Academic Service Learning and Society: From Individual to Institutional

This paper examines how Academic Service Learning (ASL) has gone from being an initiative by individual faculty to being institutionalized by universities as means to promote learning, pursue mission, and impact society. It outlines various uses of ASL by individual faculty and examines its progression into a university sponsored service-learning vessel of vision and mission. Its use acknowledges the interconnectedness of universities and society and emphasizes the need and obligation that universities feel, or should feel, in contributing to the betterment of the world we live in. In terms of being a university-sponsored initiative it highlights its use in the business curriculum of a large university in the northeast United States. This article recommends that ASL is an easily instituted method of teaching in many disciplines and is of benefit to multiple constituents both internally and externally to academic institutions

Network coherence in autism spectrum disorder : a multimodal neuroimaging study of functional connectivity and spectroscopy MRI

The underlying neuropathology and effects on neuronal activity in individuals with ASD are still being elucidated; as well as their impact on intervention and treatment outcomes. Frontal, temporal, parietal and cerebellar pathways exhibit disrupted structural and functional connectivity in individuals with ASD and we sought to investigate the potential clinical utility of altered network coherence. Beta-adrenergic antagonism improved information processing in a subset of individuals with ASD and improved performance was related to pharmacologicallymediated alterations in functional connectivity in the fronto-parietal control network. These findings support the potential utility of beta-adrenergic antagonists for some patients with ASD and the clinical significance of alterations in network coherence. There are also additional considerations for functional connectivity investigations in ASD. The cerebellum is interconnected via feedback loops to the neocortex and thus has some modulatory influences on cortical and subcortical neuronal circuits. The cerebellum is consistently implicated in the neuropathology of ASD but has been largely ignored in investigations of functional network coherence. Functional connectivity between the cerebellum and neocortex was anticorrelated in a subset of individuals with ASD. These individuals exhibited reduced glutamate levels in the cerebellum and diminished interpretive linguistic abilities, suggesting a potential mechanism underlying altered cerebrocerebellar connectivity in some individuals with ASD as well a cognitive outcome of alterations in cerebrocerebellar network coherence

The influence of magazines on men: normalizing and challenging young men’s prejudice with “lads’ mags”

Social psychologists have argued that popular UK and USA men’s magazines known as lads’ mags have normalized hostile sexism among young men. Three studies develop this argument. First, a survey of 423 young UK men found that ambivalent sexism predicted attitudes toward the consumption of lads’ mags, but not other forms of direct sexual consumption (paying for sex or patronizing strip clubs). Second, Study 2 (N = 81) found that young men low in sexism rated sexist jokes as less hostile towards women, but not as either funnier nor more ironic, when those jokes were presented within a lads’ mags context. These findings refute the idea that young men readily read lads’ mags’ sexism as ironic or ‘harmless fun.’ They show instead that placing sexist jokes in lads’ mags contexts makes them appear less hostile. The third study (N = 275) demonstrated that young men perceived lads’ mags as less legitimate after attempting to distinguish the contents of lads’ mags from rapists’ legitimations of their crimes. Implications for contemporary studies of masculinities and consumption are discussed

Stigmatization of 'gay-sounding' voices: The role of heterosexual, lesbian, and gay individuals' essentialist beliefs

Voice‐based sexual orientation (SO) judgements can prompt group‐based discrimination. However, the relationships between stigmatization and essentialist beliefs about vocal cues to SO have not been researched. Two studies examined heterosexuals’ and gay men’s and lesbian women’s essentialist beliefs about voice as a cue of SO to uncover essentialist beliefs’ role in the perpetration and experience of stigma. In Study 1 (N = 363), heterosexual participants believed voice was a better cue to SO for men than for women, and participants’ belief in the discreteness, immutability, and controllability of ‘gay‐sounding’ voices was correlated with higher avoidant discrimination towards gay‐sounding men. In Study 2 (N = 147), endorsement of essentialist beliefs about voice as a SO cue was associated with self‐perceptions of sounding gay amongst gay men and lesbians. Sexual minority participants, especially gay men, who believed that they sounded gay reported more anticipation of rejection and engaged in vigilance in response. Essentialist beliefs about vocal cues to SO are relevant to explaining both the perpetration of stigma by heterosexuals and the experience of stigma for lesbians and gay men

Antiphase dynamics in a multimode semiconductor laser with optical injection

A detailed experimental study of antiphase dynamics in a two-mode semiconductor laser with optical injection is presented. The device is a specially designed Fabry-Perot laser that supports two primary modes with a THz frequency spacing. Injection in one of the primary modes of the device leads to a rich variety of single and two-mode dynamical scenarios, which are reproduced with remarkable accuracy by a four dimensional rate equation model. Numerical bifurcation analysis reveals the importance of torus bifurcations in mediating transitions to antiphase dynamics and of saddle-node of limit cycle bifurcations in switching of the dynamics between single and two-mode regimes.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure

Two-photon-induced photoconductivity enhancement in semiconductor microcavities: a theoretical investigation

We describe a detailed theoretical investigation of two-photon absorption photoconductivity in semiconductor microcavities. We show that high enhancement (by a factor of >10, 000) of the nonlinear response can be obtained as a result of the microcavity effect. We discuss in detail the design and performance (dynamic range, speed) of such a device with the help of the example of an AlGaAs/GaAs microcavity operating at 900 nm. This device shows promise for low-intensity, fast autocorrelation and demultiplexing applications

All Optical Timing Extraction with Frequency Division using a Twin Section Laser Diode

All-optical timing extraction from a coded line signal with division of the extracted clock frequency is demonstrated using a single twin-section self-pulsating laser diode. Either the bit-rate clock or a submultiple of the bit-rate clock can be extracted, depending only on the dc biases applied to the self-pulsating laser diode. Timing extraction is carried out for the first time without optical injection locking of the self-pulsating laser diode by the optical data source

Stabilization of a passively mode-locked laser by continuous wave optical injection

We investigate numerically and experimentally the properties of a passively mode locked quantum dot semiconductor laser under the influence of cw optical injection. We demonstrate that the waveform instability at high pumping for these devices can be overcome when one mode of the device is locked to the injected master laser and additionally show spectral narrowing and tunability. Experimental and numerical analyses demonstrate that the stable locking boundaries are similar to these obtained for optical injection in CW lasers

Mid-infrared optical sensing using sub-wavelength gratings

Optical sensing has shown great potential for both quantitative and qualitative analysis of compounds. In particular sensors which are capable of detecting changes in refractive index at a surface as well as in bulk material have received much attention. Much of the recent research has focused on developing technologies that enable such sensors to be deployed in an integrated photonic device. In this work we demonstrate experimentally, using a sub-wavelength grating the detection of ethanol in aqueous solution by interrogating its large absorption band at 9.54 μm. Theoretical investigation of the operating principle of our grating sensor shows that in general, as the total field interacting with the analyte is increased, the corresponding absorption is also increased. We also theoretically demonstrate how sub-wavelength gratings can detect changes in the real part of the refractive index, similar to conventional refractive index (RI) sensors