Censorship in the EU? New Copyright Reform Raises Concerns Among Citizens.

On Wednesday, September 12, 2018 the European Parliament voted in favor of a new copyright directive. This vote occurred two years after the European Commission put forth their proposal in 2016. There has been tremendous controversy over this reform that resulted in the issue going viral on social media. It even sparked its own website and organization promoting awareness of the changes and encouraging citizens to write to their MEPs expressing their opposition. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on September 29, 2018. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

“Compelled to Connect: A Phenomenological Study of the Experience of Writing

Writing is frequently referred to as a process. Writing, in fact, is a series of complicated acts involving many processes, most of which take place in the writer’s mind and, thus, remain hidden from the lens of the researcher. The purpose of this research was to describe the first-person experience of writing through use of a phenomenological method involving dialogic interviews and hermeneutic interpretation. In the course of this investigation, 10 practicing writers (6 men and 4 women) were engaged in open-ended dialogue in which they described various personal experiences of writing. The participants were a business owner, a physician, a technical editor, a government training specialist, a psychologist, one high-school teacher, one elementary/college teacher, and three college professors; however, the combined number of non-book publications (research articles, newspaper articles, editorials, columns, non-fiction essays, and poems) among the ten participants equaled more than 5,000. From a hermeneutic analysis of the transcribed texts, a consistent pattern of four major themes emerged to characterize the awareness of meaning attached to the experience by all participants. These interdependent themes and sub-themes are as follows: (I) “The Self”: (A) “Filling Up”; (B) “Stewing”; (C) “Insight Came”; (II) “The Other” : (A) “Community”; (B) “Validation”; (C) “Feedback”; (III) “The Words”: (A) “Hard Work”; (B) “Mystical”; (C) “Discovery”; (IV) “Connection”. These findings were discussed with respect to the previous literature on composition research providing a more complete understanding what writers experience as they write. Contemplating the themes that emerged from this research enabled me to develop a more reflective understanding how writing is a linguistic process whose base purpose is to connect people with each other. This study also discusses the pedagogical implications of what participants of this study reported as part of their experiences of writing and how writing is traditionally taught in kindergarten-college classrooms

Unique Molecular Features in High-Risk Histology Endometrial Cancers

Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic malignancy in the United States and the sixth most common cancer in women worldwide. Fortunately, most women who develop endometrial cancer have low-grade early-stage endometrioid carcinomas, and simple hysterectomy is curative. Unfortunately, 15% of women with endometrial cancer will develop high-risk histologic tumors including uterine carcinosarcoma or high-grade endometrioid, clear cell, or serous carcinomas. These high-risk histologic tumors account for more than 50% of deaths from this disease. In this review, we will highlight the biologic differences between low- and high-risk carcinomas with a focus on the cell of origin, early precursor lesions including atrophic and proliferative endometrium, and the potential role of stem cells. We will discuss treatment, including standard of care therapy, hormonal therapy, and precision medicine-based or targeted molecular therapies. We will also discuss the impact and need for model systems. The molecular underpinnings behind this high death to incidence ratio are important to understand and improve outcomes

A descriptive analysis of health practices, barriers to healthcare and the unmet need for cervical cancer screening in the Lower Napo River region of the Peruvian Amazon

OBJECTIVES: To undertake an descriptive analysis of the health needs, healthcare practices and barriers to accessing healthcare faced by women in Lower Napo River Region, Peru, and to understand health literacy regarding cervical cancer and the need for more effective cervical cancer screening services. METHODS: We performed a community-based needs assessment adapting Demographic and Health survey methodology with additional questions determining female health literacy on cervical cancer and assessing the availability and need for cervical cancer screening services. We surveyed women (N = 121) across all households in six communities along the Lower Napo River, Loreto, Peru, in May 2015. Data were collected as part of the larger Amazon Community Based Participation Cervical Cancer Screen-and-Treat Programme. Survey data were compared to national results from ENDES 2014. RESULTS: Comparison between our findings and the ENDES 2014 survey highlighted considerable inequality between indigenous or mixed indigenous, rural populations in Loreto, Peru, and national population data averages over level of formal education, literacy, barriers to accessing healthcare and maternal and sexual health. Even though only 5.9% (N = 7/117) of women had no formal health insurance coverage, money was reported as the leading barrier accessing healthcare (N = 88/117, 75.2%). Health literacy regarding cervical and breast cancer was poor. A high proportion of women highlighted fear of screening processes (70.8%, N = 80/113) and lack of available services (53.6%, N = 60/112) as barriers to cervical cancer screening. CONCLUSION: Although progress has been made in improving healthcare access in Peru, such gains have not been experienced equitably and women living in remote communities face persistent marginalization regarding their health. There is a significant need for education related to and screening for cervical cancer in this region that is tailored to the reality of women's lives in remote communities in Loreto

