The Angry Echo Chamber: A Study of Extremist and Emotional Language Changes in Incel Communities Over Time

Involuntary celibates, or incels, are part of a growing online subculture. Incels are men who are unable to engage in a sexual relationship with a woman and who experience significant distress and anger as a result. In recent years, high-profile incidents of violence perpetrated by incels or those who share incel ideology have increased research attention. Incels communicate online and share several characteristics with other online extremist groups. While only a fraction of incels engage in such violence, a broader spectrum of violence should be considered, including online harassment or general violence against women. This study sought to examine how ongoing engagement on an online incel forum affects changes in incel comments in terms of expressed anger and sadness and use of incel violent extremist language. We collected comments made on an incel forum over a 3-month period. We then identified prolific users and included their comments in our analysis. To assess how their language changed, we used a text-processing program (LIWC: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to assess the extent to which anger, sadness, and incel violent extremist language were expressed in the comments. Our findings indicated that incels express more anger in their comments than users on other platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. However, they did not express greater sadness. Further, we found that incels are already quite angry and sad when they join the forum, and they already use a fair amount of incel vocabulary. Initially, these aspects of their language increase, but they flatten over time. This pattern suggests that introduction to and embracing of incel ideology occurs elsewhere on the Internet, and prior to people joining an incel forum. Implications in terms of prevention of online radicalization and future directions are discussed

Modeling Form Roughness Induced by Tidal Sand Waves

Tide-dominated sandy shelf seas, such as the Dutch North Sea, are covered by sand waves. Yet, basin-scale hydrodynamic models do not include any sand wave information because their grid sizes are too coarse to resolve sand waves individually. We explore the possibility of parametrizing the effects of sand waves on the larger-scale tidal flow by means of a form roughness. Specifically, our aim is to see to what extent the flow over a sand wave field can be reproduced by that over a flat seabed with an increased effective roughness (accounting for both grain and form roughness). To do so, we use two process-based hydrodynamic models: a second order perturbation approach, and Delft3D. Both models demonstrate that the presence of sand waves causes amplitude decrease and phase shift of the tidal flow. We explore the dependencies of form roughness on different sand wave characteristics (wavelength, height and asymmetry). Shorter and higher sand waves cause a higher form roughness, while our analysis does not reveal any dependency on sand wave asymmetry. Notably, the consideration of a tidal flow, characterized by several tidal constituents, each represented by an amplitude and a phase, results in a more complex form roughness analysis than in a fluvial setting, where the flow is unidirectional and steady. We thus obtain an amplitude-based form roughness and a phase-based form roughness, each yielding a different value, yet displaying the same qualitative dependencies

Case report: a novel KERA mutation associated with cornea plana and its predicted effect on protein function

BACKGROUND: Cornea plana (CNA) is a hereditary congenital abnormality of the cornea characterized by reduced corneal curvature, extreme hypermetropia, corneal clouding and hazy corneal limbus. The recessive form, CNA2, is associated with homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations of the keratocan gene (KERA) on chromosome 12q22. To date, only nine different disease-associated KERA mutations, including four missense mutations, have been described. CASE PRESENTATION: In this report, we present clinical data from a Turkish family with autosomal recessive cornea plana. In some of the affected individuals, hypotrichosis was found. KERA was screened for mutations using Sanger sequencing. We detected a novel KERA variant, p.(Ile225Thr), that segregates with the disease in the homozygous form. The three-dimensional structure of keratocan protein was modelled, and we showed that this missense variation is predicted to destabilize the structure of keratocan, leading to the classical ocular phenotype in the affected individuals. All the four known missense mutations, including the variation found in this family, affect the conserved residues of the leucine rich repeat domain of keratocan. These mutations are predicted to result in destabilization of the protein. CONCLUSION: We present the 10th pathogenic KERA mutation identified so far. Protein modelling is a useful tool in predicting the effect of missense mutations. This case underline the importance of the leucin rich repeat domain for the protein function, and this knowledge will ease the interpretation of future findings of mutations in these areas in other families with cornea plana. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12881-015-0179-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The colonic metabolites dihydrocaffeic acid and dihydroferulic acid are more effective inhibitors of in vitro platelet activation than their phenolic precursors

This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity (projects AGL2010- 18269 and AGL 2015-69986-R). G.B. is a FPI fellow (BES-2011-047476) granted with a bursary for short stays from MINECO (EEBB-I-14-08802). The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health receives funding from the Scottish Government Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services (RESAS). The funding bodies had no involvement in the design and execution of the study.Peer reviewedPostprin

