#BlackWorkersMatter

Asserting that Black lives matter also means that the quality of those lives matters, and economic opportunity is inextricably linked to quality of life. Decades after the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, structural barriers still hold back African Americans in the workplace.The authors of this report provide some broader context on the black jobs crisis, including its origins and effects; the particular impact of the crisis on African American women; the declining state of black workers and their organizations, particularly within the labor movement; and the implications of the twin crises of joblessness and poverty-level wages for organizing. This report also features examples of how black worker organizations are combining strategic research, services, policy advocacy, and organizing to help black workers weather the economic storms and improve the quality of jobs that are open to African Americans over the long term

Highly prevalent but not always persistent: undergraduate and graduate student's misconceptions about psychology.

Although past research has documented the prevalence of misconceptions in introductory psychology classes, few studies have assessed how readily upper-level undergraduate and graduate students endorse erroneous beliefs about the discipline. In Study 1, we administered a 30-item misconception test to an international sample of 670 undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral students. Analyses indicated that participants identified and rejected the majority of misconceptions, with doctoral students performing better than their Master’s or undergraduate peers. In Study 2, we administered a revised version of our questionnaire to a novel sample of 557 students while controlling for number of years spent at university, psychology courses completed and need for cognition. Once again, we found that graduate students rejected more, affirmed less and reported lower levels of uncertainty than their undergraduate counterparts. Educational implications and future research directions are discussed

Crowdfunding Non-fungible Tokens on the Blockchain

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been used as a way of rewarding content creators. Artists publish their works on the blockchain as NFTs, which they can then sell. The buyer of an NFT then holds ownership of a unique digital asset, which can be resold in much the same way that real-world art collectors might trade paintings. However, while a deal of effort has been spent on selling works of art on the blockchain, very little attention has been paid to using the blockchain as a means of fundraising to help finance the artist’s work in the first place. Additionally, while blockchains like Ethereum are ideal for smaller works of art, additional support is needed when the artwork is larger than is feasible to store on the blockchain. In this paper, we propose a fundraising mechanism that will help artists to gain financial support for their initiatives, and where the backers can receive a share of the profits in exchange for their support. We discuss our prototype implementation using the SpartanGold framework. We then discuss how this system could be expanded to support large NFTs with the 0Chain blockchain, and describe how we could provide support for ongoing storage of these NFTs

National Patterns of Vulnerable Decision Points in School Discipline

This study identified the discipline decision situations that contribute most to racial discipline disparities from a sample of 992 schools across the U.S. Next, latent profile analysis was used to identify distinct patterns of VDPs across schools, and then membership of schools in these profiles was predicted by school characteristics. Additionally, the strongest VDP in each school was directly compared to situations with the highest rates of ODRs to identify the extent of agreement with overall school discipline patterns. Subjective behaviors (e.g., defiance, disruption) in classrooms throughout the day were found to be the decision situations comprising the most common VDPs within school, with ODRs for physical aggression contributing notably to disparities among the top ten VDPs. Eleven distinct latent profiles of VDPs were identified among schools in the sample, with school characteristics having limited predictive effects. Last, there was moderate agreement between situations with the most referrals and those with the strongest racial disparities, with 63% of schools in the sample having VDPs that identical to their situations with most referrals. In the absence of prescriptive analysis of their own school data, the results of this study provide school leaders and intervention researchers with more precise, promising targets for intervention to increase educational equity

SWPBIS, behavior patterns, and the discipline gap

The goal of this study was to examine to what extent the discipline gap is present in a school implementing school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS) and to examine whether students of different ethnicities are reported disproportionately for different types of behavior. Eight years of reported problem behavior (RPB) data from one elementary school were collected and analyzed both descriptively and statistically. In order to reflect the population proportionately, the presence of the discipline gap was examined using the average number of RPBs per student per year by ethnicity. Results indicate that there was no statistically significant difference between white and African American students, but that Latino students were referred significantly less frequently than African American students. Also, students were not reported differentially by ethnicity for specific types of problem behaviors. Implications of these findings for SWPBIS implementation and directions for future research are discussed

C-terminal motif prediction in eukaryotic proteomes using comparative genomics and statistical over-representation across protein families

