New master of natural resources professional degree program at Utah State University

The Utah State University College of Natural Resources has recently instituted an inter-departmental, non-thesis Master of Natural Resources degree to meet the needs of students and practicing professionals with a career orientation in natural resource management as opposed to research

With great power comes great responsibility: Common errors in meta-analyses and meta-regressions in strength & conditioning research

Background and Objective: Meta-analysis and meta-regression are often highly cited and may influence practice. Unfortunately, statistical errors in meta-analyses are widespread and can lead to flawed conclusions. The purpose of this article was to review common statistical errors in meta-analyses and to document their frequency in highly cited meta-analyses from strength and conditioning research. Methods: We identified five errors in one highly cited meta-regression from strength and conditioning research: implausible outliers; overestimated effect sizes that arise from confusing standard deviation with standard error; failure to account for correlated observations; failure to account for within-study variance; and a focus on within-group rather than between-group results. We then quantified the frequency of these errors in 20 of the most highly cited meta-analyses in the field of strength and conditioning research from the past 20 years. Results: We found that 85 % of the 20 most highly cited meta-analyses in strength and conditioning research contained statistical errors. Almost half (45 %) contained at least one effect size that was mistakenly calculated using standard error rather than standard deviation. In several cases, this resulted in obviously wrong effect sizes, for example, effect sizes of 11 or 14 standard deviations. Additionally, 45 % failed to account for correlated observations despite including numerous effect sizes from the same study and often from the same group within the same study. Conclusions: Statistical errors in meta-analysis and meta-regression are common in strength and conditioning research. We highlight five errors that authors, editors, and readers should check for when preparing or critically reviewing meta-analyses

IT Program Curriculum Recommendations Based on a Survey of Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Entry-Level IT Workers

This paper provides an updated view of the importance of various skills and traits for entry-level IT workers as perceived by the IT industry based on a web-based survey administered to IT managers nationwide. The survey consists of 47 skills and traits that include personal and interpersonal skills, as well as technical skills. This study finds that the top 12 skills and traits are personal and interpersonal skills with honesty and integrity ranked most highly. The top 5 technical skills are operating systems, security, hardware, networking, and database, which have been part of the IT core for many years. The noticeable change in technical skills is the low ranking of programming. Based on the analysis of the survey, several ideas for curriculum recommendations for IT-related programs are provided

Communication Subsystems for Emerging Wireless Technologies

The paper describes a multi-disciplinary design of modern communication systems. The design starts with the analysis of a system in order to define requirements on its individual components. The design exploits proper models of communication channels to adapt the systems to expected transmission conditions. Input filtering of signals both in the frequency domain and in the spatial domain is ensured by a properly designed antenna. Further signal processing (amplification and further filtering) is done by electronics circuits. Finally, signal processing techniques are applied to yield information about current properties of frequency spectrum and to distribute the transmission over free subcarrier channels

Terahertz and infrared spectroscopic evidence of phonon-paramagnon coupling in hexagonal piezomagnetic YMnO3

Terahertz and far-infrared electric and magnetic responses of hexagonal piezomagnetic YMnO3 single crystals are investigated. Antiferromagnetic resonance is observed in the spectra of magnetic permeability mu_a [H(omega) oriented within the hexagonal plane] below the Neel temperature T_N. This excitation softens from 41 to 32 cm-1 on heating and finally disappears above T_N. An additional weak and heavily-damped excitation is seen in the spectra of complex dielectric permittivity epsilon_c within the same frequency range. This excitation contributes to the dielectric spectra in both antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases. Its oscillator strength significantly increases on heating towards room temperature thus providing evidence of piezomagnetic or higher-order couplings to polar phonons. Other heavily-damped dielectric excitations are detected near 100 cm-1 in the paramagnetic phase in both epsilon_c and epsilon_a spectra and they exhibit similar temperature behavior. These excitations appearing in the frequency range of magnon branches well below polar phonons could remind electromagnons; however, their temperature dependence is quite different. We have used density functional theory for calculating phonon dispersion branches in the whole Brillouin zone. A detailed analysis of these results and of previously published magnon dispersion branches brought us to the conclusion that the observed absorption bands stem from phonon-phonon and phonon- paramagnon differential absorption processes. The latter is enabled by a strong short-range in-plane spin correlations in the paramagnetic phase.Comment: subm. to PR

Positive solutions of Schr\"odinger equations and fine regularity of boundary points

Given a Lipschitz domain $\Omega$ in ${\mathbb R} ^N$ and a nonnegative potential $V$ in $\Omega$ such that $V(x)\, d(x,\partial \Omega)^2$ is bounded in $\Omega$ we study the fine regularity of boundary points with respect to the Schr\"odinger operator $L_V:= \Delta -V$ in $\Omega$. Using potential theoretic methods, several conditions equivalent to the fine regularity of $z \in \partial \Omega$ are established. The main result is a simple (explicit if $\Omega$ is smooth) necessary and sufficient condition involving the size of $V$ for $z$ to be finely regular. An essential intermediate result consists in a majorization of $\int_A | {\frac {u} {d(.,\partial \Omega)}} | ^2\, dx$ for $u$ positive harmonic in $\Omega$ and $A \subset \Omega$. Conditions for almost everywhere regularity in a subset $A$ of $\partial \Omega$ are also given as well as an extension of the main results to a notion of fine ${\mathcal L}_1 | {\mathcal L}_0$-regularity, if ${\mathcal L}_j={\mathcal L}-V_j$, $V_0,\, V_1$ being two potentials, with $V_0 \leq V_1$ and ${\mathcal L}$ a second order elliptic operator.Comment: version 1. 23 pages version 3. 28 pages. Mainly a typo in Theorem 1.1 is correcte