Room at the Top: Strategies for Increasing the Number of Graduate Students in Canada

The knowledge economy requires more people with advanced degrees. Policies that attach funding to students hold the greatest promise for increasing both the quantity and quality of graduate education.graduate education, government education support

Anexo Estadístico

Este artículo tiene un objetivo doble: por una parte, ofrecer una visión estadística global de la educación superior (con referencia sobre todo a la financiación) y, por otra, proporcionar un breve análisis sobre el grado de financiación disponible en diferentes sistemas de educación superior. En primer lugar, el artículo examina los datos sobre las matrículas en instituciones de educación superior. A continuación, analiza los recursos públicos disponibles para los sistemas de educación superior de varios países. Seguidamente, se centra, en la medida de lo posible, en los datos estadísticos disponibles sobre los recursos privados en la educación superior y la oferta privada de educación superior, así como en la relación entre la dependencia de los ingresos privados en la educación superior y el acceso a ella. Finalmente, trata de la financiación de la investigación en las universidades de todo el mundo.Peer Reviewe

College and University Ranking Systems: Global Perspectives and American Challenges

Examines how higher education ranking systems function, how other countries use ranking systems, and the impact of college rankings in the United States on student access, choice, and opportunity

Behavioural Challenges Associated With Risk-Adapted Cancer Screening.

Cancer screening programmes have a major role in reducing cancer incidence and mortality. Traditional internationally-adopted protocols have been to invite all 'eligible individuals' for the same test at the same frequency. However, as highlighted in Cancer Research UK's 2020 strategic vision, there are opportunities to increase effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and reduce harms of screening programmes, by making recommendations on the basis of personalised estimates of risk. In some respects, this extends current approaches of providing more intensive levels of care outside screening programmes to individuals at very high risk due to their family history or underlying conditions. However, risk-adapted colorectal cancer screening raises a wide range of questions, not only about how best to change existing programmes but also about the psychological and behavioural effects that these changes might have. Previous studies in other settings provide some important information but remain to be tested and explored further in the context of colorectal screening. Conducting behavioural science research in parallel to clinical research will ensure that risk-adapted screening is understood and accepted by the population that it aims to serve.Dr Usher Smith is funded by a NIHR Advanced Fellowship NIHR30086

First Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) Neglected Diseases and Innovation Symposium

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines organized its first Neglected Diseases and Innovation Symposium to address expanding roles of public sector research institutions in innovation in research and development of biomedical technologies for treatment of diseases, particularly neglected tropical diseases. Universities and other public research institutions are increasingly integrated into the pharmaceutical innovation system. Academic entities now routinely undertake robust high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry research programs to identify lead compounds for small molecule drugs and novel drug targets. Furthermore, product development partnerships are emerging between academic institutions, non-profit entities, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to create diagnostics, therapies, and vaccines for diseases of the poor. With not for profit mission statements, open access publishing standards, open source platforms for data sharing and collaboration, and a shift in focus to more translational research, universities and other public research institutions are well-placed to accelerate development of medical technologies, particularly for neglected tropical diseases

Figuring Rhetoric: From Antistrophe to Apostrophe through Catastrophe

This essay explores rhetoric tropologically through various strophes: antistrophe, catastrophe, and apostrophe. Our purpose is to delineate problems and possibilities that these tropes pose for rhetoric in an effort to create new rhetorics. We seek to display the antistrophic and catastrophic figurations of rhetoric and then use visual lenses of photography and cinema to disrupt the figurations. Following the disruption, we seek to heighten sensibilities to other figurations, in particular an apostrophic figuration. We cast apostrophe as a figure for change because it marks a deeply felt turn toward difference and otherness. Turned as such, rhetoric becomes erotic

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye

Neurobiological Models of Two-Choice Decision Making Can Be Reduced to a One-Dimensional Nonlinear Diffusion Equation

The response behaviors in many two-alternative choice tasks are well described by so-called sequential sampling models. In these models, the evidence for each one of the two alternatives accumulates over time until it reaches a threshold, at which point a response is made. At the neurophysiological level, single neuron data recorded while monkeys are engaged in two-alternative choice tasks are well described by winner-take-all network models in which the two choices are represented in the firing rates of separate populations of neurons. Here, we show that such nonlinear network models can generally be reduced to a one-dimensional nonlinear diffusion equation, which bears functional resemblance to standard sequential sampling models of behavior. This reduction gives the functional dependence of performance and reaction-times on external inputs in the original system, irrespective of the system details. What is more, the nonlinear diffusion equation can provide excellent fits to behavioral data from two-choice decision making tasks by varying these external inputs. This suggests that changes in behavior under various experimental conditions, e.g. changes in stimulus coherence or response deadline, are driven by internal modulation of afferent inputs to putative decision making circuits in the brain. For certain model systems one can analytically derive the nonlinear diffusion equation, thereby mapping the original system parameters onto the diffusion equation coefficients. Here, we illustrate this with three model systems including coupled rate equations and a network of spiking neurons

2016 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1003/thumbnail.jp