Testing the Waters: Blogging for User Needs Analysis, Information Access, and Building a Community of Practitioners

ABSTRACT This panel session will focus on three strategies for using blogs to improve access to collections, understand information needs of those searching the collections, and build communities of practice with information professionals serving similar user groups. Three presenters will share their experiences, goals, methods, and results. A facilitated discussion with the audience will follow the presentations and allow attendees to brainstorm on possible uses of blogging outside the box to reach the goals of their current projects or initiatives that they are hoping to undertake in the near future

The wages of whiteness in the absence of wages: racial capitalism, reactionary intercommunalism and the rise of Trumpism

In November 1970, Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton gave a lecture at Boston College where he introduced his theory of intercommunalism. Newton re-articulated Marxist theories of imperialism through the lens of the Black liberation struggle and argued that imperialism had entered a new phase called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’. Newton’s theory of intercommunalism o ers nothing less than a proto-theorisation of what we have come to call neo-liberal globalisation and its e ects on what W. E. B. Du Bois had seen as the racialisation of modern imperialism. Due to the initial historical dismissal of the Black Panther Party’s political legacy, Newton’s thought has largely been neglected for the past 40 years. This paper revisits Newton’s theory of intercommunalism, with the aim of achieving some form of epistemic justice for his thought, but also to highlight how Newton’s recasting of imperialism as reactionary intercommunalism provides critical insight into the rise of Trumpism in the US

Stochastic dynamics of correlations in quantum field theory: From Schwinger-Dyson to Boltzmann-Langevin equation

The aim of this paper is two-fold: in probing the statistical mechanical properties of interacting quantum fields, and in providing a field theoretical justification for a stochastic source term in the Boltzmann equation. We start with the formulation of quantum field theory in terms of the Schwinger - Dyson equations for the correlation functions, which we describe by a closed-time-path master ($n = \infty PI$) effective action. When the hierarchy is truncated, one obtains the ordinary closed-system of correlation functions up to a certain order, and from the nPI effective action, a set of time-reversal invariant equations of motion. But when the effect of the higher order correlation functions is included (through e.g., causal factorization-- molecular chaos -- conditions, which we call 'slaving'), in the form of a correlation noise, the dynamics of the lower order correlations shows dissipative features, as familiar in the field-theory version of Boltzmann equation. We show that fluctuation-dissipation relations exist for such effectively open systems, and use them to show that such a stochastic term, which explicitly introduces quantum fluctuations on the lower order correlation functions, necessarily accompanies the dissipative term, thus leading to a Boltzmann-Langevin equation which depicts both the dissipative and stochastic dynamics of correlation functions in quantum field theory.Comment: LATEX, 30 pages, no figure

Proteomic analysis of nipple aspirate fluid to detect biologic markers of breast cancer.

The early detection of breast cancer is the best means to minimise disease-related mortality. Current screening techniques have limited sensitivity and specificity. Breast nipple aspirate fluid can be obtained noninvasively and contains proteins secreted from ductal and lobular epithelia. Nipple aspirate fluid proteins are breast specific and generally more concentrated than corresponding blood levels. Proteomic analysis of 1 microl of diluted nipple aspirate fluid over a 5-40 kDa range from 20 subjects with breast cancer and 13 with nondiseased breasts identified five differentially expressed proteins. The most sensitive and specific proteins were 6500 and 15 940 Da, found in 75-84% of samples from women with cancer but in only 0-9% of samples from normal women. These findings suggest that (1) differential expression of nipple aspirate fluid proteins exists between women with normal and diseased breasts, and (2) analysis of these proteins may predict the presence of breast cancer

