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Background: Women and under-represented minority (URM) students continue to be under-represented in STEM and earn the lowest proportion of undergraduate engineering degrees. We employed a mixed methods research approach grounded in social capital theory to investigate "when" they first consider pursuing engineering as a college degree major, "who" influences this decision, and "how" the influence occurs. First, we surveyed 2186 first-year undergraduate students entering engineering programs at 11 universities in the U.S. during the fall of 2014. Next, we interviewed a subsample of 55 women and URM students. Results: Survey findings indicated that women were more likely than men to consider pursuing engineering while in high school, before admission into college, or while in college rather than considering it earlier in their education. Black and Latinx students were more likely than white students to consider pursuing engineering after high school. In addition, Black and Latinx students were more likely than white students to identify a school counselor (rather than a family member) as having the most influence on their engineering academic and career decisions. In interviews, women and URM students provided examples of influential people who connected their aptitude and enthusiasm for mathematics, science, and problem-solving to engineering, explained the benefits of being an engineer, and provided advice about engineering academic and career pathways. Conclusions: Encouraging earlier consideration of engineering majors, such as during middle school, could allow women and URM students time to take requisite courses and take advantage of college preparatory programming. Likewise, universities can engage in intentional efforts to identify women and URM students with engineering interests and provide guidance. Such efforts should also include connecting them with other women and URM students in engineering. In addition, universities should support K-12 and university personnel in offering advice that can influence students' decision to declare an engineering major, which could help recruit more women and URM students into engineering.

Contribution: This article discusses instructor decisions that support social capital development in an online, asynchronous, team-based introduction to electrical engineering course. Background: Online learning is changing how instructors and students interact with each other and course materials. There is a need to understand how to support students' social capital development during online engineering courses. Research Questions: What aspects of an online, asynchronous, team-based, introductory electrical engineering course gave students instrumental and expressive social capital? What decisions did the instructor make to support the development of strong and weak social ties? Methodology: A case study approach was used to analyze interview data from the students, instructor, and graduate teaching assistant (TA) from an online course. Findings: The results indicate effective lecture delivery and a team-based format can provide students with instrumental social supports they need to meet learning objectives in an online asynchronous, introduction to electrical engineering course. To facilitate the development of expressive support and stronger ties, instructors should incorporate these goals in their course design decisions.

Contribution: This study contributes to efforts to diversify the field of engineering by studying the influence of co-curricular activities on African American students' development of key nontechnical professional skills. Background: The 21st Century workforce requires significant collaboration and communication. For engineering graduates to meet workforce challenges, they must graduate with nontechnical skills. This study operationalized these skills using traits identified in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) "Engineer of 2020" report. The NAE also points to the urgent need for the United States to diversify its workforce; broadening the participation of African American engineers is key to doing so. Co-curricular activities help students develop nontechnical professional skills and are particularly important to African Americans at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Research Question: How do African American engineering students attending PWIs in the United States develop nontechnical professional skills through participation in ethnic-specific co-curricular activities? Methodology: This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of 16 participants from one of six engineering disciplines. Each participant was a member of at least one of the following organizations: a Black fraternity or sorority (termed Black Greek Letter organizations), their campus student chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, or an institution-sponsored program for racially underrepresented students such as a minority engineering program. Findings: Data analysis revealed significant evidence that involvement in one or more of the studied ethnic-specific co-curricular activities enhanced African American engineering students' educational experiences by providing resources and opportunities to help them develop professional skills.

Women and underrepresented minority (URM) undergraduates declare and complete science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors at different rates in comparison to majority groups. Explanations of these differences have long been deficit oriented, focusing on aptitude or similar characteristics, but more recent work focuses on institutional contexts, such as academic climate and feelings of belonging (fit). This study examines the experiences of women and URM students in engineering undergraduate programs, focusing on how they fit, experiential factors affecting fit, and how fit is mitigated by social relationships from their networks and organizations in which they participate (i.e., social capital). Thematic analysis of 55 women and URM interviewee responses shows that students who fit well were those with majority characteristics, including race (i.e., White, White-passing) and gender (i.e., men, masculine appearance), and those in groups well represented in their programs numerically (i.e., men, Asian). In contrast, women and Black students encountered threats to their fit due to stereotyping from bias and differential treatment from others (i.e., being excluded from group work). However, students received advice from their social networks (i.e., family, professors) in which they were warned to expect discrimination, or through organizations in which they participated (i.e., National Association of Black Engineers) where their sense of community was expanded. The advice and resources provided through this network-based and participatory social capital mitigated fit for women and Black students, albeit in different ways, helping to preserve their feelings of belonging and promote their persistence in engineering. We offer suggestions to enact university policies to increase access to social capital with homophilious alters and educational opportunities for majority groups.

This paper summarized the efforts performed to understand decay heat estimation from existing spent nuclear fuel (SNF), under the auspices of the Working Party on Nuclear Criticality Safety (WPNCS) of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. Needs for precise estimations are related to safety, cost, and optimization of SNF handling, storage, and repository. The physical origins of decay heat (a more correct denomination would be decay power) are then introduced, to identify its main contributors (fission products and actinides) and time-dependent evolution. Due to limited absolute prediction capabilities, experimental information is crucial; measurement facilities and methods are then presented, highlighting both their relevance and our need for maintaining the unique current full-scale facility and developing new ones. The third part of this report is dedicated to the computational aspect of the decay heat estimation: calculation methods, codes, and validation. Different approaches and implementations currently exist for these three aspects, directly impacting our capabilities to predict decay heat and to inform decision-makers. Finally, recommendations from the expert community are proposed, potentially guiding future experimental and computational developments. One of the most important outcomes of this work is the consensus among participants on the need to reduce biases and uncertainties for the estimated SNF decay heat. If it is agreed that uncertainties (being one standard deviation) are on average small (less than a few percent), they still substantially impact various applications when one needs to consider up to three standard deviations, thus covering more than 95% of cases. The second main finding is the need of new decay heat measurements and validation for cases corresponding to more modern fuel characteristics: higher initial enrichment, higher average burnup, as well as shorter and longer cooling time. Similar needs exist for fuel types without public experimental data, such as MOX, VVER, or CANDU fuels. A third outcome is related to SNF assemblies for which no direct validation can be performed, representing the vast majority of cases (due to the large number of SNF assemblies currently stored, or too short or too long cooling periods of interest). A few solutions are possible, depending on the application. For the final repository, systematic measurements of quantities related to decay heat can be performed, such as neutron or gamma emission. This would provide indications of the SNF decay heat at the time of encapsulation. For other applications (short- or long-term cooling), the community would benefit from applying consistent and accepted recommendations on calculation methods, for both decay heat and uncertainties. This would improve the understanding of the results and make comparisons easier.

Background: Social capital, defined as the people one knows and the resources available through that network of people, has been a key variable in research examining the participation of women and underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This study focuses on two types of social capital: instrumental (concrete advice and resources) and expressive (emotional support and encouragement). The analysis of interviews with 55 White women and women and men underrepresented minority engineering undergraduate students shows how the instrumental and expressive social capital received from parents influenced their students' declaration of and persistence in the engineering major. Within this analysis, we considered students' transition to adulthood and the corresponding expectation that parents would still provide support but allow their children to independently determine their own paths. Results: Participants shared the advice they received from people in their social networks, with the majority of participants highlighting parents as a major contributor of instrumental and expressive social capital. Instrumental social capital was helpful in students' major declarations and offered them an opportunity to further develop their interests and aptitude in STEM as well as a pathway for obtaining an engineering degree. During the first year of their engineering major, students relied heavily on the expressive social capital of parents when considering whether to stay in engineering; parental encouragement of "you can do it" became a common resource. Conclusions: These findings offer nuance to explanations of social capital's influence on STEM degree major declaration and persistence, which often use deficit approaches. In highlighting the resources of social capital, especially expressive support, this work offers educators a new frame of reference for building upon the valuable advice offered by parents to their children completing engineering majors.

