Diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering education: an exploration of European higher education institutions’ strategic frameworks, resources, and initiatives

Significant efforts have been made to promote gender equality in higher education (HE) in Europe. Examples include the establishment of the Athena Swan Charter in the UK in 2005 and the 2019 launch of the Irène Curie Fellowship scheme by Eindhoven University of Technology. But which initiatives address broader diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenges in HE? And which are specifically focused on engineering education? This exploratory study aims to improve our understanding of the ways in which a set of European HE Institutions engaged in engineering education address DEI at an organisation level, and how this is communicated within the public domain. The analysis of online data provided by a purposive sample of institutions is guided by the following research questions (RQ): 1. How is DEI addressed and defined in institution-wide strategic frameworks? 2. How many institutions describe having an institution-wide DEI organization? 3. What specific policies around DEI are being developed, and what areas are mentioned, defined, and prioritized? 4. What structures and resources noted as part of their DEI activities are specific to engineering faculties and departments? 5. What engineering-specific DEI initiatives exist that are not available in the public domain or are not written in English? Our sample is composed of the host institutions of the authors of the paper, and represent different European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, and the UK. The findings of this exploratory study will be used to inform the design of a large-scale survey to identify DEI practices across the SEFI community

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Measurement of the CP-Violating Asymmetry Amplitude sin2β\beta

We present results on time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates. The measurements use a data sample of about 88 million Y(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected between 1999 and 2002 with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. We study events in which one neutral B meson is fully reconstructed in a final state containing a charmonium meson and the other B meson is determined to be either a B0 or B0bar from its decay products. The amplitude of the CP-violating asymmetry, which in the Standard Model is proportional to sin2beta, is derived from the decay-time distributions in such events. We measure sin2beta = 0.741 +/- 0.067 (stat) +/- 0.033 (syst) and |lambda| = 0.948 +/- 0.051 (stat) +/- 0.017 (syst). The magnitude of lambda is consistent with unity, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation of no direct CP violation in these modes

Transcriptome Survey of a Marine Food Fish: Asian Seabass (Lates calcarifer)

The Asian seabass (or barramundi; Lates calcarifer) is a marine teleost and a popular food fish in Southeast Asia and Australia. To date, comprehensive genome and transcriptome sequence information has not been available for this species in public repositories. Here, we report a comprehensive de novo transcriptome assembly of the Asian seabass. These data will be useful for the development of molecular tools for use in aquaculture of Asian seabass as well as a resource for genome annotation. The transcriptome was obtained from sequences generated from organs of multiple individuals using three different next-generation sequencing platforms (454-FLX Titanium, SOLiD 3+, and paired-end Illumina HiSeq 2000). The assembled transcriptome contains >80% of the expected protein-coding loci, with 58% of these represented by a predicted full-length cDNA sequence when compared to the available Nile tilapia RefSeq dataset. Detailed descriptions of the various steps involved in sequencing and assembling a transcriptome are provided to serve as a helpful guide for transcriptome projects involving de novo assembly of short sequence reads for non-model teleosts or any species of interest