Facial feminization surgery and perceived workplace bias in transgender individuals

Facial feminization surgery (FFS) is a set of procedures performed with the goal of creating a facial appearance that is considered phenotypically female. These procedures are usually sought by cisgender women but have become increasingly popular among male to female (MTF) transgender individuals. FFS has been shown to decrease appearance anxiety and increase quality of life. Sexual minorities, including transgender individuals, are subject to a unique set of stressors termed minority stress, which involves the interplay of perceived and outright discrimination. This type of stress has been shown to lead to adverse physical and mental health outcomes. The workplace is no exception to this type of discrimination, and workplace discrimination has specifically been associated with adverse physical health outcomes. However, there have been few studies to date evaluating workplace discrimination and transgender identity. This study aims to expand on that knowledge, and determine the potential role for FFS as an intervention to reduce perceived bias

An Explicit Construction of Systematic MDS Codes with Small Sub-packetization for All-Node Repair

An explicit construction of systematic MDS codes, called HashTag+ codes, with arbitrary sub-packetization level for all-node repair is proposed. It is shown that even for small sub-packetization levels, HashTag+ codes achieve the optimal MSR point for repair of any parity node, while the repair bandwidth for a single systematic node depends on the sub-packetization level. Compared to other codes in the literature, HashTag+ codes provide from 20% to 40% savings in the average amount of data accessed and transferred during repair

Expanded Combinatorial Designs as Tool to Model Network Slicing in 5G

The network slice management function (NSMF) in 5G has a task to configure the network slice instances and to combine network slice subnet instances from the new-generation radio access network and the core network into an end-to-end network slice instance. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model for network slicing based on combinatorial designs such as Latin squares and rectangles and their conjugate forms. We extend those designs with attributes that offer different levels of abstraction. For one set of attributes we prove a stability Lemma for the necessary conditions to reach a stationary ergodic stage. We also introduce a definition of utilization ratio function and offer an algorithm for its maximization. Moreover, we provide algorithms that simulate the work of NSMF with randomized or optimized strategies, and we report the results of our implementation, experiments and simulations for one set of attributes.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Acces