Legacies in Black and White: The Racial Composition of the Legacy Pool

Selective universities regularly employ policies that favor children of alumni (known as legacies') in undergraduate admissions. Since alumni from selective colleges and universities have, historically, been disproportionately white, admissions policies that favor legacies have disproportionately benefited white students. For this reason, legacy policies lead to additional costs in terms of reductions in racial diversity. As larger numbers of minority students graduate from colleges and universities and have children, however, the potential pool of legacy applicants will change markedly in racial composition. This analysis begins with a review of the history and objectives of the preference for children of alumni in undergraduate admissions. We then consider the specific case of the University of Virginia and employ demographic techniques to predict the racial composition of the pool of potential legacy applicants to the University. Significant changes in the racial composition of classes that graduated from the University of Virginia from the late 1960s through the 1970s foreshadow similar changes in the characteristics of alumni children maturing through the next two decades.

A Comparison Of Shovel Testing And Surface Collection As Archaeological Site Discovery Methods: A Case Study Using Mississippian Farmsteads

Shovel testing and controlled surface collection are commethods of archaeological site investigation that are generally approved by state and federal agencies as well as the academic community for cultural resource management projects and research. While both techniques are equally utilized, little research has been conducted on how equivalent these techniques are in terms of their efficacy for finding site. This thesis seeks to find a way to compare these techniques by creating mathematical models to describe how well the methods behave when tested on known datasets generated from Mississippian period farmsteads. The predicted performance can then be compared to real world results of investigations. A discussion then follows on the implications for treating the investigation techniques as equivalent and recommendations are made to adjust for survey efficacy bias in future research designs

Microexpression detection in undergraduate students

Microexpressions, facial expressions lasting for less than half a second, are a common but unnoticed occurrence. The accuracy of microexpression detection, and college major choice, have both been linked with personality. This led to the hypothesis that different majors should have different levels of accuracy in detection. A convenience sample of 121 undergraduate students, of different majors, was given a short survey about microexpression detection. 10 frontal headshots, portraying examples of 7 different microexpressions, were shown on a screen. Participants were asked to identO, the expressions by choosing from a provided list on the survey. There was no statistical significance in microexpression detection among majors, [F(3,118) = 0.92, p = 0.90], or between gender, t(118) = 1.23, p = 0.22. However, there was a statistically significant correlation between gender with the identification of contempt and disgust. While our results conflict with research that has already been done on emotion/microexpression detection, it is possible that another study with a larger sample could achieve results similar to existing research

Thanks, but no thanks: women's avoidance of help-seeking in the context of a dependency-related stereotype

The stereotype that women are dependent on men is a commonly verbalized, potentially damaging aspect of benevolent sexism. We investigated how women may use behavioral disconfirmation of the personal applicability of the stereotype to negotiate such sexism. In an experiment (N = 86), we manipulated female college students’ awareness that women may be stereotyped by men as dependent. We then placed participants in a situation where they needed help. Women made aware of the dependency stereotype (compared to controls who were not) were less willing to seek help. They also displayed a stronger negative correlation between help-seeking and post help-seeking affect - such that the more help they sought, the worse they felt. We discuss the relevance of these findings for research concerning women’s help-seeking and their management of sexist stereotyping in everyday interaction. We also consider the implications of our results for those working in domains such as healthcare, teaching and counseling, where interaction with individuals in need and requiring help is common

Neprilysin inhibition: A brief review of past pharmacological strategies for heart failure treatment and future directions

