An Examination of the Impact of Gender and Culture on Facebook Privacy and Trust in Guam

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, allows users to develop a profile containing personal information. Users may choose privacy settings to control information access, but improper settings risk personal exposure. Several US studies examining gender differences in privacy management found that females have more privacy concerns. This study investigates gender differences in Facebook privacy settings among college students in Guam, a US territory whose ethnicity and culture differ from mainland US. Results show that neither gender trusts Facebook nor feels Facebook protects them. Significant differences in number and type of privacy settings indicate females are more security conscious. Gender differences exist in three of Hofstede’s five cultural factors, but only Masculinity-Femininity significantly influences perceptions of Facebook Privacy and Facebook Trust. There is also evidence of “privacy paradox” phenomenon. Summarizing for the case in Guam, the findings indicate that culture, in particular Masculinity-Femininity, influences the formation of perceptions regarding both trust in social media and the privacy protection provided by social media, while gender can influence the protective measures actually taken by individuals

Conformal Scalar Propagation on the Schwarzschild Black-Hole Geometry

The vacuum activity generated by the curvature of the Schwarzschild black-hole geometry close to the event horizon is studied for the case of a massless, conformal scalar field. The associated approximation to the unknown, exact propagator in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state for small values of the radial coordinate above $r = 2M$ results in an analytic expression which manifestly features its dependence on the background space-time geometry. This approximation to the Hartle-Hawking scalar propagator on the Schwarzschild black-hole geometry is, for that matter, distinct from all other. It is shown that the stated approximation is valid for physical distances which range from the event horizon to values which are orders of magnitude above the scale within which quantum and backreaction effects are comparatively pronounced. An expression is obtained for the renormalised $$ in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state which reproduces the established results on the event horizon and in that segment of the exterior geometry within which the approximation is valid. In contrast to previous results the stated expression has the superior feature of being entirely analytic. The effect of the manifold's causal structure to scalar propagation is also studied.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures. Published on line on October 16, 2009 and due to appear in print in Gen.Rel.Gra

The Experiment Data Depot: A Web-Based Software Tool for Biological Experimental Data Storage, Sharing, and Visualization

Although recent advances in synthetic biology allow us to produce biological designs more efficiently than ever, our ability to predict the end result of these designs is still nascent. Predictive models require large amounts of high-quality data to be parametrized and tested, which are not generally available. Here, we present the Experiment Data Depot (EDD), an online tool designed as a repository of experimental data and metadata. EDD provides a convenient way to upload a variety of data types, visualize these data, and export them in a standardized fashion for use with predictive algorithms. In this paper, we describe EDD and showcase its utility for three different use cases: storage of characterized synthetic biology parts, leveraging proteomics data to improve biofuel yield, and the use of extracellular metabolite concentrations to predict intracellular metabolic fluxes

Observing Supermassive Black Holes across cosmic time: from phenomenology to physics

In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that supermassive black holes reside in the nuclei of almost every galaxy, grow over cosmological times by accreting matter, interact and merge with each other, and in the process liberate enormous amounts of energy that influence dramatically the evolution of the surrounding gas and stars, providing a powerful self-regulatory mechanism for galaxy formation. The different energetic phenomena associated to growing black holes and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), their cosmological evolution and the observational techniques used to unveil them, are the subject of this chapter. In particular, I will focus my attention on the connection between the theory of high-energy astrophysical processes giving rise to the observed emission in AGN, the observable imprints they leave at different wavelengths, and the methods used to uncover them in a statistically robust way. I will show how such a combined effort of theorists and observers have led us to unveil most of the SMBH growth over a large fraction of the age of the Universe, but that nagging uncertainties remain, preventing us from fully understating the exact role of black holes in the complex process of galaxy and large-scale structure formation, assembly and evolution.Comment: 46 pages, 21 figures. This review article appears as a chapter in the book: "Astrophysical Black Holes", Haardt, F., Gorini, V., Moschella, U and Treves A. (Eds), 2015, Springer International Publishing AG, Cha

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Sarcopenia as Comorbid Chronic Diseases in Older Adults: Established and Emerging Treatments and Therapies

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and sarcopenia (low skeletal muscle mass and function) share a bidirectional relationship. The prevalence of these diseases increases with age and they share common risk factors. Skeletal muscle fat infiltration, commonly referred to as myosteatosis, may be a major contributor to both T2DM and sarcopenia in older adults via independent effects on insulin resistance and muscle health. Many strategies to manage T2DM result in energy restriction and subsequent weight loss, and this can lead to significant declines in muscle mass in the absence of resistance exercise, which is also a first-line treatment for sarcopenia. In this review, we highlight recent evidence on established treatments and emerging therapies targeting weight loss and muscle mass and function improvements in older adults with, or at risk of, T2DM and/or sarcopenia. This includes dietary, physical activity and exercise interventions, new generation incretin-based agonists and myostatin-based antagonists, and endoscopic bariatric therapies. We also highlight how digital health technologies and health literacy interventions can increase uptake of, and adherence to, established and emerging treatments and therapies in older adults with T2DM and/or sarcopenia

Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the $\gamma p$ centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters