Connecting the Cerebral and Heartfelt: Integrating Creative Problem Solving and Design Thinking

This paper reviews scholarly resources and industry articles exploring the challenges of understanding and implementing design thinking. Drawing upon these findings, I will develop a novel framework that connects the cerebral and heartfelt aspects of Creative Problem Solving with the more empathetic design thinking methodology. The purpose of this endeavor is twofold: first, to capture my understanding of the intellectual and emotional experiences encountered during a creative problem-solving journey, and second, to establish a unique human-centered design thinking framework that works to integrate elements of Creative Problem Solving, the Thinking Skills Model, providing a fresh perspective to tackle frequent obstacles in comprehension and execution. Ultimately, this visualization and narrative will serve as a solid foundation for enhancing my future endeavors in facilitating, training, and writing on the subject

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Discourse as a category of analysis in *policy studies: The case of welfare reform

In 1996 Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Opportunity Work Reconciliation Act (PROWRA), eliminating the 60-year old entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), otherwise known as welfare. The enactment of PROWRA was the crowning glory of the Republican Revolution led by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich and it represents a milestone in both political and policy history. While several elements converged in the policy making process that led to conservatives\u27 success, this research project focuses on the role that discourse plays in policy making with an emphasis upon the values-based discourse that was employed (or not) by advocates and opponents of the conservative backed plan

Sympatric population divergence within a highly pelagic seabird species complex (Hydrobates spp.)

acceptedVersio

Leachs_stormpetrels_mitochondroalControlRegion_and_outgroup

Mitochondrial control region sequences for all Leach's storm-petrels used in our study (including from Hydrobates leucorhoa leucorhoa, H. l. chapmani, H. socorroensis, H. cheimomnestes, and outgroup sequences from H. castro)

Leachs_stormpetrel_microsatellite_data

Microsatellite data from all birds used in our study (including from H. leucorhoa leucorhoa, H. l. chapmani, H. socorroensis and H. cheimomnestes)

Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016.

About 62,000 dead or dying common murres (Uria aalge), the trophically dominant fish-eating seabird of the North Pacific, washed ashore between summer 2015 and spring 2016 on beaches from California to Alaska. Most birds were severely emaciated and, so far, no evidence for anything other than starvation was found to explain this mass mortality. Three-quarters of murres were found in the Gulf of Alaska and the remainder along the West Coast. Studies show that only a fraction of birds that die at sea typically wash ashore, and we estimate that total mortality approached 1 million birds. About two-thirds of murres killed were adults, a substantial blow to breeding populations. Additionally, 22 complete reproductive failures were observed at multiple colonies region-wide during (2015) and after (2016-2017) the mass mortality event. Die-offs and breeding failures occur sporadically in murres, but the magnitude, duration and spatial extent of this die-off, associated with multi-colony and multi-year reproductive failures, is unprecedented and astonishing. These events co-occurred with the most powerful marine heatwave on record that persisted through 2014-2016 and created an enormous volume of ocean water (the "Blob") from California to Alaska with temperatures that exceeded average by 2-3 standard deviations. Other studies indicate that this prolonged heatwave reduced phytoplankton biomass and restructured zooplankton communities in favor of lower-calorie species, while it simultaneously increased metabolically driven food demands of ectothermic forage fish. In response, forage fish quality and quantity diminished. Similarly, large ectothermic groundfish were thought to have increased their demand for forage fish, resulting in greater top-predator demands for diminished forage fish resources. We hypothesize that these bottom-up and top-down forces created an "ectothermic vise" on forage species leading to their system-wide scarcity and resulting in mass mortality of murres and many other fish, bird and mammal species in the region during 2014-2017