Nudging Students Beyond the FAFSA: The Impact of University Outreach on Financial Aid Behaviors and Outcomes

A growing body of research indicates that proactive outreach from high schools and college access organizations about college preparation tasks, and specifically focusing on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), results in increased college enrollment. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role of colleges and universities in this outreach and outreach relating to additional financial aid barriers that students face while applying to college, such as the CSS PROFILE form. In this article we investigated, through an inter-university collaboration, the effect of sending targeted, semi-personalized text messages to students during the college application process about important financial aid deadlines, making salient the specific forms required and prompting students to plan specific times to complete these tasks. The intervention increased CSS PROFILE filing by 3.1-4.3 percentage points, where the estimates and their significance varied depending on the comparison group. Impacts on student enrollment did not accompany these filing impacts. Results from our collaboration support the idea that colleges and universities have an important role to play in outreach to applicants relating to important financial aid tasks. The paper includes a discussion of the promises and challenges of this outreach with recommendations for practitioners

The Draw-A-Clock Contest: A Strategy for Improving Cognitive Status Assessment by Trainees

Background: Historically, psychiatrists have been less inclined than neurologists to utilize pencil and paper tasks during bedside cognitive assessments. Objective: The Draw-AClock Contest was established in 1986 at the University of Massachusetts to promote use of cognitive assessment tasks by psychiatry residents. Methods: Used in neuropsychological assessments since the 1930’s, clock tasks have been popular screening tools for executive function, praxis, visuospatial and constructive ability, often as part of dementia screening. Given its broad utility as a screening tool and the ease and speed of its administration, the Draw-A-Clock task (with hands set to 11:10 and no circle provided) was selected for use by UMass psychiatry residents, with further bedside assessment encouraged to explore any detected deficits. To encourage participation and foster clinical inquiry, residents are asked to submit clinically interesting de-identified patient clocks. For 21 years, clock contest entries have been collected each spring, with basic demographic, diagnostic, and process notes. Resident names are encoded, and entries are judged by a neuropsychiatrist (SB) and a neuropsychologist (EK). A “clock trophy” and detailed analysis of the submission is presented to the winner at the annual graduation banquet. Results: As a result of this contest, mental status examinations by trainees have become more comprehensive and an atmosphere of neuropsychiatric inquiry has been maintained. Faculty members have also incorporated this task into their mental status assessments, thus establishing a culture of cognitive inquiry and an academic tradition. Examples of winning clocks and common findings will be presented. Published abstract: Sullivan J, Benjamin S, Case Report: CADASIL with Cysteine-Sparing Notch-3 Mutation, American Neuropsychiatric Association, abstract, Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 21(2):221, 2009. DOI 10.1176/appi.neuropsych.21.2.221

Genetic loss of the dopamine transporter significantly impacts behavioral and molecular responses to sub-chronic stress in mice

Dopaminergic neurotransmission has emerged as a critical determinant of stress susceptibility and resilience. Although the dopamine transporter (DAT) is known to play a key role in maintaining dopamine (DA) homeostasis, its importance for the regulation of stress susceptibility remains largely unknown. Indeed, while numerous studies have examined the neurochemical and behavioral consequences of genetic loss of DAT, very few have compared responses to stress in wild-type and DAT-knockout (KO) animals. The current study compared the responses of male and female WT and DAT-KO mice to a model of sub-chronic stress. Our results reveal that DAT-KO mice are resistant to stress-induced increases in the latency to enter the light chamber of the light-dark emergence test and demonstrate that DAT-KO mice exhibit baseline reductions in forced swim test immobility and grooming time in the splash test of grooming behavior. In addition to these behavioral changes, our results highlight the importance of sex and dopaminergic neurotransmission on stress-induced changes in the expression and phosphorylation of several signal transduction molecules in the nucleus accumbens that have previously been implicated in the regulation of stress susceptibility, including ERK, GSK3β, and ΔFosB. Overall, these results provide further evidence of the importance of dopaminergic neurotransmission in regulating stress susceptibility and suggest that genetic loss of DAT prevents stress-induced increases in anxiety-like behavior

Extended Silicic Volcanism in the Gruithuisen Region—Revisiting the Composition and Thermophysical Properties of Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon

