Social network site usage, privacy concerns, and disclosure of autobiographical memories

Internet usage has become a big part of many people’s lives, and among the many uses Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become very prevalent. How privacy concerns, trust and control are affecting SNS usage and self-disclosure has become an important question for many people. I compiled a questionnaire and analyzed it for reliability. Then it was used to determine the relationship between these constructs and compared to the behavioral data that was collected from participant’s Facebook pages. The results showed that privacy concerns do not affect SNS usage or self-disclosure. Trust and control were significantly correlated with specific autobiographical memories, but trust was negatively correlated. Because the behavioral data was different than the self-report data or the expected results more research including a behavioral measure needs to be completed. Based on these results trust and control are linked with SNS usage and self-disclosure, while privacy concerns are not affecting them

Socialization to gender roles and marriage among Egyptian adolescents

Using nationally representative survey data, this paper explores gender role socialization and attitudes toward marriage among unmarried Egyptian adolescents aged 16-19 years. We examine the daily activities of adolescent boys and girls, views about age at marriage and desirable qualities in a spouse, and various indicators of gender role attitudes including opinions about whether wives should defer to husbands, about sharing household decisionmaking, and about responsibility for domestic tasks. Our findings reflect strong gender differentiation: girls have much less free time than boys, are much less mobile, are much less likely to participate in paid work, and have heavier domestic responsibilities regardless of whether or not they are in school. Girls favor a later age at marriage for both sexes, but particularly for boys. Boys are significantly more likely than girls to favor educational inequality between spouses. While neither boys nor girls have particularly progressive gender role attitudes, girls are significantly more likely to express less traditional attitudes. Multivariate analyses indicate that girls’ and boys’ attitudes do not vary consistently and significantly by socioeconomic background; in particular, increased schooling does not always promote egalitarian attitudes. The implications of these findings for policies and programs are discussed

Solution structure of Mannobioses unravelled by means of Raman optical activity

Structural analysis of carbohydrates is a complicated endeavour, due to the complexity and diversity of the samples at hand. Herein, we apply a combined computational and experimental approach, employing molecular dynamics (MD) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations together with NMR and Raman optical activity (ROA) measurements, in the structural study of three mannobiose disaccharides, consisting of two mannoses with varying glycosidic linkages. The disaccharide structures make up the scaffold of high mannose glycans and are therefore important targets for structural analysis. Based on the MD population analysis and NMR, the major conformers of each mannobiose were identified and used as input for DFT analysis. By systematically varying the solvent models used to describe water interacting with the molecules and applying overlap integral analysis to the resulting calculational ROA spectra, we found that a full quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical approach is required for an optimal calculation of the ROA parameters. Subsequent normal mode analysis of the predicted vibrational modes was attempted in order to identify possible marker bands for glycosidic linkages. However, the normal mode vibrations of the mannobioses are completely delocalised, presumably due to conformational flexibility in these compounds, rendering the identification of isolated marker bands unfeasible

Embodying militarism: exploring the spaces and bodies in-between

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Sub 20 nm Silicon Patterning and Metal Lift-Off Using Thermal Scanning Probe Lithography

The most direct definition of a patterning process' resolution is the smallest half-pitch feature it is capable of transferring onto the substrate. Here we demonstrate that thermal Scanning Probe Lithography (t-SPL) is capable of fabricating dense line patterns in silicon and metal lift-off features at sub 20 nm feature size. The dense silicon lines were written at a half pitch of 18.3 nm to a depth of 5 nm into a 9 nm polyphthalaldehyde thermal imaging layer by t-SPL. For processing we used a three-layer stack comprising an evaporated SiO2 hardmask which is just 2-3 nm thick. The hardmask is used to amplify the pattern into a 50 nm thick polymeric transfer layer. The transfer layer subsequently serves as an etch mask for transfer into silicon to a nominal depth of 60 nm. The line edge roughness (3 sigma) was evaluated to be less than 3 nm both in the transfer layer and in silicon. We also demonstrate that a similar three-layer stack can be used for metal lift-off of high resolution patterns. A device application is demonstrated by fabricating 50 nm half pitch dense nickel contacts to an InAs nanowire.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, to be published in JVST

The decline of female circumcision in Egypt: Evidence and interpretation [Arabic]

