to engineering thinking among middle school students

The current research aims to investigate the topological concepts for intermediate stage students, engineering thinking among intermediate stage students, and the relationship between topological concepts and engineering thinking for intermediate stage students. The research sample consisted of (220) students from the first intermediate class / first Rusafa, where verification of validity and reliability were conducted for the topological test concepts as a first tool and a test for engineering thinking as a second tool. Accordingly, the two tests were ready to be applied to the basic sample and in their final form, which the topological concepts test items reached (16) items, while the engineering thinking test items reached (18) items,  Furthermore, the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was applied to analyze the research results.  and the results showed that first intermediate class students possess topological concepts and engineering thinking that exceeds the assumption average of the test and that there is a positive relation between topological concepts and engineering thinking. Finally, the researchers presented a set of proposals and recommendations based on the results of the study &nbsp

Movement Effects on Policy Adoption and Socio-Economic Outcomes: The Case of Affordable Housing Mobilization in the United States

Do social movement organizations (SMOs) have varying effects on policy adoption and on policy impact? I address this question by testing whether affordable housing SMOs in U.S. cities have an effect on two outcomes: the adoption of either a housing trust fund or inclusionary zoning ordinance (policy adoption), and the number of affordable housing units built with federal tax credits (policy impact). I find that SMOs have a more direct effect on policy adoption than they do on impact, but that SMOs have a moderating effect on the latter. Specifically, they dampen the negative effects of poverty on the number of affordable housing units built, they bolster the effects of administrative spending on units built, and they lessen the effects of an affordable housing policy on units built. The latter finding indicates that outcomes (e.g., policy adoption) that SMOs attained in earlier stages of the policy process may in fact dampen their effects in latter stages. This finding suggests that research on SMO outcomes that examines multiple policy stages can provide insights into why SMOs affect those outcomes differently. The paper’s findings also show that structural conditions such as poverty were the strongest predictors of both policy adoption and impact, suggesting that future research should consider how such structural conditions moderate or are moderated by SMOs.Master of Art

The Rise of Performance-Based Accountability in Education in the United States: 1965-1994

In this dissertation, I explain how the predominant concern among reformers and policymakers in education policy in the United States shifted from one focused on inequitable access in the 1960s to one focused on higher expectations of students and better standards in the 1980s and 1990s. I explain how this new paradigm emerged and became codified into law by focusing on three questions. First, how do knowledge regimes shape the emergence of a new paradigm? I draw on government documents, data on changes in academia, and text analysis of academic research to advance an argument about how policies, government agencies, and academics drive the demand for and supply of new ideas that shape new paradigms. The second question I ask in this dissertation helps explain how the new paradigm would eventually lead to major policy changes in education. In short, what explains the growth in the number of interest groups in the United States, not just in education policy but more broadly? In the third chapter, I test the effects that four sets of explanations (resource mobilization, policy changes, political partisanship, and issue salience) have on the growth of interest groups. I find that high partisanship on an issue is consistently associated with interest group growth. In chapter four, I focus on two dominant paradigms in American politics—equality and effectiveness— and I analyze the text of public laws to assess the effect that each of the two paradigms has on major legislation. Using word embedding models, I find that laws that engage with both paradigms are likely to be major pieces of legislation. Then, using the case of education policy, I find that interest groups that were best at combining and focusing on these two seemingly contradictory paradigms were more likely to be part of the agenda-setting process and to shape the Democratic Party’s newfound support for standards-based reforms in education.Doctor of Philosoph

Essays in Corporate Finance

In Chapter 1, I analyze the implications of managers’ early-life diversity experiences for workforce diversity and inclusion (D&I). I find that CEOs’ early-life diversity exposure is associated with more D&I policies, a greater representation of minorities and women in the workforce, and a lower probability of facing employee discrimination. Supporting a more causal interpretation, the diversity exposure effects depend on the level of integration in the CEO’s community while growing up, and the CEO’s control over firm policies. Moreover, using a difference-in-differences specification around plausibly exogenous CEO turnovers, to address the endogenous matching of CEOs to firms, provides consistent results. This chapter contributes to the recent literature that seeks to understand what drives diversity in firms. In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Paige Ouimet), we examine the economic implications of paid sick leave (PSL) mandates. The United States is one of few developed countries still without a national PSL policy. Uncertainty around the economic implications of PSL policies is a major reason why a federal law mandating PSL has failed to pass repeatedly. Using the staggered adoption of local and state mandates, we document an average increase of 1.5% in employment followingthe enactment of a PSL policy. As predicted, workers with ex ante lower access to PSL drive the employment effect. Several mechanisms can explain our findings. PSL mandates are associated with a decline in labor turnover, an increase in the labor supply, and an increase in household income, which creates positive spillover effects on local markets. Moreover, firms exposed to the mandate experience a significant increase in operating profit – benefits firms may not be able to achievethrough voluntary actions, in the absence of a mandate, due to adverse selection. In Chapter 3, I explore how managers become entrenched over time. The optimal view of managerial power theory suggests that corporate boards reward CEOs with power for good firm performance as the boards’ assessment of their ability is higher. In evaluating the CEO’s quality, economic theory predicts that boards filter out luck from performance. Luck represents exogenous shocks to performance, such as market-wide conditions, that are outside the CEO’s control. Contraryto the prediction, I find that CEOs are rewarded with power for luck. This finding is mainly driven by firms with weaker governance in terms of board structure and institutional ownership. This chapter contributes to the literature on managerial power and extends the pay for luck literature by showing that the rewards CEOs obtain due to luck extend to power and are not limited to direct monetary benefits.Doctor of Philosoph

Lysophospholipid acylation modulates plasma membrane lipid organization and insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle

Aberrant lipid metabolism promotes the development of skeletal muscle insulin resistance, but the exact identity of lipid-mediated mechanisms relevant to human obesity remains unclear. A comprehensive lipidomic analysis of primary myocytes from individuals who were insulin-sensitive and lean (LN) or insulin-resistant with obesity (OB) revealed several species of lysophospholipids (lyso-PLs) that were differentially abundant. These changes coincided with greater expression of lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase 3 (LPCAT3), an enzyme involved in phospholipid transacylation (Lands cycle). Strikingly, mice with skeletal muscle-specific knockout of LPCAT3 (LPCAT3-MKO) exhibited greater muscle lysophosphatidylcholine/phosphatidylcholine, concomitant with improved skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity. Conversely, skeletal muscle-specific overexpression of LPCAT3 (LPCAT3-MKI) promoted glucose intolerance. The absence of LPCAT3 reduced phospholipid packing of cellular membranes and increased plasma membrane lipid clustering, suggesting that LPCAT3 affects insulin receptor phosphorylation by modulating plasma membrane lipid organization. In conclusion, obesity accelerates the skeletal muscle Lands cycle, whose consequence might induce the disruption of plasma membrane organization that suppresses muscle insulin action