Basic Course Leadership: Operational Transparency as a Best Practice for Adjunct Faculty Management

Research suggests adjunct faculty receive little institutional support and feel a sense of disconnection from their campuses. Nearly half of all faculty at American colleges and universities are classified as adjunct faculty in recent National Center for Educational Statistics reporting. Thus, academic departments should consider strategies to better include and engage adjunct faculty on their campuses. This article explores transparency as a best practice for the administration of communication basic courses at a mid-sized, regional university. Further, adjunct faculty members’ perceptions of the basic course administrators’ transparency will be discussed

Bilingualism Is Associated with a Delayed Onset of Dementia but Not with a Lower Risk of Developing it: a Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses.

Some studies have linked bilingualism with a later onset of dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Not all studies have observed such relationships, however. Differences in study outcomes may be due to methodological limitations and the presence of confounding factors within studies such as immigration status and level of education. We conducted the first systematic review with meta-analysis combining cross-sectional studies to explore if bilingualism might delay symptom onset and diagnosis of dementia, AD, and MCI. Primary outcomes included the age of symptom onset, the age at diagnosis of MCI or dementia, and the risk of developing MCI or dementia. A secondary outcome included the degree of disease severity at dementia diagnosis. There was no difference in the age of MCI diagnosis between monolinguals and bilinguals [mean difference: 3.2; 95% confidence intervals (CI): -3.4, 9.7]. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals reported experiencing AD symptoms 4.7 years (95% CI: 3.3, 6.1) later. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals were diagnosed with dementia 3.3 years (95% CI: 1.7, 4.9) later. Here, 95% prediction intervals showed a large dispersion of effect sizes (-1.9 to 8.5). We investigated this dispersion with a subgroup meta-analysis comparing studies that had recruited participants with dementia to studies that had recruited participants with AD on the age of dementia and AD diagnosis between mono- and bilinguals. Results showed that bilinguals vs. monolinguals were 1.9 years (95% CI: -0.9, 4.7) and 4.2 (95% CI: 2.0, 6.4) older than monolinguals at the time of dementia and AD diagnosis, respectively. The mean difference between the two subgroups was not significant. There was no significant risk reduction (odds ratio: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.68-1.16) in developing dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Also, there was no significant difference (Hedges' g = 0.05; 95% CI: -0.13, 0.24) in disease severity at dementia diagnosis between bilinguals and monolinguals, despite bilinguals being significantly older. The majority of studies had adjusted for level of education suggesting that education might not have played a role in the observed delay in dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Although findings indicated that bilingualism was on average related to a delayed onset of dementia, the magnitude of this relationship varied across different settings. This variation may be due to unexplained heterogeneity and different sources of bias in the included studies. Registration: PROSPERO CRD42015019100

Cabbage pest management

"In Missouri, about 600 acres of cabbage and 200 acres of broccoli, cauliflower, and collards are planted each year. The majority of this acreage is in commercial production in the St. Louis and Bootheel areas. Small truck farms and home gardens produce cabbage and related cole crops throughout the state."--First page.James R. Davis, K.D. Biever, W.S. Craig, and M.L. Fairchild (Department of Entomology)New 8/85/6

Psychopathic traits influence amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during facial emotion processing

There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity – i.e., changes in connectivity during emotion processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction methods, we investigated the impact of CD and psychopathic traits on amygdala activity and effective connectivity in 46 male youths with CD and 25 typically-developing controls when processing emotional faces. All participants were aged 16-21 years. Relative to controls, youths with CD showed reduced amygdala activity when processing angry or sad faces relative to neutral faces, but the groups did not significantly differ in amygdala-related effective connectivity. In contrast, psychopathic traits were negatively correlated with amygdala-ventral anterior cingulate cortex connectivity for angry versus neutral faces, but were unrelated to amygdala responses to angry or sad faces. These findings suggest that CD and psychopathic traits have differential effects on amygdala activation and functional interactions between limbic regions during facial emotion processing

The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey IV: Data Reduction Procedures for Surface Brightness Fluctuation Measurements with the Advanced Camera for Surveys

