Becoming a Scientist: Using First-Year Undergraduate Science Courses to Promote Identification with Science Disciplines

In this qualitative study, we examined how two professors (a physicist and biochemist) of first year college students perceived their students’ development of identification in biochemistry or physics and how they actively supported this development. The professors described students who entered college with different levels of domain identification and different expectations for their college science experience depending upon whether they were in a biochemistry or physics major. Although neither professor was familiar with research related to the concept of domain identification, their beliefs about their students’ identification and academic support strategies generally aligned with the Osborne and Jones (2011) model of academic identification

Public Opinion and the President\u27s Use of Executive Orders: Aggregate- and Individual-Level Analyses Across Time

Presidential approval ratings are a political resource that presidents and their advisors hope to influence through strategic action in order to achieve their policy goals (McAvoy 2008, 284). Through 1999, scholarly literature had largely ignored the president\u27s use of unilateral powers. Since Moe and Howell (1999a, 1999b), however, the literature on the unilateral presidency has expanded rapidly. Despite the rapid growth of literature examining the unilateral presidency, and 45 years of presidential approval ratings literature, literature examining the link between the president\u27s use of unilateral powers and subsequent presidential approval ratings is virtually nonexistent. Existing research has not statistically examined what effect, if any, the president\u27s issuing executive orders has on subsequent job approval ratings. This thesis seeks to address that research gap. By modeling aggregate and individual-level presidential approval ratings, using fixed-effect models, OLS regression, and binary logistic regression, this thesis finds evidence indicating the president\u27s issuing of executive orders has a negative impact on the subsequent presidential job approval ratings that individuals report. If an executive order is salient to the public, presidents receive lower presidential approval ratings from persons of all political parties; however, if the executive order is non-salient then presidents only receive lower presidential approval ratings from members of their own political party. Members of the opposition party report higher presidential approval ratings when the president issued non-salient executive orders. Thus, this thesis concludes that the president\u27s issuing of executive orders has significant effects on subsequent presidential job approval ratings, and future research should be conducted to explore this relationship further

Fostering Students\u27 Identification with Mathematics and Science

Book Summary: Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning is the first volume to assemble findings on the role of interest in mathematics and science learning. As the contributors illuminate across the volume’s 22 chapters, interest provides a critical bridge between cognition and affect in learning and development. This volume will be useful to educators, researchers, and policy makers, especially those whose focus is mathematics, science, and technology education. Chapter Summary: The primary purpose of this chapter is to explore the process whereby students transition from a short-term, situational interest in mathematics or science to a more enduring individual interest in which they incorporate performance in mathematics or science into their self-definitions (e.g. I am a scientist ). We do so by examining the research related to domain identification, which is the extent to which students define themselves through a role or performance in a domain, such as mathematics or science. Understanding the process of domain identification is important because it can contribute to an understanding of how individual interest develops over time. The means through which students become highly domain identified involves many factors that are internal (e.g. goals and beliefs) and external (e.g. family environment and educational experiences) to them. Students who are more identified with an academic domain tend to demonstrate increased motivation, effort, perseverance (when faced with failure), and achievement. Importantly, students with lower domain identification tend to demonstrate less motivation, lower effort, and fewer desirable outcomes. Student outcomes in a domain can reciprocally influence domain identification by reinforcing or altering it. This feedback loop can help explain incremental changes in motivation, self-concept, individual interest, and, ultimately, important outcomes such as achievement, choice of college major, and career path. This dynamic model presents possible mechanisms for influencing student outcomes. Furthermore, assessing students\u27 domain identification can allow practitioners to intervene to prevent undesirable outcomes. Finally, we present research on how mathematics and science instructors could use the principles of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation to enhance students\u27 domain identification, by (a) empowering students, (b) demonstrating the usefulness of the domain, (c) supporting students\u27 success, (d) triggering students\u27 interests, and (e) fostering a sense of caring and belonging. We conclude that by using the MUSIC model, instructors can intentionally design educational experiences to help students progress from a situational interest to one that is more enduring and integrated into their identities

Experimental Investigation into the Aerodynamic Ground Effect of a Tailless Chevron-shaped UCAV

This experimental study adequately identified the ground effect region of an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). The AFIT 3\u27 x 3\u27 low-speed wind tunnel and a ground plane were used to simulate the forces and moments on a UCAV model in ground effect. The chevron planform used in this study was originally tested for stability and control and the following extends the already existing database to include ground effects. The ground plane was a flat plate mounted with cylindrical legs. To expand the capabilities of the AFIT 3\u27 x 3\u27 low-speed wind tunnel, hot-wire measurements and flow visualization revealed an adequate testing environment for the use of the ground plane. Examination of the flow through the test section indicated a significant difference in test section transducer velocity and the hot-wire measured velocity. This disparity along with the velocity difference due to the ground plane were accounted for as wind tunnel blockage. In addition, the flow visualization revealed the horseshoe vortices that built up on the front two mounted legs of the ground plane. The ground effect region for the chevron UCAV was characterized by an increase in lift, drag, and a decrease in lift-to-drag ratio. These trends were also noted in previous studies of similar aspect ratio and wing sweep

