Mediated Grassroots Collective Action: Negotiating Barriers of Digital Activism

While so far social media have been largely constructed as the quintessential tools of collective action and praised for their potential to empower individuals to act as civic agents, this paper foregrounds the tension between expectations created by public discourse and citizens’ own involvement with digital activism. This study adds to an understanding of barriers by examining how they are experienced by participants in mobilizations at the individual level. Looking at how obstacles of digital activism are experienced by citizens reveals the processes through which the structures of digital mediation impose limits over those who depend on them for their organization. By examining three regional Canadian cases, this research discusses the significant barriers mobilizers experience and finds that many of the obstacles organizers face point to an enduring need for a wellorganized, tech-savvy, collaborative network as an organizing body to reflectively handle the challenges posed by digital grassroots civic mobilization

Western Educational Longitudinal Study (WELS) Baseline Survey of Transfers Entering Western in the Fall, 2012

The WELS Baseline Survey of Transfers Entering Western in the Fall, 2012 (Transfer Survey) is the companion survey to the Office of Survey Research’s (OSR) survey of incoming freshmen. Together, these surveys elicit information from students prior to the start of their Western academic careers and provide an initial contact in a longitudinal survey design that follows students through graduation and into their initial years as alumni. The Transfer Survey is designed with three purposes in mind: (1) to provide baseline observations of students prior to the Western experience that can be used to forecast and enhance student success; (2) to provide data that can assist university assessment and accreditation endeavors; and (3) to assess student needs based upon their self-reported characteristics, perceptions, and concerns. To accomplish these, the Transfer Survey integrates questions into seven sections: prior engagement and experiences, the college application process, course scheduling, academic skills and goals, major choice, expenses and employment, and demographics. In addition to these, various Western offices submitted questions that dealt with academic advising and the use of technology. The questions on the Transfer Survey are a mixture of open-ended, numerical and multiple choice types. This report lists all questions and reports basic descriptive statistics from equations which lend themselves to numerical analysis. Responses to open ended questions are available upon request. OSR initially conducted the Transfer Survey as part of the Transitions Program. Non-participants in Transitions and non-respondents received an e-mail invitation to participate in the survey shortly after the conclusion of Transitions. Reminder e-mails were sent to non-respondents at both their internal and external e-mail addresses. Non-respondents to these e-mails received phone call requests and final e-mails through the month of August. The survey was closed the weekend prior to the beginning of fall quarter. Of the 1,096 transfer students entering the fall of 2012, OSR received responses from 804, a response rate of 73.4%. As with any survey, readers should be concerned with sample selection bias; that is bias which arises because survey respondents are not a random selection of the population of survey recipients. While sample selection bias on the Transfer Survey is mitigated through proper survey techniques and a high response rate, its presence should be considered when evaluating data. Section A of this document compares respondents to all incoming transfer students. Relative to all transfers, respondents were more likely to be female (49.5% of respondents versus 48.0% of all transfers), had a slightly higher average admissions index (48.7 for respondents versus 48.5 for all transfers), and transferred slightly fewer credits to WWU (average of 74.8 for respondents and 75.3 for all transfers). On the other hand, respondents and non-respondents were nearly identical in terms of ethnicity, SAT, prior collegiate GPAs, median age, first generation status, and state of origin. In order to shorten the survey and increase respondent completion rates, OSR asked certain questions of a random group of students. In our report, these are noted by statements such as “asked of a random 50% of respondents.” In programming this random group, OSR made an error that prevented some of these questions from being answered. As a result, the number of responses to these questions is less than what would have been hoped for. The report notes the questions in which this happened. To familiarize readers with the content of the survey, here we make a few observations regarding the survey results. The median transfer student applied to only one school (Western), while about one-third applied to two or more schools. The most common school to apply to other than Western was the University of Washington. Among those students who had registered for classes prior to completing the survey, 29% expressed some level of dissatisfaction with their schedule, an amount five percentage points higher than the 2011 survey results and eight percentage points higher than 2010. The most common reasons given for the dissatisfaction were that their desired courses were full or were offered at times conflicting with other courses. The median transfer student expects to take 6 quarters to graduate from Western, about the same as in the 2010 and 2011 surveys. However, almost one-third of transfers expect to take 9 or more quarters to graduate, a number significantly higher than respondents in 2010 or 2011. Relative to 2011, the 2012 cohort of transfers are less certain about what their major will be (63% were certain relative to 75% in 2011), though 92% of transfers expect to declare a major sometime during their first year on campus. Among transfer students, Biology (10%), Psychology (9%) and English (7%) are the most frequently listed expected majors to declare. Over the coming year, transfers expect to work for pay 16.1 hours per week, an amount about one hour per week lower than the prior year. OSR is pleased to share its data with interested campus researchers. Clarifying Notes 1. Unless otherwise noted, percentages given are of the number responding to a question divided by the number asked that question. This denominator may contain fewer students than the 804 responding to the survey due to question branching, random selection of respondents for certain questions, and survey attrition. 2. In many cases percentages do not sum to one hundred because of rounding. 3. A blank space indicates no respondent chose that response option. A report of 0% indicates that the percent of responses rounded down to, but is not equal with, zero. 4. This report presents responses from all students completing any question regardless of whether the respondent completed the survey or not

Cooling SABER with a miniature pulse tube refrigerator

Utah State University/Space Dynamics Laboratory (USU/SDL), teaming with NASA Langley Research Center, is currently building the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry(SABER) instrument. Stringent mass and power constraints, together with a greater than two year mission life, led to the selection of a TRW miniature pulse tube refrigerator to cool SABER\u27s infrared detectors to the required temperature of 75 K. This paper provides an overview of the SABER thermal management plan and the challenges encountered in matching the refrigerator characteristics with instrument performance requirements under the broadly variant space environments expected for this mission. Innovative technologies were developed to keep heat loads within the limited cooling capacity of the miniature refrigerator, as well as mechanically isolating but thermally connecting the refrigerator cold block to the focal plane assembly (FPA). A passive radiator will maintain the SABER telescope at an average temperature of 230 K while a separate radiator will reject heat from the refrigerator and electronics at approximately 260 K. Significant breadboard tests of various components of the SABER instrument have taken place and the details of one of these will be discussed. The test included attaching a miniature mechanical refrigerator, borrowed from the Air Force, to the SABER FPA. This opportunity gave the SABER team a significant head start in learning about integrating and testing issues related with the TRW miniature pulse tube refrigerator. SABER is scheduled to be launched in January 2000 as the primary instrument of NASA\u27s TIMED (Thermosphere-lonosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) spacecraft. The TIMED program is being managed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University

Exit Survey of Undergraduate Students Completing Degrees in Summer 2011, Fall 2011, Winter 2012, and Spring 2012: Descriptive Statistics