As part of a longitudinal research effort that examines the influence of social capital on differential persistence and retention among undergraduate engineering majors, this study examines how engineering degree-related social capital differs for first-year engineering students by gender and ethno-racial groups. Social capital is operationalized as a person's network of relationships with individuals who hold influential positions (e.g. parent, teacher, advisers) and access to resources that support persistence in engineering programs. Our data comprise survey responses from 2186 first-year engineering students, from eleven diverse colleges and universities, who provided information about their participation in engineering-related courses, activities, and programs while in high school as well as the individuals who influenced their decision to pursue an engineering major. We found few differences in social capital between men and women, but found many differences among ethno-racial groups, which suggests that different levels of social capital could influence students' persistence and retention.

This systematic review identifies factors that prior studies have identified as supporting the academic success of Latinx transfer students, who matriculate at 2-year institutions with respect to earning a 4-year baccalaureate degree in a STEM field. Since the students matriculate at a 2-year institution, they must, at some point in their academic career, transfer to a 4-year institution to earn the baccalaureate degree. Search and screening procedures identified 59 qualifying studies describing factors supporting persistence, transfer, or graduation of Latinx students matriculating at 2-year institutions. To synthesize findings, we coded the 31 quantitative, 22 qualitative, and six mixed methods studies according to unified themes. Nearly half the quantitative studies explored student characteristics alone, while some qualitative studies explicitly sought to identify assets Latinx students bring to higher education. None of the quantitative students utilized assets-based frameworks such as Yosso (Race Ethn Educ 8:69-91, 2005) to guide their analysis. All types of studies contributed to the conclusion that quality interactions with peers and staff support success of Latinx STEM transfer students. Specific details and strategies for institutions and their staff to support these interactions are described.

Background: The higher education literature is replete with deficit-based studies of first-generation college students. By thinking of students' social relationships as embedded assets, our research adds to an anti-deficit, or asset-based, framing of first-generation students majoring in engineering. Our multi-institution study qualitatively characterizes how the various people (alters) in students' social networks provide expressive and instrumental social capital that helps students decide to enter and then to persist in undergraduate engineering majors. Our work compares and contrasts social capital assets described by first-generation college students and those described by continuing-generation college students. Results: Both first-generation college students and continuing-generation college students described how they leveraged the social capital inherent in their social relationships. In our comparison of the two groups, we found far more similarities than differences in the way participants described their social capital. For example, the network compositions (the specific alters providing resources) were similar for both groups. Both groups reported how parents, family members, peers, middle and high school teachers, individuals associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs, university professors, academic advisors and other personnel, employers and coworkers, professional organization contacts, and graduate students provided social capital related to major choice and persistence. One difference between the two groups relates to the type of social capital provided by parents and intergenerational family members. First-generation college students described their familial relationships as assets that provided robust emotional support (expressive social capital) while the students decided upon a college major and vigorous encouragement to persist once the students enrolled in undergraduate studies. Continuing-generation college students described their families as providing engineering-specific instrumental actions and information during their selection of a college major, and then familial support changing to that of an expressive nature while the students were enrolled in engineering studies. Conclusions: Our findings illustrate that engineering undergraduates' social relationships and networks are critical to their success in engineering. The relational assets first-generation college students possess support an anti-deficit framing of this group. Our work helps us understand specifically how students gain support from a variety of alters, and it provides implications for how to better support all students' engineering educational pathways.

Meter-scale AUV bathymetric mapping and ROV sampling of the entire 47 km-long Alarcon Rise between the Pescadero and Tamayo transforms show that the shallowest inflated portion of the segment hosts all four active hydrothermal vent fields and the youngest, hottest, and highest effusion rate lava flows. This shallowest inflated part is located ∼1/3 of the way between the Tamayo and Pescadero transforms and is paved by a 16 km2 channelized flow that erupted from 9 km of en echelon fissures and is larger than historic flows on the East Pacific Rise or on the Gorda and Juan de Fuca Ridges. Starting ∼5 km south of the Pescadero transform, 6.5 km of the Alarcon Rise is characterized by faulted ridges and domes of fractionated lavas ranging from basaltic andesite to rhyolite with up to 77.3 wt % SiO2. These are the first known rhyolites from the submarine global mid-ocean ridge system. Silicic lavas range from >11.7 ka, to as young as 1.1 ka. A basalt-to-basaltic andesite sequence and an andesite-to-dacite-to-rhyolite sequence are consistent with crystal fractionation but some intermediate basaltic andesite and andesite formed by mixing basalt with dacite or rhyolite. Magmatism occurred along the bounding Tamayo and Pescadero transforms as extensive channelized flows. The flows erupted from ring faults surrounding uplifted sediment hills inferred to overlie sills. The transforms are transtensional to accommodate magma migration from the adjacent Alarcon Rise.

