Review of Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Periodical Press, by Joan Judge. University of California Press. 2015

Book Review

Podcast: Therapy dogs in school settings

Can therapy dogs decrease anxiety and stress in students, and improve school attendance? These are just some of the questions Monash University academics Dr Linda Henderson and Dr Christine Grove from the Faculty of Education are trying to answer as they push for more research in this area

SSRCの学術的ライティングのインストラクション

Reevaluating Translation as a Driving Force of Scholarship (翻訳の再評価：学問を深める原動力), 国際日本文化研究センター, 2016年2月27日-28

Guide to Community Solar: Utility, Private, and Non-Profit Project Development

This guide is designed as a resource for those who want to develop community solar projects, from community organizers or solar energy advocates to government officials or utility managers

A phase IIA randomized clinical trial of a multiclade HIV-1 DNA prime followed by a multiclade rAd5 HIV-1 vaccine boost in healthy adults (HVTN204)

BACKGROUND: The safety and immunogenicity of a vaccine regimen consisting of a 6-plasmid HIV-1 DNA prime (envA, envB, envC, gagB, polB, nefB) boosted by a recombinant adenovirus serotype-5 (rAd5) HIV-1 with matching inserts was evaluated in HIV-seronegative participants from South Africa, United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. METHODS: 480 participants were evenly randomized to receive either: DNA (4 mg IM by Biojector) at 0, 1 and 2 months, followed by rAd5 (10 10 PU IM by needle/syringe) at 6 months; or placebo. Participants were monitored for reactogenicity and adverse events throughout the 12-month study. Peak and duration of HIV-specific humoral and cellular immune responses were evaluated after the prime and boost. RESULTS: The vaccine was well tolerated and safe. T-cell responses, detected by interferon-γ (IFN-γ) ELISpot to global potential T-cell epitopes (PTEs) were observed in 70.8% (136/192) of vaccine recipients overall, most frequently to Gag (54.7%) and to Env (54.2%). In U.S. vaccine recipients T-cell responses were less frequent in Ad5 sero-positive versus sero-negative vaccine recipients (62.5% versus 85.7% respectively, p = 0.035). The frequency of HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses detected by intracellular cytokine staining were similar (41.8% and 47.2% respectively) and most secreted ≥2 cytokines. The vaccine induced a high frequency (83.7%-94.6%) of binding antibody responses to consensus Group M, and Clades A, B and C gp140 Env oligomers. Antibody responses to Gag were elicited in 46% of vaccine recipients. CONCLUSION: The vaccine regimen was well-tolerated and induced polyfunctional CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells and multi-clade anti-Env binding antibodies. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT0012597

A Case for Humans-in-the-Loop: Decisions in the Presence of Erroneous Algorithmic Scores

The increased use of algorithmic predictions in sensitive domains has been accompanied by both enthusiasm and concern. To understand the opportunities and risks of these technologies, it is key to study how experts alter their decisions when using such tools. In this paper, we study the adoption of an algorithmic tool used to assist child maltreatment hotline screening decisions. We focus on the question: Are humans capable of identifying cases in which the machine is wrong, and of overriding those recommendations? We first show that humans do alter their behavior when the tool is deployed. Then, we show that humans are less likely to adhere to the machine's recommendation when the score displayed is an incorrect estimate of risk, even when overriding the recommendation requires supervisory approval. These results highlight the risks of full automation and the importance of designing decision pipelines that provide humans with autonomy.Comment: Accepted at ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI), 202

Tissue-specific regulation of mouse MicroRNA genes in endoderm-derived tissues

MicroRNAs fine-tune the activity of hundreds of protein-coding genes. The identification of tissue-specific microRNAs and their promoters has been constrained by the limited sensitivity of prior microRNA quantification methods. Here, we determine the entire microRNAome of three endoderm-derived tissues, liver, jejunum and pancreas, using ultra-high throughput sequencing. Although many microRNA genes are expressed at comparable levels, 162 microRNAs exhibited striking tissue-specificity. After mapping the putative promoters for these microRNA genes using H3K4me3 histone occupancy, we analyzed the regulatory modules of 63 microRNAs differentially expressed between liver and jejunum or pancreas. We determined that the same transcriptional regulatory mechanisms govern tissue-specific gene expression of both mRNA and microRNA encoding genes in mammals