Mirroring and managing in electronic mentoring: factors in interactivity between student-scientist pairs

Mentoring has long been recognized as an effective process to help students and young professionals develop new skills and attitudes. This study analyzed the content of message exchanges between five professional scientists and five minority college students who were paired as part of the E-mentoring program developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Interaction was assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the connection between interactivity patterns and perceived success of a mentor-student relationship. Several factors were identified as contributing to successful interaction, including structure of the exchange; balance of discussion topics; mirroring in content and message length; and limited overt "managing" by mentors

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Interactivity between protégés and scientists in an electronic mentoring program

Interactivity is defined by Henri (1992) as a three-step process involving communication of information, a response to this information, and a reply to that first response. It is a key dimension of computer-mediated communication, particularly in the one-on-one communication involved in an electronic mentoring program. This report analyzes the interactivity between pairs of corporate research scientists (mentors) and university biology students (protégés) during two consecutive implementations of an electronic mentoring program. The frequency and structure of the interactions within each pair were examined to provide context: 542 messages were posted among the 20 mentors and 20 protégés. These messages were formed into 5-10 threads per pair, with 3-4 messages per thread, indicating a high level of interactivity (there were more responses posted than independent messages). Mentor-protégé pairs rated as effective by both mentors and protégés' posted more messages overall, had well-structured threads, had protégés and mentor postings that were similar in topic coverage and message length, and had little overt "management" behavior by mentors. However, there appears to be no clear recipe for successful interaction. Not only are there a variety of factors at play in developing an online relationship in this context, but mentor-protégés pairs can falter at various stages in the process and in various way