A New Era of Higher Education-Community Partnerships: The Role and Impact of Colleges and Universities in Greater Boston Today

Urges stronger partnerships among colleges and universities and businesses, government, and civic groups to enhance the area's competitiveness. Makes recommendations for workforce development and retention, increased housing, and higher education access

Can the last glacial maximum constrain climate sensitivity?

We investigate the relationship between the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and climate sensitivity across the PMIP2 multi-model ensemble of GCMs, and find a correlation between tropical temperature and climate sensitivity which is statistically significant and physically plausible. We use this relationship, together with the LGM temperature reconstruction of Annan and Hargreaves [2012], to generate estimates for the equilibrium climate sensitivity. We estimate the equilibrium climate sensitivity to be about 2.5C with a high probability of being under 4C, though these results are subject to several important caveats. The forthcoming PMIP3/CMIP5 models were not considered in this analysis, as very few LGM simulations are currently available from these models. We propose that these models will provide a useful validation of the correlation presented here

Wages, Productivity, and the Dynamic Interaction of Businesses and Workers

This paper exploits a new matched universal and longitudinal employer-employee database at the US Census Bureau to empirically investigate the link between firms' choice of worker mix and the implied relationships between productivity and wages. We particularly focus on the decision making process of new firms and examine the role of both learning and selection. Our key empirical results are: (i) We find substantial and persistent differences in earnings per worker, output per worker, and worker mix across businesses within narrowly defined industries, which remain even after controlling for other observable characteristics. (ii) We find that new businesses exhibit even greater heterogeneity in earnings and productivity than do mature businesses, but that they adjust to the mature business pattern as they age. The adjustment process, while different for earnings and productivity, is consistent both with firms learning as they age and with the exit of mistake' prone firms. (iii) The dynamics of the reduction in productivity heterogeneity of new firms as they age is both complex and very different from the dynamic reduction of earnings heterogeneity.

Collective Gradient Sensing in Fish Schools

Throughout the animal kingdom, animals frequently benefit from living in groups. Models of collective behaviour show that simple local interactions are sufficient to generate group morphologies found in nature (swarms, flocks and mills). However, individuals also interact with the complex noisy environment in which they live. In this work, we experimentally investigate the group performance in navigating a noisy light gradient of two unrelated freshwater species: golden shiners (Notemigonuscrysoleucas) and rummy nose tetra (Hemigrammus bleheri). We find that tetras outperform shiners due to their innate individual ability to sense the environmental gradient. Using numerical simulations, we examine how group performance depends on the relative weight of social and environmental information. Our results highlight the importance of balancing of social and environmental information to promote optimal group morphologies and performance

Rural Primary Care and the Diagnostic Resolution of Abnormal Screening Mammograms: A Mixed Methods Study in Rural Missouri

Rural health clinics (RHCs) and federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) play a vital role in initiating cancer screening in underserved, rural settings. Yet there is limited information about their involvement in diagnostic tests when a mammogram result is abnormal. Diagnostic resolution of abnormal mammograms varies widely by geographic location and resources, and timely resolution is important for addressing rural-urban cancer disparities. This mixed methods study in a rural region of Missouri with high rates of cancer mortality examined the roles of primary care providers during follow-up after an abnormal mammogram, the processes they used, and the clinic specific variations among these roles and processes. Our data show substantial involvement of primary care during follow-up, with differences in resources and formalized and informal strategies between FQHCs and RHCs. Elucidating roles and processes is a necessary step before evidence based strategies, often developed in urban settings, can be adapted for rural settings