Why Are There So Few Women in Physics? Reflections on the Experiences of Two Women

Some of the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in physics are evident in the reflections of two undergraduate women. Leia is a chemistry major who loves college-level physical chemistry and quantum mechanics but does not identify with the discipline of physics, partly because she has a low level of self-efficacy as a physicist and has received very little recognition for her work and learning in physics. Paulette is a physics major who loves physics but feels isolated by the current physics learning environment. She reluctantly dropped honors introductory lab after being snubbed by her male classmates who partnered with one another, leaving her to work alone. Paulette's experiences with condescending male professors activated a stereotype threat about who can succeed in physics that caused her to disengage in class. We also discuss what these women felt has helped them so far and explore their suggestions for what would help women in physics courses as they pursue their quest for a physical science degree

Latino Acculturative Stress Implications, Psychotherapeutic Processes, and Group Therapy

The Latino population is the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States. Yet, Latinos do not receive adequate mental health treatment due to the lack of cultural sensitivity regarding the necessity of bilingual and bicultural staff and culturally modified therapies. The difficulties associated with Latinos wrestling to preserve their native culture while also adjusting to the new dominant U.S. culture may cause them to experience acculturative stress. This specific distress may lead Latinos to implement maladaptive coping strategies that could influence Latino risk factors regarding unemployment, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, aggressive behavior, mental health issues, and suicide rates. After reviewing the research focused on Latinos, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Interpersonal Therapy were three major orientations aimed at individual therapy with Latinos while Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy and psychoeducational groups dominated group therapy literature with Latinos. This review concluded the importance of incorporating cultural values and addressing socio-psychological stressors in therapy in order to produce significant treatment efficacy. Nonetheless, the rapidly increasing Latino population and genuine lack of cultural awareness requires continued research on culturally modifying other treatment modalities, multicultural competency for mental health professionals, and graduate program incorporation of a language component to stimulate interest with this needy population

Inherent Biases of Recurrent Neural Networks for Phonological Assimilation and Dissimilation

A recurrent neural network model of phonological pattern learning is proposed. The model is a relatively simple neural network with one recurrent layer, and displays biases in learning that mimic observed biases in human learning. Single-feature patterns are learned faster than two-feature patterns, and vowel or consonant-only patterns are learned faster than patterns involving vowels and consonants, mimicking the results of laboratory learning experiments. In non-recurrent models, capturing these biases requires the use of alpha features or some other representation of repeated features, but with a recurrent neural network, these elaborations are not necessary

Linux XIA: an interoperable meta network architecture to crowdsource the future Internet

With the growing number of proposed clean-slate redesigns of the Internet, the need for a medium that enables all stakeholders to participate in the realization, evaluation, and selection of these designs is increasing. We believe that the missing catalyst is a meta network architecture that welcomes most, if not all, clean-state designs on a level playing field, lowers deployment barriers, and leaves the final evaluation to the broader community. This paper presents Linux XIA, a native implementation of XIA [12] in the Linux kernel, as a candidate. We first describe Linux XIA in terms of its architectural realizations and algorithmic contributions. We then demonstrate how to port several distinct and unrelated network architectures onto Linux XIA. Finally, we provide a hybrid evaluation of Linux XIA at three levels of abstraction in terms of its ability to: evolve and foster interoperation of new architectures, embed disparate architectures inside the implementation’s framework, and maintain a comparable forwarding performance to that of the legacy TCP/IP implementation. Given this evaluation, we substantiate a previously unsupported claim of XIA: that it readily supports and enables network evolution, collaboration, and interoperability—traits we view as central to the success of any future Internet architecture.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under awards CNS-1040800, CNS-1345307 and CNS-1347525

Tonsillectomy and Weight Gain in Children, Is There a Correlation?

The relationship between tonsillectomy and postoperative weight gain in children has been studied across the globe. Indications for tonsillectomy include chronic recurrent tonsillitis and obstructive sleep apnea. This phenomenon of weight gain postoperatively and the many possible causes were the focus of this systematic review. Relationships between adenotonsillectomy/tonsillectomy, dietary habits, obstructive sleep apnea, motor activity, hyperactivity, insulin-like growth factor-1, insulin growth factor binding protein -3, and weight gain were investigated. Findings supported a relationship between adenotonsillectomy/tonsillectomy and postoperative weight gain, decreased sleep apnea, decreased motor activity and hyperactivity, an affinity for sugary and fatty foods, and an increase in insulin growth factor binding protein -3 in children. While an increase in weight was found postoperatively, an increase in height was not found to be statistically significant. With increasing concerns regarding the rise in obesity in our society, further research in this area regarding this phenomenon may lead to the development of guidelines for post recovery dietary and exercise habits. These guidelines could then be utilized to educate parents and primary care providers in an effort to minimize or prevent the occurrence of obesity in children post adenotonsillectomy/tonsillectomy