Ratio of Juveniles and Adults of American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos in Family Groups at Loyola Marymount University and Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA

American crows are highly social animals and display cooperative breeding, where nonbreeding offspring help their breeding parents care for juveniles. (Chamberlain-Auger, Auger, & Strauss, 1990). In order to gain a better understanding of the role of these nonbreeding offspring in raising nestlings and juveniles, crow nests and breeding groups were closely observed on the campus of Loyola Marymount University and at Venice Beach during the early summer of 2016. In each group, juveniles were usually closely associated with a single adult, however, the apparent roles of the adults within the group varied. In these apparent family groups one or two crows simply watched and supervised while the adults closely associated with each juvenile fed the juveniles. These differing apparent roles adopted by adults may ensure juvenile safety while in the process of feeding. Confirmation of these apparent roles would be best determined in future study by color banding resident birds.https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cures_posters/1006/thumbnail.jp

Machines do not decide hate speech: Machine learning, power, and the intersectional approach

The advent of social media has increased digital content - and, with it, hate speech. Advancements in machine learning help detect online hate speech at scale, but scale is only one part of the problem related to moderating it. Machines do not decide what comprises hate speech, which is part of a societal norm. Power relations establish such norms and, thus, determine who can say what comprises hate speech. Without considering this data-generation process, a fair automated hate speech detection system cannot be built. This chapter first examines the relationship between power, hate speech, and machine learning. Then, it examines how the intersectional lens - focusing on power dynamics between and within social groups - helps identify bias in the data sets used to build automated hate speech detection systems

Quantifying the environmental dependence of the molecular cloud lifecycle in 54 main sequence galaxies

Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) form stars with initial conditions set by their local host galaxy environment, which feedback energy and matter into their surroundings, contributing to galaxy evolution. However, the detailed characteristics of these processes between molecular gas and young stars remain elusive, primarily due to a lack of observational constraints. By capitalizing on CO and Halpha observations from PHANGS, we have systematically measured the evolutionary timeline from GMCs to exposed HII regions, across 54 galaxies, the largest and most statistically complete sample to-date. Strong correlations between GMC evolutionary time-scales and the host galaxy properties have been identified, revealing the connection between galactic-scale dynamics and the small-scale GMC lifecycle. Furthermore, in the 5 nearest galaxies of my sample (D<3.5Mpc), we have established that the initial half of the embedded star formation detected in Spitzer 24microns is invisible in Halpha. Finally, using novel JWST observations of NGC628 with 10 times better resolution compared to Spitzer, we have further demonstrated that the embedded phase of star formation can be characterized at a greater distance (D=9.8Mpc), pioneering the way for the systematic determination of the early phases of star formation across the nearby galaxy population (up to 20Mpc) with PHANGS-JWST

Collapse transition of a square-lattice polymer with next nearest-neighbor interaction

We study the collapse transition of a polymer on a square lattice with both nearest-neighbor and next nearest-neighbor interactions, by calculating the exact partition function zeros up to chain length 36. The transition behavior is much more pronounced than that of the model with nearest-neighbor interactions only. The crossover exponent and the transition temperature are estimated from the scaling behavior of the first zeros with increasing chain length. The results suggest that the model is of the same universality class as the usual theta point described by the model with only nearest-neighbor interaction.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Technical Efficiency in the Iron and Steel Industry: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

In this paper we examine the technical efficiency of firms in the iron and steel industry and try to identify the factors contributing to the industry's efficiency growth, using a time-varying stochastic frontier model. Based on our findings, which pertain to 52 iron and steel firms over the period of 1978-1997, POSCO and Nippon Steel were the most efficient firms, with their production, on average, exceeding 95 percent of their potential output. Our findings also shed light on possible sources of efficiency growth in the industry. If a firm is government-owned, its privatization is likely to improve its technical efficiency to a great extent. A firm's technical efficiency also tends to be positively related to its production level as measured by a share of the total world production of crude steel. Another important source of efficiency growth identified by our empirical findings is adoption of new technologies and equipment. Our findings clearly indicate that continued efforts to update technologies and equipment are critical in pursuit of efficiency in the iron and steel industry.

Epidemiology of Foodborne Norovirus Outbreak in Incheon, Korea

On June 14, 2008, an outbreak of gastroenteritis occurred among elementary school students in Incheon. We conducted an investigation to identify the source and described the extent of the outbreak. We performed a retrospective cohort study among students, teachers and food handlers exposed to canteen food in the elementary school. Using self-administered questionnaires we collected information on symptoms, days of canteen food eaten, food items consumed. Stool samples were collected from 131 symptomatic people and 11 food handlers. The catering kitchen was inspected and food samples were taken. Of the 1,560 people who ate canteen food, 117 were symptomatic cases, and the attack rate was 7.5%. Consumption of cucumber-crown daisy salad (RR=2.71), fresh cabbage mix (RR=2.23), dried radish salad (RR=3.04) and young radish kimchi (RR=2.52) were associated with illness. Sixty-four (45%) of the 142 stool specimens were positive for Norovirus. Norovirus was detected in 2 food handlers. Interviews with kitchen staff indicated the likelihood of contamination from an infected food handler to the dried radish salad during food processing. The excretion of Norovirus from asymptomatic food handlers may be an infection source of Norovirus outbreaks

A STUDY ON USERS’ AWARENESS OF MOVING-PICTURE ADS IN MOVINF-PICTURE CONTENTS WITH DIFFERENT ONLINE MEDIA CHARATERISTICS

Internet plays an important role in our lives and the number of internet users keeps increasing. As internet users are exposed to ads from online media while not knowing, advertising market’s interest in moving-picture ads increases. Thus, this study comparatively measured effects of moving-picture ads inserted in news-related moving-picture contents of media companies and those of moving-picture ads inserted in moving-picture contents of professional moving-picture UCC. Advertising effects were compared between media characteristics (news and UCC) and keyword relatedness (related or unrelated keyword) and interactions of the two factors were measured. As a result, there was a significant difference in media characteristics and keyword relatedness. As for media characteristics, advertising effects of news-related moving pictures were higher than those of professional moving-picture UCC in all items. As for keyword relatedness, executing ads of keyword related to moving-picture contents was verified to have higher advertising effects than executing ads of unrelated keywords. There was no significant difference in interactions between these two factors. As interest in the moving picture advertising market increases, the necessity to introduce a method to analyze effects of moving-picture ads is raised. As for evaluation of advertising effects of moving pictures of media companies, the theme to be dealt in this paper, it is still difficult to state that moving-picture ads are facilitated in the overall market of moving picture services. So under such circumstances that verification is hard to achieve, the attempt of this study is considered to be meaningful. Keyword: media companies, UCC, moving-picture contents, moving-picture ads, advertising effects, media, new

Description of two new species of Dicranomyia (Erostrata) crane fly (Diptera, Limoniidae) from Korea, with remarks on DNA barcoding and updated taxonomic key

Two new crane fly species, Dicranomyia (Erostrata) jejuensis sp. nov. and D. (E.) koreana sp. nov., from Korea are described on the basis of morphology and mitochondrial COI sequences. DNA barcode sequences for other four D. (Erostrata) species from Korea are also provided for the first time. The identification key for all known D. (Erostrata) species is presented