Perspectives from Think College Students on Inclusive Practices at the Collegiate Level

Promoting inclusion at all levels of education is crucial in the process of positively influencing and encouraging student learning both for students with disabilities and their peers. This presentation will provide information about the Think College program and include perspectives from Think College students and their college peers about their experiences. Participants should be able to understand more about the Think College program, but more importantly gain an understanding about how the experiences within the program impact students’ lives

Gender Bias in Story Recounting

Gendered language permeates sections of our lives in ways that we may not even know. There is a subconscious act to it when thinking about the relationships between gender and other aspects of society. In this study, we aimed to investigate those differences and see how there can be a relationship between gendered language and implicit bias. Passages using gendered-language can alter the listener’s perspective in terms of gender identification of an otherwise unlabeled protagonist. Therefore, to explore this phenomena, participants of this study were given an androgynous story with masculine and feminine phrases. Then, a multiplication timesheet was distributed following with the opportunity to recall as much of the story as they could. Afterward, they were asked true/false questions with gendered-language as an observable measure for their recall. Lastly, participants were asked to engage in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to determine any unconscious biases that may have affected how they performed on the recall. We are using an ANOVA and a Chi Square test, and data is currently being collected and analyzed

Siblings and Friendships with Women

Nuclear family relationships are some of the first and most foundational to an individual (Steinberg, 2023). Sibling relationships have an impact on the way an adolescent develops, regardless of birth order or sibling status, which influences the way the adolescent thinks and behaves (Feinburg et al., 2012). A negative sibling relationship can lead to issues such as school conduct problems, substance abuse, and low self-esteem (Feinberg et al., 2012). Friendships also play an important role in quality of life and social well-being of emerging adults. A high-quality friendship is defined by high levels of prosocial behavior, intimacy, and other positive features, and low levels of conflicts, rivalry, and other negative features (Berndt, 2002). Studies have shown that friendships involving at least one woman tend to be more intimate (Aukett et al., 1988), that women value their relationships more highly than men, and that women’s friendships involve more intimacy, self-disclosure, and emotional support than those with men (Cross & Madson, 1997; Fehr, 2004; Reis, 1998). Connecting these concepts to adolescents, a study found that younger female adolescents self-reported more prosocial support in their same-sex relationships, while adolescent boys reported receiving more esteem support from their cross-sex friends (Kuttler et al., 2010). Regarding a connection between siblings and friendships, longitudinal studies have shown that adolescents who perceived their sibling relationships more positively tended to have better friendships (Yeh & Lempers, 2004). The purpose of our study was to examine the relationship between the number/type of siblings and quality of friendships with women. Emerging adult college students (N = 45) filled out a survey on Qualtrics that measured demographics, number and type of siblings, and friendship quality with women. Results indicated no correlation between the number of siblings (overall or within gendered subcategories) and the quality of relationships with women. Results of a one-way ANOVA showed no difference in friendship quality between participants with no siblings, those with only brothers, those with only sisters, and those with a combination of brothers and sisters. Results did not support any influence on sibling structure for future friendships with women in emerging adulthood

Consequence Management Assessment Method Synthesis for Combatant Commands

One of the most important roles that the US fulfills in the global war on terror and their integration with Partner Nations (PNs) is minimizing the threats and effects  of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as well as Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) attacks by enemy nations, rogue elements, or terrorist groups around the world. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) currently implements an assessment framework for determining a PN’s state of CBRNE readiness, but it is unable to conceptualize that assessment at a regional or Combatant Command (CCMD) level. This research uses the Systems Decision Process (SDP) to create an assessment metric that is capable of synchronizing PN CBRNE readiness across a CCMD into a single assessment. This research is focused on developing an effective and flexible Microsoft Access database, which evaluates all global PNs across a wide array of metrics and then synthesizes them through multi-purpose objectives in order to develop an encompassing assessment framework at the CCMD level

Acceptability of financial incentives and penalties for encouraging uptake of healthy behaviours: focus groups

