Signifying the West: Colonialist Design in Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs

"Forward," the highlighted Tomahawk and Rider units respond as they move across the mapped territory of a hill to a treasure guarded by two bears they must now kill. The WarChiefs, an expansion of the Age of Empires III Real Time Strategy (RTS) game for the PC, uses both Western and Native representations in game mechanics, sound, image, text, and narrative. This paper compares Indigenous and Western perspectives of interactivity, narrative, and space and time in a close reading of single-player campaign Fire and Shadow. In doing so, this paper asks: How does The WarChiefs, and thus the RTS genre, signify colonialist design aesthetic

The Quiet Crisis: Goodwill Industries Research Project

This paper researches the effectiveness of School to Work, a community school based program implemented and carried out by Goodwill Industries of Denver. The problem identified is a disparity in what teenaged students need to learn and what is being taught in the current curriculum of Goodwill. The action research methodology involved analyzing student perceptions and performance, utilizing teacher focus groups, and interviewing individuals who work with teenagers on a daily basis. The desired outcome is an understanding of what students need to learn and a possible revision of the curriculum being used by Goodwill Industries

The outcomes of family and consumer leadership education: creating positive change in disability policy and practice

Background When individuals with disabilities are trained in evidenced based practices and how to advocate for themselves and their families, they are best able to ensure that services and supports meet their needs and create and realize a positive vision for their future. Participants and procedure In New Hampshire in the United States a Leadership Series provided seven weekend training sessions to an annual cohort of about 25 family members and 10 adults with disabilities about better practices in service provision, defining a vision for the future, and community organizing and advocacy strategies, using informational sessions and participation in small work groups. Results A total of 100 participants completing the Series over a six-year period completed pre and post surveys consisting of both closed-ended and open-ended questions. Respondents reported highly significant increases in their knowledge about service provision and advocacy strategies, significant increases in their clarity of vision for six out of seven life domains, and significant increases in their membership in community organizations and frequency of advocacy activities. Conclusions The Leadership Series fostered increased efforts to create positive change in the lives of the participants and their family members with disabilities and in the services and supports provided to family members with disabilities

A Highly Nonlinear Differentially 4 Uniform Power Mapping That Permutes Fields of Even Degree

Functions with low differential uniformity can be used as the s-boxes of symmetric cryptosystems as they have good resistance to differential attacks. The AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) uses a differentially-4 uniform function called the inverse function. Any function used in a symmetric cryptosystem should be a permutation. Also, it is required that the function is highly nonlinear so that it is resistant to Matsui's linear attack. In this article we demonstrate that a highly nonlinear permutation discovered by Hans Dobbertin has differential uniformity of four and hence, with respect to differential and linear cryptanalysis, is just as suitable for use in a symmetric cryptosystem as the inverse function.Comment: 10 pages, submitted to Finite Fields and Their Application

Portrayals and perceptions of AI and why they matter

How researchers, communicators, policymakers, and publics talk about technology matters. Shared understandings about the nature, promise and risks of new technologies develop through the explicit or implicit stories that different groups tell about technology and its place in our lives. The AI narratives project – a joint endeavour by the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Royal Society – has been examining which narratives currently influence public debates about AI, and how these portrayals might shape public perceptions of the capabilities, risks, and benefits of AI technologies. Many of the current ideas about AI technologies that are pervasive in public consciousness – typically that AI is an embodied, super-human intelligence – are shaped by hundreds of years of stories that people have told about humans and machines, and our places in the world. This cultural hinterland shapes how AI is portrayed in media, culture, and everyday discussion; it influences what societies find concerning – or exciting – about technological developments; and it affects how different publics relate to AI technologies. Building a well-founded public dialogue about AI technologies will be key to continued public confidence in the systems that deploy AI technologies, and to realising the benefits they promise across sectors. Since the launch of the machine learning project, the Royal Society has been creating spaces for public discussion about AI technologies, and their implications for society. In a series of four workshops, the Royal Society and Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence explored: which narratives around intelligent machines are most prevalent, and their historical roots; what can be learned from how the narrative around other complex, new technologies developed, and the impact of these; how narratives are shaping the development of AI, and the role of arts and media in this process; and the implications of current AI narratives for researchers and communicators. The report brings together the conclusions of these workshops, and is for anyone interested in how AI is portrayed and perceived.Drs Cave, Dihal, and Dillon are funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Centre Grant awarded to the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Dr Singler was funded by a Templeton World Charitable Foundation grant during the course of the AI narratives project, awarded to the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund's College, Cambridge

How Does Spatial Study Design Influence Density Estimates from Spatial Capture-Recapture Models?

When estimating population density from data collected on non-invasive detector arrays, recently developed spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models present an advance over non-spatial models by accounting for individual movement. While these models should be more robust to changes in trapping designs, they have not been well tested. Here we investigate how the spatial arrangement and size of the trapping array influence parameter estimates for SCR models. We analysed black bear data collected with 123 hair snares with an SCR model accounting for differences in detection and movement between sexes and across the trapping occasions. To see how the size of the trap array and trap dispersion influence parameter estimates, we repeated analysis for data from subsets of traps: 50% chosen at random, 50% in the centre of the array and 20% in the South of the array. Additionally, we simulated and analysed data under a suite of trap designs and home range sizes. In the black bear study, we found that results were similar across trap arrays, except when only 20% of the array was used. Black bear density was approximately 10 individuals per 100 km2. Our simulation study showed that SCR models performed well as long as the extent of the trap array was similar to or larger than the extent of individual movement during the study period, and movement was at least half the distance between traps. SCR models performed well across a range of spatial trap setups and animal movements. Contrary to non-spatial capture-recapture models, they do not require the trapping grid to cover an area several times the average home range of the studied species. This renders SCR models more appropriate for the study of wide-ranging mammals and more flexible to design studies targeting multiple species

Altered Chromosomal Positioning, Compaction, and Gene Expression with a Lamin A/C Gene Mutation

Lamins A and C, encoded by the LMNA gene, are filamentous proteins that form the core scaffold of the nuclear lamina. Dominant LMNA gene mutations cause multiple human diseases including cardiac and skeletal myopathies. The nuclear lamina is thought to regulate gene expression by its direct interaction with chromatin. LMNA gene mutations may mediate disease by disrupting normal gene expression.To investigate the hypothesis that mutant lamin A/C changes the lamina's ability to interact with chromatin, we studied gene misexpression resulting from the cardiomyopathic LMNA E161K mutation and correlated this with changes in chromosome positioning. We identified clusters of misexpressed genes and examined the nuclear positioning of two such genomic clusters, each harboring genes relevant to striated muscle disease including LMO7 and MBNL2. Both gene clusters were found to be more centrally positioned in LMNA-mutant nuclei. Additionally, these loci were less compacted. In LMNA mutant heart and fibroblasts, we found that chromosome 13 had a disproportionately high fraction of misexpressed genes. Using three-dimensional fluorescence in situ hybridization we found that the entire territory of chromosome 13 was displaced towards the center of the nucleus in LMNA mutant fibroblasts. Additional cardiomyopathic LMNA gene mutations were also shown to have abnormal positioning of chromosome 13, although in the opposite direction.These data support a model in which LMNA mutations perturb the intranuclear positioning and compaction of chromosomal domains and provide a mechanism by which gene expression may be altered