Unconstrained image reconstruction with resolution modelling does not have a unique solution

<b>Background</b>: Social media data is a promising source of social science data. However, deriving the demographic characteristics of users and dealing with the nonrandom, nonrepresentative populations from which they are drawn represent challenges for social scientists. <b>Objective</b>: Given the growing use of social media data in social science research, this paper asks two questions: 1) To what extent are findings obtained with social media data generalizable to broader populations, and 2) what is the best practice for estimating demographic information from Twitter data? <b>Methods</b>: Our analyses use information gathered from 979,992 geo-located Tweets sent by 22,356 unique users in South East England between 23 June and 4 July 2014. We estimate demographic characteristics of the Twitter users with the crowd-sourcing platform CrowdFlower and the image-recognition software Face++. To evaluate bias in the data, we run a series of log-linear models with offsets and calibrate the nonrepresentative sample of Twitter users with mid-year population estimates for South East England. <b>Results</b>: CrowdFlower proves to be more accurate than Face++ for the measurement of age, whereas both tools are highly reliable for measuring the sex of Twitter users. The calibration exercise allows bias correction in the age-, sex-, and location-specific population counts obtained from the Twitter population by augmenting Twitter data with mid-year population estimates. <b>Contribution</b>: The paper proposes best practices for estimating Twitter users' basic demographic characteristics and a calibration method to address the selection bias in the Twitter population, allowing researchers to generalize findings based on Twitter to the general population

People with disabilities in Franklin County, North Carolina : an action-oriented community diagnosis : findings and next steps of action

