Constructing Social Media, Constructing Fear: A Research Proposal

As the amount of social media users increase, upwards of 66% of US adults in 2017, it can be expected that media corporations will follow. (Shearer and Gottfried 2017) Social media accounts for 35% of pathway to news (Mitchell et al. 2017) and considering 66% of online news content developers are owned by media conglomerates, it is likely to believe that many of the stories seen by users are recycled and reinforced. The relevance of this becomes clearer once noting that 33% of news is strictly crime focused. (Callanan 2012) Not only does social media provide users with content that has traditionally influenced a tinted sense of reality, but it also provides ample opportunities for follow-up actions. With 53% of social media news receiving a follow-up actions of sorts, it is likely to believe that follow-up actions may also be influential to a person’s sense of crime. (Mitchell et al. 2017) Furthermore, the increase in access to news is accompanied with an increase in access to “fake news.” 64% of US adults agree that fake news can cause great confusion, yet only 16% realizing the falsity of the news after sharing. (Barthel et al. 2016) In other words, misleading news stories have the potential to cause much harm by going unnoticed, thus the need for understanding the relationship of news and social media becomes that much more relevant. The purpose of this literature review is to address the following themes: the cognitive impact of news, crime, and social media usage, the symbolic underpinnings of news and crime, and the sociological impact of news and crime. After addressing all major exports of the literature, I will be connecting the dots in order to address the potential social impacts of crime infotainment and news through social media

Fluid-rich damage zone of an ancient out-of-sequence thrust, Kodiak Islands, Alaska

The Uganik Thrust is a fossil out-of-sequence thrust fault which was active over a period of 3 Ma during the early Tertiary until activity ceased with the subduction of the Kula-Farallon spreading ridge at 57 Ma. During this period the fault experienced at least 1 km of throw and developed a strongly asymmetric damage zone. The brittle damage zone in the footwall of the fault acted as a conduit for fluid advection during the active faulting. A similar asymmetrical footwall damage zone has been interpreted as a fluid conduit at the Nobeoka Thrust, Shimanto Belt, SW Japan. Thermal indicators in the uppermost footwall give similar maximum paleotemperatures to those in the hanging wall (280C), while previous work elsewhere in the footwall formation suggests maximum burial temperatures of 240C. In this case, similar to the Irish Canyon thrust in the Franciscan accretionary complex, the location of the thermal anomaly is spatially offset from the structural fault which caused it owing to thermal overprinting in the vicinity of the fault

Tissue-specific network-based genome wide study of amygdala imaging phenotypes to identify functional interaction modules

Motivation: Network-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS) aim to identify functional modules from biological networks that are enriched by top GWAS findings. Although gene functions are relevant to tissue context, most existing methods analyze tissue-free networks without reflecting phenotypic specificity. Results: We propose a novel module identification framework for imaging genetic studies using the tissue-specific functional interaction network. Our method includes three steps: (i) re-prioritize imaging GWAS findings by applying machine learning methods to incorporate network topological information and enhance the connectivity among top genes; (ii) detect densely connected modules based on interactions among top re-prioritized genes; and (iii) identify phenotype-relevant modules enriched by top GWAS findings. We demonstrate our method on the GWAS of [18F]FDG-PET measures in the amygdala region using the imaging genetic data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and map the GWAS results onto the amygdala-specific functional interaction network. The proposed network-based GWAS method can effectively detect densely connected modules enriched by top GWAS findings. Tissue-specific functional network can provide precise context to help explore the collective effects of genes with biologically meaningful interactions specific to the studied phenotype

A Diver-Operated Optical and Physical Profiling System

A new instrument package for measuring physical (temperature, salinity, and depth) as well as optical (absorption and attenuation at nine wavelength) parameters using SCUBA is described. The package is attached to the SCUBA bottle and allows for sampling very close to the sediment–water and water–air interfaces. This package can also provide measurements of sediment pore water properties using a 0.2-μm prefilter. Data recently collected with the package highlight the variability in the optical properties between areas with different bottom substrate (coral, sea grass, and sand) and the importance of pore water in productive sediments as sources of colored dissolved organic matter

