Cultural Communication and Cultural Transmission: The Case of Popular Tradition in Corsica

Culture is produced, shaped and transmitted through intergroup relations provoked by communication. In this paper it is examined the cultural communication alternations in a popular culture. More particularly, taking the case of dance practice in Corsica, it is described the actual dance situation. The purpose of this paper is to propose communication modules to avoid a possible cultural loss. This qualitative study is based on field research, in-depth interviews and observation. The researcher had the opportunity to observe the dance condition in Corsica, during the five (5) years that she lived on this island (2003 – 2007), exchanging and communicating with dance associations and other cultural organisations. Dance activity in Corsica today is considered a limited practice, as dance associations are the only places where it is experienced. This study identified an intergroup relation difficulty among the different dance associations. Some of the actions proposed in this study in order to improve communication and consequently improve the actual situation of insufficient dance transmission and practice is to follow common rules, propose a specific agenda with dance events, invite younger people to dance, achieve members’ identification by creating intercultural groups, mixing the teams with regard to nationality and promote cultural education and research

Index of balanced accuracy: a performance measure for skewed class distributions

This paper introduces a new metric, named Index of Balanced Accuracy, for evaluating learning processes in two-class imbalanced domains. The method combines an unbiased index of its overall accuracy and a measure about how dominant is the class with the highest individual accuracy rate. Some theoretical examples are conducted to illustrate the benefits of the new metric over other well-known performance measures. Finally, a number of experiments demonstrate the consistency and validity of the evaluation method here propose

Well-promising outcomes with vacuum-assisted closure in an infected wound following laparotomy: A case report

Introducation: Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) represents an alternative method to optimize conditions for wound healing. Delayed wound closure is a significant health problem, which is directly associated with pain and suffering from patient's aspect, as well with social and financial burden. Presentation of case: We report a case of vacuum-assisted wound therapy with hypertonic solution distillation and continuous negative pressure application, in an infected wound after laparotomy for incisional hernia reconstruction with mesh placement. Negative pressure was initiated at the wound margins after failure of conventional treatment with great outcomes, achieving a total closure of the incision within two weeks. Discussion: Each wound has particular characteristics which must be managed. Vacuum assisted closure (VAC) with continuous negative pressure and simultaneous wound instillation and cleanse can provide optimum results, reducing the cavity volume, by newly produced granulated tissue. Conclusion: The simultaneous use of instillation and constant pressure seemed to be superior in comparison with NPWT alone. Compared to conventional methods, the use of VAC ends to better outcomes, in cases of infected wounds following laparotomy

When career paths cease to exist : a qualitative study of career behavior in a crisis economy

Using grounded theory methodology, this study examines the ways young professionals describe their career paths in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. We interviewed a sample of 29 Greek women professionals (24 to 32 years old) to examine their career behavior during this recession. Findings reveal prevailing effects of professional identity and profession-consistent learning goals on participants’ career behavior. Specifically, those individuals without a strong professional identity or profession-consistent learning goals are more likely to anticipate and engage in career activities unrelated to their professions, a group whom we refer to as Shifters. In contrast, Sustainers, a group having strong career identity and profession-focused learning, are far more likely to anticipate and engage in career activities tied to their profession. Based on these findings, we develop postulates regarding career behavior in contexts of severe austerity and recession where conventional career paths have broken down.© 2015. The attached document (embargoed until 28/09/2015) is an author produced version of a paper published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.09.009. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it

The use of alfaxalone for short-term anesthesia can confound serum progesterone measurements in the common marmoset: a case report

Alfaxan® (alfaxalone) is a steroid general anesthetic widely used in veterinary medicine for induction and maintenance of anesthesia in several species. While the use of alfaxalone in veterinary practice has several benefits compared to the use of other anesthetic agents, the fact that it is derived from progesterone may confound the measurement of the latter in the blood of animals under alfaxalone treatment. In the present case study, we report the measurement of serum progesterone in an individual common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) during five ovarian cycles in which luteolysis was induced by PGF2α. Blood samples were usually taken from the awake animal with the exception of the fifth cycle in which the sample was collected under alfaxalone anesthesia in connection with a tooth extraction. In contrast to the previous four cycles in which luteolysis resulted in the expected marked decrease in progesterone concentrations, the – apparent – progesterone level in the cycle under alfaxalone treatment remained unexpectedly high. Cross-reactivity of the non-specific antibody used in the progesterone assay with alfaxalone most likely explains this finding.</p

High Accuracy Protein Identification: Fusion of solid-state nanopore sensing and machine learning

