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The lack of diversity and inclusion has been a major challenge affecting engineering programs all over the United States. This problem has been persistent over the years and has been difficult to address despite considerable amount of attention, enriched conversations, and money that has been put towards addressing it. One of the reasons behind this lack of diversity could be the presence of exclusionary behaviors, such as bias and discrimination that permeate the culture of engineering. To address this “wicked” problem, a deeper understanding of current culture and of potential change strategies toward integrating inclusion and diversity is necessary. Our larger NSF funded research project seeks to achieve this understanding through design thinking. While design thinking has been documented to successfully achieve desired outcomes for numerous other problems, its effectiveness as a tool to understand and solve the “wicked problem” of transformation of disciplinary culture related to diversity and inclusion in engineering is not yet known. This Work-in-Progress paper will address the effectiveness of using a design thinking approach by answering the research question: How did stakeholder participants perceive the impact of design sessions on their understanding and value of diversity and inclusion in the professional formation of biomedical engineers? To address this research question, our research team is coordinating six design sessions within each of two engineering schools: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Biomedical Engineering (BME) at a large Midwest University. Currently, we have completed the initial phases of the design sessions in the BME school, and hence this paper focuses on insights from preliminary data analysis of BME Design sessions. BME design sessions were conducted with 15 key stakeholders from the program including students, faculty, staff and administrators. Each of the six design session was two hours long. The research team facilitated the inspiration and ideation phase of the design thinking process throughout. Facilitation involved providing prompts and activities to guide the stakeholders through the design thinking processes of problem identification, problem scoping, and prototype solution generation related to diversity and inclusion within the school culture. A mixed-methods approach involving both qualitative and quantitative data analysis is being used to evaluate the efficacy of design thinking as a tool to address diversity and inclusion in professional formation of engineers. Artifacts such as journey maps, culture maps, and design notebooks generated by our stakeholders throughout the design sessions will be qualitatively analyzed to evaluate the role and effectiveness of design thinking in shaping a more diverse and inclusive culture within BME and, eventually ECE. Following the design sessions, participants were interviewed one-on-one to understand how their thoughts about diversity and inclusion in professional formation of biomedical engineers may have changed, and to gather participants’ self-assessment of the design process. Coupled with the interviews, an online survey was administered to assess the participants’ ranking of the solutions generated at the conclusion design sessions in terms of their novelty, importance and feasibility for implementation within their school. This Work-in-Progress paper will discuss relevant findings from initial quantitative analyses of the data collected from the post-design session surveys and is an interim report evaluating participants’ perceptions of the impact of these design sessions on their understanding of diversity and inclusion in professional formation of biomedical engineers. 

ABSTRACT A wide variety of Galactic sources show transient emission at soft and hard X-ray energies: low- and high-mass X-ray binaries containing compact objects, isolated neutron stars exhibiting extreme variability as magnetars as well as pulsar-wind nebulae. Although most of them can show emission up to MeV and/or GeV energies, many have not yet been detected in the TeV domain by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of detecting new Galactic transients with the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) and the prospects for studying them with Target of Opportunity observations. We show that CTAO will likely detect new sources in the TeV regime, such as the massive microquasars in the Cygnus region, low-mass X-ray binaries with low-viewing angle, flaring emission from the Crab pulsar-wind nebula or other novae explosions, among others. Since some of these sources could also exhibit emission at larger time-scales, we additionally test their detectability at longer exposures. We finally discuss the multiwavelength synergies with other instruments and large astronomical facilities. 

This project explores how engineering students understand diversity and inclusion within their engineering programs, and how these understandings are shaped by aspects of the environment in which they are situated. Our study is a component of a broader research project that is examining the seemingly intractable problems of diversity and inclusion that emerge through the converging threads of formation of professional identity and culture of engineering disciplines. In this study we utilized a qualitative analysis of interview data to explore the undergraduate students’ perceptions of diversity and inclusion within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Purdue University [1]. Our interview draws upon cultural dimensions of engineering disciplines that encourage student to reflect upon and assess diversity and inclusion efforts within ECE [2]. To interrogate students’ perceptions of diversity and inclusion, we interviewed 13 current or past undergraduate ECE students. With nearly 40 percent of the undergraduate ECE students identifying as international students, such a significant international population poses tremendous learning opportunities as well as challenges related to diversity and inclusion. Thus, formal efforts within ECE have been made to bridge cultural differences, develop intercultural competencies, and promote inclusion of internationally and domestically diverse ECE members. However, these efforts have met with mixed results. Our analysis of the interview data suggests that these efforts often were not aligned with literature about how to successfully bridge culture differences in that they lacked an explicit focus on students’ understandings of diversity and inclusion, nor did they provide opportunities for students to reflect on their personal and educational experiences. In what follows, we first examine the framing of scholarship about diversity and inclusion within engineering and then draw upon literature using Kolb’s experiential learning models to illuminate the transformational nature that reflection plays within establishing ways of viewing complex social problems. With this combination and reimagining of reflection as a pathway to more deeply understanding diversity and inclusion, we describe our research methods, data analysis, and the findings from our qualitative analysis. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the tensions pertaining to difference and sameness that emerged through our analysis. Namely, formal efforts within ECE required both scaffolding and intentionality. Without proper facilitation, the central role that diversity and inclusion plays within professional formation appeared forced, created more cultural isolation, or students ignored these efforts altogether to complete assignments. We conclude by offering both theoretical and pragmatic implications for engineering curriculum. 

