Mapping the Growth and Demographics of Managerial and Professional Staff in Higher Education

This chapter presents a descriptive analysis of the growth of managerial and professional staff from Fall 1993 to Fall 2011 across institution types and sectors, and a detailed snapshot of the demographic composition of these staff in Fall 2016. Our results indicate tremendous growth in the population of non‐faculty staff over time, and reveal key patterns in staff employment by gender and race/ethnicity.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154664/1/he20352.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154664/2/he20352_am.pd

The neonatal sepsis is diminished by cervical vagus nerve stimulation and tracked non-invasively by ECG: a preliminary report in the piglet model

In adults, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) reduces inflammation. In neonates, the effects of VNS are not known. An electrocardiogram (ECG)-derived heart rate variability (HRV) index reliably tracks the inflammatory response induced by low-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in near-term sheep fetuses. We evaluated the VNS effect on the systemic inflammatory response induced by a high dose of LPS in neonatal piglets to mimic late-onset neonatal sepsis. Next, we tested if our HRV inflammatory index tracks inflammation in piglets. Following anesthesia, electrodes were attached to the left vagal nerve; ECG and blood pressure (BP) were recorded throughout the experiment. Following baseline, the piglets were administered LPS as 2mg/kg IV bolus. In the VNS treated piglet, the vagus nerve was stimulated for 10 minutes prior to and 10 min after the injection of LPS. In both groups, every 15 min post LPS, the arterial blood sample was drawn for blood gas, metabolites, and inflammatory cytokines. At the end of the experiment, the piglets were euthanized. BP and HRV measures were calculated. The piglets developed a potent inflammatory response to the LPS injection with TNF-alpha, IL-1beta, IL-6 and IL-8 peaking between 45 and 90 min post-injection. VNS diminished the LPS-induced systemic inflammatory response varying across the measured cytokines from two to ten-fold. The HRV index tracked accurately the cytokines' temporal profile. This novel model allows manipulating and tracking neonatal sepsis: The HRV inflammatory index 1) applies across species pre- and postnatally and 2) performs well at different degrees of sepsis (i.e., nanogram and milligram doses of LPS); 3) the present VNS paradigm effectively suppresses LPS-induced inflammation, even at high doses of LPS. The potential of early postnatal VNS to counteract sepsis and of HRV monitoring to early detect and track it deserve further study

Paper Session II-B - High Efficiency Hyperspectral Imager for the Terrestrial and Atmospheric Multispectral Explorer

The Terrestrial and Atmospheric MultiSpectral Explorer1 (TAMSE) is a Space Shuttle Small Self- Contained Payload “Get-Away Special” (GAS) project, led by Principal Investigator Rolando Branly, and including remote sensing and microgravity experiments from Florida Space Institute member schools. One of these experiments is the High-Efficiency HyperSpectral Imager (HEHSI). The HEHSI project will provide a low-cost spaceflight demonstration of a novel type of imaging spectrometer with exceptional light gathering ability. HEHSI is also a demonstration of what can be achieved in space with a modest budget: $15K from the Florida Space Grant Consortium (FSGC) and$ 10K from the Florida Space Institute (FSI). Education and workforce development are important goals of the project, with all of the mechanical, electronics, and software design and testing being carried out by an interdisciplinary team of FSI students. These six students, who are about to graduate with bachelor’s degrees in engineering (three computer, one electrical, and two aerospace), have worked on the project and received course credit for two semesters. The matching funds from FSI support the involvement of the mentor for the HEHSI experiment, Glenn Sellar, who is also responsible for the optical design. Environmental testing (thermal and vibration) will be carried out by the students at KSC’s Physical Testing Laboratory, under a cooperative Space Act Agreement. As this instrument is the first remote sensing payload constructed in Florida (to the authors knowledge), it also serves as a seed for diversification of the space industry in Florida. An overview of the project is presented in this paper, including the science objectives, and the optical, mechanical, electrical, and software designs

