Keeping up With the Joneses: Institutional Changes Following the Adoption of a Merit Aid Policy

The increasing use by private colleges and universities of financial aid based on “merit”, as opposed to based solely on financial need has caused many to raise concerns that this type of aid will go mainly to higher income students crowding out aid to lower income students. However, some analysts suggest that by attracting more “almost full-paying” students through the use of merit aid, institutions will have more financial resources that they can use to increase their financial aid to low-income students and thus their enrollment. Results using data from the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges and other secondary data sources suggest that the increased use of merit aid is associated with a decrease in enrollment of low-income and minority students, particularly at more selective institutions. Additionally, this paper examines how institutions may be diverting financial resources to fund merit aid awards, such as through the increased use of part-time faculty, increases in tuition or fees, or smaller increases in faculty salaries. For middle and bottom tier colleges a merit aid policy is accompanied by an increase in tuition. Top tier colleges experience decreases in faculty salaries after the introduction of a merit aid policy, and bottom tier colleges see increases in salaries

Can’t Get Here from There: The Decision to Apply to a Selective Institution

Students from low-income families are greatly underrepresented at selective colleges and universities in the United States. In an attempt to increase applications from low-income students, some institutions have developed programs involving increased recruitment of and more attractive financial aid packages for students from low-income families. However, relatively little research has looked at the factors that are important in the college application decision-making process, and in particular how the importance of some factors may be different for low-income students. This paper uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort to analyze the factors influencing students\u27 college application decisions, with a focus on the decision to apply to a selective four-year institution. We analyze how the influence of distance from a student’s home during high school to a selective college or university and average tuition levels at selective institutions located nearby vary with the a student’s family income. Our results show that the further a student lives from a selective college, the less likely they are to apply to one, and this effect seems to be stronger than that of average tuition levels in the student’s state. Although the effect of distance does not differ for low-income students, they are most heavily impacted due to the geographic mismatch of low-income students and selective institutions. Personal, family (in particular, parent’s education) and high school characteristics also prove to be very influential when students are deciding whether or not to apply to a selective institution

Persistence of Women and Minorities in STEM Field Majors: Is it the School That Matters?

During college many students switch from their planned major to another, particularly so when that planned major was in a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) field. A worrying statistic shows that persistence in one of these majors is much lower for women and minorities, suggesting that this may be a leaky joint in the STEM pipeline for these two groups of students. This paper uses restricted-use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF) and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) to examine which factors contribute to persistence of all students in STEM field majors, and in particular the persistence of women and minorities. Although descriptive statistics show that a smaller percentage of women and minorities persist in a STEM field major as compared to male and nonminority students, regression analysis shows that differences in preparation and the educational experiences of these students explains much of the differences in persistence rates. Students at selective institutions with a large graduate to undergraduate student ratio and that devote a significant amount of spending to research have lower rates of persistence in STEM fields. A higher percentage of female STEM field graduate students positively impacts on the persistence of female students. However, there is little evidence that having a larger percentage of STEM field faculty members that are female increases the likelihood of persistence for women in STEM majors. These results suggest that the sorting of women and minorities into different types of undergraduate programs, as well as differences in their backgrounds have a significant impact on persistence rates

WISE Brown Dwarf Binaries: The Discovery of a T5+T5 and a T8.5+T9 System

The multiplicity properties of brown dwarfs are critical empirical constraints for formation theories, while multiples themselves provide unique opportunities to test evolutionary and atmospheric models and examine empirical trends. Studies using high-resolution imaging cannot only uncover faint companions, but they can also be used to determine dynamical masses through long-term monitoring of binary systems. We have begun a search for the coolest brown dwarfs using preliminary processing of data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and have confirmed many of the candidates as late-type T dwarfs. In order to search for companions to these objects, we are conducting observations using the Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics system on Keck II. Here we present the first results of that search, including a T5 binary with nearly equal mass components and a faint companion to a T8.5 dwarf with an estimated spectral type of T9

Integration of systems biology with organs-on-chips to humanize therapeutic development

"Mice are not little people" - a refrain becoming louder as the gaps between animal models and human disease become more apparent. At the same time, three emerging approaches are headed toward integration: powerful systems biology analysis of cell-cell and intracellular signaling networks in patient-derived samples; 3D tissue engineered models of human organ systems, often made from stem cells; and micro-fluidic and meso-fluidic devices that enable living systems to be sustained, perturbed and analyzed for weeks in culture. Integration of these rapidly moving fields has the potential to revolutionize development of therapeutics for complex, chronic diseases, including those that have weak genetic bases and substantial contributions from gene-environment interactions. Technical challenges in modeling complex diseases with "organs on chips" approaches include the need for relatively large tissue masses and organ-organ cross talk to capture systemic effects, such that current microfluidic formats often fail to capture the required scale and complexity for interconnected systems. These constraints drive development of new strategies for designing in vitro models, including perfusing organ models, as well as "mesofluidic" pumping and circulation in platforms connecting several organ systems, to achieve the appropriate physiological relevance. Keywords: organs-on-chips; 3D liver culture; perfusion; drug development; inflammation; organ crosstalk; tissue chip; intestineUnited States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Award W911NF-12-2- 0039))National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant UH3TR000496

Mental health hospital admissions:a teachable moment and window of opportunity to promote change in drug and alcohol misuse

