The work of the media in whale strandings

The stranding of sperm whales at the Belgian coast in November 1994 attracted the general attention of the media. Excessive shows of passion often encountered in other parts of the world when cetaceans die, were not observed. An examination of the articles which appeared in the press shows that the event was merely treated as a major, but common news item. Priority was given to the daily developments. The work of the authorities and that of the scientists were given similar status as the anecdotic aspects. The importance given to controversies regarding the management of the situation must be stressed. The media did not go deeply into the biology of sperm whales, the stranding that occurred abroad, or the various hypotheses that were discussed. How could such a superficial approach be explained? Would the content of the press reports have been different if official statements had regularly been released during the operation? The paper goes into the role of journalists, the strategy of interaction with the media during spectacular events, and the attention environmental matters receive in the media

Stellar Populations in the Outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud: No Outer Edge Yet

We report the detection of intermediate-age and old stars belonging to the SMC at 6.5 kpc from the SMC center in the southern direction. We show, from the analysis of three high quality 34\arcmin $\times$ 33\arcmin CMDs, that the age composition of the stellar population is similar at galactocentric distances of $\thicksim$4.7 kpc, $\thicksim$5.6 kpc, and $\thicksim$6.5 kpc. The surface brightness profile of the SMC follows an exponential law, with no evidence of truncation, all the way out to 6.5 kpc. These results, taken together, suggest that the SMC `disk' population is dominating over a possible old Milky Way-like stellar halo, and that the SMC may be significantly larger than previously thought.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. High resolution figures are available at ftp://ftp.iac.es/out/noe

Identification of Nonlinear Normal Modes of Engineering Structures under Broadband Forcing

The objective of the present paper is to develop a two-step methodology integrating system identification and numerical continuation for the experimental extraction of nonlinear normal modes (NNMs) under broadband forcing. The first step processes acquired input and output data to derive an experimental state-space model of the structure. The second step converts this state-space model into a model in modal space from which NNMs are computed using shooting and pseudo-arclength continuation. The method is demonstrated using noisy synthetic data simulated on a cantilever beam with a hardening-softening nonlinearity at its free end.Comment: Journal pape

Undergoing Political Experience. A Book Review of \u3cem\u3eEducational Politics for Social Justice\u3c/em\u3e

The persistent reports and video evidence of the brutality against people of color, the swell of protest and community organizing in response, and also the noxious swell of white supremacy in the current political climate all amount to a desperate reminder that we must not only continually interrogate our public institutions but thoughtfully pursue the many fronts necessary to dismantle the structural forms of oppression that most U.S. institutions have been built upon. Catherine Marshall, Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, and Mark Johnson provide an analysis of the political arenas making up the public education system—what they explain as the micro, district, state, federal, and global realms. In Educational Politics for Social Justice, the authors argue that an understanding of these arenas can help guide the efforts of those who care about education such that they might better “center justice” in their effort to work toward greater equity in the public schools. This review explores some of the merits and applicability of their ideas and provides a few suggestions about where else we might look for hope and guidance amid the chaos of this current political experience

Modeling the dynamical interaction between epidemics on overlay networks

Epidemics seldom occur as isolated phenomena. Typically, two or more viral agents spread within the same host population and may interact dynamically with each other. We present a general model where two viral agents interact via an immunity mechanism as they propagate simultaneously on two networks connecting the same set of nodes. Exploiting a correspondence between the propagation dynamics and a dynamical process performing progressive network generation, we develop an analytic approach that accurately captures the dynamical interaction between epidemics on overlay networks. The formalism allows for overlay networks with arbitrary joint degree distribution and overlap. To illustrate the versatility of our approach, we consider a hypothetical delayed intervention scenario in which an immunizing agent is disseminated in a host population to hinder the propagation of an undesirable agent (e.g. the spread of preventive information in the context of an emerging infectious disease).Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E. 15 pages, 7 figure

Cadmium accumulation and interactions with zinc, copper, and manganese, analysed by ICP-MS in a long-term Caco-2 TC7 cell model

The influence of long-term exposure to cadmium (Cd) on essential minerals was investigated using a Caco-2 TC7 cells and a multi-analytical tool: microwave digestion and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Intracellular levels, effects on cadmium accumulation, distribution, and reference concentration ranges of the following elements were determined: Na, Mg, Ca, Cr, Fe, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Mo, and Cd. Results showed that Caco-2 TC7 cells incubated long-term with cadmium concentrations ranging from 0 to 10 lmol Cd/l for 5 weeks exhibited a significant increase in cadmium accumulation. Furthermore, this accumulation was more marked in cells exposed long-term to cadmium compared with controls, and that this exposure resulted in a significant accumulation of copper and zinc but not of the other elements measured. Interactions of Cd with three elements: zinc, copper, and manganese were particularly studied. Exposed to 30 lmol/l of the element, manganese showed the highest inhibition and copper the lowest on cadmium intracellular accumulation but Zn, Cu, and Mn behave differently in terms of their mutual competition with Cd. Indeed, increasing cadmium in the culture medium resulted in a gradual and significant increase in the accumulation of zinc. There was a significant decrease in manganese from 5 lmol Cd/l exposure, and no variation was observed with copper. Abbreviation: AAS – Atomic absorption spectrometry; CRM– Certified reference material; PBS – Phosphate buffered saline without calcium and magnesium; DMEM – Dubelcco’s modified Eagle’s medium

Identifying cellular cancer mechanisms through pathway-driven data integration

Abstract Motivation Cancer is a genetic disease in which accumulated mutations of driver genes induce a functional reorganization of the cell by reprogramming cellular pathways. Current approaches identify cancer pathways as those most internally perturbed by gene expression changes. However, driver genes characteristically perform hub roles between pathways. Therefore, we hypothesize that cancer pathways should be identified by changes in their pathway–pathway relationships. Results To learn an embedding space that captures the relationships between pathways in a healthy cell, we propose pathway-driven non-negative matrix tri-factorization. In this space, we determine condition-specific (i.e. diseased and healthy) embeddings of pathways and genes. Based on these embeddings, we define our ‘NMTF centrality’ to measure a pathway’s or gene’s functional importance, and our ‘moving distance’, to measure the change in its functional relationships. We combine both measures to predict 15 genes and pathways involved in four major cancers, predicting 60 gene–cancer associations in total, covering 28 unique genes. To further exploit driver genes’ tendency to perform hub roles, we model our network data using graphlet adjacency, which considers nodes adjacent if their interaction patterns form specific shapes (e.g. paths or triangles). We find that the predicted genes rewire pathway–pathway interactions in the immune system and provide literary evidence that many are druggable (15/28) and implicated in the associated cancers (47/60). We predict six druggable cancer-specific drug targets.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant 770827 and the Spanish State Research Agency AEI 10.13039/501100011033 [grant number PID2019-105500GB-I00].Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version