The rearguard of freedom: the John Birch Society and the development of modern conservatism in the United States, 1958-1968

This thesis aims to investigate the role of the anti-communist John Birch Society within the greater American conservative field. More specifically, it focuses on the period from the Society's inception in 1958 to the beginning of its relative decline in significance, which can be situated after the first election of Richard M. Nixon as president in 1968. The main focus of the thesis lies on challenging more traditional classifications of the JBS as an extremist outcast divorced from the American political mainstream, and argues that through their innovative organizational methods, national presence, and capacity to link up a variety of domestic and international affairs to an overarching conspiratorial narrative, the Birchers were able to tap into a new and powerful force of largely white suburban conservatives and contribute significantly to the growth and development of the post-war New Right. For this purpose, the research interrogates the established scholarship and draws upon key primary source material, including official publications, internal communications and the private correspondence of founder and chairman Robert Welch as well as other prominent members

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

We investigated low-level auditory spectral and temporal processing in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and early language delay compared to matched typically developing controls. Auditory measures were designed to target right versus left auditory cortex processing (i.e. frequency discrimination and slow amplitude modulation (AM) detection versus gap-in-noise detection and faster AM detection), and to pinpoint the task and stimulus characteristics underlying putative superior spectral processing in ASD. We observed impaired frequency discrimination in the ASD group and suggestive evidence of poorer temporal resolution as indexed by gap-in-noise detection thresholds. These findings question the evidence of enhanced spectral sensitivity in ASD and do not support the hypothesis of superior right and inferior left hemispheric auditory processing in ASD.University of Leuven. Research Council (Grant IDO/08/013

TA-COS 2016 : First workshop on text analytics for cybersecurity and online safety : Proceedings

B

Analysis of load displacement in grape harvesters and corresponding effect on dynamic weighing system under laboratory conditions

Harvester bin dynamic weighing systems are affected by a number of sources of variation such as field slopes and load displacement. In grape harvesters, the nature of the material (wine grapes and wine grape juice) and its relative composition can vary significantly. Laboratory tests were carried out using hydrogel spheres and water to simulate field dynamic conditions during harvest. This paper quantifies the sources of variation, submitting an instrumented grape harvester to graduated inclination under shaking conditions. Load displacement is characterized using image analysis from recorded movies on four different pitch axis motions of the machine: front to horizontal, horizontal to rear, rear to horizontal and horizontal to front. Differences in the displacement of the load in relation to the machine inclination and to the load composition have been addressed

Spectrum of arthroscopic findings in 84 canine elbow joints diagnosed with medial compartment erosion

Elbow dysplasia is an important cause of forelimb lameness in large breed dogs. The aim of this study was to report on the arthroscopic findings associated with medial compartment erosion (MCE) of the canine elbow joint. Retrospectively, records of 84 elbow joints from 66 dogs diagnosed arthroscopically with MCE were retrieved from a medical records database (2008 - 2012). The radiographic degree of osteoarthritis was determined. Arthroscopic images and videos were evaluated in detail. In nine joints (10.7%), MCE was the only pathological finding (= group 1). Group 2 (n = 50, 59.5%) consisted of elbows with MCE concomitant with medial coronoid process (MCP) pathology. In group 3 (n = 25 joints, 29.8%), MCE was diagnosed during a second-look arthroscopy in dogs presented with lameness after arthroscopic treatment for medial coronoid disease. There was a significant age difference (p < 0.001) between the groups, with dogs in group 1 being the oldest. Complete erosion of the medial compartment was most commonly found in group 1, whereas focal cartilage erosion was mostly identified in group 2. Overall, additional cartilage pathology of the lateral part of the humeral condyle and/or the radial head was recognized in 58.3% of the joints (49/84)

Detection and fine-grained classification of cyberbullying events

In the current era of online interactions, both positive and negative experiences are abundant on the Web. As in real life, negative experiences can have a serious impact on youngsters. Recent studies have reported cybervictimization rates among teenagers that vary between 20% and 40%. In this paper, we focus on cyberbullying as a particular form of cybervictimization and explore its automatic detection and fine-grained classification. Data containing cyberbullying was collected from the social networking site Ask.fm. We developed and applied a new scheme for cyberbullying annotation, which describes the presence and severity of cyberbullying, a post author's role (harasser, victim or bystander) and a number of fine-grained categories related to cyberbullying, such as insults and threats. We present experimental results on the automatic detection of cyberbullying and explore the feasibility of detecting the more fine-grained cyberbullying categories in online posts. For the first task, an F-score of 55.39% is obtained. We observe that the detection of the fine-grained categories (e.g. threats) is more challenging, presumably due to data sparsity, and because they are often expressed in a subtle and implicit way

