198 research outputs found
Memes, viruses, and violence: A nation guide to managing contagious threats
On January 20, 2022, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS)-Vancouver hosted a Digital Roundtable titled Memes, Viruses, and Violence: A Nation Guide to Managing Contagious Threats, conducted by Dr. Joel Finkelstein, the director of the Network Contagion Research Institute. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS-Vancouver Executives. The main discussion topics included the intersectionality of memes, violence, and viruses; their impact on the culture of escapism; and how big data mapping could model predictions for memetic violence before it manifests into violence.
Memes, Violence, and Viruses: A Nation's Guide to Global Contagious Threats
On November 24, 2021, Dr. Joel Finkelstein, Director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, presented on Memes, Violence, and Viruses: A Nation's Guide to Global Contagious Threats at the 2021 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points of Dr. Finkelstein’s presentation included the relationship between memes and violence exploited by populists and exacerbated by viral outbreaks of online hate and the emergence of machine learning tools that enable responses by policymakers
A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism
A new wave of growing antisemitism, driven by fringe Web communities, is an
increasingly worrying presence in the socio-political realm. The ubiquitous and
global nature of the Web has provided tools used by these groups to spread
their ideology to the rest of the Internet. Although the study of antisemitism
and hate is not new, the scale and rate of change of online data has impacted
the efficacy of traditional approaches to measure and understand these
troubling trends. In this paper, we present a large-scale, quantitative study
of online antisemitism. We collect hundreds of million posts and images from
alt-right Web communities like 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (/pol/) and
Gab. Using scientifically grounded methods, we quantify the escalation and
spread of antisemitic memes and rhetoric across the Web. We find the frequency
of antisemitic content greatly increases (in some cases more than doubling)
after major political events such as the 2016 US Presidential Election and the
"Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. We extract semantic embeddings from
our corpus of posts and demonstrate how automated techniques can discover and
categorize the use of antisemitic terminology. We additionally examine the
prevalence and spread of the antisemitic "Happy Merchant" meme, and in
particular how these fringe communities influence its propagation to more
mainstream communities like Twitter and Reddit. Taken together, our results
provide a data-driven, quantitative framework for understanding online
antisemitism. Our methods serve as a framework to augment current qualitative
efforts by anti-hate groups, providing new insights into the growth and spread
of hate online.Comment: To appear at the 14th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social
Media (ICWSM 2020). Please cite accordingl
Beyond Mercury: How the Fine Print of the Bush Administration Plan Means More Dioxin, Lead and Other Toxic Air Pollution
Provides a look at power plant emissions data, adverse health effects of toxic air pollution, current technology available to clean up toxic air emissions, and the debate over regulating mercury pollution
Ultraviolet Luminosity Density of the Universe During the Epoch of Reionization
The spatial fluctuations of the extragalactic background light trace the
total emission from all stars and galaxies in the Universe. A multi-wavelength
study can be used to measure the integrated emission from first galaxies during
reionization when the Universe was about 500 million years old. Here we report
arcminute-scale spatial fluctuations in one of the deepest sky surveys with the
Hubble Space Telescope in five wavebands between 0.6 and 1.6 m. We
model-fit the angular power spectra of intensity fluctuation measurements to
find the ultraviolet luminosity density of galaxies at > 8 to be erg s Hz Mpc
. This level of integrated light emission allows for a significant
surface density of fainter primeval galaxies that are below the point source
detection level in current surveys.Comment: The official typeset version is available from the Nature
Communications website at
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150907/ncomms8945/full/ncomms8945.html The
data used in this work can be found at http://herschel.uci.edu/CANDELS
A Framework for Transforming Departmental Culture to Support Educational Innovation
This paper provides a research-based framework for promoting institutional
change in higher education. To date, most educational change efforts have
focused on relatively narrow subsets of the university system (e.g., faculty
teaching practices or administrative policies) and have been largely driven by
implicit change logics; both of these features have limited the success of such
efforts at achieving sustained, systemic change. Drawing from the literature on
organizational and cultural change, our framework encourages change agents to
coordinate their activities across three key levels of the university and to
ground their activities in the various change perspectives that emerge from
that literature. We use examples from a change project that we have been
carrying out at a large research university to illustrate how our framework can
be used as a basis for planning and implementing holistic change.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figures, submitted to Physical Review Special Topics:
Physics Education Researc
The effect of versican G3 domain on local breast cancer invasiveness and bony metastasis
Abstract
Introduction
Increased versican expression has been associated with local breast cancer invasiveness and a more aggressive tumor phenotype. The cellular mechanisms are not fully understood and this study evaluated versican G3 domain with its EGF-like motifs in influencing tumor invasion and metastasis.
Methods
One recombinant construct was synthesized (a signal peptide for product secretion and the versican G3 domain). The construct was stably transfected into human breast carcinoma MT-1 cells. Cell viability in vitro was evaluated in low serum and serum starvation conditions. In vivo study of tumor growth was evaluated in a nude mouse model. G3 effects on rodent vascular endothelial cells were evaluated in vitro on cell survival, apoptosis, migration, and vascular formation. The effects of VEGF, fibronectin, and G3 on vascular formation were examined. An intracardiac injection model of metastatic human breast carcinoma tested the effect of G3 on distant bony and soft tissue metastasis. Analysis of metastatic burden included histology, radiographs, and micro-CT quantification of osteolysis.
Results
A greater viability of cancer cells was observed in low serum and serum-free conditions in the presence of versican G3. Larger subcutaneous tumors were obtained in the G3 group following tumor cell injection into CD1 mice. G3 induced a greater degree of rodent vascular endothelial cell proliferation and migration in vitro. Simultaneous presence of fibronectin, VEGF, and G3 promoted endothelial cell migration in wound-healing assays as compared to the treatments containing none, one or two of these molecules. Systemic tumor burden to distant bony and soft tissue metastatic sites was greater in the G3 group using the intracardiac injection metastatic model
Conclusion
Versican G3 domain appears to be important in local and systemic tumor invasiveness of human breast cancer. Effects include enhancing cell viability, proliferation, migration and enhancing local tumor growth. Potential effects on angiogenesis include enhancing vascular endothelial proliferation, migration, and vessel formation. The interactions between tumor cells, surrounding stromal components and neo-vascularization in breast cancer may include interactions with VEGF and fibronectin. The propensity of versican G3 to influence tumor invasion to bone and the mechanisms of G3 mediated osteolysis warrants ongoing studies
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