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We are assessing the impact of an intervention (a two-day voluntary workshop) on the specific factors of self-efficacy and student integration. This workshop, called the “ChemE Camp”, takes place just before the start of fall classes and includes team-building exercises, presentations from faculty about upcoming classes, a hands-on project, a lab tour, presentations from upper-level students and alumni about their experiences in the curriculum and in industry, information about academic advising and the career fair, and some recreational games. Students attending the camp learn more about chemical engineering courses and the profession and also have the opportunity to meet peers and interact with faculty and upper-level students. We hypothesized that the activities included in the camp would positively impact on students’ self-efficacy and social integration, factors which have been shown in other studies to significantly influence student experience and student success. The effects of the intervention were assessed using surveys administered to students at the start of the camp. These surveys included published subscales used in the study of self-efficacy and social and academic integration. The same surveys were administered to all second-year chemical engineering students at the beginning of the academic year (three days after the beginning of the camp) and the end of the academic year (approximately eight months later). Data collected from the previous three academic years indicate a statistically significant increase in the chemical engineering self-efficacy, coping self-efficacy, and social and academic integration ratings for students who attend the camp and these effects appear to largely be maintained throughout the sophomore year. Non-attendees enter the sophomore year with lower average ratings in these factors and show little change over the course of the year. Students’ intent to persist in the chemical engineering major was also assessed by these surveys, and while the camp attendees’ ratings showed almost no change from just prior to the camp to just after, their ratings exhibited a substantial, statistically-significant increase during the sophomore year. Non-attendees entered the year with a similar average rating to the attendees but showed a much more modest increase over the course of the year. We continue to collect data from both student survey responses and academic records, with the goal of eventually using path analysis to establish the relationships between the factors of self-efficacy and student integration and the outcomes of academic performance and persistence for second-year chemical engineering students. We currently have insufficient data to power such an analysis, but our available data suggest that the intervention is having a positive impact on these factors. 

Neuroscience is advancing standardization and tool development to support rigor and transparency. Consequently, data pipeline complexity has increased, hindering FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) access. brainlife.io was developed to democratize neuroimaging research. The platform provides data standardization, management, visualization and processing and automatically tracks the provenance history of thousands of data objects. Here, brainlife.io is described and evaluated for validity, reliability, reproducibility, replicability and scientific utility using four data modalities and 3,200 participants.

 

In WSe2 intense THz fields are found to enhance transmission at 400 nm, while reducing it at 800 nm. The differential transmission is proportional to the field amplitude. The nonlinear responses are fast, yet non-adiabatic. 

As part of our study examining the factors that influence the academic performance and persistence of second-year chemical engineering students, we are assessing the impact of an intervention (a two-day voluntary workshop) on the specific factors of self-efficacy and social support. This workshop, called the “ChemE Camp”, is held just before the start of fall classes and includes team-building exercises, presentations from faculty about upcoming classes, a lab tour, presentations from upper-level students and alumni about their experiences in the curriculum and in industry, information about academic advising and the career fair, and some recreational games. Students who attend the camp can learn more about chemical engineering courses and the profession and also have the opportunity to meet peers and interact with faculty and upper-level students. It was hypothesized that the activities included in the camp would have a positive impact on students’ self-efficacy and social integration, factors which have been shown in other studies to significantly influence student experience and student success. To assess the effect of the intervention, surveys were administered to students at the start of the camp. These surveys included published subscales used in the study of self-efficacy and social and academic integration. These same surveys were also administered to all second-year chemical engineering students at the beginning of the academic year (three days after the beginning of the camp) and the end of the academic year (approximately eight months later). Data collected from the previous two academic years indicate a statistically significant increase in the chemical engineering self-efficacy, coping self-efficacy, and social and academic integration ratings for students who attend the camp. These effects appear to largely be maintained throughout the sophomore year and are distinct from the results observed for nonattendees. 

Recent studies suggest that genomic data can be matched to images of human faces, raising the concern that genomic data can be re-identified with relative ease. However, such investigations assume access to well-curated images, which are rarely available in practice and challenging to derive from photos not generated in a controlled laboratory setting. In this study, we reconsider re-identification risk and find that, for most individuals, the actual risk posed by linkage attacks to typical face images is substantially smaller than claimed in prior investigations. Moreover, we show that only a small amount of well-calibrated noise, imperceptible to humans, can be added to images to markedly reduce such risk. The results of this investigation create an opportunity to create image filters that enable individuals to have better control over re-identification risk based on linkage.