The following document is a detailed report of an Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD) completed by a six-member student team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. This AOCD was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and health experiences of people living with disabilities and their families in Franklin County, North Carolina. Through the AOCD process, the team and community participants identified resources, strengths and challenges that exist in Franklin County for people living with disabilities and their families, and developed action steps to address several of the challenges. Over the course of seven months from October 2005 to April 2006, with the help of two community liaisons (one long-time Franklin County resident and one service provider with extensive experience working with people with disabilities), the team worked to learn more about the community. Through researching secondary data, attending community events, and conducting 36 in-depth interviews with 46 community members and service providers and one focus group with ten additional community members, team members gained valuable insight into everyday life in this community. The team developed a coding system to analyze the data collected and to identify recurring themes related to living with disabilities in Franklin County. In April 2006, the team organized a community forum in Louisburg, the county seat, to present findings from the AOCD process to over 60 community members and service providers. At the forum, participants had the opportunity to discuss major themes that emerged from the team’s data analysis, and to work together in small groups to create specific action steps to address those themes. The themes discussed at the forum were as follows: Theme 1: The lack of transportation options in Franklin County limits quality of life (access to services, employment, and recreation) for people living with disabilities, thus there is a crucial need for expanded transportation options to serve the county. Theme 2: The lack of a centralized system for informing residents about social and human services in Franklin County contributes to a lack of knowledge of existing services, frustration with navigating those services, and furthers a feeling of isolation among residents. Theme 3: There is a lack of adequate, affordable home care options to facilitate independent living among residents with disabilities in Franklin County. Theme 4: There is a crucial need for a centrally located facility where residents can gather for social and recreational interaction to promote a better quality of life among Franklin County residents. Theme 5: Lack of awareness about disabilities among the general public limits accessibility (i.e. safe pedestrian travel, ADA compliance, etc.) and employment opportunities for people living with disabilities in Franklin County. The following are the action steps that were developed at the community forum: Theme 1: Transportation. Establish preliminary coordination with the Regional Transit Provision Committee. Contact churches to encourage involvement in a program to provide more transportation options to Franklin County residents through the use of church vans. Educate churches on the issue of transportation through face-to-face discussion. Theme 2: Centralized Resource System. Write petition to Franklin Times requesting more Community Guides be available to the whole county. Increase dissemination of The Franklin County Community Guide to the general public through mailings (utility bills), newspaper, schools, churches, KARTS, presentations by service providers to civic clubs, community activities, the internet, and other channels. Longer-term steps include: creating a centralized resource system that all community residents can access to obtain information about resources and services. (Group participants mentioned that a national phone-based information and referral system, Dial 2-1-1, may soon be available in Franklin County and could be an ideal route for residents to obtain information about services.) Theme 3: Independent Living. Increase awareness about the need for more volunteers to distribute meals for the Meals on Wheels Program. Work with the Department of Social Services to generate a list of people who are isolated and in need of in-home services. The list will be provided to churches and youth organizations that have volunteer initiatives (e.g. Boy Scouts). Create partnerships between churches across the county and isolated residents in the same geographic areas so that church members can assist residents in their local area. Communicate with school superintendents about creating requirements for students to fulfill community service hours through helping the elderly and people with disabilities in their homes. Contact local Boy Scouts of America troops about building ramps and other mechanisms to facilitate independent living for people in isolated areas. Theme 4: Recreation. The Recreation Department Staff will seek training from service providers who work with people with disabilities to educate them about disabilities and how to accommodate people with disabilities in recreational and entertainment opportunities. The Recreation Department will conduct a countywide survey to determine the recreational needs and desires of Franklin County residents. Participants from this group will initiate a community group representing people with disabilities to work with the Recreation Department as it begins to incorporate accommodations for people with disabilities into new and existing programs. Theme 5: Awareness. Push for and provide awareness articles in local newspapers and newsletters. Provide information to churches through the Interfaith Council on how to reach out to and support people with disabilities and make their congregations more accessible. Educate: a) seniors, through the Senior Centers, who often have disabilities but are unaware of available resources and their rights; and b) children in schools since they are pivotal in changing the culture surrounding disabilities. Encourage individuals to speak up for disability issues, for example, report abuse of parking spaces for people with disabilities or advocate for accessibility. Create an accessibility “certification” system for local businesses which will encourage owners to make accommodations so they can be labeled “disability friendly” to attract more clients and increase potential for profit. Following the forum, the team completed this final report with recommendations for the community based on their experiences throughout the process and the outcomes from the community forum. The final recommendations are summarized below: In addition to working with local churches and volunteer organizations to create added transportation opportunities as outlined in the action steps from the forum, the team recommends that Franklin County officials, representatives, community members, and service providers work to lobby at the state and federal level for increased funding for wide-spread, accessible public transportation throughout the region. The team recommends that the Franklin County community advocate for increased use and circulation of the Franklin County Community Guide so that residents will be better informed of available resources and contacts. The guide may be distributed through the Franklin County Times and/or at public locations throughout the county. Further, Franklin County officials, representatives, community members, and service providers may lobby at the federal level to bring the Dial 2-1-1 human services help-line to Franklin County. The team recommends that service providers and community organizations work more closely with the Department of Social Services to identify isolated individuals and/or families within the county who are living with disabilities. In addition, the team recommends that organizations and service providers who work with people with disabilities collaborate more closely with county schools and churches to encourage stronger volunteer programs to assist those in need of home care services. As outlined in the action steps that resulted from the forum, the team recommends that the Department of Parks and Recreation work to distribute a countywide survey to determine the recreation and entertainment needs and interests of all community members, including those with disabilities. Additionally, it would be beneficial to the community as a whole for the Parks and Recreation Department to pursue additional funding that may go towards the development of a centrally located, accessible community recreation/entertainment center. In addition to promoting awareness about living with disabilities on an individual and organizational basis, the team suggests that county officials, representatives, community members, and service providers should commence a close working relationship with the Alliance of Disability Advocates office and Executive Director Dr. Rene Cummins to increase general disabilities awareness and compliance with ADA regulations throughout the county. The team hopes that this report, the action steps, community member and service provider connections, and strong sense of initiative for change that emerged from this project and the community forum will continue to build on the strengths of this community. Ultimately, the team also hopes that the entire AOCD process and this final report contribute to future improvements not only for people living with disabilities, but also for all residents of Franklin County.Master of Public Healt