The Exit Survey of Undergraduate Students Completing Degrees in Summer, 2011 through Spring of 2012 (Exit Survey) is the fourth survey of graduating students conducted at Western Washington University. This survey is designed to illuminate departmental-, college-, and university-level information on student satisfaction, barriers to success, experiences in upper division courses, and postgraduation plans. The exit survey also includes questions submitted to the Office of Survey Research (OSR) by the Division of Enrollment and Student Services, University Residences, and the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education. The Exit Survey consists of a mixture of open-ended, multiple-choice and numerical response questions. This report provides descriptive statistics of the multiple choice and numerical response questions. In previous exit surveys, OSR surveyed only spring graduates. This exit survey includes responses from students graduating in summer 2011, fall 2011 and winter 2012 quarters, in addition to spring 2012. This means that OSR contacted every student graduating between summer 2011 and spring 2012. Because of this, the sample size of all graduates contacted nearly doubled from 1,574 in the 2011 survey of spring quarter graduates to 2,964 graduates between summer, 2011 and spring, 2012. OSR is pleased to note that 2,150 students responded to the survey, representing 72.6% of all graduates, a response rate nearly 10% higher and covering a broader base than a year ago. OSR initiated the Exit Survey during the fifth week of each quarter with an e-mail sent by the chair of the recipient’s major department. This e-mail requested that respondents complete the Exit Survey using a link embedded within the e-mail. A follow-up e-mail from OSR was typically sent three days later to non-respondents and then the process was repeated to non-respondent’s off-campus e-mail address about one week later. OSR then sent a reminder to internal email addresses the following week, and again to external addresses the subsequent week. Non-respondents were then contacted with phone call requests for their participation. This process ended the day before each quarter’s graduation exercises. As with any voluntary survey, readers should be concerned about sample selection bias; that is bias which arises because survey respondents are not a random selection from the population of survey recipients. While sample selection bias for the Exit Survey is mitigated through proper survey techniques and a high response rate, its presence should be considered when evaluating the data. Section A of this document reports basic demographic and academic statistics of the 2012 spring graduates who responded to the survey and compares these to non-respondents. As found in the general literature on surveys, women were more likely to complete the survey (64.1% of respondents were women whereas 61% of graduates were women). Respondents appear to be slightly better students as measured by the admissions index (average of 58.7 for respondents versus 57.6 for all graduates) and WWU GPA (average of 3.20 for respondents versus 3.17). In other ways, respondents and non-respondents were remarkably similar. For instance, 23.2% of respondents were minorities while 21.6% of graduates were minorities. The average and median age of respondents and non-respondents were nearly identical and measures of first generation, transfer status, Washington residency, cumulative WWU credits earned, and credits taken during their final quarter on campus were very similar. Because graduates of summer, fall, and winter quarters are potentially different than students who graduate in the spring, the inclusion of these students may make comparisons with prior surveys that excluded these students difficult. Indeed, Section A.3 demonstrates that spring quarter graduates tend to have higher admissions indices than those graduating in other quarters (60.0 for spring quarter, 55.9 for summer quarter), have higher WWU GPAs, are less likely to be former running start students (especially relative to those who graduate in the fall), are more likely to be in a non-Bellingham program. Because of these differences, for comparison purposes OSR will provide statistics on 2012 spring quarter graduates to those who request them. The remainder of this report contains university-level summary statistics of each question asked (Section B). This data is then disaggregated by college (Section C) and disaggregated again by department (Sections D through J). Section K presents data from all questions by transfer/native-freshmen status. The appendices to this report present count data on two of the open ended questions: “In what ways has Western exceeded your expectations?” and “In what ways has Western fallen short of your expectations?” Hopefully, this disaggregation of data will aid colleges and departments in their self-assessment efforts. While OSR will leave it to the reader to decide what is informative or striking in this report, we undertake to point out some findings which the wider campus may find interesting. If provided the opportunity to start over, 84% of respondents would attend Western again; a number similar to those reported each year since OSR initiated exit surveys in 2009. Of those who would not attend Western again, the most frequently given reasons were that another school has a better program in the student’s field of study and the student felt like they settled for a second-rate experience when they should have tried harder to get into a better school. It is important to note that these responses varied considerably across colleges with relative few CBE or Woodring students claiming another school had a better program. When asked about the length of time it took to graduate relative to their expectations at the time of enrollment, 65% of students claimed it took “less time than expected” or “as long as expected.” However, among those who graduated in the spring quarter, this rises to 74%, a result similar to prior surveys. For students who took longer to graduate than expected, the most frequently cited reasons for the delays were “I could not get the classes I needed” and “I changed my major.” This survey represents the first time the response regarding unavailable classes was one of the top two reasons listed for delayed graduation. This is reinforced by only 63% of students feeling “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with course availability within their major. Again, these data vary considerably by college with Fairhaven students demonstrating highest average satisfaction with course availability and Huxley students demonstrating the least satisfaction. When asked about their upper division studies, 90% of students expressed a positive level of satisfaction with the knowledge and expertise of faculty and 85% were positively satisfied with the quality of instruction and the level of academic challenge. Sixty-five percent of students collaborated with a professor on a research or creative project outside, an increase of 7% over the prior year. 75% of these students indicated that this experience contributed “quite a bit” or “a lot” to their learning. The average student graduated with an educational debt of just over $14,000, an increase of$1,000 over the prior year. However, this average hides the fact that 40% of graduates completed their education with no debt whatsoever. The average debt of those who did borrow was $25,445, an amount almost$2000 greater than the prior year. Eighteen percent of students indicated that their student loans impacted their decision to pursue a particular career. Fifty-nine percent of students indicated that their principal activity upon graduation was full-time employment while 17% expect to work part-time, increases of 3% and 4% over the past year. Of those expecting to work, 45% were looking for, but unable to find a job at the time of survey completion, a number similar to the prior year. Thirteen percent of graduates hoped to attend a graduate program and of these, 36% had accepted an offer of admission. One feature of the Exit Survey is that respondents are tracked using their W number which provides OSR the opportunity to merge the student data with Western’s records and past OSR surveys. This ability profoundly opens the door to analysis of longitudinal issues that would otherwise be impossible. OSR is happy to share data or provide survey services upon request

