102 research outputs found
'Against a Wall': Albaniaâs Women Political Prisonersâ Struggle to be Heard
Between 1944 and 1985, Enver Hoxha ruled socialist Albania as an isolated and paranoid Stalinist state. The regime held power through total party control and continual purges at all levels of society, persecuting approximately twenty per cent of the population (which stood at 3.4 million in 1990) as âenemies of the peopleâ. Women and men were punished with internal exile, forced labour or prison, yet even now, twenty years after the communist rulers instituted neoliberal reforms as re-branded âdemocratsâ (in 1990), the victims of communist persecution are socially and structurally marginalised. Through the testimony and experiences of one anonymous woman who survived the communist prison system, this article examines the political, social and psychological factors that silence the voices of Albanian women who were politically persecuted
Gender differences in behavioral regulation in four societies: The United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and China
The current study investigates gender differences in behavioral regulation in four societies: the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Directly assessed individual behavioral regulation (HeadâToesâKneesâShoulders, HTKS), teacher-rated classroom behavioral regulation (Child Behavior Rating Scale, CBRS) and a battery of school readiness assessments (mathematics, vocabulary, and early literacy) were used with 814 young children (ages 3â6Â years). Results showed that girls in the United States had significantly higher individual behavioral regulation than boys, but there were no significant gender differences in any Asian societies. In contrast, teachers in Taiwan, South Korea, as well as the United States rated girls as significantly higher than boys on classroom behavioral regulation. In addition, for both genders, individual and classroom behavioral regulation were related to many aspects of school readiness in all societies for girls and boys. Universal and culturally specific findings and their implications are discussed
Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry:An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package
This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchangeâcorrelation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclearâelectronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an âopen teamwareâ model and an increasingly modular design
Biting the hand that feeds: Australian cuisine and Aboriginal sovereignty in the Great Sandy Strait
Wilhelmina (Mina) Rawson (1851â1933) is lauded in both academic and popular circles as the author of the first uniquely Australian cookbooks, which she wrote between 1876 and 1895. Rawson was a prolific writer and stressed that she was the first white woman settler at Boonooroo in the colony of Queensland, where she was âbeholden to the blacksâ to show her what to eat (Rawson, 1895, p. 54). Rawson's cookbooks famously codified how to use Australian non-human animals, including wallaby, parrot and goanna, as meat, and her published memories of this time detailed the context in which she implemented and refined these recipes. Rawson organised and policed racialised frontier space as a white woman, claiming British sovereignty over Butchulla country in order to profit from and teach other settlers to profit from the coastal land and waterways. This paper draws on ecofeminist and postcolonial theory and works to explore how Rawson organised food production to exercise violent colonial claims to sovereignty as a white woman, explicitly advising other settlers to do the same
Bridging the Gap at Warp Speed â Delivering Options for Preventing and Treating Covid-19
The interaction of GM-CSF and IL-3 with the common beta chain of their receptors
Human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin (IL-3) are cytokines active in both normal and abnormal hemopoiesis, inflammation, and immunity. Their biological activity is mediated via receptors that comprise a ligand-specific alpha chain and a beta chain that is common to the GM-CSF, IL-3, and IL-5 receptors. To understand the mechanism of action of GM-CSF and IL-3 in both normal and pathological conditions, we are seeking to define the structural elements required for ligand/receptor and receptor/receptor contact and their role in cellular activation. To this end we have identified a conserved motif in the first helix of GM-CSF, Glu21 that is critical for high affinity binding and biological activity. Charge-reversal mutagenesis of this residue generates a GM-CSF analogue that is devoid of biological activity and can antagonize the activity of wild-type GM-CSF. This probably results from the selective deficiency in interaction with the beta chain of the receptor and suggests that similar antagonists for IL-3 and IL-5 are also feasible. Complementary mutagenesis studies on the receptor beta chain have identified the putative B'-C' loop in the membrane-proximal domain as being critical for the high affinity binding of GM-CSF but not IL-3. Characterization of the specificity of sites of interaction between the ligands and receptors may permit the design of specific or genetic antagonists that may have important therapeutic implications
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