Prosodic modulation in the babble of cochlear implanted and normally hearing infants: a perceptual study using a visual analogue scale

This study investigates prosodic modulation in the spontaneous canonical babble of congenitally deaf infants with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) infants. Research has shown that the acoustic cues to prominence are less modulated in CI babble. However acoustic measurements of individual cues to prominence give incomplete information about prosodic modulation. In the present study, raters are asked to judge prominence since they simultaneously take into account all prosodic cues. Disyllabic utterances produced by CI and NH infants were presented to naive adult raters who had to indicate the degree and direction of prosodic modulation between syllables on a visual analogue scale. The results show that the babble of infants with CI is rated as having less prosodic modulation. Moreover, segmentally more variegated babble is rated as having more prosodic modulation. Raters do not perceive the babble to be predominantly trochaic, which indicates that the predominant stress pattern of Dutch is not yet apparent in the children’s productions

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Spectra and Parameters

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol). We analyze night-time data collected during 2013-14 using two detector arrays at 149 GHz, from 548 deg$^2$ of sky on the celestial equator. We use these spectra, and the spectra measured with the MBAC camera on ACT from 2008-10, in combination with Planck and WMAP data to estimate cosmological parameters from the temperature, polarization, and temperature-polarization cross-correlations. We find the new ACTPol data to be consistent with the LCDM model. The ACTPol temperature-polarization cross-spectrum now provides stronger constraints on multiple parameters than the ACTPol temperature spectrum, including the baryon density, the acoustic peak angular scale, and the derived Hubble constant. Adding the new data to planck temperature data tightens the limits on damping tail parameters, for example reducing the joint uncertainty on the number of neutrino species and the primordial helium fraction by 20%.Comment: 23 pages, 25 figure

Neurogenic foreign accent syndrome: Articulatory setting, segments and prosody in a Dutch speaker

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) can be defined as a motor speech disorder in which patients develop a speech accent which is notably different from their premorbid habitual accent. This paper aims to provide an explicit description of the neurolinguistic and phonetic characteristics of a female speaker of Belgian Dutch who suffered from neurogenic FAS in which she developed a French/German foreign accent after a left hemisphere stroke. A detailed phonetic analysis of the speaker’s pronunciation errors revealed problems at both the segmental and suprasegmental level. At the segmental level a wide variety of pronunciation errors were observed which are consistent with a tense articulatory setting: creaky voice, strengthening of fricatives into stops and more carefully articulated consonants and vowels. The data suggest that the perception of the French accent may have resulted from a combination of speech pathology features and unaffected regional pronunciation characteristics of the patient’s Standard Dutch. In contrast to the traditional view in the literature that FAS represents a primary dysprosodic disturbance, a detailed analysis of the speaker’s intonation contours by means of the stylization method revealed the entirely correct implementation of the most common pitch contours of Standard Dutch. This unique finding shows that FAS does not by definition follow from disruption of prosodic processing. However, the frequency of occurrence of the different types of pitch contours was clearly deviant since the patient very frequently used the Dutch continuation rise. It is hypothesized that this might represent a deliberate strategy of the speaker to stay in control of the speaking situation by keeping the speaking turn which she is at continuous risk of losing as the result of long and frequent pausing

Perceptual accent rating and attribution in psychogenic FAS: some further evidence challenging Whitaker's operational definition

A 40-year-old, non-aphasic, right-handed, and polyglot (L1: French, L2: Dutch, L3: English) woman with a 12 year history of addiction to opiates and psychoactive substances, and clear psychiatric problems, presented with a foreign accent of sudden onset in L1. Speech evolved towards a mostly fluent output, despite a stutter-like behavior and a marked grammatical output disorder. The psychogenic etiology of the accent foreignness was construed based upon the patient’s complex medical history, and psychodiagnostic, neuropsychological, and neurolinguistic assessments. The presence of a foreign accent was affirmed by a perceptual accent rating and attribution experiment. It is argued that this patient provides additional evidence demonstrating the outdatedness of Whitaker’s (1982) definition of Foreign Accent Syndrome, as only one of the four operational criteria was unequivocally applicable to our patient: her accent foreignness was not only recognized by her relatives and the medical staff, but also by a group of native French-speaking laymen. However, our patient defied the three remaining criteria, as central nervous system damage could not conclusively be demonstrated, psychodiagnostic assessment raised the hypothesis of a conversion disorder, and the patient was a polyglot whose newly gained accent was associated with a range of foreign languages, which exceeded the ones she spoke

