ABSTRACT IMPACT: A robust and collaborative network of expertise and services is essential for successful research commercialization, including timely and scalable educational support for CTSA institutions and individual faculty investigators with biomedical innovations. OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Leverage expertise at the University of Michigan (UM) by creating collaborative and scalable interactive online courses to instruct and prepare internal and external faculty to navigate critical stages of life science academic research commercialization. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: UM’s Fast Forward Medical Innovation created two online courses with the UM Office of Technology Transfer and the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR). Collaborative planning committees, with content and educational experts, set course goals and learning objectives based on audience needs (e.g. preparation for consultations, commercialization concepts, etc.). Draft content was developed, peer reviewed, and revised before Articulate Storyline was used to convert didactic content to active learning content (e.g. interactive slides, scenarios, quizzes, and forms). Pilot testing was conducted prior to the launch to faculty investigators throughout the UM network. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Intellectual Property in the Academic Setting launched via the FFMI website and newsletter in July 2020 and has had 66 learners to date. Medical Device Regulations launched in October 2020 and has 22 learners. OTT and MICHR have successfully integrated the courses into their consultation process by requesting review from faculty investigators. We suspect that this will lead to more in-depth and meaningful conversation. Additionally, these courses have been integrated into an FFMI commercialization course to instruct on critical concepts. Evaluation and refinement for both use cases will ensue, as well as inform future collaborative courses. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: Early results suggest that the courses are advantageous and can serve as a model for future collaborations. The opportunity to disseminate the courses across the CTSA network, as well as collaborate with other institutions, to scale localized expertise to a broader network is promising.

Focusing on process tracing and using the example of fieldwork in Donbas, I develop an argument on what theoretically grounded and empirically detailed methodological solutions can be considered to mitigate the challenges of research on conflict zones and assure the robustness of any causal claims made. I first outline my assumptions about process tracing as the central case study method and its application to research on conflict zones, and then discuss in more detail data requirements, data collection, and data analysis. Using two examples of case studies on the war in and over Donbas, I illustrate how three standards of best-practice in process tracing—the need for a theory-guided inquiry, the necessity to enhance causal inference by paying attention to (and ruling out) rival explanations, and the importance of transparency in the design and execution of research—can be applied in the challenging circumstances of fieldwork-based case studies of conflict zones. I conclude by suggesting that as a minimum threshold for reliance upon causal inferences, these three standards also should align with a standard of evidence that requires both the theoretical and empirical plausibility of any conclusions drawn.

The conflict over Transnistria is a territorial dispute in which one of the conflict parties (Transnistria) seeks independence while the other (Moldova) aims to restore its full sovereignty and territorial integrity. For close to two decades, the situation has been stagnant: a cease-fire agreement signed in 1992 in Moscow between the Russian and Moldovan presidents at the time – Boris Yeltsin and Mircea Snegur – established a trilateral peacekeeping mission (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) and a buffer zone along the Dniestr/Nistru River. Protected by these arrangements and an additional Russian military presence, Transnistria has developed into a de facto state of its own, albeit without international recognition and heavily dependent on Russia.

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in February 2008 catapulted the Western Balkans back to the centre stage of international security concerns. Despite affirmations to the contrary, the recognition of Kosovo's independence by major Western powers is seen as a significant precedent in international law and the way in which self-determination conflicts are handled by the international community. At the same time, it raises major questions for the stability of borders across the Western Balkans region, and possibly beyond. At the centre of many of these questions is the role of the international community—defined by the international and regional organizations present in the region, as well as by their powerful member states—in tackling the complexity of interrelated self-determination conflicts, incomplete democratization processes, growing concerns about the economic viability of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia and an ever-increasing presence of transnational organized crime networks with significant reach beyond the region.

This paper seeks to analyze the nature of the German minorities in the Czech Republic and Poland. In order to achieve this goal, the relationship between Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland with the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany/FRG) forms an essential intellectual backdrop to our main theme. Reference to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic/GDR) will be made as and where appropriate. As we shall see, tensions simmered between the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany/SED) and the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza Zjednoczona (Polish United Workers' Party/PZPR), and in reality relations between the two sides were poor. Reference will be made to wartime German occupation policy in both Poland and the Czech lands. Due attention will also be paid to the consequent expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. However, due to limitations of space these themes, that have been exhaustively dealt with elsewhere, do not form part of our main focus of study.

Germany's role as a kin-state of ethnic German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe stems from a number of factors. At one level it is part and parcel of a unique historical legacy. It is also inextricably linked with the country's foreign policy towards this region. The most profound policy that the Federal Republic of Germany developed in this context after the early 1960s was Ostpolitik, which contributed significantly to the peaceful end of the Cold War, but has remained relevant thereafter despite a fundamentally changed geopolitical context, as Germany remains a kin-state for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans across Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union, in Poland, Romania, and Hungary. As such, a policy towards these external minorities continues to form a significant, but by no means the only, manifestation of Ostpolitik.

In the past, ionic analyses of deep ice cores tended to consist of a few widely spaced measurements that indicated general trends in concentration. the ion-chromatographic methods widely used provide well-validated individual data, but are time-consuming. the development of continuous flow analysis (CFA) methods has allowed very rapid, high-resolution data to be collected in the field for a wide range of ions. In the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) deep ice-core drilling at Dome C, many ions have been measured at high resolution, and several have been analyzed by more than one method. the full range of ions has been measured in five different laboratories by ion chromatography (IC), at resolutions of 2.5–10 cm. In the field, CFA was used to measure the ions Na+, Ca2+, nitrate and ammonium. Additionally, a new semi-continuous in situ IC method, fast ion chromatography (FIC), was used to analyze sulphate, nitrate and chloride. Some data are now available to 788 m depth. In this paper we compare the data obtained by the three methods, and show that the rapid methods (CFA and FIC) give an excellent indication of trends in ionic data. Differences between the data from the different methods do occur, and in some cases these are genuine, being due to differences in speciation in the methods. We conclude that the best system for most deep ice-core analysis is a rapid system of CFA and FIC, along with in situ meltwater collection for analysis of other ions by IC, but that material should be kept aside for a regular check on analytical quality and for more detailed analysis of some sections.

The academic and policy debate on state failure reaches back to the early 1990s. Since then, its empirical and analytical sophistication has grown, yet the fact that state failure is a regional phenomenon, that is, that it occurs in clusters of geographically contiguous states, has largely been overlooked. This article first considers the academic and policy debates on state failure in the Political Science/International Relations and Development Studies literatures, and offers a definition of state failure that is derived from the means of the state, rather than its ends. Subsequently engaging with existing scholarship on the concept of ‘region’ in international security, the article develops a definition of ‘state failure regions’. Further empirical observation of such regions and additional conceptual reflections lead to establishing an analytical model for the study of state failure regions and allow indentifying a number of concrete gains in knowledge and understanding that can result from its application.

Background. Exploration of the degree to which perceived chronic stress is heritable is important as these self-reports have been linked to stress-related health outcomes. The aims of this study were to estimate whether perceived stress is a heritable condition and to assess whether heritability estimates vary between subjective stress reactivity and stress related to external demands.

Method. A sample of 103 monozygotic and 77 dizygotic twin pairs completed three questionnaires designed to measure perceived stress: the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Measure for the Assessment of Stress Susceptibility (MESA) and the Trier Inventory for the Assessment of Chronic Stress (TICS). The TICS assesses the frequency of stressful experiences on six scales, the MESA assesses subjective stress reactivity, and the PSS takes both factors into account.

Results. A multivariate model-fitting procedure revealed that a model with common additive genetic and shared environmental factors best fit the eight scales (PSS, MESA, six TICS scales). Heritabilities for the best-fitting model varied between 5% and 45%, depending on the scale.

Conclusions. The present data suggest that perceived stress is in part heritable, that nearly half of the covariance between stress scales is due to genetic factors, and that heritability estimates vary considerably, depending on the questionnaire. Beyond methodological considerations that pertain to the validity of the questionnaires, these data suggest that studies assessing the heritability of perceived chronic stress should take the specific questionnaire focus into account.