Automatically assembling a full census of an academic field

The composition of the scientific workforce shapes the direction of scientific research, directly through the selection of questions to investigate, and indirectly through its influence on the training of future scientists. In most fields, however, complete census information is difficult to obtain, complicating efforts to study workforce dynamics and the effects of policy. This is particularly true in computer science, which lacks a single, all-encompassing directory or professional organization. A full census of computer science would serve many purposes, not the least of which is a better understanding of the trends and causes of unequal representation in computing. Previous academic census efforts have relied on narrow or biased samples, or on professional society membership rolls. A full census can be constructed directly from online departmental faculty directories, but doing so by hand is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Here, we introduce a topical web crawler for automating the collection of faculty information from web-based department rosters, and demonstrate the resulting system on the 205 PhD-granting computer science departments in the U.S. and Canada. This method constructs a complete census of the field within a few minutes, and achieves over 99% precision and recall. We conclude by comparing the resulting 2017 census to a hand-curated 2011 census to quantify turnover and retention in computer science, in general and for female faculty in particular, demonstrating the types of analysis made possible by automated census construction.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Researchers’ opinions about ethically sound dissemination of BCI research to the public media

BCI research and (future) applications raise ethical questions. A websurvey among 144 BCI researchers identified disseminating BCI research to the public media as a central topic. Most researchers felt that BCI scientists must responsibly communicate with the media and that general ethical guidelines on BCI research and application are needed within the next 5 years. We recommend further debate on ethical aspects related to BCI and the development of guidelines

NRQCD results on the MILC extra coarse ensemble

We present preliminary results using NRQCD to describe heavy quarks on the MILC 2+1 flavour dynamical extra coarse ensemble. We calculate the spectra of low lying states in bottomonium to complement earlier results on the finer MILC ensembles. We then exploit the coarseness of the lattices to calculate charm propagators using NRQCD. These are used to examine the charmonium spectrum and to calclate the mass of the $B_c$ using NRQCD. Finally we look breifly at the $B_d$ and $B_s$ systems using the imporoved staggered formalism to describe the light valence quarks.Comment: 6 pages, Talk presented at Lattice 2005 (Heavy Quarks), Dublin, 25-30 July 200

Effects of the California High School Exit Exam on Student Persistence, Achievement, and Graduation

Analyzes the impact of the exit exam requirement on student persistence, achievement, and graduation by race/ethnicity and gender and the factors behind the differential effects. Considers implications for the fairness and effectiveness of the exams

Deconstructing Medicine: The Intersections of Racism and Health Disparities within Pre-Medical Education

The purpose of this project is to evaluate ways in which historical racism and lack of it in pre- medical curriculum shapes future health professionals and results in negative medical treatment of under-represented groups. Research found in the literature review reveals a strong history of racism within medical practice and medical research, as well as unconscious bias that follows knowledge taught during undergraduate education and onwards. An intersectionality approach is used to show the affect of race and class on health disparities and unethical abuse. This research includes data analyzing the pre-medical curriculums of the ten pre-medical universities that produce the most medical school applicants. Through this analysis and a thorough review of literature, there is evidence that there is a lack of interdisciplinary coursework included in pre- medical curriculums and an absence of initiative by these top schools to promote coursework including humanities, or topics regarding class, race, ethnicity, and social factors affecting health. This research done compares similarly to the pre-medical curriculum recommended to students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. From this research, possible programs and changes to Cal Poly pre-medical curriculum can be incorporated to include interdisciplinary coursework. Through this suggestion there is hope that it will allow pre-medical students to become aware of social constructs, intersections between race, class, and health, as well as their influence in resolving health disparities and racism within the medical practice

Understanding Female Engineering Enrollment: Explaining Choice with Critical Engineering Agency

