Developing Effective Assessment Procedures and Instruments for the DiversiWe Program

DiversiWe is an ongoing training series in multicultural competence for mental health professionals hosted by students and faculty of APCE, a department within the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at UNC. Through activities such as panel discussions, case conceptualizations, and role-plays, students develop skills that allow them to more effectively work with diverse individuals. Overall, the objectives of the program were to: facilitate empathy for diverse individuals, generate understanding of how diversity impacts mental health, identify culturally sensitive interventions, cultivate cultural humility and sensitivity in mental health professionals, and promote the role of mental health professionals as social justice advocates. The Assessment Mini-Grant were utilized to further refine and develop an assessment tool to measure the participant’s skills and knowledge resulting from attending our program. Additionally, funds were used to hire personnel to both facilitate the program and to identify various outcome measures that could enhance the effectiveness of our survey

Sub-nanosecond tuning of microwave resonators fabricated on ruddlesden–popper dielectric thin films

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: A. M. Hagerstrom, X. Lu, N. M. Dawley, H. P. Nair, J. Mateu, R. D. Horansky, C. A. E. Little, J. C. Booth, C. J. Long, D. G. Schlom, N. D. Orloff, Adv. Mater. Technol. 2018, 3, 1800090. https://doi-org.recursos.biblioteca.upc.edu/10.1002/admt.201800090, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.201800090. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Voltage-tunable dielectric materials are widely used for microwave-frequency signal processing. Among tunable dielectric thin films, (SrTiO3)nSrO Ruddlesden–Popper (RP) superlattices have exceptionally low loss at high frequencies. This paper reports the first realization of resonators, a ubiquitous building block of microwave components, fabricated on RP films, and an analysis of their static and dynamic tuning behavior. The RP film has a ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition at ˜200 K, and the tunability is strongest at this temperature. The resonators have approximately 2.5% tuning of the resonance frequency at room temperature and 20% tuning at 200 K, and a tuning time scale of less than a nanosecond, which is limited by the measurement circuit rather than material properties.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Novel Genetic Circuit Supports Laboratory Automation and High Throughput Monitoring of Inflammation in Living Human Cells

Genetically encoded reporter circuits have been revolutionizing our ability to monitor, manipulate, and visualize specific cellular responses to a variety of environmental stimuli. However, the development of genetic circuits that enable both high throughput (HTP) application and laboratory automation remains challenging. In this report, we describe a novel dual-reporter circuit that utilizes a secretory Gaussia luciferase (Gluc) and a green fluorescent protein (GFP) for monitoring inflammatory signaling, a fundamental process in many life events. We designed and built this genetic circuit into a simple adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector, which is suitable for both simple transfection and efficient transduction protocols. We demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity of this new circuit and its ability to monitor a broad range of inflammatory response in various human cell models. Importantly, this novel system is simple, robust, and readily adaptable to HTP applications and laboratory automation including fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) and microplate reader analysis. By combining both GFP and Gluc in one genetic circuit, our new dual-reporter circuit provides an easy and powerful tool for monitoring and quantifying inflammatory signals in various mammalian cells

Identifying related journals through log analysis

Motivation: With the explosion of biomedical literature and the evolution of online and open access, scientists are reading more articles from a wider variety of journals. Thus, the list of core journals relevant to their research may be less obvious and may often change over time. To help researchers quickly identify appropriate journals to read and publish in, we developed a web application for finding related journals based on the analysis of PubMed log data

The three R’s of scientific integrity:Replicability, reproducibility, and robustness

It has been proposed that memory retrieval can destabilize consolidated memories, after which they need to be reconsolidated in order to be retained. The presentation of relevant information during memory reconsolidation could then result in the modification of a destabilized memory trace, by allowing the memory trace to be updated before being reconsolidated. In line with this idea, Schiller et al. (2010) have demonstrated that memory retrieval shortly before extinction training can prevent the later recovery of conditioned fear responding that is observed after regular extinction training. Those findings have been the subject of considerable controversy, due in part to theoretical reasons but also due to a number of failures to obtain similar results in conceptual replication attempts. Here, we report the results of a highly powered, direct, independent replication of the critical conditions of Schiller et al. (2010, Experiment 1). Due to misrepresentation of the exclusion criteria in the original Schiller et al. (2010) report, data collection was considerably delayed. When we eventually managed to attain our pre-registered sample size, we found that we could not observe any benefit of reactivation-extinction over regular extinction training in preventing recovery of conditioned fear. The results of the present study, along with the mixed findings in the literature and the misreporting in Schiller et al. (2010), give cause to question whether there is robust evidence that reactivation-extinction prevents the return of fear in humans.status: publishe