The effect of college costs and financial aid on access to engineering

Financial factors such as tuition costs and financial aid have substantial influences on college access. Prior studies have examined how financial factors influence cohort patterns of incoming students. Our study adds to that body of work by studying institutional differences in the effect of college costs and financial aid on access. We particularly focus on engineering students and explore access of an important underrepresented group in engineering—students of low socioeconomic status. We utilize two large databases: the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the Multiple Institution Database for Investigation of Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD). We employ descriptive statistics, nonparametric test, and a difference-in-difference regression model to determine the relationship between financial factors and engineering cohort patterns. We demonstrate the inability of grant aid to match the pace of rising tuition and fees, and identify different trends between institutions with and without merit-based scholarships. The adoption of merit-based scholarship was positively correlated to in-state student enrollment, engineering first-time student enrollment, and the fraction of students with high socioeconomic status. Compared to the overall institutional effect of merit-based scholarships, engineering experienced a larger increase in the fraction of students with high socioeconomic status. The scholarship effect was not consistently related to in-state students’ SAT scores. Variations in significance and direction exist in the results across institutions

OSCMS: A Decentralized Open-Source Coordination Management System Using a Novel Triple-Blockchain Architecture

Open-source systems help to manage the rapid development of software, while governing open-source systems properly can effectively promote software and software engineering. However, some significant problems, such as code controls, incentives, interaction and cooperation, automation, transparency and fairness of rights and responsibilities, cannot be properly solved by traditional methodologies. The decentralization, immutability, change in trust mode and smart contract programming of blockchain provide new solutions. In order to solve the problems of traditional centralized open-source governance, this paper proposes a decentralized open-source coordination management system using a novel triple-blockchain architecture. Through the analysis of traditional and blockchain-based research, the business and technical issues that need to be addressed in decentralized open-source governance systems have been emphatically studied. Combined with triple-blockchain architecture, smart contracts, oracles and continuous integration tools, we study the decentralization of open-source businesses and make them more trustworthy, automated and coordinated. An identity authentication mechanism is designed for permission control and inter-community collaboration. A decentralized open-source reputation is proposed for incentive and reference. We also improved the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus under triple-blockchain architecture to reduce repeated elections. By constructing the OSCMS prototype based on the proposed architecture model, many comparative experiments were conducted under different parameters and conditions and showed good feasibility, scalability, reliability and performance. The OSCMS not only solves the shortcomings of previous research but also provides a comprehensive and feasible reference for the decentralized practice of open-source governance

The effects of merit-based scholarships on first-year engineering student characteristics and academic behaviors

State-sponsored merit-based scholarship programs have proliferated since the 1990s. Using student-level data across institutions, we estimate the effects of merit-based scholarships on first -time students’ characteristics and their first-year academic behaviors, with specific focus on engineering students. Difference-in-differences regression models are used in the analysis. We find that merit-based scholarships did not help improve SAT score or first-year GPA of resident students including those majoring in engineering. The average socioeconomic indicator of engineering students increased in the presence of merit-based scholarships, suggesting the socioeconomic diversity of engineering experienced a decline after scholarship adoption. Institutional differences existed in the mean SAT score and socioeconomic status, and this stratification was more prominent in engineering. The presence of merit-based scholarships was associated with an increased likelihood that resident students would withdraw from courses and take summer courses after scholarships were implemented. The effects of merit-based scholarships on first-year course load were disproportionate across states, following credit hour requirements in scholarship retention policies. Compared to total residents, engineering residents were more prone to reduce first-year credit hours with a merit-based scholarship in effect,possibly indicating that coursework for engineering students required more effort so that students chose a lighter load to maintain good grades

Ranciere and leadership for reforms to school-to-work transition : the presupposition of equality of theoretical assets from diverse educational cultures

The research reported in this chapter focuses on how the Western Anglophone system of higher degree research training can build on non-Western students' diverse intellectual heritage and linguistic assets in their transition from education to work

Naïve or sophisticated? Information disclosure and investment decisions in peer to peer lending

