The Floating Men: Portland and the Hobo Menace, 1890-1915

At the beginning of the twentieth century, transient laborers in Portland, Oregon faced marginalization and exploitation at the hands of the classes that relied on them for their own prosperity. Portland at this time was poised to flourish as a major population and industrial center of the American West. The industries that fueled the city\u27s growth were dependent on cheap and mobile manual labor made available by the expansion of the nation\u27s railroads. As the city prospered and grew, the elite of the city created and promoted an image of Portland as an Eden of material abundance where industriousness and virtue would lead inevitably to prosperity. There was no room in Portland\u27s booster image for unemployed but otherwise able-bodied men that fueled this prosperity but saw no benefit from it. Their very existence challenged both the image of the city itself, and broader and deeper pillars of American identity. The response to the presence of this mobile, underemployed and largely white male labor class by Portland citizens and institutions was driven by, and in turn helped shape, competing mythologies of both the American West and American masculinity at a time when the country was struggling to define and redefine these constructs. Examining these floating men through their portrayal in popular culture, laws, and charitable efforts of the time exposes a deep anxiety about the notions of worth, gender, and American virtue

Design / technology co-optimization of strain-induced layout effects in 14nm UTBB-FDSOI CMOS: Enablement and assessment of continuous-RX designs

cited By 4International audienceWe report on the main local layout effect in 14nm Ultra-Thin Buried oxide and Body Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (UTBB-FDSOI) CMOS technology [1]. This effect is demonstrated by Nano-Beam Diffraction to be directly induced by the strain in the SiGe channel and reproduced by an accurate electrical compact model. An original continuous-RX design optimizes the stress management, maintaining longitudinal stress component while relaxing the transverse one. A 28% ring oscillator delay improvement is experimentally demonstrated at same leakage for 1-finger inverter at VDD=0.8V supply voltage and a frequency gain up to 15% is simulated in a critical path of an A9 core. © 2016 IEEE

Water shortage and quality of fleshy fruits--making the most of the unavoidable

International audienceExtreme climatic events, including drought, are predicted to increase in intensity, frequency, and geographic extent as a consequence of global climate change. In general, to grow crops successfully in the future, growers will need to adapt to less available water and to take better advantage of the positive effects of drought. Fortunately, there are positive effects associated with drought. Drought stimulates the secondary metabolism, thereby potentially increasing plant defences and the concentrations of compounds involved in plant quality, particularly taste and health benefits. The role of drought on the production of secondary metabolites is of paramount importance for fruit crops. However, to manage crops effectively under conditions of limited water supply, for example by applying deficit irrigation, growers must consider not only the impact of drought on productivity but also on how plants manage the primary and secondary metabolisms. This question is obviously complex because during water deficit, trade-offs among productivity, defence, and quality depend upon the intensity, duration, and repetition of events of water deficit. The stage of plant development during the period of water deficit is also crucial, as are the effects of other stressors. In addition, growers must rely on relevant indicators of water status, i.e. parameters involved in the relevant metabolic processes, including those affecting quality. Although many reports on the effects of drought on plant function and crop productivity have been published, these issues have not been reviewed thus far. Here, we provide an up-to-date review of current knowledge of the effects of different forms of drought on fruit quality relative to the primary and secondary metabolisms and their interactions. We also review conventional and less conventional indicators of water status that could be used for monitoring purposes, such as volatile compounds. We focus on fruit crops owing to the importance of secondary metabolism in fruit quality and the importance of fruits in the human diet. The issue of defence is also briefly discussed

Identification of 15 new psoriasis susceptibility loci highlights the role of innate immunity

To gain further insight into the genetic architecture of psoriasis, we conducted a meta-analysis of 3 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and 2 independent data sets genotyped on the Immunochip, including 10,588 cases and 22,806 controls. We identified 15 new susceptibility loci, increasing to 36 the number associated with psoriasis in European individuals. We also identified, using conditional analyses, five independent signals within previously known loci. The newly identified loci shared with other autoimmune diseases include candidate genes with roles in regulating T-cell function (such as RUNX3, TAGAP and STAT3). Notably, they included candidate genes whose products are involved in innate host defense, including interferon-mediated antiviral responses (DDX58), macrophage activation (ZC3H12C) and nuclear factor (NF)-κB signaling (CARD14 and CARM1). These results portend a better understanding of shared and distinctive genetic determinants of immune-mediated inflammatory disorders and emphasize the importance of the skin in innate and acquired host defense