Advancing Faculty DiversityThrough Self-Directed Mentoring

Mentoring is widely acknowledged to be important in career success, yet may be lacking for female and minority law professors, contributing to disparities in retention and promotion of diverse faculty. This Article presents the results of a unique diversity mentoring program conducted at one law school. Mentoring is often thought of as something directed by the mentor on behalf of the protégé. Our framework inverts that model, empowering diverse faculty members to proactively cultivate their own networks of research mentors. The studied intervention consisted of modest programming on mentorship, along with supplemental travel funds to focus specifically on travel for the purpose of cultivating mentors beyond one’s own institution. Participants were responsible for setting their own mentorship goals, approaching mentors and arranging meetings, and reporting annually on their activities and progress. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence demonstrate that the program has been effective along its measurable goals in its first year. Participants report growing their networks of mentors, receiving significant advice on research and the tenure process, and being sponsored for new opportunities. The authors conclude that this type of mentoring initiative, if more broadly applied, could have a significant impact on reducing disparities in retention and promotion in the legal academy. To facilitate such replication, the Article describes both the process of designing the program and the actual operation of the program as carried out at one school. In sum, the Article offers a concrete starting point for discussions at any law school interested in advancing faculty diversity through improved mentoring

Iterated smoothed bootstrap confidence intervals for population quantiles

This paper investigates the effects of smoothed bootstrap iterations on coverage probabilities of smoothed bootstrap and bootstrap-t confidence intervals for population quantiles, and establishes the optimal kernel bandwidths at various stages of the smoothing procedures. The conventional smoothed bootstrap and bootstrap-t methods have been known to yield one-sided coverage errors of orders O(n^{-1/2}) and o(n^{-2/3}), respectively, for intervals based on the sample quantile of a random sample of size n. We sharpen the latter result to O(n^{-5/6}) with proper choices of bandwidths at the bootstrapping and Studentization steps. We show further that calibration of the nominal coverage level by means of the iterated bootstrap succeeds in reducing the coverage error of the smoothed bootstrap percentile interval to the order O(n^{-2/3}) and that of the smoothed bootstrap-t interval to O(n^{-58/57}), provided that bandwidths are selected of appropriate orders. Simulation results confirm our asymptotic findings, suggesting that the iterated smoothed bootstrap-t method yields the most accurate coverage. On the other hand, the iterated smoothed bootstrap percentile method interval has the advantage of being shorter and more stable than the bootstrap-t intervals.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053604000000878 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A brief history of the British Neuroscience Association

As the British Neuroscience Association commemorates 50 years of existence in 2018, this article recalls its founding as a discussion group, its establishment as the Brain Research Association, its transition to a professional society encompassing all aspects of neuroscience research, both clinical and non-clinical, and its re-branding as the British Neuroscience Association in the late 1990s. Neuroscience as a branch of life science has expanded hugely in the last 25 years and the British Neuroscience Association has adapted, frequently working with partner societies, to serve as an interdisciplinary hub for professionals working in this exciting and crucial field. The authors have attempted to highlight some key events in the Association’s history and acknowledge the contributions made by many people over half a century

The school food environment and student body mass index and food consumption: 2004 to 2007 national data

PURPOSE: This study identifies trends in the availability of various food choices in United States' middle and high schools from 2004 to 2007, and examines the potential associations between such food availability and students' self-reported eating habits and body mass index (BMI)-related outcomes. METHODS: Data are based on nationally representative samples of 78,442 students in 684 secondary schools surveyed from 2004 to 2007 as part of the Youth, Education, and Society (YES) study and the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study. In the YES study, school administrators and food service managers completed self-administered questionnaires on their school's food environment. In the MTF study, students in the same schools completed self-administered questionnaires, providing data used to construct BMI and food consumption measures. RESULTS: Overall, there was a decrease in the availability of regular-sugar/fat food items in both middle and high schools, and some indication of an increase in high school availability of reduced-fat food items through school lunch or a la carte. Some minimal evidence was found for relationships between the school food environment and student BMI-related outcomes and food consumption measures. CONCLUSIONS: United States secondary schools are making progress in the types of foods offered to students, with food items of lower nutritional value becoming less prevalent in recent years. Continued monitoring of food environment trends may help clarify whether and how such factors relate to youth health outcomes.The Youth, Education, and Society (YES) project (part of a larger research initiative, entitled Bridging the Gap: Research Informing Policy and Practice for Healthy Youth Behavior) is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Monitoring the Future study is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA01411). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; DA01411 - National Institute on Drug Abuse

Einstein constraints on a characteristic cone

We analyse the Cauchy problem on a characteristic cone, including its vertex, for the Einstein equations in arbitrary dimensions. We use a wave map gauge, solve the obtained constraints and show gauge conservation.Comment: 10 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Waves and Stability in Continuous Media, held in Palermo, 28th June to 1st July 200

Learner-Centered Paradigms For On-Line Education: Implications For Instructional Design Models

The number of distance education programs delivered in higher education in the United States has increased dramatically since the 1990’s. To meet the demand for distance education and competition for students, institutions may rely on traditional instructional design models for development of distance education courses. Consideration of new paradigms may improve the effectiveness of distance education programs. Women are the primary users of distance education programs but women are frequently not involved in the policy or design decisions for on-line education programs (Kramarae, 2001). In addition, gender issues related to learning are often not considered in the design and development phases for distance education. This paper suggests that a learner-centered constructivist design strategy should be considered in conjunction with feminist theory for distance education. The combined approach could provide new insights for addressing the needs of women enrolled in distance education courses