Despite the explosive growth of peer-to-peer lending in China, information asymmetry remains a critical issue and is likely to be amplified in such an evolving credit market compared to a traditional credit market. This paper studies how investors screen the nonstandard and often unverifiable information disclosed voluntarily by the borrowers to make their investment decisions. Using data from Renrendai, one of the leading P2P lending platforms in China, we find that the amount of information disclosed voluntarily by the borrowers can significantly improve the funding probability. The impact is even more remarkable for the borrowers with lower credit rating. However, the loan default probability increases with the amount of disclosure, indicating the possibility of information manipulation by the borrowers. Further investigation shows the puzzle that lenders remain attracted by such loan listings can be explained by the higher profitability offered by the borrowers. These findings imply the necessity of regulation on the information disclosure in the P2P lendin

Twist-open mechanism of DNA damage recognition by the Rad4/XPC nucleotide excision repair complex.

DNA damage repair starts with the recognition of damaged sites from predominantly normal DNA. In eukaryotes, diverse DNA lesions from environmental sources are recognized by the xeroderma pigmentosum C (XPC) nucleotide excision repair complex. Studies of Rad4 (radiation-sensitive 4; yeast XPC ortholog) showed that Rad4 "opens" up damaged DNA by inserting a β-hairpin into the duplex and flipping out two damage-containing nucleotide pairs. However, this DNA lesion "opening" is slow (˜5-10 ms) compared with typical submillisecond residence times per base pair site reported for various DNA-binding proteins during 1D diffusion on DNA. To address the mystery as to how Rad4 pauses to recognize lesions during diffusional search, we examine conformational dynamics along the lesion recognition trajectory using temperature-jump spectroscopy. Besides identifying the ˜10-ms step as the rate-limiting bottleneck towards opening specific DNA site, we uncover an earlier ˜100- to 500-μs step that we assign to nonspecific deformation (unwinding/"twisting") of DNA by Rad4. The β-hairpin is not required to unwind or to overcome the bottleneck but is essential for full nucleotide-flipping. We propose that Rad4 recognizes lesions in a step-wise "twist-open" mechanism, in which preliminary twisting represents Rad4 interconverting between search and interrogation modes. Through such conformational switches compatible with rapid diffusion on DNA, Rad4 may stall preferentially at a lesion site, offering time to open DNA. This study represents the first direct observation, to our knowledge, of dynamical DNA distortions during search/interrogation beyond base pair breathing. Submillisecond interrogation with preferential stalling at cognate sites may be common to various DNA-binding proteins

A taxonomy of engineering matriculation practices

There is clear evidence that engineering persistence varies significantly among institutions. 1 Institutional culture, 2 policy, 3 and selectivity 4,5 likely all play a role, but much research is needed to understand exactly which aspects of an institution most strongly influence student success. Even though retention in engineering is as good or better than other groups of majors in higher education, 1 retention in engineering continues to be one of the dominant topics of interest among engineering education scholars. This is not surprising given that the national average retention rate is 56% and can be as low as 30%. Also, while engineering retains students as well as other majors, engineering strives for a culture of continuous improvement, and some have speculated that there is potential to improve the retention rate to 80%. 6 Particularly in that attrition is more prevalent in the early semesters, 7 it is suggested that the matriculation model of an institution might account for a significant amount of the institutional variability in persistence. Indeed, recent research shows a link between an institution’s approach to engineering matriculation and important outcomes. Students entering in first-year engineering programs make different choices and experience different results than students who admit directly to a discipline. 8 There is also evidence of a relationship between an institution’s approach to engineering matriculation and persistence, switching from other disciplines into engineering, transfer from other institutions to the institution’s engineering program, likelihood of graduating in the first degree program selected, and time to degree. 9 Research combining the results of two surveys of first-year engineering programs describes a variety of characteristics of that particular matriculation model, yet that work also stops short of exploring first-year engineering programs in the context of other matriculation models. 10 Clifford Adelman’s metaphor of “paths” is used as a framework, 11 because it captures the fact that there are many ways for students to navigate the process of getting an engineering degree. Note that this is somewhat in contrast to “pipeline” metaphor, which suggests only one entrypoint with many “leaks” or exit points. 12,13 In keeping with this paths metaphor, this work considers a diversity of approaches by which students proceed from matriculating to an institution to being enrolled in a degree-granting engineering program and taking classes from faculty in that discipline.To the extent that important outcomes are affected by the matriculation practices of an institution, it is important to the engineering education enterprise as a whole to know how prevalent the various matriculation models are. Independent of this systemic objective, institutions with a diversity of matriculation models have an interest in improving these various outcomes and, in some cases, have an interest in changing from one matriculation model to another. In support of benchmarking, continuous improvement, and to avoid reinventing the wheel, institutions have much to learn from knowing which institutions use a similar matriculation model, what matriculation models are being used by peer institutions, and what matriculation models are being used by aspirational institutions. In this paper, both to establish a complete taxonomy and to classify all U.S. engineering programs using the that taxonomy, we research all 390 U.S. undergraduate institutions with ABET EAC-accredited engineering programs to determine the universe of practices leading to direct contact with a specific engineering major. Data were gathered from university, college, and departmental websites as well as clarifying telephone calls to admissions and engineering personnel. To further explain how this taxonomy may work in practice, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with College of Engineering representatives at 11 institutions to determine: 1) who makes the admissions decision for engineering students; 2) at what point may students declare an engineering major; and 3) the formal mechanism by which students are advised

