Impacts of Sea Ice Loss on Polar Bear Diet, Prey Availability, Foraging Behaviors, and Human-Bear Interactions in the Arctic

Anthropogenic-induced climate change has warmed the Arctic 2-3 times faster than the rest of the world, causing sea ice declines that introduce challenges for specialist species, such as polar bears, in adapting to rapid environmental changes. Comparative and quantitative analyses of three Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulations were used to determine the impacts of sea ice loss on polar bear diet, prey availability, foraging behaviors, and human-bear interactions in the Arctic. The study reveal that Hudson Bay polar bears experience the most severe impacts from sea ice declines, resulting in a 30% population decline. Due to their smaller body size, high energetic demands to support pregnancy, and dependency of their young, adult female polar bears with cubs are the most at risk of sea ice loss due to dietary restrictions. Longer ice-free periods force fasting bears to expend more energy foraging for suboptimal terrestrial resources, resulting in an energetic imbalance. Indigenous communities not only experience increasingly dangerous and frequent bear encounters in town, but also reduced socioeconomic gains from declining polar bear numbers. Declines in polar bear numbers have prompted the bears to be listed and managed under science-based regimes, reducing indigenous subsistence hunting activities and creating clashes of interests between scientific and indigenous communities. Integration and increased understanding of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), habitat monitoring, and habitat protection is needed for future polar bear management to succeed. However, the foremost solution in halting polar bear extirpation is global aggressive, collaborative, and proactive greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction

Insiders, Outsiders, and Involuntary Unemployment

Sexual harassment is perceived to be a major impediment to female labor force participation. We use the random assignment of U.S. federal judges setting geographically-local precedent, and the fact that judges’ biographies predict decisions in sexual harassment cases, to document the causal impact of forbidding sexual harassment. Consistent with an insider-outsider theory of involuntary unemployment, but in contrast to a mandated benefits theory of employment protections, pro-plaintiff sexual harassment precedent spurred the adoption of sexual harassment human resources policies, encouraged entry of outsiders, and reduced gender inequality in labor supply and wages among the population. These effects were comparable to the effects of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and greatest in the construction industry, which was heavily affected by sexual harassment litigation

Insiders, Outsiders, and Involuntary Unemployment

Sexual harassment is perceived to be a major impediment to female labor force participation. We use the random assignment of U.S. federal judges setting geographically-local precedent, and the fact that judges’ biographies predict decisions in sexual harassment cases, to document the causal impact of forbidding sexual harassment. Consistent with an insider-outsider theory of involuntary unemployment, but in contrast to a mandated benefits theory of employment protections, pro-plaintiff sexual harassment precedent spurred the adoption of sexual harassment human resources policies, encouraged entry of outsiders, and reduced gender inequality in labor supply and wages among the population. These effects were comparable to the effects of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and greatest in the construction industry, which was heavily affected by sexual harassment litigation

Digital Trace Data and Demographic Forecasting: How Well Did Google Predict the US COVID-19 Baby Bust?

At the onset of the first wave of COVID-19 in the United States, the pandemic\u27s effect on future birthrates was unknown. In this paper, we assess whether digital trace data—often touted as a panacea for traditional data scarcity—held the potential to accurately predict fertility change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Specifically, we produced state-level, dynamic future predictions of the pandemic\u27s effect on birthrates in the United States using pregnancy-related Google search data. Importantly, these predictions were made in October 2020 (and revised in February 2021), well before the birth effect of the pandemic could have possibly been known. Our analysis predicted that between November 2020 and February 2021, monthly United States births would drop sharply by approximately 12 percent, then begin to rebound while remaining depressed through August 2021. While these predictions were generally accurate in terms of the magnitude and timing of the trough, there were important misses regarding the speed at which these reductions materialized and rebounded. This ex post evaluation of an ex ante prediction serves as a powerful demonstration of the “promise and pitfalls” of digital trace data in demographic research

How structural and symbolic violence during resettlement impacts the social and mental wellbeing of forced migrant women: the lived experiences of Arabic speaking survivors of IPV resettled in Melbourne, Australia.

Forced migrant women experience high levels of violence across their journeys and violence can be characterised as having three overarching forms: structural, symbolic, and interpersonal. It is important to understand the intersecting nature of gendered forms of symbolic, structural and interpersonal violence, and their impact on the mental health of forced migrant women in order to develop holistic IPV and resettlement programs and interventions. This article adopts an ecological framework of violence and qualitative methods with mental health service providers and survivors of IPV to understand the intersections of different forms of violence and their impact on mental health as they relate to the lived experiences of Arabic-speaking forced migrant survivors currently residing in Melbourne, Australia. Our research has three key findings: (1) that forced migrant women living in Melbourne, Australia experience intersecting forms of violence during resettlement (2) Structural and symbolic violence against forced migrant women persists regardless of marital status (3) Autonomy and independence plays a vital role in the mental health and wellbeing of forced migrant women. Our findings reveal that structural and symbolic violence increase the risk of IPV for forced migrant women during resettlement and that even when forced migrant women leave IPV situations, structural and symbolic violence persist and exacerbate mental ill-health. This article also reveals the importance autonomy and independence in both the perpetration of violence and in healing and recovery