Heart failure (HF) is a manifestation of aberrant vascular responses and remains a public health concern with a worldwide prevalence of around 23 million and a 5-year mortality numerically equivalent to many cancers. Over the last two decades, mortality from HF reached a plateau with current pharmaceutical agents and mechanical cardiac support. In the last several years, various “novel” pharmaceutical agents have been tested in clinical trials and ultimately met with disappointment, showing only incremental benefit in the treatment of HF. Designing a HF drug with enhanced efficacy over existing agents seemed like a Sisyphean task. Yet again, pharmaceutical chemists have demonstrated their prowess in lateral thinking by developing a vasoactive agent which is a co-crystallized compound of valsartan and sacubitril in a one-to-one molar ratio; the former molecule belongs to a family of agents that are the current standard of care for HF and the latter molecule is a novel agent which inhibits neprilysin — a neutral endopeptidase found in human plasma which alters neurohumoral responses. In July of 2015, a drug which is a combination of valsartan and sacubitril was formally licensed by the United States Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of HF. This review describes the evolution of HF medications focusing on rational drug design with the first HF medication, the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist. We then discuss the biochemical and physiological properties of sacubitril/valsartan which likely lead to its dramatic ability to ameliorate HF mortality

Extracellular free water and glutathione in first-episode psychosis-a multimodal investigation of an inflammatory model for psychosis.

Evidence has been accumulating for an immune-based component to the etiology of psychotic disorders. Advancements in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled estimation of extracellular free water (FW), a putative biomarker of neuroinflammation. Furthermore, inflammatory processes may be associated with altered brain levels of metabolites, such as glutathione (GSH). Consequently, we sought to test the hypotheses that FW is increased and associated with decreased GSH in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (SZ) compared with healthy controls (HC). SZ (n = 36) and HC (n = 40) subjects underwent a multi-shell diffusion MRI scan on a Siemens 3T scanner. 1H-MR spectroscopy data were acquired using a GSH-optimized MEGA-PRESS editing sequence and GSH/creatine ratios were calculated for DLPFC (SZ: n = 33, HC: n = 37) and visual cortex (SZ: n = 29, HC: n = 35) voxels. Symptoms and functioning were measured using the SANS, SAPS, BPRS, and GSF/GRF. SZ demonstrated significantly elevated FW in whole-brain gray (p = .001) but not white matter (p = .060). There was no significant difference between groups in GSH in either voxel. However, there was a significant negative correlation between DLPFC GSH and both whole-brain and DLPFC-specific gray matter FW in SZ (r = -.48 and -.47, respectively; both p < .05), while this relationship was nonsignificant in HC and in both groups in the visual cortex. These data illustrate an important relationship between a metabolite known to be important for immune function-GSH-and the diffusion extracellular FW measure, which provides additional support for these measures as neuroinflammatory biomarkers that could potentially provide tractable treatment targets to guide pharmacological intervention

Biomass burning and pollution aerosol over North America: Organic components and their influence on spectral optical properties and humidification response

Thermal analysis of aerosol size distributions provided size resolved volatility up to temperatures of 400°C during extensive flights over North America (NA) for the INTEX/ICARTT experiment in summer 2004. Biomass burning and pollution plumes identified from trace gas measurements were evaluated for their aerosol physiochemical and optical signatures. Measurements of soluble ionic mass and refractory black carbon (BC) mass, inferred from light absorption, were combined with volatility to identify organic carbon at 400°C (VolatileOC) and the residual or refractory organic carbon, RefractoryOC. This approach characterized distinct constituent mass fractions present in biomass burning and pollution plumes every 5–10 min. Biomass burning, pollution and dust aerosol could be stratified by their combined spectral scattering and absorption properties. The “nonplume” regional aerosol exhibited properties dominated by pollution characteristics near the surface and biomass burning aloft. VolatileOC included most water-soluble organic carbon. RefractoryOC dominated enhanced shortwave absorption in plumes from Alaskan and Canadian forest fires. The mass absorption efficiency of this RefractoryOC was about 0.63 m2 g−1 at 470 nm and 0.09 m2 g−1 at 530 nm. Concurrent measurements of the humidity dependence of scattering, γ, revealed the OC component to be only weakly hygroscopic resulting in a general decrease in γ with increasing OC mass fractions. Under ambient humidity conditions, the systematic relations between physiochemical properties and γ lead to a well-constrained dependency on the absorption per unit dry mass for these plume types that may be used to challenge remotely sensed and modeled optical properties