Abstract We present 294 pulsars found in GeV data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another 33 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered in deep radio searches of LAT sources will likely reveal pulsations once phase-connected rotation ephemerides are achieved. A further dozen optical and/or X-ray binary systems colocated with LAT sources also likely harbor gamma-ray MSPs. This catalog thus reports roughly 340 gamma-ray pulsars and candidates, 10% of all known pulsars, compared to ≤11 known before Fermi. Half of the gamma-ray pulsars are young. Of these, the half that are undetected in radio have a broader Galactic latitude distribution than the young radio-loud pulsars. The others are MSPs, with six undetected in radio. Overall, ≥236 are bright enough above 50 MeV to fit the pulse profile, the energy spectrum, or both. For the common two-peaked profiles, the gamma-ray peak closest to the magnetic pole crossing generally has a softer spectrum. The spectral energy distributions tend to narrow as the spindown power $\dot{E}$decreases to its observed minimum near 10³³erg s⁻¹, approaching the shape for synchrotron radiation from monoenergetic electrons. We calculate gamma-ray luminosities when distances are available. Our all-sky gamma-ray sensitivity map is useful for population syntheses. The electronic catalog version provides gamma-ray pulsar ephemerides, properties, and fit results to guide and be compared with modeling results. 

Context.The nearby elliptical galaxy M87 contains one of only two supermassive black holes whose emission surrounding the event horizon has been imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). In 2018, more than two dozen multi-wavelength (MWL) facilities (from radio toγ-ray energies) took part in the second M87 EHT campaign. Aims.The goal of this extensive MWL campaign was to better understand the physics of the accreting black hole M87*, the relationship between the inflow and inner jets, and the high-energy particle acceleration. Understanding the complex astrophysics is also a necessary first step towards performing further tests of general relativity. Methods.The MWL campaign took place in April 2018, overlapping with the EHT M87* observations. We present a new, contemporaneous spectral energy distribution (SED) ranging from radio to very high-energy (VHE)γ-rays as well as details of the individual observations and light curves. We also conducted phenomenological modelling to investigate the basic source properties. Results.We present the first VHEγ-ray flare from M87 detected since 2010. The flux above 350 GeV more than doubled within a period of ≈36 hours. We find that the X-ray flux is enhanced by about a factor of two compared to 2017, while the radio and millimetre core fluxes are consistent between 2017 and 2018. We detect evidence for a monotonically increasing jet position angle that corresponds to variations in the bright spot of the EHT image. Conclusions.Our results show the value of continued MWL monitoring together with precision imaging for addressing the origins of high-energy particle acceleration. While we cannot currently pinpoint the precise location where such acceleration takes place, the new VHEγ-ray flare already presents a challenge to simple one-zone leptonic emission model approaches, and it emphasises the need for combined image and spectral modelling. 

To provide an observational basis for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections of a slowing Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the 21st century, the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) observing system was launched in the summer of 2014. The first 21-month record reveals a highly variable overturning circulation responsible for the majority of the heat and freshwater transport across the OSNAP line. In a departure from the prevailing view that changes in deep water formation in the Labrador Sea dominate MOC variability, these results suggest that the conversion of warm, salty, shallow Atlantic waters into colder, fresher, deep waters that move southward in the Irminger and Iceland basins is largely responsible for overturning and its variability in the subpolar basin. 

ABSTRACT A deep survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud at ∼0.1–100 TeV photon energies with the Cherenkov Telescope Array is planned. We assess the detection prospects based on a model for the emission of the galaxy, comprising the four known TeV emitters, mock populations of sources, and interstellar emission on galactic scales. We also assess the detectability of 30 Doradus and SN 1987A, and the constraints that can be derived on the nature of dark matter. The survey will allow for fine spectral studies of N 157B, N 132D, LMC P3, and 30 Doradus C, and half a dozen other sources should be revealed, mainly pulsar-powered objects. The remnant from SN 1987A could be detected if it produces cosmic-ray nuclei with a flat power-law spectrum at high energies, or with a steeper index 2.3–2.4 pending a flux increase by a factor of >3–4 over ∼2015–2035. Large-scale interstellar emission remains mostly out of reach of the survey if its >10 GeV spectrum has a soft photon index ∼2.7, but degree-scale 0.1–10 TeV pion-decay emission could be detected if the cosmic-ray spectrum hardens above >100 GeV. The 30 Doradus star-forming region is detectable if acceleration efficiency is on the order of 1−10 per cent of the mechanical luminosity and diffusion is suppressed by two orders of magnitude within <100 pc. Finally, the survey could probe the canonical velocity-averaged cross-section for self-annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles for cuspy Navarro–Frenk–White profiles. 

Abstract Data from repeat hydrographic surveys over the 25‐year period 1993 to 2017, together with satellite altimetry data, are used to quantify the temporal and spatial variability of the North Icelandic Irminger Current (NIIC), East Icelandic Current (EIC), and the water masses they advect around northern Iceland. We focus on the warm, salty Atlantic Water (AW) flowing northward through Denmark Strait and the cooler, fresher, denser Atlantic‐origin Overflow Water (AtOW) which has circulated cyclonically around the rim of the Nordic Seas before being advected to the Iceland slope via the EIC. The absolute geostrophic velocities reveal that approximately half of the NIIC recirculates just north of Denmark Strait, while the remaining half merges with the EIC to form a single current that extends to the northeast of Iceland, with no further loss in transport of either component. The AW percentage decreases by 75% over this distance, while the AtOW percentage is higher than that of the AW in the merged current. The NIIC and merged NIIC‐EIC are found to be baroclinically unstable, which causes the flow to become increasingly barotropic as it progresses around Iceland. A seasonal accounting of the water masses within the currents indicates that only in springtime is the NIIC dominated by AW inflow north of Denmark Strait. Overall, there is considerably more seasonal and along‐stream variability in the properties of the flow prior to the merging of the NIIC and EIC. Over the 25‐year time period, the NIIC became warmer, saltier, and increased in volume transport.