Ripple Effects of a Minority Leadership Training Program: Beyond its target

Chair: Michiko Iwasaki, Ph.D. ([email protected]) – Loyola University Maryland Discussant: Y. Barry Chung, Ph.D. ([email protected]) – Indiana University The APA Commission of Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology (2008) pointed out the underrepresentation of minorities in the field of psychology, particularly in leadership positions. In response to the shortage of minority leaders, the Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests (CNPAAEMI) initiated a Leadership Development Institute (LDI) in 2012. The major purpose of the LDI was to foster and nurture ongoing leadership development among early career ethnic minority psychologists. This symposium addresses the ripple effects of this leadership development program. Although the LDI aimed to foster leadership development among a cohort of six early-career ethnic minority professionals, the training program had ripple effects that extended well beyond its primary purpose. This symposium draws from a collaborative project – interviewing ethnic minority leaders in psychology – initiated by the LDI fellows that provided unanticipated learning opportunities for both the fellows and students assisting the project. The first presentation, led by a LDI fellow, will delineate the LDI mechanism and discusses the importance of connecting in-group and out-group members in minority leadership. The second presentation, led by racial minority graduate students, will emphasize the significance of empowerment and presence of role models when considering the pipeline of minority leadership development. The final presentation, led by White minority graduate and undergraduate students, will discuss the nature of White privilege at academic institutions as well as their own personal growth. This symposium targets the following sub-themes of the 2014 Counseling Psychology Conference: training context and domestic/international diversity. A past president of the Society of Counseling Psychology will be a discussant. This symposium offers valuable information regarding leadership training mechanisms in order to enhance cultural sensitivity among all individuals in the psychology field regardless of their color, sexual orientation, or professional/academic levels

Eigenvector localization as a tool to study small communities in online social networks

We present and discuss a mathematical procedure for identification of small "communities" or segments within large bipartite networks. The procedure is based on spectral analysis of the matrix encoding network structure. The principal tool here is localization of eigenvectors of the matrix, by means of which the relevant network segments become visible. We exemplified our approach by analyzing the data related to product reviewing on Amazon.com. We found several segments, a kind of hybrid communities of densely interlinked reviewers and products, which we were able to meaningfully interpret in terms of the type and thematic categorization of reviewed items. The method provides a complementary approach to other ways of community detection, typically aiming at identification of large network modules

Probing the Intermediate-Age Globular Clusters in NGC 5128 from Ultraviolet Observations

We explore the age distribution of the globular cluster (GC) system of the nearby elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 using ultraviolet (UV) photometry from Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) observations, with UV - optical colors used as the age indicator. Most GCs in NGC 5128 follow the general trends of GCs in M31 and Milky Way in UV - optical color-color diagram, which indicates that the majority of GCs in NGC 5128 are old similar to the age range of old GCs in M31 and Milky Way. A large fraction of spectroscopically identified intermediate-age GC (IAGC) candidates with ~ 3-8 Gyr are not detected in the FUV passband. Considering the nature of intermediate-age populations being faint in the far-UV (FUV) passband, we suggest that many of the spectroscopically identified IAGCs may be truly intermediate in age. This is in contrast to the case of M31 where a large fraction of spectroscopically suggested IAGCs are detected in FUV and therefore may not be genuine IAGCs but rather older GCs with developed blue horizontal branch stars. Our UV photometry strengthens the results previously suggesting the presence of GC and stellar subpopulation with intermediate age in NGC 5128. The existence of IAGCs strongly indicates the occurrence of at least one more major star formation episode after a starburst at high redshift.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for ApJ Lette

Molecular Analysis of Precursor Lesions in Familial Pancreatic Cancer

PMCID: PMC3553106This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Reconfigurable self-assembly through chiral control of interfacial tension

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature 481 (2012): 348–351, doi:10.1038/nature10769.From determining optical properties of simple molecular crystals to establishing preferred handedness in highly complex vertebrates, molecular chirality profoundly influences the structural, mechanical, and optical properties of both synthetic and biological matter at macroscopic lengthscales1,2. In soft materials such as amphiphilic lipids and liquid crystals, the competition between local chiral interactions and global constraints imposed by the geometry of the self-assembled structures leads to frustration and the assembly of unique materials3-6. An example of particular interest is smectic liquid crystals, where the 2D layered geometry cannot support twist, expelling chirality to the edges in a manner analogous to the expulsion of a magnetic field from superconductors7-10. Here, we demonstrate a previously unexplored consequence of this geometric frustration which leads to a new design principle for the assembly of chiral molecules. Using a model system of colloidal membranes11, we show that molecular chirality can control the interfacial tension, an important property of multi-component mixtures. This finding suggests an analogy between chiral twist which is expelled to the edge of 2D membranes, and amphiphilic surfactants which are expelled to oil-water interfaces12. Similar to surfactants, chiral control of interfacial tension drives the assembly of myriad polymorphic assemblages such as twisted ribbons with linear and circular topologies, starfish membranes, and double and triple helices. Tuning molecular chirality in situ enables dynamical control of line tension that powers polymorphic transitions between various chiral structures. These findings outline a general strategy for the assembly of reconfigurable chiral materials which can easily be moved, stretched, attached to one another, and transformed between multiple conformational states, thus enabling precise assembly and nano-sculpting of highly dynamical and designable materials with complex topologies.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF-MRSEC-0820492, NSF-DMR-0955776, NSF-MRI 0923057) and Petroleum Research Fund (ACS-PRF 50558-DNI7).2012-07-0

The 2L1S/1L2S Degeneracy for Two Microlensing Planet Candidates Discovered by the KMTNet Survey in 2017

We report two microlensing planet candidates discovered by the KMTNet survey in $2017$. However, both events have the 2L1S/1L2S degeneracy, which is an obstacle to claiming the discovery of the planets with certainty unless the degeneracy can be resolved. For KMT-2017-BLG-0962, the degeneracy cannot be resolved. If the 2L1S solution is correct, KMT-2017-BLG-0962 might be produced by a super Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a mid-M dwarf host star. For KMT-2017-BLG-1119, the light curve modeling favors the 2L1S solution but higher-resolution observations of the baseline object tend to support the 1L2S interpretation rather than the planetary interpretation. This degeneracy might be resolved by a future measurement of the lens-source relative proper motion. This study shows the problem of resolving 2L1S/1L2S degeneracy exists over a much wider range of conditions than those considered by the theoretical study of Gaudi (1998).Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables, accepted in A