Whiteness of A Name: Is “White” the Baseline?

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that Whiteness is used as a normative standard when comparing a variety of first names. Design/methodology/approach– Respondents (full- and part-time business students) evaluated names that sounded common, African-American, Russian, and unusual. Findings– Results from two studies suggest that “common” or “neutral” names are perceived to be white, and to be more American than African-American, Russian or unusual-sounding names. Results also demonstrate that the common names have more positive attributes, including socio-economic class. Research limitations/implications– The study found that the basic comparison of American respondents will be to a white person. Second, the authors applied Critical Race Theory (CRT) to the research on names. Finally, the authors demonstrate that unless they are totally anonymous, virtual teams will still have the type of social categorization and stereotyping of team members found in ordinary teams. Practical implications– Organizations and managers need to recognize that a “colorblind” approach simply reinforces the expectation that any differences in American organizations will be compared against the Whiteness standard. This can be a problem in any organizational setting, especially given the proliferation of virtual teams. This may be addressed with attempts to increase common in-group identity and strategies for identifying bias. Originality/value– In this research the authors integrate concepts and theory from Virtual Teams, CRT and the Psychology of Names, providing both theoretical and practical implications

Compression of thick laminated composite beams with initial impact-like damage

While the study of compression after impact of laminated composites has been under consideration for many years, the complexity of the damage initiated by low velocity impact has not lent itself to simple predictive models for compression strength. The damage modes due to non-penetrating, low velocity impact by large diameter objects can be simulated using quasi-static three-point bending. The resulting damage modes are less coupled and more easily characterized than actual impact damage modes. This study includes the compression testing of specimens with well documented initial damage states obtained from three-point bend testing. Compression strengths and failure modes were obtained for quasi-isotropic stacking sequences from 0.24 to 1.1 inches thick with both grouped and interspersed ply stacking. Initial damage prior to compression testing was divided into four classifications based on the type, extent, and location of the damage. These classifications are multiple through-thickness delaminations, isolated delamination, damage near the surface, and matrix cracks. Specimens from each classification were compared to specimens tested without initial damage in order to determine the effects of the initial damage on the final compression strength and failure modes. A finite element analysis was used to aid in the understanding and explanation of the experimental results

Human B1 Cell Frequency: Isolation and Analysis of Human B1 Cells

Controversy over the frequency of human B1 cells in normal individuals has arisen as different labs have begun to employ non-uniform techniques to study this population. The phenotypic profile and relative paucity of circulating human B1 cells place constraints on methodology to identify and isolate this population. Multiple steps must be optimized to insure accurate enumeration and optimal purification. In the course of working with human B1 cells we have developed a successful strategy that provides consistent analysis of B1 cells for frequency determination and efficient isolation of B1 cells for functional studies. Here we discuss issues attendant to identifying human B1 cells and outline a carefully optimized approach that leads to uniform and reproducible data

Probing strongly interacting atomic gases with energetic atoms

We investigate properties of an energetic atom propagating through strongly interacting atomic gases. The operator product expansion is used to systematically compute a quasiparticle energy and its scattering rate both in a spin-1/2 Fermi gas and in a spinless Bose gas. Reasonable agreement with recent quantum Monte Carlo simulations even at a relatively small momentum k/kF>1.5 indicates that our large-momentum expansions are valid in a wide range of momentum. We also study a differential scattering rate when a probe atom is shot into atomic gases. Because the number density and current density of the target atomic gas contribute to the forward scattering only, its contact density (measure of short-range pair correlation) gives the leading contribution to the backward scattering. Therefore, such an experiment can be used to measure the contact density and thus provides a new local probe of strongly interacting atomic gases.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures; (v4) published with the new titl

Minor Pilins of the Type IV Pilus System Participate in the Negative Regulation of Swarming Motility

