Graduate student supervision policies and procedures: A case study of issues and factors affecting graduate study

This study was designed to identify salient issues in supervision across disciplines at a Canadian research university with a history of decentralized administration of graduate programs. Three sets of issues guided the inquiry: (a) the definition of supervision, (b) policies and procedures for supervision, and (c) the resources available for supervision. Although most departments reported having some form of policies and procedures, they did not tend to be explicitly stated or communicated. According to program directors, the two most important factors in the graduate supervision process were the supervisor's knowledge of the research field and his or her availability. There was considerable variability across faculties in the existence of policies and in the importance attached to different factors. Resources also varied greatly across disciplines. One conclusion of the study is that since the process of supervision is complex and occurs within a disciplinary context, much of the effort involved in enhancing the quality of graduate student supervision must be made at the department level. However, a comprehensive definition of graduate student supervision is needed to ensure that, where possible, there is common ground for graduate student supervision policy and practice.Cette étude a été conçue de manière à identifier des questions importantes de supervision dans diverses disciplines, dans une université de recherche canadienne ayant des antécédents en matière de décentralisation administrative de programmes d'études supérieures. Trois ensembles de questions ont guidé l'étude: (a) la définition du terme supervision, (b) les politiques et procédures régissant la supervision, et (c) les ressources affectées à la supervision. Si la plupart des départements ont dit disposer de quelconques politiques et procédures, plus rares étaient ceux qui les avaient formulées ou communiquées explicitement. La connaissance du domaine de recherche et la disponibilité du superviseur étaient les deux facteurs les plus importants du processus de supervision. On a constaté des différences considérables entre les facultés pour ce qui a trait à l'existence de politiques et à l'importance attachée à divers facteurs. Le niveau de ressources variait en outre grandement d'une discipline à une autre. L'étude conclut notamment que, le processus de supervision étant complexe et s'inscrivant dans le contexte d'une discipline, une grande partie des efforts déployés afin de relever la qualité de la supervision des étudiants aux niveaux supérieurs doit se faire dans les départements. Toutefois, il y aurait lieu de formuler une définition globale de ce qu 'on entend par supervision des étudiants aux niveaux supérieurs afin de s'assurer que la politique et la pratique en matière de supervision des étudiants à ces niveaux reposent dans la mesure du possible sur une base commune

Meeting Report: Hazard Assessment for Nanoparticles—Report from an Interdisciplinary Workshop

In this report we present the findings from a nanotoxicology workshop held 6–7 April 2006 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Over 2 days, 26 scientists from government, academia, industry, and nonprofit organizations addressed two specific questions: what information is needed to understand the human health impact of engineered nanoparticles and how is this information best obtained? To assess hazards of nanoparticles in the near-term, most participants noted the need to use existing in vivo toxicologic tests because of their greater familiarity and interpretability. For all types of toxicology tests, the best measures of nanoparticle dose need to be determined. Most participants agreed that a standard set of nanoparticles should be validated by laboratories worldwide and made available for benchmarking tests of other newly created nanoparticles. The group concluded that a battery of tests should be developed to uncover particularly hazardous properties. Given the large number of diverse materials, most participants favored a tiered approach. Over the long term, research aimed at developing a mechanistic understanding of the numerous characteristics that influence nanoparticle toxicity was deemed essential. Predicting the potential toxicity of emerging nanoparticles will require hypothesis-driven research that elucidates how physicochemical parameters influence toxic effects on biological systems. Research needs should be determined in the context of the current availability of testing methods for nanoscale particles. Finally, the group identified general policy and strategic opportunities to accelerate the development and implementation of testing protocols and ensure that the information generated is translated effectively for all stakeholders

Integrated HIV Testing, Malaria, and Diarrhea Prevention Campaign in Kenya: Modeled Health Impact and Cost-Effectiveness

Efficiently delivered interventions to reduce HIV, malaria, and diarrhea are essential to accelerating global health efforts. A 2008 community integrated prevention campaign in Western Province, Kenya, reached 47,000 individuals over 7 days, providing HIV testing and counseling, water filters, insecticide-treated bed nets, condoms, and for HIV-infected individuals cotrimoxazole prophylaxis and referral for ongoing care. We modeled the potential cost-effectiveness of a scaled-up integrated prevention campaign.We estimated averted deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) based on published data on baseline mortality and morbidity and on the protective effect of interventions, including antiretroviral therapy. We incorporate a previously estimated scaled-up campaign cost. We used published costs of medical care to estimate savings from averted illness (for all three diseases) and the added costs of initiating treatment earlier in the course of HIV disease.Per 1000 participants, projected reductions in cases of diarrhea, malaria, and HIV infection avert an estimated 16.3 deaths, 359 DALYs and $85,113 in medical care costs. Earlier care for HIV-infected persons adds an estimated 82 DALYs averted (to a total of 442), at a cost of$37,097 (reducing total averted costs to $48,015). Accounting for the estimated campaign cost of$32,000, the campaign saves an estimated $16,015 per 1000 participants. In multivariate sensitivity analyses, 83$20.A mass, rapidly implemented campaign for HIV testing, safe water, and malaria control appears economically attractive

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Weighing Distant Clusters with the Most Ancient Light

We use gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to measure the mass of the most distant blindly selected sample of galaxy clusters on which a lensing measurement has been performed to date. In CMB data from the the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Planck satellite, we detect the stacked lensing effect from 677 near-infrared-selected galaxy clusters from the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), which have a mean redshift of ⟨z⟩ = 1.08. There are currently no representative optical weak lensing measurements of clusters that match the distance and average mass of this sample. We detect the lensing signal with a significance of 4.2σ. We model the signal with a halo model framework to find the mean mass of the population from which these clusters are drawn. Assuming that the clusters follow Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) density profiles, we infer a mean mass of ⟨M_(500c)⟩ = (1.7±0.4)×10¹⁴M⊙. We consider systematic uncertainties from cluster redshift errors, centering errors, and the shape of the NFW profile. These are all smaller than 30% of our reported uncertainty. This work highlights the potential of CMB lensing to enable cosmological constraints from the abundance of distant clusters populating ever larger volumes of the observable universe, beyond the capabilities of optical weak lensing measurements

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Modeling the Gas Thermodynamics in BOSS CMASS galaxies from Kinematic and Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Measurements

The thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ, kSZ) probe the thermodynamic properties of the circumgalactic and intracluster medium (CGM and ICM) of galaxies, groups, and clusters, since they are proportional, respectively, to the integrated electron pressure and momentum along the line-of-sight. We present constraints on the gas thermodynamics of CMASS galaxies in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) using new measurements of the kSZ and tSZ signals obtained in a companion paper. Combining kSZ and tSZ measurements, we measure within our model the amplitude of energy injection $\epsilon M_\star c^2$, where $M_\star$ is the stellar mass, to be $\epsilon=(40\pm9)\times10^{-6}$, and the amplitude of the non-thermal pressure profile to be $\alpha_{\rm Nth}<0.2$ (2$\sigma$), indicating that less than 20% of the total pressure within the virial radius is due to a non-thermal component. We estimate the effects of including baryons in the modeling of weak-lensing galaxy cross-correlation measurements using the best fit density profile from the kSZ measurement. Our estimate reduces the difference between the original theoretical model and the weak-lensing galaxy cross-correlation measurements in arXiv:1611.08606 by half, but does not fully reconcile it. Comparing the kSZ and tSZ measurements to cosmological simulations, we find that they under predict the CGM pressure and to a lesser extent the CGM density at larger radii. This suggests that the energy injected via feedback models in the simulations that we compared against does not sufficiently heat the gas at these radii. We do not find significant disagreement at smaller radii. These measurements provide novel tests of current and future simulations. This work demonstrates the power of joint, high signal-to-noise kSZ and tSZ observations, upon which future cross-correlation studies will improve.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review D. Editors' Suggestion. New Fig. 1-2, Tab.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Combined kinematic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements from BOSS CMASS and LOWZ halos

The scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters leaves detectable imprints on high resolution CMB maps: the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ respectively). We use combined microwave maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) DR5 and Planck in combination with the CMASS and LOWZ galaxy catalogs from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS DR10 and DR12), to study the gas associated with these galaxy groups. Using individual reconstructed velocities, we perform a stacking analysis and reject the no-kSZ hypothesis at 6.5$\sigma$, the highest significance to date. This directly translates into a measurement of the electron number density profile, and thus of the gas density profile. Despite the limited signal to noise, the measurement shows at high significance that the gas density profile is more extended than the dark matter density profile, for any reasonable baryon abundance (formally $>90\sigma$ for the cosmic baryon abundance). We simultaneously measure the tSZ signal, i.e. the electron thermal pressure profile of the same CMASS objects, and reject the no-tSZ hypothesis at 10$\sigma$. We combine tSZ and kSZ measurements to estimate the electron temperature to 20% precision in several aperture bins, and find it comparable to the virial temperature. In a companion paper, we analyze these measurements to constrain the gas thermodynamics and the properties of feedback inside galaxy groups. We present the corresponding LOWZ measurements in this paper, ruling out a null kSZ (tSZ) signal at 2.9 (13.9)$\sigma$, and leave their interpretation to future work. Our stacking software ThumbStack is publicly available at https://github.com/EmmanuelSchaan/ThumbStack and directly applicable to future Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 data.Comment: Accepted in Physical Review D, Editors' Suggestio

The Confidence Database

Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for the characterization of a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common, easy-to-use format that can be easily imported and analysed using multiple software packages. Each dataset is accompanied by an explanation regarding the nature of the collected data. At the time of publication, the Confidence Database (which is available at https://osf.io/s46pr/) contained 145 datasets with data from more than 8,700 participants and almost 4 million trials. The database will remain open for new submissions indefinitely and is expected to continue to grow. Here we show the usefulness of this large collection of datasets in four different analyses that provide precise estimations of several foundational confidence-related effects

Coronavirus Gene 7 Counteracts Host Defenses and Modulates Virus Virulence

Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) genome contains three accessory genes: 3a, 3b and 7. Gene 7 is only present in members of coronavirus genus a1, and encodes a hydrophobic protein of 78 aa. To study gene 7 function, a recombinant TGEV virus lacking gene 7 was engineered (rTGEV-Δ7). Both the mutant and the parental (rTGEV-wt) viruses showed the same growth and viral RNA accumulation kinetics in tissue cultures. Nevertheless, cells infected with rTGEV-Δ7 virus showed an increased cytopathic effect caused by an enhanced apoptosis mediated by caspase activation. Macromolecular synthesis analysis showed that rTGEV-Δ7 virus infection led to host translational shut-off and increased cellular RNA degradation compared with rTGEV-wt infection. An increase of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2α) phosphorylation and an enhanced nuclease, most likely RNase L, activity were observed in rTGEV-Δ7 virus infected cells. These results suggested that the removal of gene 7 promoted an intensified dsRNA-activated host antiviral response. In protein 7 a conserved sequence motif that potentially mediates binding to protein phosphatase 1 catalytic subunit (PP1c), a key regulator of the cell antiviral defenses, was identified. We postulated that TGEV protein 7 may counteract host antiviral response by its association with PP1c. In fact, pull-down assays demonstrated the interaction between TGEV protein 7, but not a protein 7 mutant lacking PP1c binding motif, with PP1. Moreover, the interaction between protein 7 and PP1 was required, during the infection, for eIF2α dephosphorylation and inhibition of cell RNA degradation. Inoculation of newborn piglets with rTGEV-Δ7 and rTGEV-wt viruses showed that rTGEV-Δ7 virus presented accelerated growth kinetics and pathology compared with the parental virus. Overall, the results indicated that gene 7 counteracted host cell defenses, and modified TGEV persistence increasing TGEV survival. Therefore, the acquisition of gene 7 by the TGEV genome most likely has provided a selective advantage to the virus