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The carboxy termini of proteins are a frequent site of activity for a variety of biologically important functions, ranging from post-translational modification to protein targeting. Several short peptide motifs involved in protein sorting roles and dependent upon their proximity to the C-terminus for proper function have already been characterized. As a limited number of such motifs have been identified, the potential exists for genome-wide statistical analysis and comparative genomics to reveal novel peptide signatures functioning in a C-terminal dependent manner. We have applied a novel methodology to the prediction of C-terminal-anchored peptide motifs involving a simple z-statistic and several techniques for improving the signal-to-noise ratio.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We examined the statistical over-representation of position-specific C-terminal tripeptides in 7 eukaryotic proteomes. Sequence randomization models and simple-sequence masking were applied to the successful reduction of background noise. Similarly, as C-terminal homology among members of large protein families may artificially inflate tripeptide counts in an irrelevant and obfuscating manner, gene-family clustering was performed prior to the analysis in order to assess tripeptide over-representation across protein families as opposed to across all proteins. Finally, comparative genomics was used to identify tripeptides significantly occurring in multiple species. This approach has been able to predict, to our knowledge, all C-terminally anchored targeting motifs present in the literature. These include the PTS1 peroxisomal targeting signal (SKL*), the ER-retention signal (K/HDEL*), the ER-retrieval signal for membrane bound proteins (KKxx*), the prenylation signal (CC*) and the CaaX box prenylation motif. In addition to a high statistical over-representation of these known motifs, a collection of significant tripeptides with a high propensity for biological function exists between species, among kingdoms and across eukaryotes. Motifs of note include a serine-acidic peptide (DSD*) as well as several lysine enriched motifs found in nearly all eukaryotic genomes examined.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have successfully generated a high confidence representation of eukaryotic motifs anchored at the C-terminus. A high incidence of true-positives in our results suggests that several previously unidentified tripeptide patterns are strong candidates for representing novel peptide motifs of a widely employed nature in the C-terminal biology of eukaryotes. Our application of comparative genomics, statistical over-representation and the adjustment for protein family homology has generated several hypotheses concerning the C-terminal topology as it pertains to sorting and potential protein interaction signals. This approach to background reduction could be expanded for application to protein motif prediction in the protein interior. A parallel N-terminal analysis is presented as supplementary data.</p

The GOJO Smartlink Observation System: Research for Adoption

This research project sought to provide GOJO Industries, Inc. with strategic recommendations for improving sales of their SMARTLINK Observation (OBV) hand hygiene compliance monitoring mobile application. The two required steps for building recommendations were to analyze the status of the hand hygiene compliance monitoring market (as of 2017) and gain insight on the needs of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare directors in hospitals and urgent care facilities. In conjunction with GOJO Industries, Inc., the viability of a subscription-based mobile application for monitoring was tested. Employees of several different healthcare facilities were interviewed about their current methods and practices for compliance monitoring. Their pain points, suggestions, and thoughts on a mobile application solution were all documented. Information was also gathered from hospital systems that currently use GOJO\u27s Smartlink OBV application. Upon aggregating all of the interview responses, four strategic recommendations for selling the GOJO Smartlink app were formulated. The four suggestions: 1. Improve existing reporting capabilities and features.2. Create a hygiene compliance standard and reward for hospitals to display. 3. Bundle the application with other GOJO products (purell, the fully automated dispensing systems, etc.) and offer a freemium version of the app. 4. Modify the application for use in other markets, such as restuarants, chemical labs, schools, and factories

Application of a New Procedure for Power Analysis and Comparison of the Adjusted Univariate and Multivariate Tests in Repeated Measures Designs

A relationship between the multivariate and univariate noncentrality parameters in repeated measures designs was developed for the purpose of assessing the relative power of the univariate and multivariate approaches. An application is provided examining the use of repeated measures designs to evaluate student achievement in a K-12 school syste

Salesforce.com

Innovation! One of the most innovative companies, and also one of the best companies to work for, is losing money. This case traces the meteoric rise of the number one customer relationship management service provider against huge rivals such as Microsoft and Oracle. Detail regarding their highly innovative Scrum system is provided, along with detail regarding their marketing approach. How can Salesforce.com regain profitability while continuing to grow in a highly competitive industry