Startups for journalists: the news hub

News Must Be Free Post by William Stolerman Imagine you’re launching a news platform. Imagine you’ve got the chance to design the platform from scratch. Imagine print had never existed. Imagine the digital age was the only one you’d ever known. Would you charge users for access? The answer should be ‘no’.The problem, as shown by Matter, a long-form journalism platform that raised nearly three times its funding goal on Kickstarter and had to drop its paywall last year, is that even if you’ve got plenty of vocal supporters for your theoretical paywall, turning that support into hard cash is extremely challenging. In fact, it’s nigh on impossible for a mainstream news platform to enter the market and charge for access, which means any new blood will (and should) be free. The next big thing in news isn’t going to be hiding behind a paywall

Authorship Verification

In recent years, stylometry, the study of linguistic style, has become more prominent in security and privacy applications involving written language, mostly in digital and online domains. Although literature is abundant with computational stylometry research, the field of authorship verification is relatively unexplored. Authorship verification is the binary semi-open-world problem of determining whether a document is written by a given author or not. A key component in authorship verification techniques is confidence measurement, on which verification decisions are based, expressed by acceptance thresholds selected and tuned per need. This thesis demonstrates how utilization of confidence-based approaches in stylometric applications, and their combination with traditional approaches, can benefit classification accuracy, and allow new domains and problems to be analyzed. We start by motivating the usage of authorship verification approaches with two stylometric applications: native-language identification from non-native text and active linguistic user authentication. Next, we introduce the Classify-Verify algorithm, which integrates classification with binary verification, applied to several stylometric problems. Classify-Verify is proposed as an open-world alternative to restricted closed-world attribution methods, and is shown effective in dealing with possibly missing candidate authors by thwarting misclassifications, coping with various domains and scales, and even adversarial authors who try to fool the classifier.Ph.D., Computer Science -- Drexel University, 201

DOCUMENTOS Y PRODUCCIÓN DE SIGNIFICADOS - REFLEXIONES SOBRE UN ESTUDIO AMBIENTAL

Pretendo neste artigo discutir a produção de uma peça documental específica com a qual me deparei no decorrer de minha pesquisa: “Estudo Ambiental sobre o espaço territorial e componentes da Reserva Extrativista – RESEX Jaci-Paraná”, encomendado pela Associação de criadores de gado que atua dentro da reserva. Acionando conceitos como “agroestratégias” e “Justificações”, sugiro que sua elaboração imprime a tentativa de impor uma certa moralidade nas atividades econômicas praticadas ilegalmente.En este artículo, pretendo discutir la producción de una pieza documental específica que encontré en el curso de mi investigación: "Estudio Ambiental sobre el espacio territorial y los componentes de la Reserva Extractiva - RESEX Jaci-Paraná", encargado por la Asociación de ganaderos que laboran dentro de la reserva. Utilizando conceptos como “agroestrategias” y “Justificaciones”, sugiero que su elaboración implica un intento de imponer cierta moralidad a las actividades económicas realizadas ilegalmente

Long-term effects of gestational nicotine exposure and food-restriction on gene expression in the striatum of adolescent rats

Gestational exposure to environmental toxins such as nicotine may result in detectable gene expression changes in later life. To investigate the direct toxic effects of prenatal nicotine exposure on later brain development, we have used transcriptomic analysis of striatal samples to identify gene expression differences between adolescent Lister Hooded rats exposed to nicotine in utero and controls. Using an additional group of animals matched for the reduced food intake experienced in the nicotine group, we were also able to assess the impact of imposed food-restriction on gene expression profiles. We found little evidence for a role of gestational nicotine exposure on altered gene expression in the striatum of adolescent offspring at a significance level of p0.5|, although we cannot exclude the possibility of nicotine-induced changes in other brain regions, or at other time points. We did, however, find marked gene expression differences in response to imposed food-restriction. Food-restriction resulted in significant group differences for a number of immediate early genes (IEGs) including Fos, Fosb, Fosl2, Arc, Junb, Nr4a1 and Nr4a3. These genes are associated with stress response pathways and therefore may reflect long-term effects of nutritional deprivation on the development of the stress system

If Sugar Is Addictive…What Does It Mean for the Law?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97481/1/jlme.12038.pd

Common Genetic Variation in GLP1R and Insulin Secretion in Response to Exogenous GLP-1 in Nondiabetic Subjects: A pilot study