The effect of matriculation practices and first-year engineering courses on engineering major selection

Sixty-one sophomores were interviewed at six large public institutions to learn why they chose their institution and their engineering major. The institutions were categorized as either requiring a first-year engineering (FYE) program or allowing students to matriculate directly into a major. At these institutions, the first-year experience either required a common introduction to engineering course, required introduction to engineering courses that were not common to all majors or included an optional introduction to engineering course. The impact of the matriculation mode on selection of the institution and the presence or absence of a required first year course are studied. We find that cost of attendance is far more important than matriculation mode for most students choosing their institutions. Required and optional first-year courses, when taken, do tend to help students either affirm their prior choice of major or select an engineering major that suits their interests

ParBFT: An Optimized Byzantine Consensus Parallelism Scheme

Byzantine fault-tolerance (BFT) consensus is a fundamental building block of distributed systems such as blockchains. However, implementations based on classic PBFT and most linear PBFT-variants still suffer from message communication complexity, restricting the scalability and performance of BFT algorithms when serving large-scale systems with growing numbers of peers. To tackle the scalability and performance challenges, we propose ParBFT, a new Byzantine consensus parallelism scheme combining classic BFT protocols and a novel Bilevel Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (BL-MILP)-based optimisation model. The core aim of ParBFT is to improve scalability via parallel consensus while providing enhanced safety (i.e. ensuring consistent total order across all correct replicas). Another core novelty is the integration of the BL-MILP model into ParBFT. The BL-MILP allows us to compute optimal numerical decisions for parallel committees (i.e. the optimal number of committees and peer allocation for each committee) and improve consensus performance while ensuring security. Finally, we test the performance of the proposed ParBFT on Microsoft Azure Cloud systems with 20 to 300 peers and find that ParBFT can achieve significant improvement compared to the state-of-the-art protocols

Impact of oxygation on soil respiration and crop physiological characteristics in pineapple

Oxygation refers to irrigation of the crops with aerated water, air injection using the venture principle or the supply hydrogen peroxide in the root zone, by using subsurface drip irrigation(SDI) system. This research investigated the potential of oxygation to enhance soil respiration, plant growth, yield, and water use efficiency(WUE) of pineapple in field experiments. The field experiment, compared Mazzei air injectors and control and treatments(oxygation or not), were randomized and replicated seven times in pineapple. In the experiments, soil water content and CO 2 concentration in root zone of pineapple did not differ significantly between oxygation and not. But soil respiration increased by 100%, for oxygation compared to control at the same depth. There were significant effects of oxygation on pineapple fresh biomass, dry matter and industry production, and the harvest index. The irrigation water use efficiency(WUE) was not significantly improved, the WUE values in oxygation treatments were somewhat greater 4.3% compared with the control. However, the yield and some quality parameters were significantly improved, the total fruit yield and marketable yield increased by 17.3% and 4.3%. Our data suggest that the benefits of oxygation are application for field crop