Building First-Generation Campus Advocates: Who, When, How?

In this virtual roundtable session learn how three high touch point student-centered offices collaborate together to support first-generation students at Monmouth University. We will share best practices from our experiences for how to build partnerships and advocates across campus. Then we will participate in a breakout session to help support your current needs. The goal is for first-generation advocates to learn who you need to build relationships with and how to start that dialog

Critical Tools for Machine Learning:Working with Intersectional Critical Concepts in Machine Learning Systems Design

This paper investigates how intersectional critical theoretical concepts from social sciences and humanities research can be worked with in machine learning systems design. It does so by presenting a case study of a series of speculative design workshops, conducted in 2021. These workshops drew on intersectional feminist methodologies to construct interdisciplinary interventions in the design of machine learning systems, towards more inclusive, accountable, and contextualized systems design. The concepts of "situating/situated knowledges", "figuration", "diffraction", and "critical fabulation/speculation"were taken up as theoretical and methodological tools for concept-led design workshops. This paper presents the design framework of the workshops and highlights tensions and possibilities with regards to interdisciplinary machine learning systems design towards more inclusive, contextualized, and accountable systems. It discusses the role that critical theoretical concepts can play in a design process and shows how such concepts can work as methodological tools that nonetheless require an open-ended experimental space to function. It presents insights and discussion points regarding what it means to work with critical intersectional knowledge that is inextricably connected to its historical and socio-political roots, and how this reframes what it might mean to design fair and accountable systems.</p

Platelet Accumulation in Brain Microvessels in Fatal Pediatric Cerebral Malaria

The pathogenesis of fatal cerebral malaria (CM) is not well understood, in part because data from patients in whom a clinical diagnosis was established prior to death are rare. In a murine CM model, platelets accumulate in brain microvasculature, and antiplatelet therapy can improve outcome. We determined whether platelets are also found in cerebral vessels in human CM, and we performed immunohistopathology for platelet-specific glycoprotein, GPIIb-IIIa, on tissue from multiple brain sites in Malawian children whose fatal illness was severe malarial anemia, CM, or nonmalarial encephalopathy. Platelets were observed in 3 locations within microvessels: between malaria pigment and leukocytes, associated with malaria pigment, or alone. The mean surface area of platelet staining and the proportion of vessels showing platelet accumulation were significantly higher in patients with CM than in those without it. Platelet accumulation occurs in the microvasculature of patients with CM and may play a role in the pathogenesis of the diseas

Utilitarian Collective Choice and Voting

In his seminal Social Choice and Individual Values, Kenneth Arrow stated that his theory applies to voting. Many voting theorists have been convinced that, on account of Arrow’s theorem, all voting methods must be seriously flawed. Arrow’s theory is strictly ordinal, the cardinal aggregation of preferences being explicitly rejected. In this paper I point out that all voting methods are cardinal and therefore outside the reach of Arrow’s result. Parallel to Arrow’s ordinal approach, there evolved a consistent cardinal theory of collective choice. This theory, most prominently associated with the work of Harsanyi, continued the older utilitarian tradition in a more formal style. The purpose of this paper is to show that various derivations of utilitarian SWFs can also be used to derive utilitarian voting (UV). By this I mean a voting rule that allows the voter to score each alternative in accordance with a given scale. UV-k indicates a scale with k distinct values. The general theory leaves k to be determined on pragmatic grounds. A (1,0) scale gives approval voting. I prefer the scale (1,0,-1) and refer to the resulting voting rule as evaluative voting. A conclusion of the paper is that the defects of conventional voting methods result not from Arrow’s theorem, but rather from restrictions imposed on voters’ expression of their preferences. The analysis is extended to strategic voting, utilizing a novel set of assumptions regarding voter behavior

Non-perturbative Power Corrections to Ghost and Gluon Propagators

We study the dominant non-perturbative power corrections to the ghost and gluon propagators in Landau gauge pure Yang-Mills theory using OPE and lattice simulations. The leading order Wilson coefficients are proven to be the same for both propagators. The ratio of the ghost and gluon propagators is thus free from this dominant power correction. Indeed, a purely perturbative fit of this ratio gives smaller value ($\simeq 270$MeV) of \Lambda_{\ms} than the one obtained from the propagators separately($\simeq 320$MeV). This argues in favour of significant non-perturbative $\sim 1/q^2$ power corrections in the ghost and gluon propagators. We check the self-consistency of the method.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; replaced with revised version, to appear in JHE

Gluons in glueballs: Spin or helicity?