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that financial incentive interventions, which include both financial rewards and also penalties, are effective in encouraging healthy behaviours. However, concerns about the acceptability of such interventions remain. We report on focus groups with a cross-section of adults from North East England exploring their acceptance of financial incentive interventions for encouraging healthy behaviours amongst adults. Such information should help guide the design and development of acceptable, and effective, financial incentive interventions. METHODS: Eight focus groups with a total of 74 adults were conducted between November 2013 and January 2014 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Focus groups lasted approximately 60 minutes and explored factors that made financial incentives acceptable and unacceptable to participants, together with discussions on preferred formats for financial incentives. Verbatim transcripts were thematically coded and analysed in Nvivo 10. RESULTS: Participants largely distrusted health promoting financial incentives, with a concern that individuals may abuse such schemes. There was, however, evidence that health promoting financial incentives may be more acceptable if they are fair to all recipients and members of the public; if they are closely monitored and evaluated; if they are shown to be effective and cost-effective; and if clear health education is provided alongside health promoting financial incentives. There was also a preference for positive rewards rather than negative penalties, and for shopping vouchers rather than cash incentives. CONCLUSIONS: This qualitative empirical research has highlighted clear suggestions on how to design health promoting financial incentives to maximise acceptability to the general public. It will also be important to determine the acceptability of health promoting financial incentives in a range of stakeholders, and in particular, those who fund such schemes, and policy-makers who are likely to be involved with the design, implementation and evaluation of health promoting financial incentive schemes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1409-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

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

Roadmap on energy harvesting materials

Ambient energy harvesting has great potential to contribute to sustainable development and address growing environmental challenges. Converting waste energy from energy-intensive processes and systems (e.g. combustion engines and furnaces) is crucial to reducing their environmental impact and achieving net-zero emissions. Compact energy harvesters will also be key to powering the exponentially growing smart devices ecosystem that is part of the Internet of Things, thus enabling futuristic applications that can improve our quality of life (e.g. smart homes, smart cities, smart manufacturing, and smart healthcare). To achieve these goals, innovative materials are needed to efficiently convert ambient energy into electricity through various physical mechanisms, such as the photovoltaic effect, thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity, triboelectricity, and radiofrequency wireless power transfer. By bringing together the perspectives of experts in various types of energy harvesting materials, this Roadmap provides extensive insights into recent advances and present challenges in the field. Additionally, the Roadmap analyses the key performance metrics of these technologies in relation to their ultimate energy conversion limits. Building on these insights, the Roadmap outlines promising directions for future research to fully harness the potential of energy harvesting materials for green energy anytime, anywhere

Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact.

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 separate but interlinked components: a standardized method (i.e., measurement against benchmarks of species' viability, functionality, and preimpact distribution) to determine current species recovery status (herein species recovery score) and application of that method to estimate past and potential future impacts of conservation based on 4 metrics (conservation legacy, conservation dependence, conservation gain, and recovery potential). We tested the framework with 181 species representing diverse taxa, life histories, biomes, and IUCN Red List categories (extinction risk). Based on the observed distribution of species' recovery scores, we propose the following species recovery categories: fully recovered, slightly depleted, moderately depleted, largely depleted, critically depleted, extinct in the wild, and indeterminate. Fifty-nine percent of tested species were considered largely or critically depleted. Although there was a negative relationship between extinction risk and species recovery score, variation was considerable. Some species in lower risk categories were assessed as farther from recovery than those at higher risk. This emphasizes that species recovery is conceptually different from extinction risk and reinforces the utility of the IUCN Green Status of Species to more fully understand species conservation status. Although extinction risk did not predict conservation legacy, conservation dependence, or conservation gain, it was positively correlated with recovery potential. Only 1.7% of tested species were categorized as zero across all 4 of these conservation impact metrics, indicating that conservation has, or will, play a role in improving or maintaining species status for the vast majority of these species. Based on our results, we devised an updated assessment framework that introduces the option of using a dynamic baseline to assess future impacts of conservation over the short term to avoid misleading results which were generated in a small number of cases, and redefines short term as 10 years to better align with conservation planning. These changes are reflected in the IUCN Green Status of Species Standard