Asynchronous video and the development of instructor social presence and student engagement

Enrollment in online learning continues to grow in the higher education sector, along with persistent goals dedicated to achieving better student outcomes and lowering attrition rates. Improved student engagement has been shown to possibly reduce attrition rates through a greater sense of connectedness and decreased feelings of isolation among online learners. Instructor social presence may be the most important factor in building the relationships that foster learning and retention. Through communication, the instructor conveys the necessary immediacy behaviors required to cultivate these interpersonal relationships. With improved technology that allows for enhanced communication in online classrooms, the use of asynchronous video may be an effective way to improve instructor social presence and student engagement. This quasi-experimental design aimed to determine whether asynchronous video or text-based communication increased students\u27 perceptions of instructor social presence and student engagement in an online graduate classroom. Significance was found for student engagement based on the number of discussion posts and length of discussion posts. Students in the group who received text-based communication demonstrated increased student engagement in voluntary discussion boards as opposed to students in the group who received asynchronous video. There was no significant difference found for instructor social presence between the two groups

U.S. Philanthropic Commitments For HIV/AIDS 2004

This reports analyses HIV/AIDS philanthropy undertaken by U.S.-based grantmakers in 2004

Motivation in Late Learners of Japanese: Self-Determination Theory, Attitudes and Pronunciation

The present study examined a hypothesized relationship between the following variables: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as described by Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), integrative and instrumental orientation (Gardner & Lambert, 1972), attitudes toward pronunciation, and accent in English-speaking late learners of Japanese. Data collection occurred in two steps: First, English-speaking participants completed three questionnaires designed to measure their motivation and attitudes toward pronunciation; they then provided speech samples in Japanese. Native speakers of Japanese then rated these speech samples holistically on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating a strong foreign accent, and 5 indicating a native accent. Scores on the questionnaires were then correlated with the accent ratings. None of the English-speaking participants were judged as native or near-native speakers of Japanese. However, results demonstrated a significant positive correlation between ratings of accent and two variables: Intrinsic Motivation Toward Accomplishment and attitudes toward pronunciation. The statistical analysis also revealed a positive correlation between integrative and instrumental orientation and extrinsic motivation, suggesting a relationship between measures of orientation and extrinsic motivation as well. These results highlight the importance of including Self-Determination Theory in the area of second/foreign language acquisition research, as well as clarifying the role of motivation and attitudes toward pronunciation in the present context of late learners of Japanese

Importance Of SBIRT Training In Undergraduate Curriculum

Research poster detailing investigation of the question: What is the significance of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) and why is it important to implement in undergrad curriculum?https://dune.une.edu/cecespring2020/1000/thumbnail.jp

Stochastic Resonance in Ion Channels Characterized by Information Theory

We identify a unifying measure for stochastic resonance (SR) in voltage dependent ion channels which comprises periodic (conventional), aperiodic and nonstationary SR. Within a simplest setting, the gating dynamics is governed by two-state conductance fluctuations, which switch at random time points between two values. The corresponding continuous time point process is analyzed by virtue of information theory. In pursuing this goal we evaluate for our dynamics the tau-information, the mutual information and the rate of information gain. As a main result we find an analytical formula for the rate of information gain that solely involves the probability of the two channel states and their noise averaged rates. For small voltage signals it simplifies to a handy expression. Our findings are applied to study SR in a potassium channel. We find that SR occurs only when the closed state is predominantly dwelled. Upon increasing the probability for the open channel state the application of an extra dose of noise monotonically deteriorates the rate of information gain, i.e., no SR behavior occurs.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Cross entropy as a measure of musical contrast

We present a preliminary study of using the information theoretic concept of cross-entropy to measure musical contrast in a symbolic context, with a focus on melody. We measure cross-entropy using the Information Dynamics Of Music (IDyOM) framework. Whilst our long term aim is to understand the use of contrast in Sonata form, in this paper we take a more general perspective and look at a broad spread of Western art music of the common practice era. Our results suggest that cross-entropy has a useful role as an objective measure of contrast, but that a fuller picture will require more work