The Stream of All Human Consciousness: Using Social Media in a History Seminar Collaboratory to Chart the Tributaries of Collective Cultural memories in the Digital Age

Internet surfing and social networking are much maligned as activities that divert the attention of our digital native students away from the serious, sustained pursuit of knowledge and encourage, instead, mind-numbing, superficial quests for personal relationships. This paper challenges the time-honored seminar class paradigm by demonstrating that social media do, in fact, possess tremendous latent scholarly and pedagogical credibility, legitimacy, and power if utilized in a carefully charted manner for a semester-long research project. When enrollments in a traditional history seminar dwindled in the face of stiff competition from other technologically-driven electives, the instructor surmised that redesigning his class to appeal to tech-savvy digital natives could renew student interest in more humanistic investigations. Flying in the face of the status quo in art historiography, typical research paper assignments were reconceived to leverage the technology literacies and digital dexterities of NetGeners, including their infatuation with social media. This paper describes a collaborative class project in a seminar dedicated to the life and times of a singularly renowned and catalytic historic figure in architecture. Upper-level architecture students were asked to create individual Facebook pages clustered around that architect\u27s fan page (created by the instructor) and then to “friend” all other students\u27 pages in a closed-network. Each student assumed the identity, or avatar, of one of that architect\u27s family members, friends, clients, or apprentices. The overarching objective of this class project asked students to discover the true character of one of the most enigmatic architectural personalities and enormously complicated design geniuses of all time not through the traditional channels of art historical scholarship – studies of the architect himself or his corpus of designs by themselves – but through the virtual recreation of the complex web of personal and professional relationships he had forged over a nine-decade-long lifetime. By plumbing the depths of cultural data bases on the Internet, by digitizing products of traditional scholarship, and by creating their own born-digital materials, students immersed themselves in a new sort of historical scholarship that transcended the mere consultation of typical textual sources. By inventing new approaches to documenting their investigations, by altering the means of scholarly communication, by increasing the visibility of their work to one another, students acquired a more profound understanding of the personal character and motivations behind the public persona of a celebrated icon in the art world. The end result of this digital humanities experiment was a vibrant, endlessly interconnected repository of useful information – simultaneously engaging and revelatory – that everyone within this harbored network could share. And in the final analysis, this social media collaboratory was perfectly attuned to coming to terms with the intricate, nuanced findings that multifaceted, historical problems often demand. Envisioned by Mark Zuckerberg as “the stream of all human consciousness,” Facebook does indeed redeem itself as a valuable didactic tool in the humanities when focused particularly on matters of the human condition throughout time

Clustered yield model for SMT boards and MCM's, A

Includes bibliographical references.This paper describes a clustered yield model for complex surface mount technology (SMT) assemblies and multichip modules (MCM's). Based on yield modeling techniques that have been proven in the manufacturing of integrated circuits (IC's), this model uses the negative binomial distribution of defects to calculate board yield after test. Manufacturing data validates that this model accurately predicts the clustering of defects and the yield predictions are significantly better than traditional binomial models

Molecular mechanisms of metastasis in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) preferentially metastasizes to the bone marrow stroma of the axial skeleton. This activity is the principal cause of PCa morbidity and mortality. The exact mechanism of PCa metastasis is currently unknown, although considerable progress has been made in determining the key players in this process. In this review, we present the current understanding of the molecular processes driving PCa metastasis to the bone

Characteristics of physical measurement consent in a population-based survey of older adults

BACKGROUND: Collecting physical measurements in population-based health surveys has increased in recent years, yet little is known about the characteristics of those who consent to these measurements. OBJECTIVE: To examine the characteristics of persons who consent to physical measurements across several domains, including one’s demographic background, health status, resistance behavior toward the survey interview, and interviewer characteristics. RESEARCH DESIGN, SUBJECTS, AND MEASURES: We conducted a secondary data analysis of the 2006 Health and Retirement Study, a nationally-representative panel survey of older adults aged 50 and older. We performed multilevel logistic regressions on a sample of 7,457 respondents who were eligible for physical measurements. The primary outcome measure was consent to all physical measurements. RESULTS: Seventy-nine percent (unweighted) of eligible respondents consented to all physical measurements. In weighted multilevel logistic regressions controlling for respondent demographics, current health status, survey resistance indicators, and interviewer characteristics, the propensity to consent was significantly greater among Hispanic respondents matched with bilingual Hispanic interviewers, diabetics, and those who visited a doctor in the past 2 years. The propensity to consent was significantly lower among younger respondents, those who have several Nagi functional limitations and infrequently participate in “mildly vigorous” activities, and those interviewed by black interviewers. Survey resistance indicators, such as number of contact attempts and interviewer observations of resistant behavior in prior wave iterations of the HRS were also negatively associated with physical measurement consent. The propensity to consent was unrelated to prior medical diagnoses, including high blood pressure, cancer (excl. skin), lung disease, heart abnormalities, stroke, and arthritis, and matching of interviewer and respondent on race and gender. CONCLUSIONS: Physical measurement consent is not strongly associated with one’s health status, though the findings are somewhat mixed. We recommend that physical measurement results be adjusted for characteristics associated with the likelihood of consent, particularly functional limitations, to reduce potential bias. Otherwise, health researchers should exercise caution when generalizing physical measurement results to persons suffering from functional limitations that may affect their participation

Knockdown of piRNA pathway proteins results in enhanced Semliki forest virus production in mosquito cells

The exogenous siRNA pathway is important in restricting arbovirus infection in mosquitoes. Less is known about the role of the PIWI-interacting RNA pathway, or piRNA pathway, in antiviral responses. Viral piRNA-like molecules have recently been described following infection of mosquitoes and derived cell lines with several arboviruses. The piRNA pathway has thus been suggested to function as an additional small RNA-mediated antiviral response to the known infection-induced siRNA response. Here we show that piRNA-like molecules are produced following infection with the naturally mosquito-borne Semliki Forest virus in mosquito cell lines. We show that knockdown of piRNA pathway proteins enhances the replication of this arbovirus and defines the contribution of piRNA pathway effectors, thus characterizing the antiviral properties of the piRNA pathway. In conclusion, arbovirus infection can trigger the piRNA pathway in mosquito cells, and knockdown of piRNA proteins enhances virus production