Onward and upward? An empirical investigation of gender and promotions in Information Technology Services

The shaky ascent of women up the organizational ladder is a critical factor that may contribute to the lack of women in information technology (IT). In this study, we examine the effect of gender on the likelihood of employee promotions. We further examine whether women get an equal lift in promotion likelihood from performance improvements, work experience, and training as men. We analyze archival promotion data, as well as demographic, human capital, and administrative data for 7,004 employees at a leading IT services firm located in India for the years 2002–2007 and for multiple levels of promotion. We develop robust econometric models that consider employee heterogeneity to identify the differential effect of gender and performance on promotions. We find that, contrary to expectations, women are more likely to be promoted, on average. However, looking deeper into the heterogeneous main effects using hierarchical Bayesian modeling reveals more nuanced insights. We find that, ceteris paribus, women realize less benefit from performance gains than men, less benefit from tenure within the focal firm, but more benefit from training than men. These results suggest that despite the disparity in returns to performance and experience improvements, women can rely on signaling mechanisms such as training to restore parity in promotions. We find that the effects of gender and performance vary with the level of employee promotion; although not as much as men, women benefit more from performance gains at higher organizational levels. Our findings suggest several actionable managerial insights that can potentially make IT firms more inclusive and attractive to women

Probing the T-Box Riboswitch: A Novel, High-Throughput Transcription Reporter Assay Using a Fluorophore-Binding Aptamer

In most Gram-positive bacteria, including important pathogens, expression of many aminoacyl tRNA synthetase (aaRS) genes is controlled by the tRNA substrate specific to each of these enzymes. This riboswitch regulatory mechanism is unique to Gram-positive bacteria and because correct and efficient aminoacylation of tRNAs is essential to an organism’s viability, it is an ideal target for the development of new antibiotics. The 5’-untranslated region (5’UTR) of the aaRS mRNA adopts a conformation that determines whether readthrough or termination of transcription occurs by interacting with unacylated or acylated tRNA, respectively. Our goal is to uncover a new class of small molecules that will disrupt the binding of tRNA to the 5’UTR and through that, inhibit transcription. We are creating a transcription based reporter assay to examine small molecules for their ability to disrupt gene expression. We cloned the entire 5’UTR of a B. subtilis aaRS gene upstream of the adenine riboswitch aptamer, with an intervening linker region. This aptamer binds 2-aminopurine and upon binding, quenches the fluorescence normally associated with this molecule. We have successfully transcribed the chimeric RNA. Preliminary fluorescence data shows the aptamer RNA is able to quench 2- aminopurine (2AP) fluorescence. Future work includes carrying out the fluorescence studies in real time during transcription and testing a library of small molecules to assess their ability to inhibit tRNA-mediated transcription

New Memory Technologies

Memory is used to store the data. Semiconductor memory can be used as our computer’s cache memory, in our mobile applications, in memory cards of our cameras. To meet the growing needs for memory, variety of different memories are used like DRAM, SRAM, etc. With the rapid growth in the requirement of memories new memory technologies are being developed and considerable amount of research is invested in these new memory technologies. One of a very new memory technology is 3DXP Memory. 3DXP is a type of Non-Volatile memory which has very high density and high speed as compared to any other Non-Volatile memory. It can be used in various applications like Genomics, sensing. In this report, I would like to introduce 3DXP Memory development and my work as a 3DXP Yield Enhancement Electrical Failure Analysis Engineer. In my creative component I was required to read and understand the literature about how different memories work. I was also assigned to do an internship on 3DXP Memory at Micron Technology Inc from March 12,2018 through August 3,2018. During my master’s degree I took some courses like Semiconductor Physics, Microelectronics Fabrication Techniques, Digital VLSI and Statistics which helped me to learn and apply the knowledge to solve problems at industrial level

Comparison of encoding schemes for symbolic model checking of bounded petri nets

Petri nets are a graph based formalism used for modelling concurrent systems. Binary Decision Diagrams or Multi-Valued Decision Diagrams can be used in the analysis of systems modelled by Petri nets. An encoding scheme is required to be able to map the Petri net state to decision diagram values. Various encodings like One-hot scheme, logarithmic scheme and Mdd scheme exist for this purpose. This thesis compares the performance of the existing encodings based on time and space taken to represent and analyze the system modelled as Petri net. It also introduces and compares a new encoding scheme called k-hot encoding and shows a gradual improvement in performance of the scheme with increasing values of k. The process of analyzing properties like deadlock and starvation is explained and a comparison is made between the encoding schemes based on the time taken by each to analyze these properties