Pseudomonas aeruginosa exhibits distinct surface-associated behaviors, including biofilm formation, flagellum-mediated swarming motility, and type IV pilus-driven twitching. Here, we report a role for the minor pilins, PilW and PilX, components of the type IV pilus assembly machinery, in the repression of swarming motility. Mutating either the pilW or pilX gene alleviates the inhibition of swarming motility observed for strains with elevated levels of the intracellular signaling molecule cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) due to loss of BifA, a c-di-GMP-degrading phosphodiesterase. Blocking PilD peptidase-mediated processing of PilW and PilX renders the unprocessed proteins defective for pilus assembly but still functional in c-di-GMP-mediated swarming repression, indicating our ability to separate these functions. Strains with mutations in pilW or pilX also fail to exhibit the increase in c-di-GMP levels observed when wild-type (WT) or bifA mutant cells are grown on a surface. We also provide data showing that c-di-GMP levels are increased upon PilY1 overexpression in surface-grown cells and that this c-di-GMP increase does not occur in the absence of the SadC diguanylate cyclase. Increased levels of endogenous PilY1, PilX, and PilA are observed when cells are grown on a surface compared to liquid growth, linking surface growth and enhanced signaling via SadC. Our data support a model wherein PilW, PilX, and PilY1, in addition to their role(s) in type IV pilus biogenesis, function to repress swarming via modulation of intracellular c-di-GMP levels. By doing so, these pilus assembly proteins contribute to P. aeruginosa\u27s ability to coordinately regulate biofilm formation with its two surface motility systems

Exploring Food Detection using CNNs

One of the most common critical factors directly related to the cause of a chronic disease is unhealthy diet consumption. In this sense, building an automatic system for food analysis could allow a better understanding of the nutritional information with respect to the food eaten and thus it could help in taking corrective actions in order to consume a better diet. The Computer Vision community has focused its efforts on several areas involved in the visual food analysis such as: food detection, food recognition, food localization, portion estimation, among others. For food detection, the best results evidenced in the state of the art were obtained using Convolutional Neural Network. However, the results of all these different approaches were gotten on different datasets and therefore are not directly comparable. This article proposes an overview of the last advances on food detection and an optimal model based on GoogLeNet Convolutional Neural Network method, principal component analysis, and a support vector machine that outperforms the state of the art on two public food/non-food datasets

Human B1 cells in umbilical cord and adult peripheral blood express the novel phenotype CD20+CD27+CD43+CD70−

Human B1 cells consist of CD20+CD27+CD43+CD70− cells bearing a skewed B cell receptor repertoire, and are present in umbilical cord and adult peripheral blood

Impact of deprivation and comorbidity on outcomes in emergency general surgery : an epidemiological study

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hydrodynamic modes in a trapped Bose gas above the Bose-Einstein transition

We discuss the collective modes of a trapped Bose gas in the hydrodynamic regime where atomic collisions ensure local thermal equilibrium for the distribution function. Starting from the conservation laws, in the linearized limit we derive a closed equation for the velocity fluctuations in a trapped Bose gas above the Bose-Einstein transition temperature. Explicit solutions for a parabolic trap are given. We find that the surface modes have the same dispersion relation as the one recently obtained by Stringari for the oscillations of the condensate at $T=0$ within the Thomas-Fermi approximation. Results are also given for the monopole ``breathing'' mode as well as for the $m=0$ excitations which result from the coupling of the monopole and quadrupole modes in an anisotropic parabolic well.Comment: 4 pages, no figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Leibniz, Acosmism, and Incompossibility

Leibniz claims that God acts in the best possible way, and that this includes creating exactly one world. But worlds are aggregates, and aggregates have a low degree of reality or metaphysical perfection, perhaps none at all. This is Leibniz’s tendency toward acosmism, or the view that there this no such thing as creation-as-a-whole. Many interpreters reconcile Leibniz’s acosmist tendency with the high value of worlds by proposing that God sums the value of each substance created, so that the best world is just the world with the most substances. I call this way of determining the value of a world the Additive Theory of Value (ATV), and argue that it leads to the current and insoluble form of the problem of incompossibility. To avoid the problem, I read “possible worlds” in “God chooses the best of all possible worlds” as referring to God’s ideas of worlds. These ideas, though built up from essences, are themselves unities and so well suited to be the value bearers that Leibniz’s theodicy requires. They have their own value, thanks to their unity, and that unity is not preserved when more essences are added