A Look at Mentorship in a Structured Undergraduate Program

From the great deal of research previously done in the area of mentorship, we know that it can be very valuable to individuals across all ages and fields. However, there has not been much research done on how mentorship affects undergraduate students while in a structured program. In this study, we examine aspects of mentorship in a structured undergraduate program from the perspectives of the undergraduate protégés. We aimed to look at what specific mentorship interaction protégés had with their mentors and what aspect of satisfaction protégés had with their mentors. The structured program was the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program, a scholarship program that provides support and resources for those who are first generation, low income, and underrepresented in higher education to conduct research in order to prepare for graduate studies. McNair Scholars are paired with mentors who guide them through their summer research experience. Thirteen current protégé McNair Scholars participated in an approximately ninety to ninety-five question Qualtrics survey assessing mentoring functions, satisfaction, and mentorship recommendations using four previously published surveys, researcher designed questions, and general demographic questions. Those surveys include the following: Mentoring Functions Questionnaire (MFQ-9) (Scandura & Ragins, 1993), Mentoring Role Instrument (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990), Satisfaction with Mentor Scale (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990), and Mentoring Functions Scale (Noe, 1988). These questionnaires included items that could be broken up into 14 different categories including the following: sponsor, acceptance, challenge, coaching, counseling, friendship, psychosocial support, protect, exposure, role modeling, social, parent, career support, and satisfaction. After running a frequency analysis, we found that a higher percentage of protégés did not view their mentors as parents or friends, but a high percentage were still highly satisfied with their mentoring relationship. The data led us to believe that protégés seemed to appreciate career support and guidance rather than social friendships. This study did have limitations such as a small sample size. Further research could aim to obtain a larger sample size and collect data from not only protégés, but also their mentors

Dynamic clamp with StdpC software

Dynamic clamp is a powerful method that allows the introduction of artificial electrical components into target cells to simulate ionic conductances and synaptic inputs. This method is based on a fast cycle of measuring the membrane potential of a cell, calculating the current of a desired simulated component using an appropriate model and injecting this current into the cell. Here we present a dynamic clamp protocol using free, fully integrated, open-source software (StdpC, for spike timing-dependent plasticity clamp). Use of this protocol does not require specialist hardware, costly commercial software, experience in real-time operating systems or a strong programming background. The software enables the configuration and operation of a wide range of complex and fully automated dynamic clamp experiments through an intuitive and powerful interface with a minimal initial lead time of a few hours. After initial configuration, experimental results can be generated within minutes of establishing cell recording

The length-tension diagrams of human oblique muscles in trochlear palsy and strabismus sursoadductorius

We determined the relation between length and tension in detached oblique muscles of 16 strabismus patients that underwent surgery, before and during contraction evoked by intravenous administration of succinylcholine. We frequently found a nonlinear relation between length and tension, unlike our previous findings in recti. In superior oblique palsies, the superior oblique was found, before injection of succinylcholine, to be stiff after elongation, and did not contract after injection of succinylcholine, while the ipsilateral inferior oblique contract after injection of succinylcholine, but with a higher spring constant than did usual. In 3 cases the superior oblique contracted vividly after administration of succinylcholine despite the presence of excyclotropia, stereopsis, torticollis (2 cases) and a hypertropia that increased in adduction, in downgaze, in adduction-and-downgaze and on ipsilateral head-tilt. The finding of a vividly contracting superior oblique is incompatible with the diagnosis of a complete superior oblique palsy. We conclude that some of the cases diagnosed as congenital superior oblique palsy, having a hypertropia increasing in adduction, in downgaze, in adduction-and-downgaze and on ipsilateral head-tilt, are in fact cases of unilateral strabismus sursoadductorius (upshoot in adduction), a non-paretic motility disorder

Practical Evaluation of Lempel-Ziv-78 and Lempel-Ziv-Welch Tries

We present the first thorough practical study of the Lempel-Ziv-78 and the Lempel-Ziv-Welch computation based on trie data structures. With a careful selection of trie representations we can beat well-tuned popular trie data structures like Judy, m-Bonsai or Cedar

Winter wheat roots grow twice as deep as spring wheat roots, is this important for N uptake and N leaching losses?