In the last decade, lattice QCD has been able to compute the low-lying glueball spectrum with accuracy. Like other effective approaches of QCD, potential models still have difficulties to cope with gluonic hadrons. Assuming that glueballs are bound states of valence gluons with zero current mass, it is readily understood that the use of a potential model, intrinsically non covariant, could be problematic in this case. The main challenge for this kind of model is actually to find a way to introduce properly the more relevant degree of freedom of the gluon: spin or helicity. In this work, we use the so-called helicity formalism of Jacob and Wick to describe two-gluon glueballs. We show in particular that this helicity formalism exactly reproduces the $J^{PC}$ numbers which are observed in lattice QCD when the constituent gluons have a helicity-1, without introducing extra states as it is the case in most of the potential models. These extra states appear when gluons are seen as spin-1 particles. Using a simple spinless Salpeter model with Cornell potential within the helicity formalism, we obtain a glueball mass spectrum which is in good agreement with lattice QCD predictions for helicity-1 gluons provided instanton-induced interactions are taken into account.Comment: 2 figures, section III.B corrected but conclusions unchange

Two Late Pleistocene Faunas from Southwestern Kansas

1-223http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/48345/2/ID187.pd

Correlation of Clinical Trachoma and Infection in Aboriginal Communities

Repeated episodes of C. trachomatis infection lead to active trachoma clinically characterised by an often intense inflammatory response to chlamydial antigens with later scarring and distortion of the eyelid leading to blindness. However, the clinical signs of trachoma do not correlate well with laboratory tests to detect the presence of Chlamydia. The WHO simplified clinical grading scheme currently used for assessment of trachoma has a poor correlation with C. trachomatis genomic test findings, even though the detection of bacterial genome is strongly correlated with the prevalence and severity of active trachoma. A detailed assessment of the clinical signs using a finer grading system was studied in a population-based survey in five Australian Aboriginal communities. Much clinical activity and infection was found in those with clinical signs below the threshold used in the current WHO grading scheme. Future studies of the distribution of infection and pathogenesis should use finer grading methods than the current WHO scheme. The prevalence of trachoma in these communities confirms that trachoma remains of public health importance and sustained interventions to control trachoma are warranted

Lagos Bat Virus, South Africa

Three more isolates of Lagos bat virus were recently recovered from fruit bats in South Africa after an apparent absence of this virus for 13 years. The sporadic occurrence of cases is likely due to inadequate surveillance programs for lyssavirus infections among bat populations in Africa

Application of FTA technology for sampling, recovery and molecular characterization of viral pathogens and virus-derived transgenes from plant tissues

BACKGROUND: Plant viral diseases present major constraints to crop production. Effective sampling of the viruses infecting plants is required to facilitate their molecular study and is essential for the development of crop protection and improvement programs. Retaining integrity of viral pathogens within sampled plant tissues is often a limiting factor in this process, most especially when sample sizes are large and when operating in developing counties and regions remote from laboratory facilities. FTA is a paper-based system designed to fix and store nucleic acids directly from fresh tissues pressed into the treated paper. We report here the use of FTA as an effective technology for sampling and retrieval of DNA and RNA viruses from plant tissues and their subsequent molecular analysis. RESULTS: DNA and RNA viruses were successfully recovered from leaf tissues of maize, cassava, tomato and tobacco pressed into FTA(® )Classic Cards. Viral nucleic acids eluted from FTA cards were found to be suitable for diagnostic molecular analysis by PCR-based techniques and restriction analysis, and for cloning and nucleotide sequencing in a manner equivalent to that offered by tradition isolation methods. Efficacy of the technology was demonstrated both from sampled greenhouse-grown plants and from leaf presses taken from crop plants growing in farmer's fields in East Africa. In addition, FTA technology was shown to be suitable for recovery of viral-derived transgene sequences integrated into the plant genome. CONCLUSION: Results demonstrate that FTA is a practical, economical and sensitive method for sampling, storage and retrieval of viral pathogens and plant genomic sequences, when working under controlled conditions and in the field. Application of this technology has the potential to significantly increase ability to bring modern analytical techniques to bear on the viral pathogens infecting crop plants