Response of beef cattle selected for tolerance to tall fescue toxicosis

Tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus (Schreb.) Dumort.) infected with the endophytic fungus, Epichlooجا coenophiala [(Morgan-Jones & W. Gams) C.W. Bacon & Schardl, comb. nov.] produces ergot alkaloids that result in a livestock disorder known as tall fescue toxicosis. Tall fescue cultivars have been developed that do not contain the toxic endophyte. These novel endophyte cultivars have been used to alleviate tall fescue toxicosis. Recently, genetically testing cattle using the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene has been identified as a way to determine tolerance to tall fescue toxicosis. Results will be presented from three research projects involving cow-calf pairs on pasture, heifers in the GrowSafe feeding system, and rumen fluid in a continuous culture. Research on cow-calf pairs grazing toxic Kentucky 31 tall fescue pasture show that cow pre-calving weight and calf 205-d adjusted weaning weight were greater for animals with tolerant genotype. Evaluation of heifers in the GrowSafe feeding system showed that there was no difference in dry matter intake as a percent of body weight between the tolerant heifers fed Kentucky 31 and the tolerant heifers fed BarOptima. Research in the continuous culture showed that there were very few responses in fermenter characteristics due to genotype when toxic or novel endophyte-infected tall fescue was fed. These results indicate that providing animals with novel endophyte-infected tall fescue is the best way to prevent tall fescue toxicosis. However, the DRD2 gene shows promise as another possible way to mitigate the effects of tall fescue toxicosis in cattle.Includes bibliographical reference

Persuasion, Promotion, Perception: Untangling Archivists\u27 Understanding of Advocacy and Outreach

More and more, archivists find themselves having to be advocates for their own institutions, fellow archival institutions, and themselves. This is an especially complicated turn of events because of discrepancy among archivists as to what specifically constitutes archival advocacy. Over the past year, as a response to this, the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists has been conducting surveys on archival advocacy in the profession, designed to gauge the advocacy environment as it exists among today’s archivists and archival institutions. The ongoing goal of the project has been to create a dialogue about what advocacy is, how it is defined, and the ways in which advocacy (as well as outreach activities) form part of our professional activities. In doing so, the Roundtable hopes to understand how it can best engage and educate the profession about shaping future archival-related policies

Machine Learning Methods To Identify Hidden Phenotypes In The Electronic Health Record

The widespread adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) means an unprecedented amount of patient treatment and outcome data is available to researchers. Research is a tertiary priority in the EHR, where the priorities are patient care and billing. Because of this, the data is not standardized or formatted in a manner easily adapted to machine learning approaches. Data may be missing for a large variety of reasons ranging from individual input styles to differences in clinical decision making, for example, which lab tests to issue. Few patients are annotated at a research quality, limiting sample size and presenting a moving gold standard. Patient progression over time is key to understanding many diseases but many machine learning algorithms require a snapshot, at a single time point, to create a usable vector form. In this dissertation, we develop new machine learning methods and computational workflows to extract hidden phenotypes from the Electronic Health Record (EHR). In Part 1, we use a semi-supervised deep learning approach to compensate for the low number of research quality labels present in the EHR. In Part 2, we examine and provide recommendations for characterizing and managing the large amount of missing data inherent to EHR data. In Part 3, we present an adversarial approach to generate synthetic data that closely resembles the original data while protecting subject privacy. We also introduce a workflow to enable reproducible research even when data cannot be shared. In Part 4, we introduce a novel strategy to first extract sequential data from the EHR and then demonstrate the ability to model these sequences with deep learning

The Effects of Mind Mapping Activities on Students\u27 Motivation

We examined how students‟ motivation differed when they participated in three different types of mind mapping activities: one activity that was completed individually outside of class time, one that was completed individually in class with the instructor available for help, and one that was completed in class with other students and the instructor available for help. Using the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation (Jones, 2009) as a framework, we implemented a concurrent mixed methods design using identical samples whereby the quantitative component was dominant over the qualitative component. Participants included 40 undergraduate students enrolled in an educational psychology course at a U.S. university. After each of the mind mapping activities, study participants completed questionnaires that included open- and closed-ended items. Although the three activities had similar effects on students‟ motivation-related beliefs, some differences were documented in their preferences of mind mapping activities. Instructional implications are provided