Program Design and Student Outcomes in Graduate Education

Doctoral programs in the humanities and related social sciences are characterized by high attrition and long time-to-degree. In response to these long-standing problems, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs, and in turn reduce attrition and shorten time-to-degree. Over a 10-year period starting in 1991, the Foundation provided a total of $80 million to 51 departments at 10 major research universities. This paper estimates the impact of the GEI on attrition rates and time-to-degree. Our analysis is based on a competing-risk duration model and student-level data spanning the start of the GEI, including data on students at a set of control departments. We estimate that, on average, the GEI had modest impacts on student outcomes in the expected directions: reducing attrition rates, reducing time-to-degree, and increasing completion rates. The overall impacts of the GEI appear to have been driven in part by reductions in cohort size, increases in financial aid, and increases in student quality

Blink rate and blink timing in children with ADHD and the influence of stimulant medication

Spontaneous eye blink rate is modulated by task demands and internal state, and is demonstrated to reflect central dopamine activity. Also, spontaneous eye blinks are strategically timed around salient stimuli. This study investigates whether children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show reduced blink rates, blink modulation and blink timing, and whether this is influenced by stimulant medication. The electrooculogram was measured in 18 typically developing children, 16 children with ADHD off methylphenidate (Mph), and 16 children with ADHD on Mph during a rest period and during performance of a 60-min visual selective attention task. Blink rate and timing was extracted from the electrooculogram. No evidence was found for aberrant blink rate or blink modulation in children with ADHD off Mph. All groups increased blink rates from rest to task, and no group differences were found in blink rate during rest and task, or in the modulation of blink rate from rest to task. Time-on task resulted in a similar increase in blink rates in all three groups. Stimulant medication appeared not to influence blink rate and blink modulation, except that in the ADHD off Mph group the blink rate was enhanced only under conditions with performance feedback. All groups inhibited blinks before stimulus presentation and strategically timed their blinks after the stimulus. Children with ADHD off Mph showed reduced blink inhibition before the stimulus; however, given the low incidence (\1 % of the trials) and long latency this is not likely to impair their visual intake

Reduced emotional empathy in adults with subclinical ADHD:Evidence from the empathy and systemizing quotient

Studies in children with ADHD suggest impairments in social cognitive functions, whereas studies in adults with ADHD are scarce and inconclusive. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between ADHD traits and self-reported social cognitive style in a sample of adults from the general population. For this purpose, a community sample of 685 adults filled out online self-report questionnaires about ADHD symptoms (ADHD Rating Scale, ARS), social cognitive functioning and friendships. The Empathy Quotient (EQ) with the subscales Cognitive Empathy (CE), Emotional Empathy (EE) and Social Skills (SS), and the Systemizing Quotient (SQ) were included for measuring social cognitive style and the Friendship Questionnaire (FQ) for the quality of friendships. Participants who met the DSM-5 criteria on the ARS ('subclinical ADHD'; n = 56) were compared regarding their social cognitive functioning scores with a control group (n = 56) that was matched for age, sex and student status. With small effect sizes, the subclinical ADHD group showed reduced EE scores on the EQ and a more male social cognitive profile. This result was not influenced by sex or ADHD subtype. This study points to a relationship between traits of ADHD and the emotional aspect of empathy, whereas more complex aspects of empathy were unrelated. These findings should be corroborated in clinical patients with ADHD, employing neuropsychological tests rather than self-report questionnaires

The Empathy and Systemizing Quotient:The Psychometric Properties of the Dutch Version and a Review of the Cross-Cultural Stability

The 'Empathy Quotient' (EQ) and 'Systemizing Quotient' (SQ) are used worldwide to measure people's empathizing and systemizing cognitive styles. This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Dutch EQ and SQ in healthy participants (n = 685), and high functioning males with autism spectrum disorder (n = 42). Factor analysis provided support for three subscales of the abridged 28-item EQ: Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy and Social Skills. Overall, the Dutch EQ and SQ appeared reliable and valid tools to assess empathizing and systemizing cognitive style in healthy adults and high functioning adults with autism. The literature showed good cross-cultural stability of the SQ and EQ in Western countries, but in Asian countries EQ is less stable and less sensitive to sex differences

Polarization independent InGaAs/lnP chopped quantum well interferometric space switch at 1.55 mum

A Mach-Zehnder Interferometric (MZI) space switch using a novel CRE grown InGaAs/InP chopped quantum well (CQW) phase section is presented. Each CQW consists of three 3IA. InGaAs strained quantum wells separated by 12A InP barriers. This structure shows a shift of the absorption edge as high as 80nm at lOV reverse bias. The heavy hole and light hole subbands cross at approximately 0.6% tensile strain. Using these chopped quantum wells, we realized MZ/'s with low attenuation and a V2.l product as low as 3.6 V2.cm. Finally, we realized full polarisation independent switching using 0.75% tensile strained CQW's

FabSim3: An automation toolkit for verified simulations using high performance computing

A common feature of computational modelling and simulation research is the need to perform many tasks in complex sequences to achieve a usable result. This will typically involve tasks such as preparing input data, pre-processing, running simulations on a local or remote machine, post-processing, and performing coupling communications, validations and/or optimisations. Tasks like these can involve manual steps which are time and effort intensive, especially when it involves the management of large ensemble runs. Additionally, human errors become more likely and numerous as the research work becomes more complex, increasing the risk of damaging the credibility of simulation results. Automation tools can help ensure the credibility of simulation results by reducing the manual time and effort required to perform these research tasks, by making more rigorous procedures tractable, and by reducing the probability of human error due to a reduced number of manual actions. In addition, efficiency gained through automation can help researchers to perform more research within the budget and effort constraints imposed by their projects. This paper presents the main software release of FabSim3, and explains how our automation toolkit can improve and simplify a range of tasks for researchers and application developers. FabSim3 helps to prepare, submit, execute, retrieve, and analyze simulation workflows. By providing a suitable level of abstraction, FabSim3 reduces the complexity of setting up and managing a large-scale simulation scenario, while still providing transparent access to the underlying layers for effective debugging. The tool also facilitates job submission and management (including staging and curation of files and environments) for a range of different supercomputing environments. Although FabSim3 itself is application-agnostic, it supports a provably extensible plugin system where users automate simulation and analysis workflows for their own application domains. To highlight this, we briefly describe a selection of these plugins and we demonstrate the efficiency of the toolkit in handling large ensemble workflows.EPSRC under grant agreement EP/W007711/1, as well as by the VECMA and HiDALGO projects, which have received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement nos 800925 and 824115. In addition, FabFlee was supported by the ITFLOWS project and FabCovid19 by the STAMINA project, both of which have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 882986 and No 883441 respectivel