The Histone Chaperones SET/TAF-1β and NPM1 Exhibit Conserved Functionality in Nucleosome Remodeling and Histone Eviction in a Cytochrome c-Dependent Manner

Chromatin homeostasis mediates essential processes in eukaryotes, where histone chaperones have emerged as major regulatory factors during DNA replication, repair, and transcription. The dynamic nature of these processes, however, has severely impeded their characterization at the molecular level. Here, fluorescence optical tweezers are applied to follow histone chaperone dynamics in real time. The molecular action of SET/template-activating factor-Iβ and nucleophosmin 1—representing the two most common histone chaperone folds—are examined using both nucleosomes and isolated histones. It is shown that these chaperones present binding specificity for fully dismantled nucleosomes and are able to recognize and disrupt non-native histone-DNA interactions. Furthermore, the histone eviction process and its modulation by cytochrome c are scrutinized. This approach shows that despite the different structures of these chaperones, they present conserved modes of action mediating nucleosome remodeling.Ministerio de Educación y Cultura FPU016/01513European Commission PAIDI-DOCTOR 2020 DOC_00796European Molecular Biology Organization 8541European ARBRE-Mobieu consortium CA15126Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PGC 2018-096049-BI00, PID2021-126663NB-100Junta de Andalucía BIO198, US-1254317, P18-FR-3487, P18HO-409

Síndrome de Down: trajetórias do seu diagnóstico para os pais

Objetivo: identificar as reações e os sentimentos de pais de crianças com SD e a participação do enfermeiro perante o diagnóstico da síndrome. Método: trata-se de um estudo descritivo, exploratório, de abordagem qualitativa, realizado na Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais (APAE) de um município do Vale do Rio Pardo/RS. Os dados foram coletados em março de 2018 utilizando um questionário com questões semiestruturadas respondido por cinco pais de crianças com Síndrome de Down que frequentavam o grupo de Estimulação Precoce da APAE. Utilizou-se a Análise de Conteúdo como método de tratamento dos dados. Resultados: os casais receberam a notícia após o nascimento e junto de seus parceiros, sendo o médico o responsável pela informação. Identificou-se que o enfermeiro possui importância fundamental na realização das orientações sobre a saúde da criança e os cuidados necessários para os diferentes ciclos vitais. Conclusão: considera-se que o diagnóstico de SD ainda possui vários entraves na realidade dos pais entrevistados, principalmente em relação ao preconceito e falta de orientações em saúde. Faz-se necessário a realização de intervenções efetivas do enfermeiro para enfatizar o quanto a Sistematização da Assistência de Enfermagem (SAE) pode auxiliar no cuidado com a criança e a família

Sideband Thermometry of Ion Crystals

Coulomb crystals of cold trapped ions are a leading platform for the realization of quantum processors and quantum simulations and, in quantum metrology, for the construction of optical atomic clocks and for fundamental tests of the standard model. For these applications, it is not only essential to cool the ion crystal in all its degrees of freedom down to the quantum ground state but also to be able to determine its temperature with a high accuracy. However, when a large ground-state cooled crystal is interrogated for thermometry, complex many-body interactions take place, making it challenging to accurately estimate the temperature with established techniques. In this work, we present a new thermometry method tailored for ion crystals. The method is applicable to all normal modes of motion and does not suffer from a computational bottleneck when applied to large ion crystals. We test the temperature estimate with two experiments, namely with a one-dimensional linear chain of four ions and a two-dimensional crystal of 19 ions and verify the results, where possible, using other methods. The results show that the new method is an accurate and efficient tool for thermometry of ion crystals

Sideband thermometry of ion crystals

Coulomb crystals of cold trapped ions are a leading platform for the realisation of quantum processors and quantum simulations and, in quantum metrology, for the construction of optical atomic clocks and for fundamental tests of the Standard Model. For these applications, it is not only essential to cool the ion crystal in all its degrees of freedom down to the quantum ground state, but also to be able to determine its temperature with a high accuracy. However, when a large ground-state cooled crystal is interrogated for thermometry, complex many-body interactions take place, making it challenging to accurately estimate the temperature with established techniques. In this work we present a new thermometry method tailored for ion crystals. The method is applicable to all normal modes of motion and does not suffer from a computational bottleneck when applied to large ion crystals. We test the temperature estimate with two experiments, namely with a 1D linear chain of 4 ions and a 2D crystal of 19 ions and verify the results, where possible, using other methods. The results show that the new method is an accurate and efficient tool for thermometry of ion crystals.Comment: 12+5 pages, 9+2 figures, Fig.3(b) was correcte