1,840 research outputs found
Women Superintendents In Illinois: Gender Barriers and Challenges
Women face unique challenges as superintendents. This study determined barri- ers women face as superintendents and elicited reasons why these women would consider leaving the superintendent\u27s position. Thirty-nine PreK-12 women su- perintendents in Illinois participated in a web-based survey in January 2008. Survey items included information regarding characteristics, pathways to the superintendency, personal barriers, professional barriers, and factors that would cause women to consider leaving the superintendency. Respondents identified familial responsibilities, gender discrimination, employment opportunities, and self-confidence as major barriers. Factors that would cause women superinten- dents to leave their position included employment opportunities, familial re- sponsibilities, and peer support. Six women were also personally interviewed to clarify survey responses and to gain greater insights regarding the barriers. The women indicated that they had experienced barriers related to gender discrimi- nation and familial responsibilities. These barriers did not contribute to the su- perintendents leaving their current positions. Their reasons for seeking new positions would be to pursue opportunities that would enhance their profes- sional experiences or improve their compensation
Co-location epidemic tracking on London public transports using low power mobile magnetometer
The public transports provide an ideal means to enable contagious diseases
transmission. This paper introduces a novel idea to detect co-location of
people in such environment using just the ubiquitous geomagnetic field sensor
on the smart phone. Essentially, given that all passengers must share the same
journey between at least two consecutive stations, we have a long window to
match the user trajectory. Our idea was assessed over a painstakingly survey of
over 150 kilometres of travelling distance, covering different parts of London,
using the overground trains, the underground tubes and the buses
Epidemic contact tracing with smartphone sensors
Contact tracing is widely considered as an effective procedure in the fight
against epidemic diseases. However, one of the challenges for technology based
contact tracing is the high number of false positives, questioning its
trust-worthiness and efficiency amongst the wider population for mass adoption.
To this end, this paper proposes a novel, yet practical smartphone-based
contact tracing approach, employing WiFi and acoustic sound for relative
distance estimate, in addition to the air pressure and the magnetic field for
ambient environment matching. We present a model combining 6 smartphone
sensors, prioritising some of them when certain conditions are met. We
empirically verified our approach in various realistic environments to
demonstrate an achievement of up to 95% fewer false positives, and 62% more
accurate than Bluetooth-only system. To the best of our knowledge, this paper
was one of the first work to propose a combination of smartphone sensors for
contact tracing
Sound-Induced Flash Illusion is Resistant to Feedback Training
A single flash accompanied by two auditory beeps tends to be perceived as two flashes (Shams et al. Nature 408:788, 2000, Cogn Brain Res 14:147β152, 2002). This phenomenon is known as βsound-induced flash illusion.β Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that this illusion is correlated with modulation of activity in early visual cortical areas (Arden et al. Vision Res 43(23):2469β2478, 2003; Bhattacharya et al. NeuroReport 13:1727β1730, 2002; Shams et al. NeuroReport 12(17):3849β3852, 2001, Neurosci Lett 378(2):76β81, 2005; Watkins et al. Neuroimage 31:1247β1256, 2006, Neuroimage 37:572β578, 2007; Mishra et al. J Neurosci 27(15):4120β4131, 2007). We examined how robust the illusion is by testing whether the frequency of the illusion can be reduced by providing feedback. We found that the sound-induced flash illusion was resistant to feedback training, except when the amount of monetary reward was made dependent on accuracy in performance. However, even in the latter case the participants reported that they still perceived illusory two flashes even though they correctly reported single flash. Moreover, the feedback training effect seemed to disappear once the participants were no longer provided with feedback suggesting a short-lived refinement of discrimination between illusory and physical double flashes rather than vanishing of the illusory percept. These findings indicate that the effect of sound on the perceptual representation of visual stimuli is strong and robust to feedback training, and provide further evidence against decision factors accounting for the sound-induced flash illusion
MASTL overexpression promotes chromosome instability and metastasis in breast cancer.
MASTL kinase is essential for correct progression through mitosis, with loss of MASTL causing chromosome segregation errors, mitotic collapse and failure of cytokinesis. However, in cancer MASTL is most commonly amplified and overexpressed. This correlates with increased chromosome instability in breast cancer and poor patient survival in breast, ovarian and lung cancer. Global phosphoproteomic analysis of immortalised breast MCF10A cells engineered to overexpressed MASTL revealed disruption to desmosomes, actin cytoskeleton, PI3K/AKT/mTOR and p38 stress kinase signalling pathways. Notably, these pathways were also disrupted in patient samples that overexpress MASTL. In MCF10A cells, these alterations corresponded with a loss of contact inhibition and partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition, which disrupted migration and allowed cells to proliferate uncontrollably in 3D culture. Furthermore, MASTL overexpression increased aberrant mitotic divisions resulting in increased micronuclei formation. Mathematical modelling indicated that this delay was due to continued inhibition of PP2A-B55, which delayed timely mitotic exit. This corresponded with an increase in DNA damage and delayed transit through interphase. There were no significant alterations to replication kinetics upon MASTL overexpression, however, inhibition of p38 kinase rescued the interphase delay, suggesting the delay was a G2 DNA damage checkpoint response. Importantly, knockdown of MASTL, reduced cell proliferation, prevented invasion and metastasis of MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo, indicating the potential of future therapies that target MASTL. Taken together, these results suggest that MASTL overexpression contributes to chromosome instability and metastasis, thereby decreasing breast cancer patient survival
Ancestry of the Iban Is Predominantly Southeast Asian: Genetic Evidence from Autosomal, Mitochondrial, and Y Chromosomes
Humans reached present-day Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) in one of the first major human migrations out of Africa. Population movements in the millennia following this initial settlement are thought to have greatly influenced the genetic makeup of current inhabitants, yet the extent attributed to different events is not clear. Recent studies suggest that south-to-north gene flow largely influenced present-day patterns of genetic variation in Southeast Asian populations and that late Pleistocene and early Holocene migrations from Southeast Asia are responsible for a substantial proportion of ISEA ancestry. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the ancestors of present-day inhabitants came mainly from north-to-south migrations from Taiwan and throughout ISEA approximately 4,000 years ago. We report a large-scale genetic analysis of human variation in the Iban population from the Malaysian state of Sarawak in northwestern Borneo, located in the center of ISEA. Genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers analyzed here suggest that the Iban exhibit greatest genetic similarity to Indonesian and mainland Southeast Asian populations. The most common non-recombining Y (NRY) and mitochondrial (mt) DNA haplogroups present in the Iban are associated with populations of Southeast Asia. We conclude that migrations from Southeast Asia made a large contribution to Iban ancestry, although evidence of potential gene flow from Taiwan is also seen in uniparentally inherited marker data
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