Contextualizing Native Resistance: Precedents for the Movement Against the Dakota Access Pipeline

In 2016, news of the Standing Rock resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline swept through the social media sphere. Although many young people had never seen anything like it, this article shows that the “water protectors” are part of a long tradition of Indigenous resistance on the North American plains

Inclusivity in Public Space: Architecture and the Disabled Body

People with disabilities are living in a world that simply was not built for them and it creates a lot of unnecessary struggle and bias because of that. Public spaces are especially discriminatory towards the disabled body, and yet the public world as it exists today is also more and more discriminatory towards every single one of our bodies because of reductive design strategies that place more emphasis on evolving technology such as cars over our bodily experience of design and space. The only way we can interact with the world is through our bodies. Our bodies move us through space and create meaningful interactions and moments with one another and the world around us. For these reasons, this project explores how our ability to engage with public space is entirely dependent on our bodily imagination, and how the experiences we have depend on the engagement of the body and space, the uniqueness of our bodies, and various scales of interaction. To explore these levels of involvement, I propose the design of a library situated in an area known for activism related to ableism. The various scales of the design explore inclusivity as a means of connection and meaningful exchange that allows for active participation within public spaces, in the space of reading, and in a ?human library? wherein people can engage with one another?s stories

Rethinking Security of Web-Based System Applications

Many modern desktop and mobile platforms, including Ubuntu, Google Chrome, Windows, and Firefox OS, support so called Web-based system applications that run outside the Web browser and enjoy direct access to native objects such as files, camera, and ge-olocation. We show that the access-control models of these plat-forms are (a) incompatible and (b) prone to unintended delega-tion of native-access rights: when applications request native ac-cess for their own code, they unintentionally enable it for untrusted third-party code, too. This enables malicious ads and other third-party content to steal users ’ OAuth authentication credentials, ac-cess camera on their devices, etc. We then design, implement, and evaluate POWERGATE, a new access-control mechanism for Web-based system applications. It solves two key problems plaguing all existing platforms: security and consistency. First, unlike the existing platforms, POWERGATE correctly protects native objects from unauthorized access. Second, POWERGATE provides uniform access-control semantics across all platforms and is 100 % backward compatible. POWERGATE en-ables application developers to write well-defined native-object ac-cess policies with explicit principals such as “application’s own lo-cal code ” and “third-party Web code, ” is easy to configure, and incurs negligible performance overhead

Whether weather matters: Evidence of association between in utero meteorological exposures and foetal growth among Indigenous and non-Indigenous mothers in rural Uganda

Pregnancy and birth outcomes have been found to be sensitive to meteorological variation, yet few studies explore this relationship in sub-Saharan Africa where infant mortality rates are the highest in the world. We address this research gap by examining the association between meteorological factors and birth weight in a rural population in southwestern Uganda. Our study included hospital birth records (n = 3197) from 2012 to 2015, for which we extracted meteorological exposure data for the three trimesters preceding each birth. We used linear regression, controlling for key covariates, to estimate the timing, strength, and direction of meteorological effects on birth weight. Our results indicated that precipitation during the third trimester had a positive association with birth weight, with more frequent days of precipitation associated with higher birth weight: we observed a 3.1g (95% CI: 1.0–5.3g) increase in birth weight per additional day of exposure to rainfall over 5mm. Increases in average daily temperature during the third trimester were also associated with birth weight, with an increase of 41.8g (95% CI: 0.6–82.9g) per additional degree Celsius. When the sample was stratified by season of birth, only infants born between June and November experienced a significant associated between meteorological exposures and birth weight. The association of meteorological variation with foetal growth seemed to differ by ethnicity; effect sizes of meteorological were greater among an Indigenous subset of the population, in particular for variation in temperature. Effects in all populations in this study are higher than estimates of the African continental average, highlighting the heterogeneity in the vulnerability of infant health to meteorological variation in different contexts. Our results indicate that while there is an association between meteorological variation and birth weight, the magnitude of these associations may vary across ethnic groups with differential socioeconomic resources, with implications for interventions to reduce these gradients and offset the health impacts predicted under climate change

Genetic and Anatomic Determinants of Enzootic Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus Infection of Culex (Melanoconion) taeniopus

Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) is a re-emerging, mosquito-borne viral disease with the potential to cause fatal encephalitis in both humans and equids. Recently, detection of endemic VEE caused by enzootic strains has escalated in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador, emphasizing the importance of understanding the enzootic transmission cycle of the etiologic agent, VEE virus (VEEV). The majority of work examining the viral determinants of vector infection has been performed in the epizootic mosquito vector, Aedes (Ochlerotatus) taeniorhynchus. Based on the fundamental differences between the epizootic and enzootic cycles, we hypothesized that the virus-vector interaction of the enzootic cycle is fundamentally different from that of the epizootic model. We therefore examined the determinants for VEEV IE infection in the enzootic vector, Culex (Melanoconion) taeniopus, and determined the number and susceptibility of midgut epithelial cells initially infected and their distribution compared to the epizootic virus-vector interaction. Using chimeric viruses, we demonstrated that the determinants of infection for the enzootic vector are different than those observed for the epizootic vector. Similarly, we showed that, unlike A. taeniorhynchus infection with subtype IC VEEV, C. taeniopus does not have a limited subpopulation of midgut cells susceptible to subtype IE VEEV. These findings support the hypothesis that the enzootic VEEV relationship with C. taeniopus differs from the epizootic virus-vector interaction in that the determinants appear to be found in both the nonstructural and structural regions, and initial midgut infection is not limited to a small population of susceptible cells

Normal values for pelvic organ descent in health nulligravid young caucasian women

Translabial ultrasound is increasingly being used for the assessment of women presenting with pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence (1,2). However, there is little information on normal values for bladder neck descent, with the two available studies disagreeing widely (3,4). No data has so far been published on mobility of the central and posterior compartment which can now also be assessed by ultrasound (5). This study presents normal values for urethral, bladder, cervical and rectal mobility in a cohort of young, stress continent, nulliparous nonpregnant women. Methods 118 nonpregnant nulliparous Caucasian women between 18 and 23 years of age were recruited for an ongoing twin study of pelvic floor function. Translabial ultrasound assessment of pelvic organ mobility was undertaken supine and after bladder emptying (6,7). The best of at least three effective Valsalva manoeuvres was used for evaluation, with no attempts at standardization of Valsalva pressure. Parameters of anterior compartment mobility were obtained by the use of on-screen calipers; cervical and rectal descent were evaluated on printouts. All examinations were carried out under direct supervision of the first author or by personnel trained by him for at least 100 consecutive assessments. Results The median age of participants in this study was 20 (range 18- 23). Mean body mass index was 23 (range 16.9- 36.7). Of 118 women, 2 were completely unable to perform a Valsalva manoeuvre despite repeated efforts at teaching and were excluded from analysis, as were ten women who complained of urinary stress incontinence, leaving 106 datasets. Average measurements for the parameters ‘retrovesical angle at rest’ (RVA-R) and on Valsalva (RVA-S), urethral rotation, bladder neck mobility, cysto-cele descent, cervical descent and descent of the rectal ampulla are given in Table 1