One path to increasing the diversity of the engineering workforce is to understand the affective self-beliefs of women who choose engineering and how those beliefs change over time. By understanding these self-beliefs, educators can help to empower women to identify with engineering and see its potential to make change in their world. Rigorous research in this area is needed and could have significant positive impact on the engineering workforce. This research builds on critical agency theory by validating and refining the frame-work of Critical Engineering Agency (CEA), though which students’ interest in engineering is enhanced when they see opportunities to make change in their world. This framework has been developed by drawing from prior qualitative research and through a quantitative national study. Structural equation modeling was used to understand the connections be-tween the constructs of CEA. Additional work was conducted to understand other factors that influence students’ choice of engineering. A pair of qualitative follow-up studies to this work were conducted to understand the reasons why students develop CEA and choose engineering as a career. The qualitative phase added explanatory context and interpretive power to previously identified relationships through open-ended surveys and a longitudinal case study. The results highlight the salience of the CEA framework, indicating that recog-nition beliefs are the most important piece of identity development and holding agency beliefs about the positive impact that engineering and science can have on the world is more important for women than men in affecting their engineering choice. Qualitative results illustrated how identity and agency beliefs form and how the connection between Communities of Practice and identity through agential bridging occurs. The results from an in-depth case study demonstrated how CEA is developed through constructed hybrid spaces and practically plays a role in engineering decisions and identity formation within an engineering Community of Practice. Students’ identities and agency beliefs provide insight into why students choose and persist in areas related to engineering, how professors might develop students’ internalization of recognition in the classroom, and how this CEA framework might provide a lens for future research. Providing high school and college faculty, admissions and recruitment staff, and college administrators with research-based strategies to increase female students’ personal engagement with engineering is an important step towards diversifying engineering

A Beacon of Hope: Inoculating Against Relapse

Inoculation is a robust theory applied to a variety of health behaviors. Social marketing is designed to change behavior by applying marketing tactics in the context of social change. This study combines inoculation theory with social marketing in the context of substance abuse disorders to promote long-term recovery. This is a pilot project that specifically focuses on the Beacon House, a residential recovery treatment center in Louisville, Kentucky. With the growing drug problem in America, it is necessary to implement effective recovery strategies in treatment programs. The social marketing plan focuses on the target audience to outline potential barriers, motivators, and competition to remaining in long-term recovery. Three intervention strategies were developed as part of the project: a core inoculation message, booster messages, and refusal skills training. These strategies utilize inoculation messages in various ways to address the complexity of long-term recovery. While this study focuses on the Beacon House treatment facility, the concepts can be applied to similar treatment centers

Cover Letter

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present its Annual Survey issue of the 2013-2014 academic year. This issue is published in conjunction with JOLT’s Symposium entitled “Information Governance: A Comprehensive Approach to e-Discovery.” Since its founding in 1995, JOLT has strived to publish relevant legal articles at the forefront of the technological field. With this goal in mind, we are excited to expand JOLT’s respected discussion of e-Discovery to the emerging field of Information Governance

CenteringPregnancy: Perceptions of Providers and Staff in a Private OB Practice

Traditional prenatal care has been the stalwart of care in the United States since the 1920s; however, a new model of care is emerging: group-style prenatal care. This model of care has been well-documented within literature as having notable maternal and fetal outcomes, including increased patient satisfaction, decreased preterm birth rates, increased breastfeeding rates, and increased patient compliance, to name only a few. With such remarkable outcomes, it begs the question of why the group prenatal care model is not more widely utilized. This project aimed to determine if increasing the knowledge of healthcare providers in a private obstetrics practice regarding the CenteringPregnancy model of care led to increased intent to provide this model of care within the practice. A pre-education survey was given to 32 participants, followed by education regarding group-style prenatal care, followed by a post-education survey. Results suggested that an increase in knowledge regarding the CenteringPregnancy model leads to an increased interest in providing this model of care