AnFlo: Detecting anomalous sensitive information flows in Android apps

Smartphone apps usually have access to sensitive user data such as contacts, geo-location, and account credentials and they might share such data to external entities through the Internet or with other apps. Confidentiality of user data could be breached if there are anomalies in the way sensitive data is handled by an app which is vulnerable or malicious. Existing approaches that detect anomalous sensitive data flows have limitations in terms of accuracy because the definition of anomalous flows may differ for different apps with different functionalities; it is normal for "Health" apps to share heart rate information through the Internet but is anomalous for "Travel" apps. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to detect anomalous sensitive data flows in Android apps, with improved accuracy. To achieve this objective, we first group trusted apps according to the topics inferred from their functional descriptions. We then learn sensitive information flows with respect to each group of trusted apps. For a given app under analysis, anomalies are identified by comparing sensitive information flows in the app against those flows learned from trusted apps grouped under the same topic. In the evaluation, information flow is learned from 11,796 trusted apps. We then checked for anomalies in 596 new (benign) apps and identified 2 previously-unknown vulnerable apps related to anomalous flows. We also analyzed 18 malware apps and found anomalies in 6 of them

2012 Exit Survey of Graduate Students Completing Degrees Fall 2012, Winter 2012, Spring 2012, and Summer 2012: Descriptive Statistics