Cropping systems comprising winter catch crops followed by spring wheat could reduce N leaching risks compared to traditional winter wheat systems in humid climates. We studied the soil mineral N (Ninorg) and root growth of winter- and spring wheat to 2.5 m depth during three years. Root depth of winter wheat (2.2 m) was twice that of spring wheat, and this was related to much lower amounts of Ninorg in the 1 to 2.5 m layer after winter wheat (81 kg Ninorg ha-1 less). When growing winter catch crops before spring wheat, N content in the 1 to 2.5 m layer after spring wheat was not different from that after winter wheat. The results suggest that by virtue of its deep rooting, winter wheat may not lead to high levels of leaching as it is often assumed in humid climates. Deep soil and root measurements (below 1 m) in this experiment were essential to answer the questions we posed

Informing investment to reduce inequalities: a modelling approach

Background: Reducing health inequalities is an important policy objective but there is limited quantitative information about the impact of specific interventions. Objectives: To provide estimates of the impact of a range of interventions on health and health inequalities. Materials and methods: Literature reviews were conducted to identify the best evidence linking interventions to mortality and hospital admissions. We examined interventions across the determinants of health: a ‘living wage’; changes to benefits, taxation and employment; active travel; tobacco taxation; smoking cessation, alcohol brief interventions, and weight management services. A model was developed to estimate mortality and years of life lost (YLL) in intervention and comparison populations over a 20-year time period following interventions delivered only in the first year. We estimated changes in inequalities using the relative index of inequality (RII). Results: Introduction of a ‘living wage’ generated the largest beneficial health impact, with modest reductions in health inequalities. Benefits increases had modest positive impacts on health and health inequalities. Income tax increases had negative impacts on population health but reduced inequalities, while council tax increases worsened both health and health inequalities. Active travel increases had minimally positive effects on population health but widened health inequalities. Increases in employment reduced inequalities only when targeted to the most deprived groups. Tobacco taxation had modestly positive impacts on health but little impact on health inequalities. Alcohol brief interventions had modestly positive impacts on health and health inequalities only when strongly socially targeted, while smoking cessation and weight-reduction programmes had minimal impacts on health and health inequalities even when socially targeted. Conclusions: Interventions have markedly different effects on mortality, hospitalisations and inequalities. The most effective (and likely cost-effective) interventions for reducing inequalities were regulatory and tax options. Interventions focused on individual agency were much less likely to impact on inequalities, even when targeted at the most deprived communities

Increasing condom use in heterosexual men: development of a theory-based interactive digital intervention

Increasing condom use to prevent sexually transmitted infections is a key public health goal. Interventions are more likely to be effective if they are theory- and evidence-based. The Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) provides a framework for intervention development. To provide an example of how the BCW was used to develop an intervention to increase condom use in heterosexual men (the MenSS website), the steps of the BCW intervention development process were followed, incorporating evidence from the research literature and views of experts and the target population. Capability (e.g. knowledge) and motivation (e.g. beliefs about pleasure) were identified as important targets of the intervention. We devised ways to address each intervention target, including selecting interactive features and behaviour change techniques. The BCW provides a useful framework for integrating sources of evidence to inform intervention content and deciding which influences on behaviour to target

A new hammer to crack an old nut : interspecific competitive resource capture by plants is regulated by nutrient supply, not climate

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Composite structural motifs of binding sites for delineating biological functions of proteins

Most biological processes are described as a series of interactions between proteins and other molecules, and interactions are in turn described in terms of atomic structures. To annotate protein functions as sets of interaction states at atomic resolution, and thereby to better understand the relation between protein interactions and biological functions, we conducted exhaustive all-against-all atomic structure comparisons of all known binding sites for ligands including small molecules, proteins and nucleic acids, and identified recurring elementary motifs. By integrating the elementary motifs associated with each subunit, we defined composite motifs which represent context-dependent combinations of elementary motifs. It is demonstrated that function similarity can be better inferred from composite motif similarity compared to the similarity of protein sequences or of individual binding sites. By integrating the composite motifs associated with each protein function, we define meta-composite motifs each of which is regarded as a time-independent diagrammatic representation of a biological process. It is shown that meta-composite motifs provide richer annotations of biological processes than sequence clusters. The present results serve as a basis for bridging atomic structures to higher-order biological phenomena by classification and integration of binding site structures.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figure