The formation mechanisms, extent, and compositions of red spots on the lunar surface have intrigued the lunar community for decades. By identifying a new dome and another silicic crater in the highlands nearby, we find that the silicic volcanism in the Gruithuisen region extends beyond the three major domes. Our observations indicate that the Gruithuisen domes have low iron and titanium contents. They are enveloped by ejecta from surrounding regions and host silica-rich material excavated by the young craters consistent with previous work. Our boulder maps of the Gamma dome display a high boulder count and indicate that the Diviner rock abundance maps are only sensitive to boulders larger than ∼2 m. The H-parameter values are sensitive to presence of rocks and may be a better indicator of rocks at submeter scales. The Delta dome has gentle slopes, lower rock abundance, and one young crater, and it could serve as a safe and scientifically valuable site for landing and exploration of the domes and nearby region. The dome also displays anomalously high H-parameter in the same region as the crater, indicating the potential presence of pyroclastic materials. We observe up to 200 ppm of OH/H2O on the domes and nearby mare despite the presence of a weak magnetic field to the south of Delta dome, further supporting the potential presence of pyroclastics in the region. This study could potentially aid in logistical and scientific decisions of the future NASA missions in the region

Magnon-mediated qubit coupling determined via dissipation measurements

Controlled interaction between localized and delocalized solid-state spin systems offers a compelling platform for on-chip quantum information processing with quantum spintronics. Hybrid quantum systems (HQSs) of localized nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond and delocalized magnon modes in ferrimagnets—systems with naturally commensurate energies—have recently attracted significant attention, especially for interconnecting isolated spin qubits at length-scales far beyond those set by the dipolar coupling. However, despite extensive theoretical efforts, there is a lack of experimental characterization of the magnon-mediated interaction between NV centers, which is necessary to develop such hybrid quantum architectures. Here, we experimentally determine the magnon-mediated NV–NV coupling from the magnon-induced self-energy of NV centers. Our results are quantitatively consistent with a model in which the NV center is coupled to magnons by dipolar interactions. This work provides a versatile tool to characterize HQSs in the absence of strong coupling, informing future efforts to engineer entangled solid-state systems

The Complete Star Formation History of the Universe

The determination of the star-formation history of the Universe is a key goal of modern cosmology, as it is crucial to our understanding of how structure in the Universe forms and evolves. A picture has built up over recent years, piece-by-piece, by observing young stars in distant galaxies at different times in the past. These studies indicated that the stellar birthrate peaked some 8 billion years ago, and then declined by a factor of around ten to its present value. Here we report on a new study which obtains the complete star formation history by analysing the fossil record of the stellar populations of 96545 nearby galaxies. Broadly, our results support those derived from high-redshift galaxies elsewhere in the Universe. We find, however, that the peak of star formation was more recent - around 5 billion years ago. Our study also shows that the bigger the stellar mass of the galaxy, the earlier the stars were formed. This striking result indicates a very different formation history for high- and low-mass formation.Comment: Accepted by Nature. Press embargo until publishe

Global ecological predictors of the soil priming effect.

Identifying the global drivers of soil priming is essential to understanding C cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. We conducted a survey of soils across 86 globally-distributed locations, spanning a wide range of climates, biotic communities, and soil conditions, and evaluated the apparent soil priming effect using 13C-glucose labeling. Here we show that the magnitude of the positive apparent priming effect (increase in CO2 release through accelerated microbial biomass turnover) was negatively associated with SOC content and microbial respiration rates. Our statistical modeling suggests that apparent priming effects tend to be negative in more mesic sites associated with higher SOC contents. In contrast, a single-input of labile C causes positive apparent priming effects in more arid locations with low SOC contents. Our results provide solid evidence that SOC content plays a critical role in regulating apparent priming effects, with important implications for the improvement of C cycling models under global change scenarios

CDK-dependent nuclear localization of B-Cyclin Clb1 promotes FEAR activation during meiosis I in budding yeast

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) are master regulators of the cell cycle in eukaryotes. CDK activity is regulated by the presence, post-translational modification and spatial localization of its regulatory subunit cyclin. In budding yeast, the B-cyclin Clb1 is phosphorylated and localizes to the nucleus during meiosis I. However the functional significance of Clb1's phosphorylation and nuclear localization and their mutual dependency is unknown. In this paper, we demonstrate that meiosis-specific phosphorylation of Clb1 requires its import to the nucleus but not vice versa. While Clb1 phosphorylation is dependent on activity of both CDK and polo-like kinase Cdc5, its nuclear localization requires CDK but not Cdc5 activity. Furthermore we show that increased nuclear localization of Clb1 during meiosis enhances activation of FEAR (Cdc Fourteen Early Anaphase Release) pathway. We discuss the significance of our results in relation to regulation of exit from meiosis I