Neurotoxin-mediated potent activation of the axon degeneration regulator SARM1

Axon loss underlies symptom onset and progression in many neurodegenerative disorders. Axon degeneration in injury and disease is promoted by activation of the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-consuming enzyme SARM1. Here, we report a novel activator of SARM1, a metabolite of the pesticide and neurotoxin vacor. Removal of SARM1 completely rescues mouse neurons from vacor-induced neuron and axon death in vitro and in vivo. We present the crystal structure the Drosophila SARM1 regulatory domain complexed with this activator, the vacor metabolite VMN, which as the most potent activator yet know is likely to support drug development for human SARM1 and NMNAT2 disorders. This study indicates the mechanism of neurotoxicity and pesticide action by vacor, raises important questions about other pyridines in wider use today, provides important new tools for drug discovery, and demonstrates that removing SARM1 can robustly block programmed axon death induced by toxicity as well as genetic mutation

Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study

In the context of workforce scheduling, there are many scenarios in which personnel must carry out tasks at different locations hence requiring some form of transportation. Examples of these type of scenarios include nurses visiting patients at home, technicians carrying out repairs at customers’ locations and security guards performing rounds at different premises, etc. We refer to these scenarios as workforce scheduling and routing problems (WSRP) as they usually involve the scheduling of personnel combined with some form of routing in order to ensure that employees arrive on time at the locations where tasks need to be performed. The first part of this paper presents a survey which attempts to identify the common features of WSRP scenarios and the solution methods applied when tackling these problems. The second part of the paper presents a study on the computational difficulty of solving these type of problems. For this, five data sets are gathered from the literature and some adaptations are made in order to incorporate the key features that our survey identifies as commonly arising in WSRP scenarios. The computational study provides an insight into the structure of the adapted test instances, an insight into the effect that problem features have when solving the instances using mathematical programming, and some benchmark computation times using the Gurobi solver running on a standard personal computer

English compound and non-compound processing in bilingual and multilingual speakers: effects of dominance and sequential multilingualism

This article reports on a study investigating the relative influence of the first and dominant language on L2 and L3 morpho-lexical processing. A lexical decision task compared the responses to English NV-er compounds (e.g., taxi driver) and non-compounds provided by a group of native speakers and three groups of learners at various levels of English proficiency: L1 Spanish-L2 English sequential bilinguals and two groups of early Spanish-Basque bilinguals with English as their L3. Crucially, the two trilingual groups differed in their first and dominant language (i.e., L1 Spanish-L2 Basque vs. L1 Basque-L2 Spanish). Our materials exploit an (a)symmetry between these languages: while Basque and English pattern together in the basic structure of (productive) NV-er compounds, Spanish presents a construction that differs in directionality as well as inflection of the verbal element (V[3SG] + N). Results show between and within group differences in accuracy and response times that may be ascribable to two factors besides proficiency: the number of languages spoken by a given participant and their dominant language. An examination of response bias reveals an influence of the participants' first and dominant language on the processing of NV-er compounds. Our data suggest that morphological information in the nonnative lexicon may extend beyond morphemic structure and that, similarly to bilingualism, there are costs to sequential multilingualism in lexical retrieval

Emergent Properties of Patch Shapes Affect Edge Permeability to Animals

Animal travel between habitat patches affects populations, communities and ecosystems. There are three levels of organization of edge properties, and each of these can affect animals. At the lowest level are the different habitats on each side of an edge, then there is the edge itself, and finally, at the highest level of organization, is the geometry or structure of the edge. This study used computer simulations to (1) find out whether effects of edge shapes on animal behavior can arise as emergent properties solely due to reactions to edges in general, without the animals reacting to the shapes of the edges, and to (2) generate predictions to allow field and experimental studies to test mechanisms of edge shape response. Individual animals were modeled traveling inside a habitat patch that had different kinds of edge shapes (convex, concave and straight). When animals responded edges of patches, this created an emergent property of responding to the shape of the edge. The response was mostly to absolute width of the shapes, and not the narrowness of them. When animals were attracted to edges, then they tended to collect in convexities and disperse from concavities, and the opposite happened when animals avoided edges. Most of the responses occurred within a distance of 40% of the perceptual range from the tip of the shapes. Predictions were produced for directionality at various locations and combinations of treatments, to be used for testing edge behavior mechanisms. These results suggest that edge shapes tend to either concentrate or disperse animals, simply because the animals are either attracted to or avoid edges, with an effect as great as 3 times the normal density. Thus edge shape could affect processes like pollination, seed predation and dispersal and predator abundance