The rearguard of freedom: the John Birch Society and the development of modern conservatism in the United States, 1958-1968

This thesis aims to investigate the role of the anti-communist John Birch Society within the greater American conservative field. More specifically, it focuses on the period from the Society's inception in 1958 to the beginning of its relative decline in significance, which can be situated after the first election of Richard M. Nixon as president in 1968. The main focus of the thesis lies on challenging more traditional classifications of the JBS as an extremist outcast divorced from the American political mainstream, and argues that through their innovative organizational methods, national presence, and capacity to link up a variety of domestic and international affairs to an overarching conspiratorial narrative, the Birchers were able to tap into a new and powerful force of largely white suburban conservatives and contribute significantly to the growth and development of the post-war New Right. For this purpose, the research interrogates the established scholarship and draws upon key primary source material, including official publications, internal communications and the private correspondence of founder and chairman Robert Welch as well as other prominent members

Development and performance of a targeted whole exome sequencing enrichment kit for the dog (Canis Familiaris Build 3.1)

Whole exome sequencing is a technique that aims to selectively sequence all exons of protein-coding genes. A canine whole exome sequencing enrichment kit was designed based on the latest canine reference genome (build 3.1.72). Its performance was tested by sequencing 2 exome captures, each consisting of 4 pre-capture pooled, barcoded Illumina libraries on an Illumina HiSeq 2500. At an average sequencing depth of 102x, 83 to 86% of the target regions were completely sequenced with a minimum coverage of five and 90% of the reads mapped on the target regions. Additionally, it is shown that the reproducibility within and between captures is high and that pooling four samples per capture is a valid option. Overall, we have demonstrated the strong performance of this WES enrichment kit and are confident it will be a valuable tool in future disease association studies

An heuristic filtering tool to identify phenotype-associated genetic variants applied to human intellectual disability and canine coat colors

Background: Identification of one or several disease causing variant(s) from the large collection of variants present in an individual is often achieved by the sequential use of heuristic filters. The recent development of whole exome sequencing enrichment designs for several non-model species created the need for a species-independent, fast and versatile analysis tool, capable of tackling a wide variety of standard and more complex inheritance models. With this aim, we developed "Mendelian", an R-package that can be used for heuristic variant filtering. Results: The R-package Mendelian offers fast and convenient filters to analyze putative variants for both recessive and dominant models of inheritance, with variable degrees of penetrance and detectance. Analysis of trios is supported. Filtering against variant databases and annotation of variants is also included. This package is not species specific and supports parallel computation. We validated this package by reanalyzing data from a whole exome sequencing experiment on intellectual disability in humans. In a second example, we identified the mutations responsible for coat color in the dog. This is the first example of whole exome sequencing without prior mapping in the dog. Conclusion: We developed an R-package that enables the identification of disease-causing variants from the long list of variants called in sequencing experiments. The software and a detailed manual are available at https://github.com/BartBroeckx/Mendelian

Comparison of various guidance strategies to achieve time constraints in optimal descents

Continuous Descent Operations (CDOs) have been subject of extensive research in the last decades. Even if proving successful in reducing the environmental impact [1], such operations suffer from a well-known drawback: the loss of predictability from the Air Traffic Control (ATC) point of view, in terms of overfly-times at certain fixes along the route. Consequently, existing CDO implementations require ATC to introduce additional sequencing buffers to ensure safe separation among aircraft, thus reducing airport capacity. For all these reasons, in busy airports, CDOs are only feasible in off-peak hours, when the traffic demand is low [2]. In other to face this issue, several Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts have been proposed that aim to enable CDOs also in high traffic demand scenarios. For instance, several works investigated the use of fixed Fight-Path-Angle (FPA) descents with time control to improve both spatial and temporal predictability [3, 4]. The disadvantage of fixed FPA descents is that predictability is achieved at the cost of thrust settings that might be different from idle. Another potential approach to enable CDOs in dense traffic scenarios consists of assigning controlled times of arrival (CTAs) to each aircraft at some strategic fixes for separation, negotiation starts with the on-board computation of the earliest and latest achievable times of arrival at the metering fix, and the subsequent down-link of this information to the ground automation system. Based on this feasible time window and the surrounding traffic a CTA is computed by a ground-based support tool, such as an arrival manager. Then, the incoming CTA is entered on-board as a Required Time of Arrival (RTA) into the FMS, and the on-board trajectory planner computes a new (optimal) trajectory plan starting at the current state, while satisfying the RTA and other operational constraints (e.g., altitude and speed constraints) [5].Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft