Examining the Gap: Compensation Disparities between Male and Female Physician Assistants.

BACKGROUND: Compensation disparities between men and women have been problematic for decades, and there is considerable evidence that the gap cannot be entirely explained by nongender factors. The current study examined the compensation gap in the physician assistant (PA) profession. METHODS: Compensation data from 2014 was collected by the American Academy of PAs in 2015. Practice variables, including experience, specialty, and hours worked, were controlled for in an ordinary least-squares sequential regression model to examine whether there remained a disparity in total compensation. In addition, the absolute disparity in compensation was compared with historical data collected by American Academy of PAs over the previous 1.5 decades. RESULTS: Without controlling for practice variables, a total compensation disparity of $16,052 existed between men and women in the PA profession. Even after PA practice variables were controlled for, a total compensation disparity of$9,695 remained between men and women (95% confidence interval, $8,438-$10,952). A 17-year trend indicates the absolute disparity between men and women has not lessened, although the disparity as a percent of male compensation has decreased in recent years. CONCLUSIONS: There remain challenges to ensuring pay equality in the PA profession. Even when compensation-relevant factors such as experience, hours worked, specialty, postgraduate training, region, and call are controlled for, there is still a substantial gender disparity in PA compensation. Remedies that may address this pay inequality include raising awareness of compensation disparities, teaching effective negotiation skills, assisting employers as they develop equitable compensation plans, having less reliance on past salary in position negotiation, and professional associations advocating for policies that support equal wages and opportunities, regardless of personal characteristics

Nonequilibrium and Nonlinear Dynamics in Geomaterials I : The Low Strain Regime

Members of a wide class of geomaterials are known to display complex and fascinating nonlinear and nonequilibrium dynamical behaviors over a wide range of bulk strains, down to surprisingly low values, e.g., 10^{-7}. In this paper we investigate two sandstones, Berea and Fontainebleau, and characterize their behavior under the influence of very small external forces via carefully controlled resonant bar experiments. By reducing environmental effects due to temperature and humidity variations, we are able to systematically and reproducibly study dynamical behavior at strains as low as 10^{-9}. Our study establishes the existence of two strain thresholds, the first, epsilon_L, below which the material is essentially linear, and the second, epsilon_M, below which the material is nonlinear but where quasiequilibrium thermodynamics still applies as evidenced by the success of Landau theory and a simple macroscopic description based on the Duffing oscillator. At strains above epsilon_M the behavior becomes truly nonequilibrium -- as demonstrated by the existence of material conditioning -- and Landau theory no longer applies. The main focus of this paper is the study of the region below the second threshold, but we also comment on how our work clarifies and resolves previous experimental conflicts, as well as suggest new directions of research.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

Impacts of phosphorus concentration and light intensity on river periphyton biomass and community structure

Periphyton growth rate has been identified as the key process that leads to river eutrophication. Effort has focused on reducing phosphorus concentrations to control periphyton biomass, but other factors, such as light, are also important. Within-stream flume mesocosms were deployed in the River Lambourn, UK, to investigate how light intensity and phosphorus concentrations affect periphyton biomass and community structure. Soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentrations were tripled in some flumes, and decreased in others by dosing of FeCl3. Increasing SRP concentrations from the ambient concentration of 49 µg L-1 to 155 µg L-1 had no effect on biomass, but community composition (by flow cytometry) shifted from diatom to cyanobacterial dominance. Reducing light levels (equivalent to riparian tree shading) decreased biomass by 40 %, showing that the biofilms were light limited at SRP concentration ≥ 49 µg L-1. Periphyton were phosphorus / light co-limited when SRP concentrations were reduced to 33 µg L-1. Further reductions in SRP concentration (23 µg L-1) resulted in phosphorus limitation of periphyton biomass and increased dominance of diatoms and chlorophytes within the biofilm. Reducing light intensity through providing riparian tree shading could be an important management tool to reduce periphyton biomass and improve ecological status

Mapping Luminous Blue Compact Galaxies with VIRUS-P: morphology, line ratios and kinematics

[abridged] We carry out an integral field spectroscopy (IFS) study of a sample of luminous BCGs, with the aim to probe the morphology, kinematics, dust extinction and excitation mechanisms of their warm interstellar medium (ISM). IFS data for five luminous BCGs were obtained using VIRUS-P, the prototype instrument for the Visible Integral Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph, attached to the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith Telescope at the McDonald Observatory. VIRUS-P consists of a square array of 247 optical fibers, which covers a 109"x109" field of view, with a spatial sampling of 4.2" and a 0.3 filling factor. We observed in the 3550-5850 Angstrom spectral range, with a resolution of 5 A FWHM. From these data we built two-dimensional maps of the continuum and the most prominent emission-lines ([OII]3727, Hgamma, Hbeta and [OIII]5007), and investigate the morphology of diagnostic emission-line ratios and the extinction patterns in the ISM as well as stellar and gas kinematics. Additionally, from integrated spectra we infer total line fluxes and luminosity-weighted extinction coefficients and gas-phase metallicities. All galaxies exhibit an overall regular morphology in the stellar continuum, while their warm ISM morphology is more complex: in II Zw 33 and Mrk 314, the star-forming regions are aligned along a chain-structure; Haro 1, NGC 4670 and III Zw 102 display several salient features, such as extended gaseous filaments and bubbles. A significant intrinsic absorption by dust is present in all galaxies, the most extreme case being III Zw 102. Our data reveal a manifold of kinematical patterns, from overall regular gas and stellar rotation to complex velocity fields produced by structurally and kinematically distinct components.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 16 pages, 10 figure

The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey. IX. Dust-to-gas mass ratio and metallicity gradients in four Virgo spiral galaxies

Using Herschel data from the Open Time Key Project the Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey (HeViCS), we investigated the relationship between the metallicity gradients expressed by metal abundances in the gas phase as traced by the chemical composition of HII regions, and in the solid phase, as traced by the dust-to-gas mass ratio. We derived the radial gradient of the dust-to-gas mass ratio for all galaxies observed by HeViCS whose metallicity gradients are available in the literature. They are all late type Sbc galaxies, namely NGC4254, NGC4303, NGC4321, and NGC4501. We examined different dependencies on metallicity of the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor (\xco), used to transform the $^{12}$CO observations into the amount of molecular hydrogen. We found that in these galaxies the dust-to-gas mass ratio radial profile is extremely sensitive to choice of the \xco\ value, since the molecular gas is the dominant component in the inner parts. We found that for three galaxies of our sample, namely NGC4254, NGC4321, and NGC4501, the slopes of the oxygen and of the dust-to-gas radial gradients agree up to $\sim$0.6-0.7R$_{25}$ using \xco\ values in the range 1/3-1/2 Galactic \xco. For NGC4303 a lower value of \xco$\sim0.1\times$ 10$^{20}$ is necessary. We suggest that such low \xco\ values might be due to a metallicity dependence of \xco (from close to linear for NGC4254, NGC4321, and NGC4501 to superlinear for NGC4303), especially in the radial regions R$_G<$0.6-0.7R$_{25}$ where the molecular gas dominates. On the other hand, the outer regions, where the atomic gas component is dominant, are less affected by the choice of \xco, and thus we cannot put constraints on its value.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, A&A accepte

Molecular excitation in the Interstellar Medium: recent advances in collisional, radiative and chemical processes

We review the different excitation processes in the interstellar mediumComment: Accepted in Chem. Re

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin