Federal Participation in LEED in 2005

The federal government is an active participant in promotingsustainable design, construction and operations and in the use of USGBC'sLeadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green BuildingRating System. This paper presents an overview of sustainableconstruction activities in the federal sector in 2005

Graduate Student Orientation through a Professional Seminar

Traditional new student orientation programming is focused on the duality of academic preparation and social integration. For graduate students, especially doctoral students, much of the academic preparation has already been accounted for and social integration is often seen as secondary. The current study follows a cohort of new doctoral students through an orientation course, collecting relevant demographic data, and tracking them through completion of their dissertations

Female First-Year Students Preceptions of Orientation Programs

Female college students experience unique dimensions to their transition to college. Traditional orientation programming has begun to address the needs of female students, but these efforts have typically not provided the holistic attention deserving of this population. The current report was a case study of 605 female first-year college students, their perceptions of an orientation program based on the CAS Standards, and the differences between Multi-Ethnic and Caucasian females

Novel genetic loci underlying human intracranial volume identified through genome-wide association

Intracranial volume reflects the maximally attained brain size during development, and remains stable with loss of tissue in late life. It is highly heritable, but the underlying genes remain largely undetermined. In a genome-wide association study of 32,438 adults, we discovered five novel loci for intracranial volume and confirmed two known signals. Four of the loci are also associated with adult human stature, but these remained associated with intracranial volume after adjusting for height. We found a high genetic correlation with child head circumference (ρgenetic=0.748), which indicated a similar genetic background and allowed for the identification of four additional loci through meta-analysis (Ncombined = 37,345). Variants for intracranial volume were also related to childhood and adult cognitive function, Parkinson’s disease, and enriched near genes involved in growth pathways including PI3K–AKT signaling. These findings identify biological underpinnings of intracranial volume and provide genetic support for theories on brain reserve and brain overgrowth

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Federal participation in LEED

The federal government has been an active participant in the development and use of USGBC's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Green Building Rating System (LEED). This paper presents a review of this participation and some expectations for ongoing partnership