Understanding the archival fonds as autobiographical text through three discourses

Over the last few decades, textual criticism has shifted its focus away from the reconstruction of final authorial intentions in favour of exposing the multiplicity of intentions concurring in the formation of literary texts. A similar shift in focus can be tracked in the theoretical literature on lifewriting exploring the nature of autobiographical texts. There, the notion that such texts function as sites for the revelation of a unified authentic self has been displaced by an understanding of them as sites for the construction of multiple selves. Both these shifts resonate, in turn, with a growing body of archival literature investigating the multiple layers of agency implicated in the construction of archival fonds. Drawing on the insights of textual criticism, lifewriting scholarship and the archival theory of arrangement, this article considers the ways in which personal fonds in general and writers’ fonds in particular may be understood as autobiographical texts

Persistence Factors for Nontraditional Undergraduate Students at a Northeast Catholic College

Nontraditional students are an extremely diverse group with very unique backgrounds and needs, and their motivations to enroll, persist, and graduate vary depending on factors internal and external to the college and are often dissimilar to their traditional aged counterparts (Pelletier, 2010). Given this difference and increasing enrollment numbers of nontraditional students, understanding the lived experiences of these students is critical for institutions of higher education. This study examined persistence factors for nontraditional students at a Northeast Catholic college, including academic and social engagement, the role of support systems in their lives, and their sense of belonging. It also sought their suggested improvements to the college environment. 62 students participated in a survey and six students participated in a focus group. Participants described institutional barriers to persistence stemming from a lack of communication and academic advising, unsupportive faculty and services, programming that was not relevant, and a chilly campus climate. In contrast, support and concern from faculty and staff, family, friends, work colleagues, combined with intrinsic, internal motivation was integral to the students’ persistence and success. Recommendations for improved practice include building a nontraditional student lounge, faculty training, and strengthening advising and support services on campus. Additional recommendations include improved communication processes, and promoting academic and social opportunities specifically designed for nontraditional students

Lessons from Archives: Strategies for Collecting Sociocultural Data in Machine Learning

A growing body of work shows that many problems in fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in machine learning systems are rooted in decisions surrounding the data collection and annotation process. In spite of its fundamental nature however, data collection remains an overlooked part of the machine learning (ML) pipeline. In this paper, we argue that a new specialization should be formed within ML that is focused on methodologies for data collection and annotation: efforts that require institutional frameworks and procedures. Specifically for sociocultural data, parallels can be drawn from archives and libraries. Archives are the longest standing communal effort to gather human information and archive scholars have already developed the language and procedures to address and discuss many challenges pertaining to data collection such as consent, power, inclusivity, transparency, and ethics & privacy. We discuss these five key approaches in document collection practices in archives that can inform data collection in sociocultural ML. By showing data collection practices from another field, we encourage ML research to be more cognizant and systematic in data collection and draw from interdisciplinary expertise.Comment: To be published in Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency FAT* '20, January 27-30, 2020, Barcelona, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 page

Prognostic value of lymphocyte vascular density and e-cadherin in inflammatory breast cancer

Background: We recently evaluated four laboratory assays, vascular endothelial growth factor D (VEGF-D), E-cadherin, lymphatic vessel density (LVD) measured by podoplanin, and intra-lymphatic tumor emboli (ILTE), which showed notable differences between inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) and non-inflammatory locally advanced breast cancer (LABC). In this study we investigated the potential of the three most quantitatively measured markers, E-cadherin, LVD and VEGF-D, to predict survival in the IBC patients. Materials and Methods: This study involved the 100 cases identified in the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Registry (IBCR) whose tumors were previously evaluated for the four assays noted above. Living patients were recontacted and survival data were available for up to 17 years. Overall survival (OS) was analyzed through the Kaplan-Meier method stratified by E-cadherin, LVD, VEGF-D, and response to chemotherapy. The differences in OS curves were compared using the log-rank test. Results: The median OS for patients with high LVD was 6.63 years (95% CI: 4.06 to 10.14), compared to median at 10 years not reached in those with low LVD (p = 0.03). There was a trend towards a longer median OS in patients with high E-cadherin (10.14, 95% CI: 6.63 to 11.67), compared with those with low E-cadherin (6.26, 95% CI: 3.42 to undeterminable). VEGF-D levels showed no correlation with survival. Conclusion: Low LVD significantly predicts better survival. High E-cadherin expression, as with non-IBC breast cancer and several other malignancies, tends to be associated with a better prognosis

Personal values, social capital, and higher education student career decidedness: a new 'protean'-informed model

This study investigates the role of personal values as motivational antecedents for understanding HE student career decidedness among university business school (UBS) students. We propose a new ‘protean’ informed HE student career decidedness model for theorizing how both personal values and social capital mediators (student social capital; personal, social and enterprise skills; access to resources) help in the student-centric and self-directed processes of career decision-making. A mixed methods study combines a (stage 1) survey of 308 UBS students from five (UK) university business schools, with results from (stage 2) four student focus groups, and (stage 3) two staff-student interactive seminars. From an employability perspective, arguably, the ultimate responsibility for becoming a ‘protean graduate’ rests with each UBS student, whilst the obligation of HE staff is to effectively facilitate and nurture all possible personal growth and skills development opportunities

Gerschenkron revisited: The new corporate Russia

© 2015, Journal of Economic Issues / Association for Evolutionary Economics. Our analysis is based on firm-specific data compiled from the Russian Trading System stock exchange and SKRIN (CKP-H in Russian) database. We seek to identify the factors behind Russias dramatically improved corporate sector performance from the beginning of the 2000s to December 2007. We argue that improved long-term corporate performance was a consequence of several policy initiatives associated with the state-dominated banking sector, which enabled statesubsidized investment funds to be channeled from a structurally reengineered energy sector to targeted investment projects located in other industries. We claim that Russias industrial strategy closely conforms to Alexander Gerschenkrons catch-up theory

Role of PSIP1/LEDGF/p75 in lentiviral infectivity and integration targeting

To replicate, lentiviruses such as HIV must integrate DNA copies of their RNA genomes into host cell chromosomes. Lentiviral integration is favored in active transcription units, which allows efficient viral gene expression after integration, but the mechanisms directing integration targeting are incompletely understood. A cellular protein, PSIP1/LEDGF/p75, binds tightly to the lentiviral-encoded integrase protein (IN), and has been reported to be important for HIV infectivity and integration targeting.Here we report studies of lentiviral integration targeting in 1) human cells with intensified RNAi knockdowns of PSIP1/LEDGF/p75, and 2) murine cells with homozygous gene trap mutations in the PSIP1/LEDGF/p75 locus. Infections with vectors derived from equine infections anemia virus (EIAV) and HIV were compared. Integration acceptor sites were analyzed by DNA bar coding and pyrosequencing.In both PSIP1/LEDGF/p75-depleted cell lines, reductions were seen in lentiviral infectivity compared to controls. For the human cells, integration was reduced in transcription units in the knockdowns, and this reduction was greater than in our previous studies of human cells less completely depleted for PSIP1/LEDGF/p75. For the homozygous mutant mouse cells, similar reductions in integration in transcription units were seen, paralleling a previous study of a different mutant mouse line. Integration did not become random, however-integration in transcription units in both cell types was still favored, though to a reduced degree. New trends also appeared, including favored integration near CpG islands. In addition, we carried out a bioinformatic study of 15 HIV integration site data sets in different cell types, which showed that the frequency of integration in transcription units was correlated with the cell-type specific levels of PSIP1/LEDGF/p75 expression