The 2012 Exit Survey of Graduate Students Completing Degrees continues the Office of Survey Research’s (OSR) survey of Graduate students first initiated in 2009. The current survey was administered at the end of each quarter to students completing their graduate degree. This report summarizes responses from students who graduated in Fall 2011, Winter 2012, Spring 2012, and Summer 2012. Of the 343 recipients of this degree during this time, OSR received valid responses from 247 (a response rate of 72.0%). With the help of the Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, this survey was designed to elicit information on program satisfaction, the frequency and scope of academic interaction on and off campus, barriers to success, and plans for the future. OSR uses a mixture of online and telephone survey methodologies and links survey results with Western’s student records thus expanding their usefulness to researchers and university decision makers. The survey was launched with an e-mail invitation to potential respondents about four weeks prior to the end of each quarter. Follow up e-mail reminders were sent approximately every four days for the subsequent two weeks. Phone call reminders were placed to all non-respondents. The survey was closed immediately prior to commencement exercises. As with any survey, readers should be concerned with sample selection bias; that is bias which arises because survey respondents are not a random selection of the population of survey recipients. While sample selection bias for Western’s graduate exit survey is mitigated through proper survey techniques and limited by a high response rate, its presence should continually be kept in mind when evaluating results. Section A of this document presents basic descriptive statistics that compare all graduates with those who responded to the survey. At the university level, these comparisons reveal that the average respondent is nearly identical to the average graduate. For instance, 10% of respondents are minorities compared to 11% of all graduates. Similar results occur for average age (30.7 years for respondents, 30.5 years for graduates), the number of credit hours attempted (69.3 for respondents and 68.8 for graduates), the average graduate GPA (3.76 for respondents and 3.75 for graduates), and the quarter of graduation. Section B of this report presents all questions asked. Section C presents these questions broken down by college and, for questions with enough responses to prevent identification of individuals, these are further broken down to the departmental level in Sections D through H. Because CBE has only a single graduate program, we do not break their responses down further than the college level. As CFPA had a small number of graduates, these responses were included in the overall WWU results but, in order to protect student anonymity, were not disaggregated into a college report. While we leave it to the reader to determine what is interesting in the survey, here we highlight some of the findings. The first set of questions is geared to understanding students’ background and general satisfaction with their Western graduate school experience. Immediately prior to beginning their Western graduate program 34% of students were in an undergraduate program, 37% were employed in a field related to their graduate program, and 25% were employed in a field different than their program. Results are very similar to prior surveys. Sixty-Eight percent of students claimed that, if given the opportunity, they would “probably” or “definitely” select Western again for graduate study, a decrease of six percent relative to the 2011 survey. Seventy-five percent would “probably” or “definitely” recommend Western to someone considering graduate school, a decrease of four percent relative to the prior year. Survey questions also relate to a student’s academic program. For instance, 86% of students reported that the level of academic challenge was “very” or “extremely” important to them and 77% of students claimed they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the level of academic challenge they encountered. Seventy-eight percent were satisfied or very satisfied with their program. The most commonly reported barrier to academic progress was family obligations. Almost two-thirds of respondents claimed the availability (or lack thereof ) of faculty had no impact on their progress towards their degree, a significant increase over the prior year. The average graduate accumulates just over $17,800 in debt from their graduate program, a 5.7$25,000. There is large variation in amounts of student debt incurred between colleges. Graduates of CHSS incur 50% more debt that those of CBE who, in turn, accumulate about 50% more debt than students in CST. One benefit of the graduate exit survey is that the data is tracked by a unique student identifier which allows OSR to divide the data by school or program. OSR hopes to share this data with administrators and individuals who hope to improve their programs

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions

The epidemiology of fighting in group-housed laboratory mice

Injurious home-cage aggression (fighting) in mice affects both animal welfare and scientific validity. It is arguably the most common potentially preventable morbidity in mouse facilities. Existing literature on mouse aggression almost exclusively examines territorial aggression induced by introducing a stimulus mouse into the home-cage of a singly housed mouse (i.e. the resident/intruder test). However, fighting occurring in mice living together in long-term groups under standard laboratory housing conditions has barely been studied. We performed a point-prevalence epidemiological survey of fighting at a research institution with an approximate 60,000 cage census. A subset of cages was sampled over the course of a year and factors potentially influencing home-cage fighting were recorded. Fighting was almost exclusively seen in group-housed male mice. Approximately 14% of group-housed male cages were observed with fighting animals in brief behavioral observations, but only 14% of those cages with fighting had skin injuries observable from cage-side. Thus simple cage-side checks may be missing the majority of fighting mice. Housing system (the combination of cage ventilation and bedding type), genetic background, time of year, cage location on the rack, and rack orientation in the room were significant risk factors predicting fighting. Of these predictors, only bedding type is easily manipulated to mitigate fighting. Cage ventilation and rack orientation often cannot be changed in modern vivaria, as they are baked in by cookie-cutter architectural approaches to facility design. This study emphasizes the need to invest in assessing the welfare costs of new housing and husbandry systems before implementing them