Perceptions of mixed-race

The psychology of race is in its infancy, particularly in the United Kingdom and especially regarding mixed-race. Most use untimed explicit indexes and qualitative/self-report measures. Here, we used not only explicit responses (participants’ choice of response categories) but also implicit data (participants’ response times, RT). In a Stroop task, 92 Black, White, and mixed-race participants classified photographs of mixed-race persons. Photos were accompanied by a word, such as Black or White. Participants ignored the word, simply deciding whether to categorize photos as White or Black. Averaged across three different instructional sets, White participants categorized mixed-race slightly to the White side of the center point, with Black participants doing the converse. Intriguingly, mixed-race participants placed mixed-race photos further toward Black than did the Black group. But for RT, they now indicated midway between White and Black participants. We conclude that at the conscious (key-press) level, mixed-race persons see being mixed-race as Black, but at the unconscious (RT) level, their perception is a perfect balance between Black and White. Findings are discussed in terms of two recent theories of racial identity

ABCB1 (MDR1) polymorphisms and ovarian cancer progression and survival: A comprehensive analysis from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium and The Cancer Genome Atlas

<b>Objective</b> <i>ABCB1</i> encodes the multi-drug efflux pump P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and has been implicated in multi-drug resistance. We comprehensively evaluated this gene and flanking regions for an association with clinical outcome in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC).<p></p> <b>Methods</b> The best candidates from fine-mapping analysis of 21 <i>ABCB1</i> SNPs tagging C1236T (rs1128503), G2677T/A (rs2032582), and C3435T (rs1045642) were analysed in 4616 European invasive EOC patients from thirteen Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) studies and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Additionally we analysed 1,562 imputed SNPs around ABCB1 in patients receiving cytoreductive surgery and either ‘standard’ first-line paclitaxel–carboplatin chemotherapy (n = 1158) or any first-line chemotherapy regimen (n = 2867). We also evaluated ABCB1 expression in primary tumours from 143 EOC patients.<p></p> <b>Result</b> Fine-mapping revealed that rs1128503, rs2032582, and rs1045642 were the best candidates in optimally debulked patients. However, we observed no significant association between any SNP and either progression-free survival or overall survival in analysis of data from 14 studies. There was a marginal association between rs1128503 and overall survival in patients with nil residual disease (HR 0.88, 95% CI 0.77–1.01; p = 0.07). In contrast, <i>ABCB1</i> expression in the primary tumour may confer worse prognosis in patients with sub-optimally debulked tumours.<p></p> <b>Conclusion</b> Our study represents the largest analysis of <i>ABCB1</i> SNPs and EOC progression and survival to date, but has not identified additional signals, or validated reported associations with progression-free survival for rs1128503, rs2032582, and rs1045642. However, we cannot rule out the possibility of a subtle effect of rs1128503, or other SNPs linked to it, on overall survival.<p></p&gt

Revisiting histories of anti-racist thought and activism

This piece reconsiders histories of anti-racist thought and practice, including the linkages between anti-racisms and other traditions of liberatory thought. We argue that anti-racism should be understood as a strand in radical thought linking internationalism, institutional critique and street activism, in the process interfeeding with other social movements. The traditions of anti-racist thought discussed in this special issue exemplify these cross-cutting influences

Toward a geography of black internationalism: Bayard Rustin, nonviolence and the promise of Africa

This article charts the trip made by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin to West Africa in 1952, and examines the unpublished ‘Africa Program’ which he subsequently presented to leading American pacifists. I situate Rustin’s writings within the burgeoning literature on black internationalism which, despite its clear geographical registers, geographers themselves have as yet made only a modest contribution towards. The article argues that within this literature there remains a tendency to romanticize cross-cultural connections in lieu of critically interrogating their basic, and often competing, claims. I argue that closer attention to the geographies of black internationalism, however, allows us to shape a more diverse and practiced sense of internationalist encounter and exchange. The article reconstructs the multiplicity of Rustin’s black internationalist geographies which drew eclectically from a range of Pan-African, American and pacifist traditions. Though each of these was profoundly racialized, they conceptualized race in distinctive ways and thereby had differing understandings of what constituted the international as a geographical arena. By blending these forms of internationalism Rustin was able to promote a particular model of civil rights which was characteristically internationalist in outlook, nonviolent in principle and institutional in composition; a model which in selective and uneven ways continues to shape our understanding of the period