OBJECTIVE: Glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 receptor is encoded by GLP1R. The effect of genetic variation at this locus on the response to GLP-1 is unknown. This study assessed the effect of GLP1R polymorphisms on insulin secretion in response to hyperglycemia and to infused GLP-1 in nondiabetic subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Eighty-eight healthy individuals (aged 26.3 +/- 0.6 years, fasting glucose 4.83 +/- 0.04 mmol/l) were studied using a hyperglycemic clamp. GLP-1 was infused for the last 2 h of the study (0.75 pmol/kg/min over 121-180 min, 1.5 pmol/kg/min over 181-240 min). beta-Cell responsivity (Phi(Total)) was measured using a C-peptide minimal model. The effect of 21 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in GLP1R on Phi(Total) was examined. RESULTS: Two SNPs (rs6923761 and rs3765467) were nominally associated with altered beta-cell responsivity in response to GLP-1 infusion. CONCLUSIONS: Variation in GLP1R may alter insulin secretion in response to exogenous GLP-1. Future studies will determine whether such variation accounts for interindividual differences in response to GLP-1-based therapy

Common variants at 10 Genomic loci influence hemoglobin A1C levels via glycemic and nonglycemic pathways

OBJECTIVE: Glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)), used to monitor and diagnose diabetes, is influenced by average glycemia over a 2- to 3-month period. Genetic factors affecting expression, turnover, and abnormal glycation of hemoglobin could also be associated with increased levels of HbA(1c). We aimed to identify such genetic factors and investigate the extent to which they influence diabetes classification based on HbA(1c) levels. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We studied associations with HbA(1c) in up to 46,368 nondiabetic adults of European descent from 23 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and 8 cohorts with de novo genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We combined studies using inverse-variance meta-analysis and tested mediation by glycemia using conditional analyses. We estimated the global effect of HbA(1c) loci using a multilocus risk score, and used net reclassification to estimate genetic effects on diabetes screening. RESULTS: Ten loci reached genome-wide significant association with HbA(1c), including six new loci near FN3K (lead SNP/P value, rs1046896/P = 1.6 × 10(−26)), HFE (rs1800562/P = 2.6 × 10(−20)), TMPRSS6 (rs855791/P = 2.7 × 10(−14)), ANK1 (rs4737009/P = 6.1 × 10(−12)), SPTA1 (rs2779116/P = 2.8 × 10(−9)) and ATP11A/TUBGCP3 (rs7998202/P = 5.2 × 10(−9)), and four known HbA(1c) loci: HK1 (rs16926246/P = 3.1 × 10(−54)), MTNR1B (rs1387153/P = 4.0 × 10(−11)), GCK (rs1799884/P = 1.5 × 10(−20)) and G6PC2/ABCB11 (rs552976/P = 8.2 × 10(−18)). We show that associations with HbA(1c) are partly a function of hyperglycemia associated with 3 of the 10 loci (GCK, G6PC2 and MTNR1B). The seven nonglycemic loci accounted for a 0.19 (% HbA(1c)) difference between the extreme 10% tails of the risk score, and would reclassify ∼2% of a general white population screened for diabetes with HbA(1c). CONCLUSIONS: GWAS identified 10 genetic loci reproducibly associated with HbA(1c). Six are novel and seven map to loci where rarer variants cause hereditary anemias and iron storage disorders. Common variants at these loci likely influence HbA(1c) levels via erythrocyte biology, and confer a small but detectable reclassification of diabetes diagnosis by HbA(1c)

Impaired performance of alpha7 nicotinic receptor knockout mice in the five-choice serial reaction time task

RATIONALE: Nicotinic receptors have been implicated in attentional performance. Nicotine can improve attention in animals and humans, but knowledge about relevant receptor subtypes is very limited. OBJECTIVES: The aim was to examine the role of α7 receptors in attentional performance of mice and in effects of nicotine. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Mice with targeted deletion of the gene coding for the α7 subunit of nicotinic receptors and wild-type controls were trained on a five-choice serial reaction time task with food reinforcers presented under varying parametric conditions. Nicotine was administered in a range of doses (0.001–1.0 mg/kg sc), including those reported to enhance attentional performance. RESULTS: Initially the α7(−/−) (knockout) mice responded less accurately and made more anticipatory responses. After task parameters were altered so that the time allowed for responding was reduced and anticipatory (impulsive) responses were punished by a time-out, the pattern of performance deficits changed; there were increased omission errors in α7(−/−) mice but normal levels of accuracy and anticipatory responding. Nicotine did not improve any measure of performance, either with the original training parameters or after retraining; the largest dose used (1.0 mg/kg) produced a general impairment of responding in α7(−/−) and wild-type mice. CONCLUSIONS: α7 nicotinic receptor knockout mice are impaired in performance of the 5-CSRTT, suggesting a possible role for α7 receptors in attentional processing. However, identification of a protocol for assessing attention-enhancing effects of nicotine in mice may require further modifications of test procedures or the use of different strains of animal