Complicating Practice with Success: Service-Learning Perspectives at a Research-Intensive University

Although extant research has demonstrated the benefits of servicelearning for students and the greater community, faculty involvement in service-learning at research-intensive universities remains a challenge. In order to critically explore faculty perceptions of service-learning and to challenge everyday understandings, this study utilizes politically attentive relational constructionism to analyze faculty focus groups. Findings constructed service-learning as facilitating student success, but constrained by self-defined practice. Based on this analysis, transformative possibilities around the perception, practice, and institutionalization of service-learning emerge. Combined, these findings extend research on service-learning by highlighting a research-intensive university as a unique context and proposing ways to overcome service-learning challenges. This study provides pragmatic suggestions for service learning and university administration such as the need for greater administrative support, university-wide buy-in, and the need to reflexively review faculty understanding–and practice–of service-learning

Authoring Organizational Tensions Within the Roman Catholic Church: Women Religious Organize for Themselves

For centuries women religious have faced an uncomfortable tension with the all-male hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. This tension is underscored today by the Vatican’s 2008 assessment and subsequent investigation of women religious in the US. Considering this tension-filled context, this study is concerned with the ways in which women religious organize around, alongside, and in some cases against the Church while also supporting the same beliefs and values as the Church. Specifically, this study recognizes NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice as a unique organizational site operating at the intersection of religion, politics, and authority, and explores how women religious and staff at NETWORK frame organizational tension and construct and stabilize authority for the purpose of their ministry. Embracing a tension-centered approach, along with the lenses of authority/authoring and alternative organizing, this study aimed to contribute to theory by exploring the organizational implications of subunits (i.e., women religious) of larger institutions (i.e., the Roman Catholic Church) authoring new tensions. To do so, this dissertation project relied on the qualitative methods of interviews, varying degrees of participant-observation, and document analysis, and engaged a manual approach to data analysis. The findings revealed how staff and sisters associated with NETWORK framed tension and manifested authority through their work, as well as how their organizing efforts have historically authored tension(s) within the institution of Church. First, NETWORK identified tension around three central tensional nodes, framed as dualisms, namely: Catholic/secular; all-male hierarchy of the Church/laity; and religious convent/society. In response to tension, NETWORK discursively constructed a third space, or a space between opposite poles wherein tension can be united in creative ways (Janssens & Steyaert, 1999). NETWORK’s third space is named sister spirit, and it allows staff and sisters to redefine the situation and be productive within the tension. Next, the manifestation of authority happened on two separate levels: the individual, or micro-level (i.e., Catholic sisters who associate with NETWORK) and the organizational, or meso-level (i.e., NETWORK as an organization). At the individual level Catholic sisters leveraged the support of their religious communities as a means of collective construction of authority in order to dissent from the Catholic Church. At the organizational level, NETWORK invoked authority through the Gospel, as an authoritative text brought to life through their work in engaging politics as an avenue for change. Finally, NETWORK’s organizing efforts of have authored tensions within the institution of the Church through NETWORK’s foundational feminist agenda and its Catholic identity. This study contributes to theory on tension and authority/authoring by explicitly recognizing the ways tension engenders authoring, and advances theory on the construction and stabilization of authority in third space. Additionally, this work responds to requests for theory development around duality relationships, suggesting the process of constructing third space via trialectics as a strategy to manage tension inherent in dualities. Methodologically, this project contributes to scholarship by introducing the strategic application of authority construction to qualitative data analysis and expands on manual procedures for data analysis through the use of whiteboarding during specific moments of the analysis process. Practical contributions identify third space as a strategically ambiguous form of alternative organizing that may be ideal for other religious or spiritual social change organizations. In addition, the use of religious or spiritual guiding principles, when organizationally appropriate, may offer stability and energy for staff facing a variety of organizational tensions

Spatial and Sex-Specific Variation in Growth of Albacore Tuna (Thunnus alalunga) across the South Pacific Ocean

Spatial variation in growth is a common feature of demersal fish populations which often exist as discrete adult sub-populations linked by a pelagic larval stage. However, it remains unclear whether variation in growth occurs at similar spatial scales for populations of highly migratory pelagic species, such as tuna. We examined spatial variation in growth of albacore Thunnus alalunga across 90° of longitude in the South Pacific Ocean from the east coast of Australia to the Pitcairn Islands. Using length-at-age data from a validated ageing method we found evidence for significant variation in length-at-age and growth parameters (L∞ and k) between sexes and across longitudes. Growth trajectories were similar between sexes up until four years of age, after which the length-at-age for males was, on average, greater than that for females. Males reached an average maximum size more than 8 cm larger than females. Length-at-age and growth parameters were consistently greater at more easterly longitudes than at westerly longitudes for both females and males. Our results provide strong evidence that finer spatial structure exists within the South Pacific albacore stock and raises the question of whether the scale of their “highly migratory” nature should be re-assessed. Future stock assessment models for South Pacific albacore should consider sex-specific growth curves and spatial variation in growth within the stock

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Models of marine fish biodiversity : assessing predictors from three habitat classification schemes

Prioritising biodiversity conservation requires knowledge of where biodiversity occurs. Such knowledge, however, is often lacking. New technologies for collecting biological and physical data coupled with advances in modelling techniques could help address these gaps and facilitate improved management outcomes. Here we examined the utility of environmental data, obtained using different methods, for developing models of both uni- and multivariate biodiversity metrics. We tested which biodiversity metrics could be predicted best and evaluated the performance of predictor variables generated from three types of habitat data: acoustic multibeam sonar imagery, predicted habitat classification, and direct observer habitat classification. We used boosted regression trees (BRT) to model metrics of fish species richness, abundance and biomass, and multivariate regression trees (MRT) to model biomass and abundance of fish functional groups. We compared model performance using different sets of predictors and estimated the relative influence of individual predictors. Models of total species richness and total abundance performed best; those developed for endemic species performed worst. Abundance models performed substantially better than corresponding biomass models. In general, BRT and MRTs developed using predicted habitat classifications performed less well than those using multibeam data. The most influential individual predictor was the abiotic categorical variable from direct observer habitat classification and models that incorporated predictors from direct observer habitat classification consistently outperformed those that did not. Our results show that while remotely sensed data can offer considerable utility for predictive modeling, the addition of direct observer habitat classification data can substantially improve model performance. Thus it appears that there are aspects of marine habitats that are important for modeling metrics of fish biodiversity that are not fully captured by remotely sensed data. As such, the use of remotely sensed data to model biodiversity represents a compromise between model performance and data availability

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

Age at onset as stratifier in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease – effect of ageing and polygenic risk score on clinical phenotypes

Several phenotypic differences observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have been linked to age at onset (AAO). We endeavoured to find out whether these differences are due to the ageing process itself by using a combined dataset of idiopathic PD (n = 430) and healthy controls (HC; n = 556) excluding carriers of known PD-linked genetic mutations in both groups. We found several significant effects of AAO on motor and non-motor symptoms in PD, but when comparing the effects of age on these symptoms with HC (using age at assessment, AAA), only positive associations of AAA with burden of motor symptoms and cognitive impairment were significantly different between PD vs HC. Furthermore, we explored a potential effect of polygenic risk score (PRS) on clinical phenotype and identified a significant inverse correlation of AAO and PRS in PD. No significant association between PRS and severity of clinical symptoms was found. We conclude that the observed non-motor phenotypic differences in PD based on AAO are largely driven by the ageing process itself and not by a specific profile of neurodegeneration linked to AAO in the idiopathic PD patients