The role of binarity in Wolf-Rayet central stars of planetary nebulae

Over a hundred planetary nebulae (PNe) are known to have H-deficient central stars that mimic the spectroscopic appearance of massive Wolf-Rayet stars. The formation of these low-mass Wolf-Rayet stars, denoted [WR] stars, remains poorly understood. While several binary formation scenarios have been proposed, there are too few [WR] binaries known to determine their feasibility. Out of nearly 50 post-common-envelope (post-CE) binary central stars known, only PN G222.8$-$04.2 ([WC7], $P=1.26$ d) and NGC 5189 ([WO1], $P=4.05$ d) have a [WR] component. The available data suggests that post-CE central stars with [WR] components lack main sequence companions and have a wider orbital separation than typical post-CE binaries. There is also some indirect evidence for wide binaries that could potentially lead to the discovery of more [WR] binaries.Comment: To appear in conference proceedings of the Physics of Evolved Stars meeting. 4 page

Expressionism, Futurism, and the Dream of Mass Democracy

This essay throws new light on a radical tendency in cultural modernism by analyzing the role of a single metaphor—the figure of politics as a stage—in political debates among German Expressionists and Italian Futurists before World War I. As the essay argues, this trope was used to critique liberalism\u27s limited notion of popular rule and envision how disenfranchised masses might develop the political subjectivity needed to create a truly mass democracy. While the essay demonstrates that Futurists and Expressionists failed to develop a clear vision of what form mass democracy might take, it concludes that they agreed on one point. It would have to entail a qualitative transformation of the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty, rather than a quantitative extension of voting rights. This conclusion throws new light on the political character of cultural modernism before 1914. Whereas recent research has focused on proto-fascist tendencies in modernist ideology, this analysis shows that Expressionism and Futurism initially shared a commitment to the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty that was incommensurable with fascist methods of orchestrating popular consent for authoritarian rule

The Importance of Generalizability to Anomaly Detection

In security-related areas there is concern over novel “zero-day” attacks that penetrate system defenses and wreak havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “nonself” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that appears similar to self could be missed. Given this situation, one could incorrectly assume that a preference for a tighter fit to self over generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article confirms that in anomaly detection as in other forms of classification a tight fit, although important, does not supersede model generality. This is shown using three systems each with a different geometric bias in the decision space. The first two use spherical and ellipsoid clusters with a k-means algorithm modified to work on the one-class/blind classification problem. The third is based on wrapping the self points with a multidimensional convex hull (polytope) algorithm capable of learning disjunctive concepts via a thresholding constant. All three of these algorithms are tested using the Voting dataset from the UCI Machine Learning Repository, the MIT Lincoln Labs intrusion detection dataset, and the lossy-compressed steganalysis domain

The Effects of a Parent Education/Play Group Program on Father Involvement in Childrearing

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a parent education/play group program on the types of involvement fathers have with their children, and on their perceived sense of competence in parenting skills. Subjects were 30 fathers (15 - treatment group, 15 - "wait-list" control group) and their preschool aged children. Treatment group father-child pairs met for 2 hours on 10 consecutive Saturday mornings. Each session consisted of 1 hour of father-child play and 1 hour of the fathers in group discussions on parenting and child development. Measures of the fathers' involvement in childrearing and their perceived sense of competence in parenting skills were taken on a pretest - posttest basis from treatment and control groups. Due to the initial comparability of both groups on pretest and demographic variables, program effects were examined using posttest data only. Three categories (interaction, accessibility, and responsibility) were utilized in defining father involvement. Analyses indicated there were significant program effects on the responsibility assumed by treatment group fathers, as well as on their perceived sense of competence in parenting skills. No program effects were evident on their levels of interaction or accessibility. Analyses on the combined pretest data suggests there was a significant positive relationship between the fathers' sense of competence in parenting skills and their responsibility types of involvement. Pretest data suggested the fathers have different amounts of interaction and accessibility for workdays and non-workdays. Further analyses indicated these two types of involvement are highly related on workdays, but not so on non-workdays. Different patterns of involvement were evident for fathers of girls as opposed to fathers of boys, as well as fathers with employed wives vs. non-employed wives. The results of these analyses are discussed in terms of future research on the antecedents and modifiability of father involvement, as well as the implications for the development and implementation of parent education and support programs aimed at increasing the parenting options for fathers

A New Blind Method for Detecting Novel Steganography

Steganography is the art of hiding a message in plain sight. Modern steganographic tools that conceal data in innocuous-looking digital image files are widely available. The use of such tools by terrorists, hostile states, criminal organizations, etc., to camouflage the planning and coordination of their illicit activities poses a serious challenge. Most steganography detection tools rely on signatures that describe particular steganography programs. Signature-based classifiers offer strong detection capabilities against known threats, but they suffer from an inability to detect previously unseen forms of steganography. Novel steganography detection requires an anomaly-based classifier. This paper describes and demonstrates a blind classification algorithm that uses hyper-dimensional geometric methods to model steganography-free jpeg images. The geometric model, comprising one or more convex polytopes, hyper-spheres, or hyper-ellipsoids in the attribute space, provides superior anomaly detection compared to previous research. Experimental results show that the classifier detects, on average, 85.4% of Jsteg steganography images with a mean embedding rate of 0.14 bits per pixel, compared to previous research that achieved a mean detection rate of just 65%. Further, the classification algorithm creates models for as many training classes of data as are available, resulting in a hybrid anomaly/signature or signature-only based classifier, which increases Jsteg detection accuracy to 95%

An Innovative, Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Promoting Child Health: The Reggio Emilia Approach and the Ecological Approach to Family Style Dining Program

The Reggio Emilia approach is an international example of high-quality early care and education programs and this article offers innovative, practical strategies in which Reggio Emilia-inspired educators can link this approach while implementing the research-based EAT Family Style Dining program to foster a positive mealtime environment and promote better health for children. The EAT Family Style Dining program presents childcare providers with the knowledge and skills needed for promoting children’s development of healthy eating behaviors while engaging families and communities. Children and adults eat together during mealtime and children serve themselves and select their own portions. This practice is recommended by the National Academy of Medicine, USDA’s Child and Adult Care Food Program, and Head Start. The EAT Family Style Program, developed by an interdisciplinary team of nutrition and early childhood researchers, is composed of seven different lessons that address specific strategies for promoting family style dining

A Comparison of Generalizability for Anomaly Detection

In security-related areas there is concern over the novel “zeroday” attack that penetrates system defenses and wreaks havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “non-self” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that looks similar to self could be missed. Given this situation one could logically assume that a tighter fit to self rather than generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article shows that a tight fit, although important, does not supersede having some model generality. This is shown using three systems. The first two use sphere and ellipsoid clusters with a k-means algorithm modified to work on the one-class/blind classification problem. The third is based on wrapping the self points with a multidimensional convex hull (polytope) algorithm capable of learning disjunctive concepts via a thresholding constant. All three of these algorithms are tested on an intrusion detection problem and a steganalysis problem with results exceeding published results using an Artificial Immune System

Benefits to Adolescents Who Perform Community Service: A Perspective from Adolescent Health Researchers

In the arenas of health, social scientists have learned over the past two decades that engagement in community service among adolescents often result in valuable outcomes. In other words, the persons being served are not the only ones benefiting from the experience, the providers of the service benefit as well. The purpose of this paper is to share with the legal community some of what we as social science researchers have learned from our research and also learned from the research of others in both health and education regarding benefits of community service among adolescents. We also will share with the readers what we have learned about structuring a successful community service and/or service learning program or process