Numerous national reports have identified the importance of significantly improving pathways that begin with Latinx students enrolling in 2-year institutions and ultimately completing baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields at 4-year institutions. Many programs using multiple interventions have been designed, implemented, and studied to achieve this goal. To synthesize what has been learned from studies of these programs, this article presents a systematic review of published studies of programs designed to support Latinx student success in 2-year institutions and successful transfer to 4-year institutions, particularly for STEM majors. A total of 49 quantitative, 9 qualitative, and 16 mixed-methods studies published as reports, articles, or dissertations since 1980 were identified that met the criteria for the review. Studies covered a wide range of interventions, including mentoring, counseling, advising, study groups, tutoring, scholarships, orientations, career services, undergraduate research, articulation agreements, and transfer programs. Individually, these studies report positive influences on student success outcomes, including 2- and 4-year graduation, transfer to a 4-year institution, retention, and success in individual courses. However, the number of qualifying studies was surprisingly small, considering the importance of improving success of Latinx students and the length of time during which the problem has been repeatedly emphasized. Few interventions have been undertaken from explicitly assets-based perspectives or theoretical frameworks. The lack of explicit frameworks underlying interventions--combined with a sole/primary focus on students--suggests many interventions were approached from a deficit-based perspective. Further, the study found no pattern of replication studies that might confirm effectiveness of potentially promising interventions. Based on our analysis of evaluations presented in the studies, it does not appear that the research community has developed agreed-upon methods to evaluate commonly agreed-upon outcomes. Finally, no intervention has been sufficiently supported that widespread implementation could be recommended.

This study employs the notion of bridging social capital to investigate the extent to which different forms and quantity of interactions with educators predict intentions to persist in engineering among a sample of Latina/o engineering majors from five public 4-year institutions in the United States. Different forms of capital were effective for women and men on intentions to persist, and learning orientation emerged as the most important predictor of engineering commitment.

We report an uncommon case of a cutaneous infection with Mycobacterium fortuitum arising in a new tattoo. A 29-year-old man presented with a several month history of a non-pruritic papular eruption within a tattoo; the papules developed 1-to-2 weeks after the tattoo procedure. He denied similar symptoms with previous tattoos. He had been treated unsuccessfully with cephalexin. Histopathologic examination revealed perifollicular chronic and granulomatous inflammation, consistent with chronic folliculitis. Acid-fast bacilli culture identified Mycobacterium fortuitum complex. The patient was treated with a 2-month course of oral trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (160mg/800mg twice daily) and ciprofloxacin (250 mg twice daily), with clinical improvement at follow up after three weeks of the antibiotic regimen. Rapidly growing mycobacteria have emerged as a cause of tattoo-associated cutaneous infection in recent years. Diagnosis and treatment can be difficult without clinical suspicion. M. fortuitum and other rapidly growing mycobacteria should be considered in the differential diagnosis of tattoo-associated dermatologic complications.

The generation and resolution of joint molecule recombination intermediates is required to ensure bipolar chromosome segregation during meiosis. During wild type meiosis in Caenorhabditis elegans, SPO-11-generated double stranded breaks are resolved to generate a single crossover per bivalent and the remaining recombination intermediates are resolved as noncrossovers. We discovered that early recombination intermediates are limited by the C. elegans BLM ortholog, HIM-6, and in the absence of HIM-6 by the structure specific endonuclease MUS-81. In the absence of both MUS-81 and HIM-6, recombination intermediates persist, leading to chromosome breakage at diakinesis and inviable embryos. MUS-81 has an additional role in resolving late recombination intermediates in C. elegans. mus-81 mutants exhibited reduced crossover recombination frequencies suggesting that MUS-81 is required to generate a subset of meiotic crossovers. Similarly, the Mus81-related endonuclease XPF-1 is also required for a subset of meiotic crossovers. Although C. elegans gen-1 mutants have no detectable meiotic defect either alone or in combination with him-6, mus-81 or xpf-1 mutations, mus-81;xpf-1 double mutants are synthetic lethal. While mus-81;xpf-1 double mutants are proficient for the processing of early recombination intermediates, they exhibit defects in the post-pachytene chromosome reorganization and the asymmetric disassembly of the synaptonemal complex, presumably triggered by crossovers or crossover precursors. Consistent with a defect in resolving late recombination intermediates, mus-81; xpf-1 diakinetic bivalents are aberrant with fine DNA bridges visible between two distinct DAPI staining bodies. We were able to suppress the aberrant bivalent phenotype by microinjection of activated human GEN1 protein, which can cleave Holliday junctions, suggesting that the DNA bridges in mus-81; xpf-1 diakinetic oocytes are unresolved Holliday junctions. We propose that the MUS-81 and XPF-1 endonucleases act redundantly to process late recombination intermediates to form crossovers during C. elegans meiosis.

Here, we show that the human homologue of the Caenorhabditis elegans biological clock protein CLK-2 (HCLK2) associates with the S-phase checkpoint components ATR, ATRIP, claspin and Chk1. Consistent with a critical role in the S-phase checkpoint, HCLK2-depleted cells accumulate spontaneous DNA damage in S-phase, exhibit radio-resistant DNA synthesis, are impaired for damage-induced monoubiquitination of FANCD2 and fail to recruit FANCD2 and Rad51 (critical components of the Fanconi anaemia and homologous recombination pathways, respectively) to sites of replication stress. Although Thr 68 phosphorylation of the checkpoint effector kinase Chk2 remains intact in the absence of HCLK2, claspin phosphorylation and degradation of the checkpoint phosphatase Cdc25A are compromised following replication stress as a result of accelerated Chk1 degradation. ATR phosphorylation is known to both activate Chk1 and target it for proteolytic degradation, and depleting ATR or mutation of Chk1 at Ser 345 restored Chk1 protein levels in HCLK2-depleted cells. We conclude that HCLK2 promotes activation of the S-phase checkpoint and downstream repair responses by preventing unscheduled Chk1 degradation by the proteasome.

The paper analyzes the socio-economic and demographic indicators of life expectancy in the countries of the world. Methods of regression analysis and machine learning are used. Statistically significant indicators that affect life expectancy around the world have been identified. When analyzing the data using machine learning methods, 13 of the 14 analyzed indicators were statistically significant. Significant indicators, in addition to those selected in the regression analysis, were 3: the under-five infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), the Net Barter Terms of Trade Index (2000 = 100), and Imports of goods and services (in % of GDP) (in the regression analysis, only the infant death rate was significant). In addition, it should be noted that there is a significant decrease in the under-five infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) for the EU, CIS and South-East Asian countries compared to the border set in the study for all countries: 4.65 vs. 34.9, a decrease in the birth rate from 2.785 to 1.85, a sharp increase in exports of goods and services: from 23.17 to 80.59, a halving in imports of goods and services, a drop in population growth from 2.105 to 0.85. The performed statistical analysis strongly supports the use of machine learning methods in identifying statistically significant relationships between various indicators that characterize the development of countries, if there are gaps in the data.