An Automated Room Temperature Flip-Chip Mounting Process for Hybrid Printed Electronics

Printing technology and mounting technology enable the novel field of hybrid printed electronics. To establish a hybrid printed system, one challenge is that the applied mounting process meets the requirements of functional inks and substrates. One of the most common requirements is low process temperature. Many functional inks and substrates cannot withstand the high temperatures required by traditional mounting processes. In this work, a standardized interconnection and an automated bump-less flip-chip mounting process using a room temperature curing conductive adhesive are realised. With the proposed process, the conductive adhesive selected for the standardized interconnection can be dispensed uniformly, despite its increase of viscosity already during pot time. Electrical and mechanical performance of the interconnection are characterized by four terminal resistance measurement and shear test. The herein proposed automated process allows for fabrication of hybrid printed devices in larger batch sizes than manual assembly processes used beforehand and thus, more comprehensive evaluation of device parameters. This is successfully demonstrated in a first application, a novel hybrid printed security device. The room temperature mounting process eliminates any potentially damaging thermal influence on the performance of the printed circuits that might result from other assembly techniques like soldering

Hybrid low-voltage physical unclonable function based on inkjet-printed metal-oxide transistors

Modern society is striving for digital connectivity that demands information security. As an emerging technology, printed electronics is a key enabler for novel device types with free form factors, customizability, and the potential for large-area fabrication while being seamlessly integrated into our everyday environment. At present, information security is mainly based on software algorithms that use pseudo random numbers. In this regard, hardware-intrinsic security primitives, such as physical unclonable functions, are very promising to provide inherent security features comparable to biometrical data. Device-specific, random intrinsic variations are exploited to generate unique secure identifiers. Here, we introduce a hybrid physical unclonable function, combining silicon and printed electronics technologies, based on metal oxide thin film devices. Our system exploits the inherent randomness of printed materials due to surface roughness, film morphology and the resulting electrical characteristics. The security primitive provides high intrinsic variation, is non-volatile, scalable and exhibits nearly ideal uniqueness

Altered functional connectivity during speech perception in Congenital Amusia

Individuals with congenital amusia have a lifelong history of unreliable pitch processing. Accordingly, they downweight pitch cues during speech perception and instead rely on other dimensions such as duration. We investigated the neural basis for this strategy. During fMRI, individuals with amusia (N=15) and controls (N=15) read sentences where a comma indicated a grammatical phrase boundary. They then heard two sentences spoken that differed only in pitch and/or duration cues, and selected the best match for the written sentence. Prominent reductions in functional connectivity were detected in the amusia group, between left prefrontal language-related regions and right hemisphere pitch-related regions, which reflected the between-group differences in cue weights in the same groups of listeners. Connectivity differences between these regions were not present during a control task. Our results indicate that the reliability of perceptual dimensions is linked with functional connectivity between frontal and perceptual regions, and suggest a compensatory mechanism

Sex differences in cancer mechanisms

We now know that cancer is many different diseases, with great variation even within a single histological subtype. With the current emphasis on developing personalized approaches to cancer treatment, it is astonishing that we have not yet systematically incorporated the biology of sex differences into our paradigms for laboratory and clinical cancer research. While some sex differences in cancer arise through the actions of circulating sex hormones, other sex differences are independent of estrogen, testosterone, or progesterone levels. Instead, these differences are the result of sexual differentiation, a process that involves genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, in addition to acute sex hormone actions. Sexual differentiation begins with fertilization and continues beyond menopause. It affects virtually every body system, resulting in marked sex differences in such areas as growth, lifespan, metabolism, and immunity, all of which can impact on cancer progression, treatment response, and survival. These organismal level differences have correlates at the cellular level, and thus, males and females can fundamentally differ in their protections and vulnerabilities to cancer, from cellular transformation through all stages of progression, spread, and response to treatment. Our goal in this review is to cover some of the robust sex differences that exist in core cancer pathways and to make the case for inclusion of sex as a biological variable in all laboratory and clinical cancer research. We finish with a discussion of lab- and clinic-based experimental design that should be used when testing whether sex matters and the appropriate statistical models to apply in data analysis for rigorous evaluations of potential sex effects. It is our goal to facilitate the evaluation of sex differences in cancer in order to improve outcomes for all patients

Executable network of SARS-CoV-2-host interaction predicts drug combination treatments

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed healthcare systems globally to a breaking point. The urgent need for effective and affordable COVID-19 treatments calls for repurposing combinations of approved drugs. The challenge is to identify which combinations are likely to be most effective and at what stages of the disease. Here, we present the first disease-stage executable signalling network model of SARS-CoV-2-host interactions used to predict effective repurposed drug combinations for treating early- and late stage severe disease. Using our executable model, we performed in silico screening of 9870 pairs of 140 potential targets and have identified nine new drug combinations. Camostat and Apilimod were predicted to be the most promising combination in effectively supressing viral replication in the early stages of severe disease and were validated experimentally in human Caco-2 cells. Our study further demonstrates the power of executable mechanistic modelling to enable rapid pre-clinical evaluation of combination therapies tailored to disease progression. It also presents a novel resource and expandable model system that can respond to further needs in the pandemic