Homotopy Algebras in Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics

In dieser Arbeit werden die Grundlagen von zwei häufig auftretenden Merkmalen unserer Naturgesetze untersucht: Eichsymmetrien und Quantisierung. Durch die Betrachtung dieser Merkmale im mathematischen Rahmen von Homotopie-Algebren wollen wir neue Methoden zur Berechnung physikalischer Observablen beschreiben, insbesondere in der Kosmologie und der Quantenmechanik. Zunächst befassen wir uns mit dem Problem der Eichredundanzen, die es schwer machen zu erkennen, welche Größen eine physikalische Bedeutung haben. Im Jahr 1980 erreichte Bardeen dieses Ziel in der kosmologischen Störungstheorie zu erster Ordnung. Die Frage, ob dieses Verfahren auf die perturbative Expansion von Eichtheorien aller Ordnungen ausgedehnt werden kann, ist seitdem jedoch offen geblieben. Wir zeigen, dass die Umformulierung von Eichtheorien in eichinvariante Felder als ein Transfer von homotopie-algebraischer Strukturen verstanden werden kann. Unter Verwendung dieses mathematischen Rahmens erweitern wir dann die Gültigkeit der Bardeen-Variablen auf perturbative Eichtheorien zu allen Ordnungen. Nach der Einführung eines systematisches Verfahrens für die eichinvariante Störungstheorie betrachten wir die Berechnung von Observablen in der Doppelfeldtheorie um zeitabhängige Hintergründe. Indem wir die Doppelfeldtheorie um zeitabhängige Hintergründe quadratischer und kubischer Ordnung erweitern und die quadratische Wirkung in den eichinvarianten Variablen ausdrücken, schaffen wir eine Grundlage für zukünftige Berechnungen, insbesondere zur Untersuchung des Einflusses massiver Stringmoden in kosmologischen Hintergründen. Zum Schluss betrachten wir einen anderen Ansatz zur Berechnung von Erwartungswerten in der Quantenmechanik. Obwohl die Pfadintegralformulierung der Quantenmechanik für den Fortschritt der Quantentheorie von entscheidender Bedeutung war, fehlt ihr immer noch eine strenge mathematische Definition. Die Reduktion eines unendlich-dimensionalen Raums von klassisch erlaubten Trajektorien auf einen Erwartungswert, der lediglich eine Funktion der Anfangs- und Endrandbedingungen ist, hat jedoch eine homotopiealgebraische Interpretation. Mit Hilfe des Batalin-Vilkovisky-Formalismus, der eng mit Homotopie-Lie-Algebren verwandt ist, entwickeln wir einen homologischen Ansatz zur Berechnung von Quantenerwartungswerten. Als Beispiel betrachten wir den harmonischen Oszillator und zeigen, dass unsere Methode auch im Kontext der Quantenfeldtheorie in gekrümmter Raumzeit verwendet werden kann, indem wir den Unruh-Effekt berechnen.This thesis examines the underpinnings of two frequently manifest features of our laws of nature: gauge symmetries and quantization. By studying these features through the mathematical framework of homotopy algebras, we aim to describe new methods towards the computation of physical observables, in particular for cosmology and quantum mechanics. First, we deal with the problem of gauge redundancies, which make it difficult to discern which quantities have physical meaning. In 1980, Bardeen introduced a procedure to achieve this goal in first order cosmological perturbation theory. However, the question whether this procedure can be extended to the perturbative expansion of gauge theories to all orders has remained open since then. We show that, in general, the reformulation of gauge theories in gauge invariant fields has the interpretation of transferring homotopy algebraic structure. Utilising this mathematical framework, we then generalize Bardeen’s procedure to perturbative expansions of gauge theories to all orders in perturbations. After establishing a systematic procedure for gauge invariant perturbation theory, we set up the stage for computing observables in double field theory around time-dependent backgrounds. Double field theory not only has T-duality as a manifest symmetry, which is expected to be important in string cosmology proposals, but is also (in its weakly constrained form) a description of massive string modes, and hence is a suitable arena to investigate the imprint of massive string modes in cosmological backgrounds. By expanding double field theory around time-dependent backgrounds to quadratic and cubic order and expressing the quadratic action in terms of gauge invariant variables, we provide a basis for future computations. Finally, we describe a different approach for computing expectation values in quantum mechanics. Though having been essential for the progress of quantum theory, the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics still lacks a rigorous mathematical definition. However, the act of reducing an infinite-dimensional space of classically allowed trajectories into an expectation value which is merely a function of the initial and final boundary conditions does have a homotopy algebraic interpretation. Through the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism, which is closely related to homotopy Lie algebras, we build a homological approach for computing quantum expectation values. We demonstrate our method for the harmonic oscillator and we show that our method can also be used in the context of quantum field theory in curved spacetime by rederiving the Unruh effect