Form factors of chiral primary operators at two loops in ABJ(M)

archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: NORDITA-2013-34 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1305.2422;%%archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: NORDITA-2013-34 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1305.2422;%%archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: NORDITA-2013-34 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1305.2422;%

Namibian Indigenous Communities Reflecting on Their Own Digital Representations.

Indigenous communities' narratives have all too often been created, documented, curated and digitalized by aliens. This digital othering has created widely disseminated images and perceptions of indigenous communities which are neither authentic, nor in line with what the communities consider a valid or worthwhile representation of themselves or their cultural heritage. This has led to misconstrued and stereotypical perspectives by outsiders about indigenous communities. Technological interventions with indigenous communities to promote their sovereignty, while sometimes challenging, have opened critical debates around communities' self-determination of digital representations of their own cultural identities and heritage. We have entered into a dialogue with two Namibian indigenous communities, who have been our design partners on technology projects aimed at safeguarding their own cultural heritage on their own terms. We are reporting from our long-term ovaHimba collaborator who has engaged in a reflection about the preservation of his traditions triggered by our joint digitalization efforts. Moreover, in response to the widespread stereotyping of members of San communities in contemporary Namibia, that directly influences their cultural identity; we have co-constructed a video conversation between Namibians and a rural San community. In this way, the remote community could consider outsiders' perceptions, reflect upon and actively re-construct their digital self-representation. We discuss community reflections, self-representation and digital empowerment in the context of digitalization efforts

Associations of vitamin D pathway genes with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin-D, and prostate cancer:a nested case-control study

Vitamin D pathway single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are potentially useful proxies for investigating whether circulating vitamin D metabolites [total 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 25(OH)D; 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin, 1,25(OH)2D] are causally related to prostate cancer. We investigated associations of sixteen SNPs across seven genes with prostate-specific antigen-detected prostate cancer

Boring bivalve traces in modern reef and deeper-water macroid and rhodolith beds

Macroids and rhodoliths, made by encrusting acervulinid foraminifera and coralline algae, are widely recognized as bioengineers providing relatively stable microhabitats and increasing biodiversity for other species. Macroid and rhodolith beds occur in different depositional settings at various localities and bathymetries worldwide. Six case studies of macroid/rhodolith beds from 0 to 117m water depth in the Pacific Ocean (northern Central Ryukyu Islands, French Polynesia), eastern Australia (Fraser Island, One Tree Reef, Lizard Island), and the Mediterranean Sea (southeastern Spain) show that nodules in the beds are perforated by small-sized boring bivalve traces (Gastrochanolites). On average, boring bivalve shells (gastrochaenids and mytilids) are more slender and smaller than those living inside shallow-water rocky substrates. In the Pacific, Gastrochaena cuneiformis, Gastrochaena sp., Leiosolenus malaccanus, L. mucronatus, L. spp., and Lithophaga/Leiosolenus sp., for the first time identified below 20m water depth, occur as juvenile forms along with rare small-sized adults. In deep-water macroids and rhodoliths the boring bivalves are larger than the shallower counterparts in which growth of juveniles is probably restrained by higher overturn rates of host nodules. In general, most boring bivalves are juveniles that grew faster than the acervulinid foraminiferal and coralline red algal hosts and rarely reached the adult stage. As a consequence of phenotypic plasticity, small-sized adults with slow growth rates coexist with juveniles. Below wave base macroids and rhodoliths had the highest amounts of bioerosion, mainly produced by sponges and polychaete worms. These modern observations provide bases for paleobiological inferences in fossil occurrences.Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) 25247083Erasmus+FAR2012-2017FIR2016FIR2018PRIN "Biotic resilience to global change: biomineralization of planktonic and benthic calcifiers in the past, present and future" 2017RX9XXXYBioMed Central-Prepay Membership at the University of FerraraJunta de Andalucía RNM 190Committee on ResearchMuseum of PaleontologyDepartment of Integrative Biology, UC BerkeleyUC Pacific Rim Projec

Conceptualizing pathways linking women's empowerment and prematurity in developing countries.