Proteins are arguably the most important class of biomarkers for health diagnostic purposes. Label-free solid-state nanopore sensing is a versatile technique for sensing and analysing biomolecules such as proteins at single-molecule level. While molecular-level information on size, shape, and charge of proteins can be assessed by nanopores, the identification of proteins with comparable sizes remains a challenge. Here, we present methods that combine solid-state nanopore sensing with machine learning to address this challenge. We assess the translocations of four similarly sized proteins using amplifiers with bandwidths (BWs) of 100 kHz (sampling rate=200 ksps) and 10 MHz (sampling rate=40 Msps), the highest bandwidth reported for protein sensing, using nanopores fabricated in <10 nm thick silicon nitride membranes. F-values of up to 65.9% and 83.2% (without clustering of the protein signals) were achieved with 100 kHz and 10 MHz BW instruments, respectively, for identification of the four proteins. The accuracy of protein identification was significantly improved by grouping the signals into several clusters depending on the event features, resulting in F-value and specificity reaching as high as 88.7% and 96.4%, respectively, for combinations of four proteins. The combined improvement in sensor signals through the use of high bandwidth instruments, advanced clustering, machine learning, and other advanced data analysis methods allows identification of proteins with high accuracy

Strong and Broadband Pure Optical Activity in 3D Printed THz Chiral Metamaterials

Optical activity (polarization rotation of light) is one of the most desired features of chiral media, as it is important for many polarization related applications. However, in the THz region, chiral media with strong optical activity are not available in nature. Here, we study theoretically, and experimentally a chiral metamaterial structure composed of pairs of vertical U-shape resonators of "twisted" arms, and we reveal that it demonstrates large pure optical activity (i.e. optical activity associated with negligible transmitted wave ellipticity) in the low THz regime. The experimental data show polarization rotation up to 25 (deg) for an unmatched bandwidth of 1 THz (relative bandwidth 80 %), from a 130 um-thickness structure, while theoretical optimizations show that the rotation can reach 45 (deg). The enhanced chiral response of the structure is analyzed through an equivalent RLC circuit model, which provides also simple optimization rules for the enhancement of its chiral response. The proposed chiral structures allow easy fabrication via direct laser writing and electroless metal plating, making them suitable candidates for polarization control applications.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Transcriptomic Signature of Leishmania Infected Mice Macrophages: A Metabolic Point of View

We analyzed the transcriptional signatures of mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages at different times after infection with promastigotes of the protozoan parasite Leishmania major. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis revealed that the macrophage metabolic pathways including carbohydrate and lipid metabolisms were among the most altered pathways at later time points of infection. Indeed, L. major promastiogtes induced increased mRNA levels of the glucose transporter and almost all of the genes associated with glycolysis and lactate dehydrogenase, suggesting a shift to anaerobic glycolysis. On the other hand, L. major promastigotes enhanced the expression of scavenger receptors involved in the uptake of Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL), inhibited the expression of genes coding for proteins regulating cholesterol efflux, and induced the synthesis of triacylglycerides. These data suggested that Leishmania infection disturbs cholesterol and triglycerides homeostasis and may lead to cholesterol accumulation and foam cell formation. Using Filipin and Bodipy staining, we showed cholesterol and triglycerides accumulation in infected macrophages. Moreover, Bodipy-positive lipid droplets accumulated in close proximity to parasitophorous vacuoles, suggesting that intracellular L. major may take advantage of these organelles as high-energy substrate sources. While the effect of infection on cholesterol accumulation and lipid droplet formation was independent on parasite development, our data indicate that anaerobic glycolysis is actively induced by L. major during the establishment of infection

Prediction-Coherent LSTM-based Recurrent Neural Network for Safer Glucose Predictions in Diabetic People

In the context of time-series forecasting, we propose a LSTM-based recurrent neural network architecture and loss function that enhance the stability of the predictions. In particular, the loss function penalizes the model, not only on the prediction error (mean-squared error), but also on the predicted variation error. We apply this idea to the prediction of future glucose values in diabetes, which is a delicate task as unstable predictions can leave the patient in doubt and make him/her take the wrong action, threatening his/her life. The study is conducted on type 1 and type 2 diabetic people, with a focus on predictions made 30-minutes ahead of time. First, we confirm the superiority, in the context of glucose prediction, of the LSTM model by comparing it to other state-of-the-art models (Extreme Learning Machine, Gaussian Process regressor, Support Vector Regressor). Then, we show the importance of making stable predictions by smoothing the predictions made by the models, resulting in an overall improvement of the clinical acceptability of the models at the cost in a slight loss in prediction accuracy. Finally, we show that the proposed approach, outperforms all baseline results. More precisely, it trades a loss of 4.3\% in the prediction accuracy for an improvement of the clinical acceptability of 27.1\%. When compared to the moving average post-processing method, we show that the trade-off is more efficient with our approach