Hospital admissions provide a “teachable moment”. Many patients admitted to mental health hospitals have co-existing substance misuse. As acute symptoms decline, a window of increased insight into factors that contributed to becoming unwell and admission may present. This study used this “teachable” opportunity to assess the acceptability of delivering a brief integrated motivational intervention (BIMI) to inpatients and the feasibility of delivery by inpatient staff. Qualitative interviews were completed with 21 inpatients experiencing co-occurring schizophrenia-related or bipolar disorder diagnoses and substance misuse who received the BIMI. Twelve staff members completed either individual interviews or a focus group. Four themes were identified from the qualitative interviews with participants; these were openness/readiness to talk about substance use, feeling valued, understanding substance use and helpful skills and processes; each with a number of subthemes. Participants appeared to find the intervention useful; although, felt they did not always have the “headspace”. One theme emerged from the staff data, the acceptability of the approach for inpatient ward staff, which had four subthemes; training in the intervention; delivering the intervention; joint working; and feasibility. Staff considered the targeted style of the BIMI useful. Delivery considerations included “timing” and competing ward duties. Hospital admission presents a natural window of opportunity for staff to start conversations with inpatients about substance misuse

Mutations associated with progression in follicular lymphoma predict inferior outcomes at diagnosis: Alliance A151303

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is clinically heterogeneous, with select patients tolerating extended watch-and-wait, whereas others require prompt treatment, suffer progression of disease within 24 months of treatment (POD24), and/or experience aggressive histologic transformation (t-FL). Because our understanding of the relationship between genetic alterations in FL and patient outcomes remains limited, we conducted a clinicogenomic analysis of 370 patients with FL or t-FL (from Cancer and Leukemia Group B/Alliance trials 50402/50701/50803, or real-world cohorts from Washington University School of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, or University of Miami). FL subsets by grade, stage, watch-and-wait, or POD24 status did not differ by mutation burden, whereas mutation burden was significantly higher in relapsed/refractory (rel/ref) FL and t-FL than in newly diagnosed (dx) FL. Nonetheless, mutation burden in dx FL was not associated with frontline progression-free survival (PFS). CREBBP was the only gene more commonly mutated in FL than in t-FL yet mutated CREBBP was associated with shorter frontline PFS in FL. Mutations in 20 genes were more common in rel/ref FL or t-FL than in dx FL, including 6 significantly mutated genes (SMGs): STAT6, TP53, IGLL5, B2M, SOCS1, and MYD88. We defined a mutations associated with progression (MAP) signature as ≥2 mutations in these 7 genes (6 rel/ref FL or t-FL SMGs plus CREBBP). Patients with dx FL possessing a MAP signature had shorter frontline PFS, revealing a 7-gene set offering insight into FL progression risk potentially more generalizable than the m7-Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (m7-FLIPI), which had modest prognostic value in our cohort. Future studies are warranted to validate the poor prognosis associated with a MAP signature in dx FL, potentially facilitating novel trials specifically in this high-risk subset of patients

A T8.5 Brown Dwarf Member of the Xi Ursae Majoris System

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has revealed a T8.5 brown dwarf (WISE J111838.70+312537.9) that exhibits common proper motion with a solar-neighborhood (8 pc) quadruple star system - Xi Ursae Majoris. The angular separation is 8.5 arc-min, and the projected physical separation is about 4000 AU. The sub-solar metallicity and low chromospheric activity of Xi UMa A argue that the system has an age of at least 2 Gyr. The infrared luminosity and color of the brown dwarf suggests the mass of this companion ranges between 14 and 38 Jupiter masses for system ages of 2 and 8 Gyr respectively.Comment: AJ in press, 12 pages LaTeX with 6 figures. More astrometric data and a laser guide star adaptive optics image adde

A microphysiological system model of therapy for liver micrometastases

Metastasis accounts for almost 90% of cancer-associated mortality. The effectiveness of cancer therapeutics is limited by the protective microenvironment of the metastatic niche and consequently these disseminated tumors remain incurable. Metastatic disease progression continues to be poorly understood due to the lack of appropriate model systems. To address this gap in understanding, we propose an all-human microphysiological system that facilitates the investigation of cancer behavior in the liver metastatic niche. This existing LiverChip is a 3D-system modeling the hepatic niche; it incorporates a full complement of human parenchymal and non-parenchymal cells and effectively recapitulates micrometastases. Moreover, this system allows real-time monitoring of micrometastasis and assessment of human-specific signaling. It is being utilized to further our understanding of the efficacy of chemotherapeutics by examining the activity of established and novel agents on micrometastases under conditions replicating diurnal variations in hormones, nutrients and mild inflammatory states using programmable microdispensers. These inputs affect the cues that govern tumor cell responses. Three critical signaling groups are targeted: the glucose/insulin responses, the stress hormone cortisol and the gut microbiome in relation to inflammatory cues. Currently, the system sustains functioning hepatocytes for a minimum of 15 days; confirmed by monitoring hepatic function (urea, α-1-antitrypsin, fibrinogen, and cytochrome P450) and injury (AST and ALT). Breast cancer cell lines effectively integrate into the hepatic niche without detectable disruption to tissue, and preliminary evidence suggests growth attenuation amongst a subpopulation of breast cancer cells. xMAP technology combined with systems biology modeling are also employed to evaluate cellular crosstalk and illustrate communication networks in the early microenvironment of micrometastases. This model is anticipated to identify new therapeutic strategies for metastasis by elucidating the paracrine effects between the hepatic and metastatic cells, while concurrently evaluating agent efficacy for metastasis, metabolism and tolerability.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 1UH2TR000496-01)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Microphysiological Systems Program (W911NF-12-2-0039

Organizational correlates of adolescent immunization: Findings of a state-wide study of primary care clinics in North Carolina

To analyze organization-level correlates of immunization coverage among adolescents served by high-volume primary care providers in North Carolina