International calls for building capacity in engineering education research (EER) as a discipline have led to the development of workshops, training programs, and resources for scholars to learn and practice EER. Building capacity in EER as a discipline depends not only on the research skills of scholars, but also their sustained engagement in the discipline through the development of strong social networks. Understanding how scholars develop robust social networks through mentorship will support building research capacity in the field. This study was designed to answer the research question: How do established engineering education researchers help new engineering education researchers build social capital for EER through mentoring relationships? It draws on semi-structured interviews leveraging critical incident technique conducted with nine participants: two mentors and seven mentees. The findings suggest that mentors serve critical roles in the professional development of engineering faculty (academics) in EER as a discipline, providing training in methods and theories, developing mentees' social networks, and providing moral support for entering a new field. Building capacity efforts and related structured mentoring programs (and mentoring training) should emphasise the importance of developing mentees' social networks to support sustained engagement in EER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the contribution of maternal childhood histories of aggression and social withdrawal to the prediction of mother-child social problem solving in the next generation. Fifty-seven women (M = 37.32 years), previously rated (on a version of the pupil evaluation inventory) by their peers during childhood on measures of aggression and withdrawal, discussed conflicts with their 9- to 13-year-old children. Problem-defining statements, solutions, and resolution strategies were coded using an observational measure developed by the authors. Maternal childhood histories of aggression and withdrawal predicted poorly sophisticated solutions in both mothers and children as well as antisocial solutions in children. Histories of withdrawal predicted solitary solutions in children as well as less guidance and structure during decision making. Findings suggest that mothers who were withdrawn, and those aggressive and withdrawn in childhood, display less sophisticated problem solving, which may be mirrored in children. Results have implications for the development of aggressive and withdrawn girls into parenthood and highlight a potential pathway for the transfer of risk. (Contains 6 tables.)

Comparisons of calculated and experimental isotopic compositions of used nuclear fuels can provide valuable information on the quality of nuclear data involved in neutronic calculations. The experimental database used in the present study − containing more than a thousand isotopic ratio measurements for UOX and MOX fuels with burnup ranging from 10 GWd/t up to 85 GWd/t − allowed to investigate 45 isotopic ratios covering a large number of actinides (U, Np, Pu, Am and Cm) and fission products (Nd, Cs, Sm, Eu, Gd, Ru, Ce, Tc, Mo, Ag and Rh). The Integral Data Assimilation procedure implemented in the CONRAD code was used to provide nuclear data trends with realistic uncertainties for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) applications. Results confirm the quality of the 235U, 239Pu and 241Pu neutron capture cross sections available in the JEFF-3.1.1 library; slight increases of +1.2 ± 2.4%, +0.5 ± 2.2% and +1.2 ± 4.2% are respectively suggested, these all being within the limits of the quoted uncertainties. Additional trends on the capture cross sections were also obtained for other actinides (236U, 238Pu, 240Pu, 242Pu, 241Am, 243Am, 245Cm) and fission products (103Rh, 153Eu, 154Eu) as well as for the 238U(n,2n) and 237Np(n,2n) reactions. Meaningful trends for the cumulative fission yields of 144Ce, 133Cs, 137Cs and 106Ru for the 235U(nth,f) and 239Pu(nth,f) reactions are also reported.

Grafton Middle School in York County, Virginia has consistently met state accreditation criteria and has repeatedly met adequate yearly progress markers. Rather than abandoning previous work to improve curriculum and instruction by fully adopting the newest reform that improves student achievement, the authors decided to complement past efforts with classroom-based assessment to help teachers more accurately determine the degree of student learning in the classroom. In this article, the authors describe how they implemented classroom-based assessments at Grafton Middle School. (Contains 1 figure.)

DARWIN2.3 is the French reference package dedicated to fuel cycle applications, computing fuel inventory as well as decay heat, neutron emissions, α, β and γ spectra. The DARWIN2.3 package fuel inventory calculation was experimentally validated with Post-Irradiation Experiments (PIEs), mainly consisting in irradiated fuel pellets analysis. This paper presents a method to assimilate these integral trends for improving nuclear data. In this study, the method is applied to 137Cs/238U concentration ratio. Results suggest an increase of the JEFF-3.1.1 235U cumulated thermal fission yield in 137Cs by (+3.8 ± 2.1)%, from 6.221E-02 to 6.460E-02 ± 2.1%.

Communication and interpersonal effectiveness skills training can help older adults adapt to aging. Skills include expressing feelings in "I" statements, reflecting, validating self and others, and giving and receiving positive feedback. (SK)