Using publication metrics to highlight academic productivity and research impact

This article provides a broad overview of widely available measures of academic productivity and impact using publication data and highlights uses of these metrics for various purposes. Metrics based on publication data include measures such as number of publications, number of citations, the journal impact factor score, and the h-index, as well as emerging metrics based on document-level metrics. Publication metrics can be used for a variety of purposes for tenure and promotion, grant applications and renewal reports, benchmarking, recruiting efforts, and administrative purposes for departmental or university performance reports. The authors also highlight practical applications of measuring and reporting academic productivity and impact to emphasize and promote individual investigators, grant applications, or department output

Exploring General Gauge Mediation

We explore various aspects of General Gauge Mediation(GGM). We present a reformulation of the correlation functions used in GGM, and further elucidate their IR and UV properties. Additionally we clarify the issue of UV sensitivity in the calculation of the soft masses in the MSSM, highlighting the role of the supertrace over the messenger spectrum. Finally, we present weakly coupled messenger models which fully cover the parameter space of GGM. These examples demonstrate that the full parameter space of GGM is physical and realizable. Thus it should be considered a valid basis for future phenomenological explorations of gauge mediation.Comment: 27 pages, minor changes, typos fixed in appendix

Automated Test for NASA CFS

The core Flight System (cFS) is a flight software (FSW) product line developed by the Flight Software Systems Branch (FSSB) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The cFS uses compile-time configuration parameters to implement variable requirements to enable portability across embedded computing platforms and to implement different end-user functional needs. The verification and validation of these requirements is proving to be a significant challenge. This paper describes the challenges facing the cFS and the results of a pilot effort to apply EXB Solution's testing approach to the cFS applications

A Resolved Ring of Debris Dust around the Solar Analog HD 107146

We present resolved images of the dust continuum emission from the debris disk around the young (80-200 Myr) solar-type star HD 107146 with CARMA at λ = 1.3 mm and the CSO at λ = 350 μ. Both images show that the dust emission extends over an approximately 10" diameter region. The high-resolution (3") CARMA image further reveals that the dust is distributed in a partial ring with significant decrease in a flux inward of 97 AU. Two prominent emission peaks appear within the ring separated by ~140° in the position angle. The morphology of the dust emission is suggestive of dust captured into a mean motion resonance, which would imply the presence of a planet at an orbital radius of ~45-75 AU

Mutations in Drosophila Greatwall/Scant Reveal Its Roles in Mitosis and Meiosis and Interdependence with Polo Kinase

Polo is a conserved kinase that coordinates many events of mitosis and meiosis, but how it is regulated remains unclear. Drosophila females having only one wild-type allele of the polo kinase gene and the dominant Scant mutation produce embryos in which one of the centrosomes detaches from the nuclear envelope in late prophase. We show that Scant creates a hyperactive form of Greatwall (Gwl) with altered specificity in vitro, another protein kinase recently implicated in mitotic entry in Drosophila and Xenopus. Excess Gwl activity in embryos causes developmental failure that can be rescued by increasing maternal Polo dosage, indicating that coordination between the two mitotic kinases is crucial for mitotic progression. Revertant alleles of Scant that restore fertility to polo–Scant heterozygous females are recessive alleles or deficiencies of gwl; they show chromatin condensation defects and anaphase bridges in larval neuroblasts. One recessive mutant allele specifically disrupts a Gwl isoform strongly expressed during vitellogenesis. Females hemizygous for this allele are sterile, and their oocytes fail to arrest in metaphase I of meiosis; both homologues and sister chromatids separate on elongated meiotic spindles with little or no segregation. This allelic series of gwl mutants highlights the multiple roles of Gwl in both mitotic and meiotic progression. Our results indicate that Gwl activity antagonizes Polo and thus identify an important regulatory interaction of the cell cycle