554 research outputs found
Applying Social Science to Bring Resident Stakeholders into Pollution Governance: A Rural Environmental Justice Public Health Case Study
The purpose of this engaged public sociology study was to use social science to bring resident stakeholders into the process of governing pollution production in a rural community. The community has cancer clusters. Residents have concerns about direct exposure to pollution production in their neighborhood by a steel recycling plant that has been cited numerous times for environmental violations. The facility has been under voluntary remediation since 2009, but neighborhood residents were marginalized from the governance process. This case study details how social science was used to bring neighborhood residentsâ concerns about direct exposure to toxic air pollution into remediation governance. A curricula-as-research model was developed to provide an engagement framework that guided the case study as it progressed through a series of six stages over five years. The Principle Investigator maintained this collaboration by integrating the project into courses, securing small grants, developing an affordable air pollution monitoring method, and convening multiple community meetings. The air monitoring results are analyzed and discussed. Finally, the impact of the case study on the company, the state environmental management agency, local government, the nonprofit partner, and residentsâ sense of human agency is evaluated
Comparative Pathogenomics Reveals Horizontally Acquired Novel Virulence Genes in Fungi Infecting Cereal Hosts
Comparative analyses of pathogen genomes provide new insights into how pathogens have evolved common and divergent virulence strategies to invade related plant species. Fusarium crown and root rots are important diseases of wheat and barley world-wide. In Australia, these diseases are primarily caused by the fungal pathogen Fusarium pseudograminearum. Comparative genomic analyses showed that the F. pseudograminearum genome encodes proteins that are present in other fungal pathogens of cereals but absent in non-cereal pathogens. In some cases, these cereal pathogen specific genes were also found in bacteria associated with plants. Phylogenetic analysis of selected F. pseudograminearum genes supported the hypothesis of horizontal gene transfer into diverse cereal pathogens. Two horizontally acquired genes with no previously known role in fungal pathogenesis were studied functionally via gene knockout methods and shown to significantly affect virulence of F. pseudograminearum on the cereal hosts wheat and barley. Our results indicate using comparative genomics to identify genes specific to pathogens of related hosts reveals novel virulence genes and illustrates the importance of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of plant infecting fungal pathogens
Identifying reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) via a hybrid machine learning and crowdsourcing approach
OBJECTIVES: Identifying all published reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is an important aim, but it requires extensive manual effort to separate RCTs from non-RCTs, even using current machine learning (ML) approaches. We aimed tomake this process more efficient via a hybrid approach using both crowdsourcing andML. METHODS: We trained a classifier to discriminate between citations that describe RCTs and those that do not. We then adopted a simple strategy of automatically excluding citations deemed very unlikely to be RCTs by the classifier and deferring to crowdworkers otherwise. RESULTS: Combining ML and crowdsourcing provid es a highly sensitive RCT identification strategy (our estimates suggest 95%-99% recall) with substantially less effort (we observed a reduction of around 60%-80%) than relying on manual screening alone. CONCLUSIONS: Hybrid crowd-ML strategies warrant further exploration for biomedical curation/annotation tasks
Optical Spectropolarimetry of the GRB 020813 Afterglow
The optical afterglow of gamma-ray burst 020813 was observed for 3 hours with
the LRIS spectropolarimeter at the Keck-I telescope, beginning 4.7 hours after
the burst was detected by HETE-2. The spectrum reveals numerous metal
absorption lines that we identify with two systems at z=1.223 and z=1.255. We
also detect an O II 3727 emission line at z=1.255 and we identify this galaxy
as the likely host of the GRB. After a correction for Galactic interstellar
polarization, the optical afterglow has a linear polarization of 1.8-2.4%
during 4.7-7.9 hours after the burst. A measurement of p = 0.80% +/- 0.16% on
the following night by Covino et al. demonstrates significant polarization
variability over the next 14 hours. The lack of strong variability in the
position angle of linear polarization indicates that the magnetic field in the
jet is likely to be globally ordered rather than composed of a number of
randomly oriented cells. Within the framework of afterglow models with
collimated flows, the relatively low observed polarization suggests that the
magnetic field components perpendicular and parallel to the shock front are
only different by about 20%.Comment: To appear in ApJ Letters. 6 pages including 2 figure
The InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: latest science cases and simulations
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) first light instrument IRIS (Infrared
Imaging Spectrograph) will complete its preliminary design phase in 2016. The
IRIS instrument design includes a near-infrared (0.85 - 2.4 micron) integral
field spectrograph (IFS) and imager that are able to conduct simultaneous
diffraction-limited observations behind the advanced adaptive optics system
NFIRAOS. The IRIS science cases have continued to be developed and new science
studies have been investigated to aid in technical performance and design
requirements. In this development phase, the IRIS science team has paid
particular attention to the selection of filters, gratings, sensitivities of
the entire system, and science cases that will benefit from the parallel mode
of the IFS and imaging camera. We present new science cases for IRIS using the
latest end-to-end data simulator on the following topics: Solar System bodies,
the Galactic center, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and distant
gravitationally-lensed galaxies. We then briefly discuss the necessity of an
advanced data management system and data reduction pipeline.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, SPIE (2016) 9909-0
The fables of pity: Rousseau, Mandeville and the animal-fable
Copyright @ 2012 Edinburgh University PressPrompted by Derridaâs work on the animal-fable in eighteenth-century debates about political power, this article examines the role played by the fiction of the animal in thinking of pity as either a natural virtue (in Rousseauâs Second Discourse) or as a natural passion (in Mandevilleâs The Fable of the Bees). The war of fables between Rousseau and Mandeville â and their hostile reception by Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith â reinforce that the animal-fable illustrates not so much the proper of man as the possibilities and limitations of a moral philosophy that is unable to address the political realities of the state
- âŠ