Psychogenic Foreign Accent Syndrome: A New Case

This paper presents the case of a 33-year-old, right-handed, French-speaking Belgian lady who was involved in a car accident as a pedestrian. Six months after the incident she developed a German/Flemish-like accent. The patient's medical history, the onset of the FAS and the possible psychological causes of the accent change are analyzed. Relevant neuropsychological, neurolinguistic, and psychodiagnostic test results are presented and discussed. The psychodiagnostic interview and testing will receive special attention, because these have been underreported in previous FAS case reports. Furthermore, an accent rating experiment was carried out in order to assess the foreign quality of the patient's speech. Pre- and post-morbid spontaneous speech samples were analyzed phonetically to identify the pronunciation characteristics associated with this type of FAS. Several findings were considered essential in the diagnosis of psychogenic FAS: the psychological assessments as well as the clinical interview confirmed the presence of psychological problems, while neurological damage was excluded by means of repeated neuroimaging and neurological examinations. The type and nature of the speech symptoms and the accent fluctuations associated with the patient's psychological state cannot be explained by a neurological disorder. Moreover, the indifference of the patient toward her condition may also suggest a psychogenic etiology, as the opposite is usually observed in neurogenic FAS patients

Model of SNARE-Mediated Membrane Adhesion Kinetics

SNARE proteins are conserved components of the core fusion machinery driving diverse membrane adhesion and fusion processes in the cell. In many cases micron-sized membranes adhere over large areas before fusion. Reconstituted in vitro assays have helped isolate SNARE mechanisms in small membrane adhesion-fusion and are emerging as powerful tools to study large membrane systems by use of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Here we model SNARE-mediated adhesion kinetics in SNARE-reconstituted GUV-GUV or GUV-supported bilayer experiments. Adhesion involves many SNAREs whose complexation pulls apposing membranes into contact. The contact region is a tightly bound rapidly expanding patch whose growth velocity increases with SNARE density . We find three patch expansion regimes: slow, intermediate, fast. Typical experiments belong to the fast regime where depends on SNARE diffusivities and complexation binding constant. The model predicts growth velocities s. The patch may provide a close contact region where SNAREs can trigger fusion. Extending the model to a simple description of fusion, a broad distribution of fusion times is predicted. Increasing SNARE density accelerates fusion by boosting the patch growth velocity, thereby providing more complexes to participate in fusion. This quantifies the notion of SNAREs as dual adhesion-fusion agents

Unintended Consequences of Conservation Actions: Managing Disease in Complex Ecosystems

Infectious diseases are increasingly recognised to be a major threat to biodiversity. Disease management tools such as control of animal movements and vaccination can be used to mitigate the impact and spread of diseases in targeted species. They can reduce the risk of epidemics and in turn the risks of population decline and extinction. However, all species are embedded in communities and interactions between species can be complex, hence increasing the chance of survival of one species can have repercussions on the whole community structure. In this study, we use an example from the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania to explore how a vaccination campaign against Canine Distemper Virus (CDV) targeted at conserving the African lion (Panthera leo), could affect the viability of a coexisting threatened species, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). Assuming that CDV plays a role in lion regulation, our results suggest that a vaccination programme, if successful, risks destabilising the simple two-species system considered, as simulations show that vaccination interventions could almost double the probability of extinction of an isolated cheetah population over the next 60 years. This work uses a simple example to illustrate how predictive modelling can be a useful tool in examining the consequence of vaccination interventions on non-target species. It also highlights the importance of carefully considering linkages between human-intervention, species viability and community structure when planning species-based conservation actions

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead