Leadership and Race: How to Develop and Support Leadership that Contributes to Racial Justice

This report explores the ways in which our current thinking about leadership often contributes to producing and maintaining racialized dynamics, and identifies a set of core competencies associated with racial justice leadership. Recommendations are included for helping leadership programs develop and support leadership that furthers racial justice in organizations, communities, and the broader society

The development of a program analysis environment for Ada

A unit level, Ada software module testing system, called Query Utility Environment for Software Testing of Ada (QUEST/Ada), is described. The project calls for the design and development of a prototype system. QUEST/Ada design began with a definition of the overall system structure and a description of component dependencies. The project team was divided into three groups to resolve the preliminary designs of the parser/scanner: the test data generator, and the test coverage analyzer. The Phase 1 report is a working document from which the system documentation will evolve. It provides history, a guide to report sections, a literature review, the definition of the system structure and high level interfaces, descriptions of the prototype scope, the three major components, and the plan for the remainder of the project. The appendices include specifications, statistics, two papers derived from the current research, a preliminary users' manual, and the proposal and work plan for Phase 2

A dynamic Bayesian network for identifying protein-binding footprints from single molecule-based sequencing data

Motivation: A global map of transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) is critical to understanding gene regulation and genome function. DNaseI digestion of chromatin coupled with massively parallel sequencing (digital genomic footprinting) enables the identification of protein-binding footprints with high resolution on a genome-wide scale. However, accurately inferring the locations of these footprints remains a challenging computational problem

Decentralised Commitment for Optimistic Semantic Replication

International audienceWe study large-scale distributed cooperative systems that use optimistic replication. We represent a system as a graph of actions (operations) connected by edges that reify semantic constraints between actions. Constraint types include conflict, execution order, dependence, and atomicity. The local state is some schedule that conforms to the constraints; because of conflicts, client state is only tentative. For consistency, site schedules should converge; we designed a decentralised, asynchronous commitment protocol. Each client makes a proposal, reflecting its tentative and/or preferred schedules. Our protocol distributes the proposals, which it decomposes into semantically-meaningful units called candidates, and runs an election between comparable candidates. A candidate wins when it receives a majority or a plurality. The protocol is fully asynchronous: each site executes its tentative schedule independently, and determines locally when a candidate has won an election. The committed schedule is as close as possible to the preferences expressed by clients

The Stress Response Factors Yap6, Cin5, Phd1, and Skn7 Direct Targeting of the Conserved Co-Repressor Tup1-Ssn6 in S. cerevisiae

Maintaining the proper expression of the transcriptome during development or in response to a changing environment requires a delicate balance between transcriptional regulators with activating and repressing functions. The budding yeast transcriptional co-repressor Tup1-Ssn6 is a model for studying similar repressor complexes in multicellular eukaryotes. Tup1-Ssn6 does not bind DNA directly, but is directed to individual promoters by one or more DNA-binding proteins, referred to as Tup1 recruiters. This functional architecture allows the Tup1-Ssn6 to modulate the expression of genes required for the response to a variety of cellular stresses. To understand the targeting or the Tup1-Ssn6 complex, we determined the genomic distribution of Tup1 and Ssn6 by ChIP-chip. We found that most loci bound by Tup1-Ssn6 could not be explained by co-occupancy with a known recruiting cofactor and that deletion of individual known Tup1 recruiters did not significantly alter the Tup1 binding profile. These observations suggest that new Tup1 recruiting proteins remain to be discovered and that Tup1 recruitment typically depends on multiple recruiting cofactors. To identify new recruiting proteins, we computationally screened for factors with binding patterns similar to the observed Tup1-Ssn6 genomic distribution. Four top candidates, Cin5, Skn7, Phd1, and Yap6, all known to be associated with stress response gene regulation, were experimentally confirmed to physically interact with Tup1 and/or Ssn6. Incorporating these new recruitment cofactors with previously characterized cofactors now explains the majority of Tup1 targeting across the genome, and expands our understanding of the mechanism by which Tup1-Ssn6 is directed to its targets

“No good man will ever want me”. How structural social inequality increases women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission: a qualitative study from Bandung, Indonesia

Understanding the pathways that expose women to HIV transmission are vital in improving HIV prevention, especially among a “hidden” group of women without pre-established known risk for HIV. We investigated the pathways which place certain women at greater risk for HIV in a qualitative exploratory study with theoretical sampling using an emergent theory study design in an urban setting in Indonesia. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 47 HIV-infected women, one focus group discussion with five young women who occassionally engage in sex work, participant observation at six sex work venues and two midwife clinics, and 11 informal interviews with midwives, nurses, and obstetricians. Our research found that many women not characterized as belonging to a “high-risk group” or “key population” were nevertheless at increased risk for HIV. A history of sexual abuse, premarital sex, divorce, or involvement in sex work, often precipitated by poverty coupled with discriminatory public health policies further heightened women’s exposure to HIV. While reaching at-risk populations is a key strategy in HIV prevention, a novel and more tailored approach is needed to reach more hidden categories of women with less apparent risk behavior yet considerable risk for HIV infection