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Virgo Cluster Survey is a large program to image 100 early-type Virgo galaxies using the F475W and F850LP bandpasses of the Wide Field Channel of the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The scientific goals of this survey include an exploration of the three-dimensional structure of the Virgo Cluster and a critical examination of the usefulness of the globular cluster luminosity function as a distance indicator. Both of these issues require accurate distances for the full sample of 100 program galaxies. In this paper, we describe our data reduction procedures and examine the feasibility of accurate distance measurements using the method of surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) applied to the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey F850LP imaging. The ACS exhibits significant geometrical distortions due to its off-axis location in the HST focal plane; correcting for these distortions by resampling the pixel values onto an undistorted frame results in pixel correlations that depend on the nature of the interpolation kernel used for the resampling. This poses a major challenge for the SBF technique, which normally assumes a flat power spectrum for the noise. We investigate a number of different interpolation kernels and show through an analysis of simulated galaxy images having realistic noise properties that it is possible, depending on the kernel, to measure SBF distances using distortion-corrected ACS images without introducing significant additional error from the resampling. We conclude by showing examples of real image power spectra from our survey.Comment: ApJS, in press, complete version of the paper at the link: http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~pcote/acs/publications.htm

Modeling Micro-Porous Surfaces for Secondary Electron Emission Control to Suppress Multipactor

This work seeks to understand how the topography of a surface can be engineered to control secondary electron emission (SEE) for multipactor suppression. Two unique, semi-empirical models for the secondary electron yield (SEY) of a micro-porous surface are derived and compared. The first model is based on a two-dimensional (2D) pore geometry. The second model is based on a three-dimensional (3D) pore geometry. The SEY of both models is shown to depend on two categories of surface parameters: chemistry and topography. An important parameter in these models is the probability of electron emissions to escape the surface pores. This probability is shown by both models to depend exclusively on the aspect ratio of the pore (the ratio of the pore height to the pore diameter). The increased accuracy of the 3D model (compared to the 2D model) results in lower electron escape probabilities with the greatest reductions occurring for aspect ratios less than two. In order to validate these models, a variety of micro-porous gold surfaces were designed and fabricated using photolithography and electroplating processes. The use of an additive metal-deposition process (instead of the more commonly used subtractive metal-etch process) provided geometrically ideal pores which were necessary to accurately assess the 2D and 3D models. Comparison of the experimentally measured SEY data with model predictions from both the 2D and 3D models illustrates the improved accuracy of the 3D model. For a micro-porous gold surface consisting of pores with aspect ratios of two and a 50% pore density, the 3D model predicts that the maximum total SEY will be one. This provides optimal engineered surface design objectives to pursue for multipactor suppression using gold surfaces

A macroinvertebrate assessment of Ozark streams located in lead–zinc mining areas of the Viburnum Trend in southeastern Missouri, USA

The Viburnum Trend lead–zinc mining subdistrict is located in the southeast Missouri portion of the Ozark Plateau. In 2003 and 2004, we assessed the ecological effects of mining in several watersheds in the region. We included macroinvertebrate surveys, habitat assessments, and analysis of metals in sediment, pore water, and aquatic biota. Macroinvertebrates were sampled at 21 sites to determine aquatic life impairment status (full, partial, or nonsupport) and relative biotic condition scores. Macroinvertebrate biotic condition scores were significantly correlated with cadmium, nickel, lead, zinc, and specific conductance in 2003 (r = −0.61 to −0.68) and with cadmium, lead, and pore water toxic units in 2004 (r = −0.55 to −0.57). Reference sites were fully supporting of aquatic life and had the lowest metals concentrations and among the highest biotic condition scores in both years. Sites directly downstream from mining and related activities were partially supporting, with biotic condition scores 10% to 58% lower than reference sites. Sites located greater distances downstream from mining activities had intermediate scores and concentrations of metals. Results indicate that elevated concentrations of metals originating from mining activities were the underlying cause of aquatic life impairment in several of the streams studied. There was a general concurrence among the adversely affected sites in how the various indicators responded to the mining activities during the overall study

European Corn Borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hbn.) Populations in Field Corn, Zea mays (L.) in the North Central United States

A long-range study of the annual changes in corn borer populations in the North Central States was started in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska in 1955 and in Missouri and Ohio in 1956. This investigation was a phase of a broader Regional Project, NC-20, entitled Factors Influencing Corn Borer Populations and was undertaken to measure by standardized procedures the seasonal changes in abundance of the European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hbn.), under cropping procedures in different locations within, the North Central States. Much valuable information has been accumulated on the abundance and effects of various physical and biotic factors on corn borer populations. Results obtained from 1955 through 1959 are summarized in a regional publication (Chiang et al. 1961). The present compilation and summary is offered as a companion bulletin containing data for the years 1960 through 1964. Although the primary purpose of the present bulletin is to present results for the 1960 to 1964 period, it seemed pertinent to include statements of comparison with the preceding 5-year\u27s work and to analyze in a rather gross way certain aspects of the population changes for the entire 10-year period. Studies of this nature are long-time projects requiring many years of work in order to evaluate population fluctuations and factors influencing them. Hence the examination of the recent 5-year period becomes more meaningful when compared with the previous 5-year period or when considered as a single 10-year period