Faculty’s Role in Creating a (Remote) Sense of Community Among Faculty and Facilitating Contexts of Care for Students

Objectives: This qualitative study employed a sensemaking approach to understand faculty members’ sensemaking of their roles during the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergency transition to remote teaching and learning. Methods: An email invitation to participate in the study was sent to faculty who taught in an MBA program during both the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic school years. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 14 faculty members who self-selected to participate in the study. Results: Two salient themes emerged from the research: creating a (remote) sense of community among faculty and facilitating contexts of care for students. These findings highlight the mission-central importance of faculty, the role of teaching, and the need to support faculty as they support students in higher education. Conclusions: As a result of the emergency transition to remote teaching and learning, faculty gained an increased awareness of the importance of human connection and interaction, which made them develop a whole-person approach both to colleagues and students. Implications: How well institutions plan for and support their faculty during times of crises will influence the institution’s capacity for student support and the personal impact of the crisis on faculty

Empirical testing of Tsallis' Thermodynamics as a model for dark matter halos

We study a dark matter halo model from two points of view: the ``stellar polytrope'' (SP) model coming from Tsallis' thermodynamics, and the one coming from the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) paradigm. We make an appropriate comparison between both halo models and analyzing the relations between the global physical parameters of observed galactic disks, coming from a sample of actual galaxies, with the ones of the unobserved dark matter halos, we conclude that the SP model is favored over the NFW model in such a comparison.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, To appear in the Proceedings of X Mexican Workshop on Particles and Fields, Morelia Michoac\'an, M\'exico, November 7-12, 200

Vitellogenin receptors during vitellogenesis in the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss

Rainbow trout vitellogenin receptors have been characterized by ligand blotting and Scatchard analysis. Their evolution has been studied over a reproductive cycle in a broodstock of 2-year-old females. The receptors were prepared from ovarian membrane homogenates and were solubilized using n-octyl-beta-D-glucopyranoside. The visualization of the receptor by ligand blotting using 125iodine-vitellogenin after sodium dodecyl sulfate electrophoresis revealed the existence of one major binding component corresponding to a protein of 113 kDa. The Scatchard transformation of the binding data revealed a single class of binding sites. The variations of the binding characteristics (Kd and maximum binding) were investigated during vitellogenesis. This study revealed that the Kd was not affected by oocyte growth during vitellogenesis, but was highly decreased in ovulated eggs. The receptor number increased during the same period from 35 to 860 fM per oocyte, while the receptor number per mm2 of oocyte membrane surface was doubled during the same period. (Résumé d'auteur

Entropy considerations in constraining the mSUGRA parameter space

We explore the use of two criteria to constraint the allowed parameter space in mSUGRA models. Both criteria are based in the calculation of the present density of neutralinos as dark matter in the Universe. The first one is the usual ``abundance'' criterion which is used to calculate the relic density after the ``freeze-out'' era. To compute the relic density we used the numerical public code micrOMEGAs. The second criterion applies the microcanonical definition of entropy to a weakly interacting and self-gravitating gas evaluating then the change in the entropy per particle of this gas between the ``freeze-out'' era and present day virialized structures. An ``entropy-consistency'' criterion emerges by comparing theoretical and empirical estimates of this entropy. The main objective of our work is to determine for which regions of the parameter space in the mSUGRA model are both criteria consistent with the 2$\sigma$ bounds according to WMAP for the relic density: $0.0945<\Omega_{CDM}h^2<0.1287$. As a first result, we found that for $A_0=0$, sgn$\mu=+$, small values of tan$\beta$ are not favored; only for tan$\beta\simeq50$ are both criteria significantly consistent.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the Proceedings of X Mexican Workshop on Particles and Fields, Morelia Michoac\'an, M\'exico, November 7-12, 200

Crustal Structure Across the Northern Region of the Islas Marias Archipelago

The tectonic interaction between the Rivera and North American plates north of the Bahia de Banderas is poorly understood. The nature of the crust and where the subduction ends in the western part of the Islas Marias Archipelago are still controversial. Based on new geophysical data provided by the TsuJal project, we present the shallow and deep crustal structure of the Rivera North American plate contact zone along two seismic transects, TS09b and RTSIM01b, and the bathymetry obtained across the northern region of Maria Madre Island. Detailed bathymetric analysis allowed mapping of a series of lineaments along the study region, with two main preferred tendencies (020 050 and 290 320) associated with the evolution of the Pacific-Rivera rise and the transform faults of the Gulf of California, respectively. The shallow structure is characterized by five sedimentary basins without deformation, whose horizons are subparallel, suggesting that the sediment deposition occurred after the extension process ended. The deep structure corresponds to a transition between oceanic crust (Rivera Plate), with an average thickness of 10 km to the Islas Marias Escarpment, and a thinned continental crust, whose thickness increases toward the continent until it reaches 28 km, with a dip angle of 7 10. The absence of an accretionary prism suggests that the subduction process of the Rivera Plate beneath the North American Plate to the north of Islas Marias has ceased. In this study, we determined that the morphological expression of the northern limit of the Rivera Plate corresponds to the Islas Marias Escarpment.Comment: Frontiers in Earth Science, 202

Testicular structure, spermatogenesis and sperm cryopreservation in the African clariid catfish Heterobranchus longifilis (Valenciennes, 1840)

The morphological and physiological characteristics of the testes and the sperm of the catfish #Heterobranchus longifilis$ (Val.) are presented. The effect of cryopreservation on the fertilizing capacity of the sperm was also evaluated. Testicular structure and spermatogenesis are described using histological techniques. The coexistence in the lobules of spermatozoa and all the spermatogenic stages indicates that this species is able to perform continuous reproduction. No seasonal trend was noticed in the evolution of the gonadosomatic index and in the quantity of the sperm produced over a year's period. However, maximum sperm production was observed in April and September. Different cryopreservation trials were conducted using a cryoprotective solution composed of 5% dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO), 5% glycerol, 10% hen's eggyolk and 80% Mounib's solution. Fresh and cryopreserved semen gave equivalent hatching rates (81.1%, 83.4% and 78.9% respectively for the fresh, the 1-hour cryopreserved and the 8-month cryopreserved sperm). Percentages of normal and deformed larvae were not affected by sperm cryopreservation. (Résumé d'auteur

MySmartPi

Nowadays, accessing the Internet in a secure way in a big concern for many people due to the increase of cybersecurity attacks and the vulnerability of the data that is transferred online. In order to address such vulnerabilities, the use of a Virtual Private Network is really important. Not only for security reasons, but also to access resources of the network, such as printers, files or web pages. Considering that many people, especially IT students, have curiosity and enjoy creating their own technologies, this project aims to create a user manual to teach how people can create their own VPN server at home using a Raspberry Pi and to access their files and folders which are in the network. For that, tutorials were used and adapted in order to install the VPN server and NAS. In order to prove that the whole process was successful, some tools, such as, Wireshark, were used to show how the network traffic works once the VPN is used. The process was successful and many concepts were learnt and used such as Cryptography, Port forwarding, dynamic DNS, OpenVPN, etc