BackgroundGlobally, prematurity is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5. Many efforts have focused on clinical approaches to improve the survival of premature babies. There is a need, however, to explore psychosocial, sociocultural, economic, and other factors as potential mechanisms to reduce the burden of prematurity. Women's empowerment may be a catalyst for moving the needle in this direction. The goal of this paper is to examine links between women's empowerment and prematurity in developing settings. We propose a conceptual model that shows pathways by which women's empowerment can affect prematurity and review and summarize the literature supporting the relationships we posit. We also suggest future directions for research on women's empowerment and prematurity.MethodsThe key words we used for empowerment in the search were "empowerment," "women's status," "autonomy," and "decision-making," and for prematurity we used "preterm," "premature," and "prematurity." We did not use date, language, and regional restrictions. The search was done in PubMed, Population Information Online (POPLINE), and Web of Science. We selected intervening factors-factors that could potentially mediate the relationship between empowerment and prematurity-based on reviews of the risk factors and interventions to address prematurity and the determinants of those factors.ResultsThere is limited evidence supporting a direct link between women's empowerment and prematurity. However, there is evidence linking several dimensions of empowerment to factors known to be associated with prematurity and outcomes for premature babies. Our review of the literature shows that women's empowerment may reduce prematurity by (1) preventing early marriage and promoting family planning, which will delay age at first pregnancy and increase interpregnancy intervals; (2) improving women's nutritional status; (3) reducing domestic violence and other stressors to improve psychological health; and (4) improving access to and receipt of recommended health services during pregnancy and delivery to help prevent prematurity and improve survival of premature babies.ConclusionsWomen's empowerment is an important distal factor that affects prematurity through several intervening factors. Improving women's empowerment will help prevent prematurity and improve survival of preterm babies. Research to empirically show the links between women's empowerment and prematurity is however needed

Cerebral activations related to ballistic, stepwise interrupted and gradually modulated movements in parkinson patients

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience impaired initiation and inhibition of movements such as difficulty to start/stop walking. At single-joint level this is accompanied by reduced inhibition of antagonist muscle activity. While normal basal ganglia (BG) contributions to motor control include selecting appropriate muscles by inhibiting others, it is unclear how PD-related changes in BG function cause impaired movement initiation and inhibition at single-joint level. To further elucidate these changes we studied 4 right-hand movement tasks with fMRI, by dissociating activations related to abrupt movement initiation, inhibition and gradual movement modulation. Initiation and inhibition were inferred from ballistic and stepwise interrupted movement, respectively, while smooth wrist circumduction enabled the assessment of gradually modulated movement. Task-related activations were compared between PD patients (N = 12) and healthy subjects (N = 18). In healthy subjects, movement initiation was characterized by antero-ventral striatum, substantia nigra (SN) and premotor activations while inhibition was dominated by subthalamic nucleus (STN) and pallidal activations, in line with the known role of these areas in simple movement. Gradual movement mainly involved antero-dorsal putamen and pallidum. Compared to healthy subjects, patients showed reduced striatal/SN and increased pallidal activation for initiation, whereas for inhibition STN activation was reduced and striatal-thalamo-cortical activation increased. For gradual movement patients showed reduced pallidal and increased thalamo-cortical activation. We conclude that PD-related changes during movement initiation fit the (rather static) model of alterations in direct and indirect BG pathways. Reduced STN activation and regional cortical increased activation in PD during inhibition and gradual movement modulation are better explained by a dynamic model that also takes into account enhanced responsiveness to external stimuli in this disease and the effects of hyper-fluctuating cortical inputs to the striatum and STN in particular

OPTIMA: A prospective randomized trial to validate the predictive utility and cost-effectiveness of gene expression test-directed chemotherapy decisions in early breast cancer

Background: Multi-parameter gene expression assays (MPAs) are widely used to estimate individual patient residual risk in hormone-sensitive HER2-negative node-negative early breast cancer, allowing patients with low risk to safely avoid chemotherapy. Evidence for MPA use in node-positive breast cancer is limited. OPTIMA (Optimal Personalised Treatment of early breast cancer usIng Multi-parameter Analysis) aims to validate MPA’s as predictors of chemotherapy sensitivity in a largely node-positive breast cancer population