Spatially Uniform ReliefF (SURF) for computationally-efficient filtering of gene-gene interactions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genome-wide association studies are becoming the de facto standard in the genetic analysis of common human diseases. Given the complexity and robustness of biological networks such diseases are unlikely to be the result of single points of failure but instead likely arise from the joint failure of two or more interacting components. The hope in genome-wide screens is that these points of failure can be linked to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which confer disease susceptibility. Detecting interacting variants that lead to disease in the absence of single-gene effects is difficult however, and methods to exhaustively analyze sets of these variants for interactions are combinatorial in nature thus making them computationally infeasible. Efficient algorithms which can detect interacting SNPs are needed. ReliefF is one such promising algorithm, although it has low success rate for noisy datasets when the interaction effect is small. ReliefF has been paired with an iterative approach, Tuned ReliefF (TuRF), which improves the estimation of weights in noisy data but does not fundamentally change the underlying ReliefF algorithm. To improve the sensitivity of studies using these methods to detect small effects we introduce Spatially Uniform ReliefF (SURF).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>SURF's ability to detect interactions in this domain is significantly greater than that of ReliefF. Similarly SURF, in combination with the TuRF strategy significantly outperforms TuRF alone for SNP selection under an epistasis model. It is important to note that this success rate increase does not require an increase in algorithmic complexity and allows for increased success rate, even with the removal of a nuisance parameter from the algorithm.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Researchers performing genetic association studies and aiming to discover gene-gene interactions associated with increased disease susceptibility should use SURF in place of ReliefF. For instance, SURF should be used instead of ReliefF to filter a dataset before an exhaustive MDR analysis. This change increases the ability of a study to detect gene-gene interactions. The SURF algorithm is implemented in the open source Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) software package available from <url>http://www.epistasis.org</url>.</p

Authigenic carbonates from the Cascadia subduction zone and their relation to gas hydrate stability

Authigenic carbonates are intercalated with massive gas hydrates in sediments of the Cascadia margin. The deposits were recovered from the uppermost 50 cm of sediments on the southern summit of the Hydrate Ridge during the RV Sonne cruise SO110. Two carbonate lithologies that differ in chemistry, mineralogy, and fabric make up these deposits. Microcrystalline high-magnesium calcite (14 to 19 mol% MgCO3) and aragonite are present in both semiconsolidated sediments and carbonate-cemented clasts. Aragonite occurs also as a pure phase without sediment impurities. It is formed by precipitation in cavities as botryoidal and isopachous aggregates within pure white, massive gas hydrate. Variations in oxygen isotope values of the carbonates reflect the mineralogical composition and define two end members: a Mg-calcite with δ18O =4.86‰ PDB and an aragonite with δ18O =3.68‰ PDB. On the basis of the ambient bottom-water temperature and accepted equations for oxygen isotope fractionation, we show that the aragonite phase formed in equilibrium with its pore-water environment, and that the Mg-calcite appears to have precipitated from pore fluids enriched in 18O. Oxygen isotope enrichment probably originates from hydrate water released during gas-hydrate destabilization

Contrasting Decollement and Prism Properties over the Sumatra 2004-2005 Earthquake Rupture Boundary

Styles of subduction zone deformation and earthquake rupture dynamics are strongly linked, jointly influencing hazard potential. Seismic reflection profiles across the trench west of Sumatra, Indonesia, show differences across the boundary between the major 2004 and 2005 plate interface earthquakes, which exhibited contrasting earthquake rupture and tsunami generation. In the southern part of the 2004 rupture, we interpret a negative-polarity sedimentary reflector ~500 meters above the subducting oceanic basement as the seaward extension of the plate interface. This predécollement reflector corresponds to unusual prism structure, morphology, and seismogenic behavior that are absent along the 2005 rupture zone. Although margins like the 2004 rupture zone are globally rare, our results suggest that sediment properties influence earthquake rupture, tsunami hazard, and prism development at subducting plate boundaries

Multifactor dimensionality reduction for graphics processing units enables genome-wide testing of epistasis in sporadic ALS

Motivation: Epistasis, the presence of gene–gene interactions, has been hypothesized to be at the root of many common human diseases, but current genome-wide association studies largely ignore its role. Multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) is a powerful model-free method for detecting epistatic relationships between genes, but computational costs have made its application to genome-wide data difficult. Graphics processing units (GPUs), the hardware responsible for rendering computer games, are powerful parallel processors. Using GPUs to run MDR on a genome-wide dataset allows for statistically rigorous testing of epistasis

A Survey on Continuous Time Computations

We provide an overview of theories of continuous time computation. These theories allow us to understand both the hardness of questions related to continuous time dynamical systems and the computational power of continuous time analog models. We survey the existing models, summarizing results, and point to relevant references in the literature