Female circumcision is widespread in Egypt. Research suggests that the practice persists because of a belief that circumcision will moderate female sexuality, that it will assure a girl’s marriageability, and that it is sanctioned by Islam. Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents, this paper investigates the prevalence and social correlates of circumcision among girls aged 10-19, the circumstances surrounding the procedure, and the attitudes of adolescents towards it. While the vast majority of adolescents are circumcised, a life table analysis indicates that girls today are at least 10 percentage points less likely to undergo female circumcision than were their mothers. Circumcision may have begun to decline prior to the time when the current cohort of girls were at risk; however, the data hint at a temporal association between the decline and the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, a time when the campaign against circumcision gained momentum. Over half of circumcised girls reported that the procedure was performed by a physician or nurse rather than a traditional practitioner. This represents a substantial increase over rates of “medicalized” circumcision found among earlier cohorts of Egyptian women. Even among circumcised girls, support for the practice is by no means universal, with 14 percent saying they think the procedure is unnecessary and a further 28 percent expressing ambivalence. A multivariate analysis indicates that girls who have been or are currently in school, who live in urban governorates, and who are older are more likely to believe that circumcision is not obligatory. When the analysis includes boys as well as circumcised girls, a large gender gap emerges, with boys considerably more supportive of the practice than are their female counterparts

The decline of female circumcision in Egypt: Evidence and interpretation

Female circumcision is widespread in Egypt. Research suggests that the practice persists because of a belief that circumcision will moderate female sexuality, that it will assure a girl’s marriageability, and that it is sanctioned by Islam. Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents, this paper investigates the prevalence and social correlates of circumcision among girls aged 10-19, the circumstances surrounding the procedure, and the attitudes of adolescents towards it. While the vast majority of adolescents are circumcised, a life table analysis indicates that girls today are at least 10 percentage points less likely to undergo female circumcision than were their mothers. Circumcision may have begun to decline prior to the time when the current cohort of girls were at risk; however, the data hint at a temporal association between the decline and the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, a time when the campaign against circumcision gained momentum. Over half of circumcised girls reported that the procedure was performed by a physician or nurse rather than a traditional practitioner. This represents a substantial increase over rates of “medicalized” circumcision found among earlier cohorts of Egyptian women. Even among circumcised girls, support for the practice is by no means universal, with 14 percent saying they think the procedure is unnecessary and a further 28 percent expressing ambivalence. A multivariate analysis indicates that girls who have been or are currently in school, who live in urban governorates, and who are older are more likely to believe that circumcision is not obligatory. When the analysis includes boys as well as circumcised girls, a large gender gap emerges, with boys considerably more supportive of the practice than are their female counterparts

Large Scale Retrieval and Generation of Image Descriptions

What is the story of an image? What is the relationship between pictures, language, and information we can extract using state of the art computational recognition systems? In an attempt to address both of these questions, we explore methods for retrieving and generating natural language descriptions for images. Ideally, we would like our generated textual descriptions (captions) to both sound like a person wrote them, and also remain true to the image content. To do this we develop data-driven approaches for image description generation, using retrieval-based techniques to gather either: (a) whole captions associated with a visually similar image, or (b) relevant bits of text (phrases) from a large collection of image + description pairs. In the case of (b), we develop optimization algorithms to merge the retrieved phrases into valid natural language sentences. The end result is two simple, but effective, methods for harnessing the power of big data to produce image captions that are altogether more general, relevant, and human-like than previous attempts

The Occurrence of Intersex in Different Populations of the Marine Amphipod Echinogammarus marinus in North-West Brittany – A Longterm-Study

In the past two decades, an increasing body of studies has been published on the intersex phenomenon in separate-sexed crustaceans from marine and freshwater ecosystems. Various causes are being considered that could have an influence on the occurrence of intersex. Besides genetic factors, environmental conditions such as photoperiodicity, temperature, salinity and parasitism, but also environmental pollution with endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are discussed. As part of a long-term monitoring (2012 – 2020) in north-west Brittany, we recorded the occurrence of intersex in the marine amphipod Echinogammarus marinus. We quantified the intersex incidence at marine and estuarine sites and analyzed the incidence in relation to the endocrine potential of the sediments. Intersex occurred with mean frequencies between 0.87% and 12%. It was striking that the incidence of intersex increased with increasing distance from the sea. Since the highest incidence was observed at the range boundary of this stenohaline species, we assume that intersex is triggered by endocrine potential and increasing stress due to increasing freshwater content − and thus an interplay of different environmental factors