Exploring Approaches to Data Literacy Through a Critical Race Theory Perspective

In this paper, we describe and analyze a workshop developed for a work training program called DataWorks. In thisworkshop, data workers chose a topic of their interest, sourced and processed data on that topic, and used that data to createpresentations. Drawing from discourses of data literacy; epistemic agency and lived experience; and critical race theory, we analyze the workshops’ activities and outcomes. Through this analysis, three themes emerge: the tensions between epistemic agency and the context of work, encountering the ordinariness of racism through data work, and understanding the personal as communal and intersectional. Finally, critical race theory also prompts us to consider the very notions of data literacy that undergird our workshop activities. From this analysis, we offer a series of suggestions for approaching designing data literacy activities, taking into account critical race theory

A novel mode of capping protein-regulation by Twinfilin

Cellular actin assembly is controlled at the barbed ends of actin filaments, where capping protein (CP) limits polymerization. Twinfilin is a conserved in vivo binding partner of CP, yet the significance of this interaction has remained a mystery. Here, we discover that the C-terminal tail of Twinfilin harbors a CP-interacting (CPI) motif, identifying it as a novel CPI-motif protein. Twinfilin and the CPI-motif protein CARMIL have overlapping binding sites on CP. Further, Twinfilin binds competitively with CARMIL to CP, protecting CP from barbed-end displacement by CARMIL. Twinfilin also accelerates dissociation of the CP inhibitor V-1, restoring CP to an active capping state. Knockdowns of Twinfilin and CP each cause similar defects in cell morphology, and elevated Twinfilin expression rescues defects caused by CARMIL hyperactivity. Together, these observations define Twinfilin as the first \u27pro-capping\u27 ligand of CP and lead us to propose important revisions to our understanding of the CP regulatory cycle

Bringing Black Feminist's Thoughts, Self-Definitions, and Creative Agency to Digital Media and Technology Design

Users from marginalized groups are often faced with the challenges that result from a lack of diverse thought in the design and implementation of media and technologies that we engage in our daily lives. It is these artifacts that result in the harm, erasure, and hyper-surveillance of Black and Brown people. We seek to disrupt problematic narratives present in tech and design fields by (re)inserting Black Feminism and leveraging our personal experiences to build on design methods. Though research centered on the importance of women’s experiences and standpoints in tech practice is crucial, feminist scholarship has not always reflected the values and the liberation of women who are not white. This paper uses personal narrative to argue for the value of Black feminist thought and methods in the sub-disciplines of computing, such as digital media, human computer interaction (HCI) and human-centered computing (HCC)

UNBOUND

Featured here, are the extraordinary works of our graduating Fashion Design class. This accomplishment is truly a celebration of the tree years of passion, hard work, and dedication of our students. It\u27s our hope that the fashion industry will partake in the creative endeavors of the emerging designers from the Fashion Design program at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.https://first.fanshawec.ca/famd_design_fashiondesign_unbound/1002/thumbnail.jp

African-specific alleles modify risk for asthma at the 17q12-q21 locus in African Americans

BACKGROUND: Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children, occurring at higher frequencies and with more severe disease in children with African ancestry. METHODS: We tested for association with haplotypes at the most replicated and significant childhood-onset asthma locus at 17q12-q21 and asthma in European American and African American children. Following this, we used whole-genome sequencing data from 1060 African American and 100 European American individuals to identify novel variants on a high-risk African American-specific haplotype. We characterized these variants in silico using gene expression and ATAC-seq data from airway epithelial cells, functional annotations from ENCODE, and promoter capture (pc)Hi-C maps in airway epithelial cells. Candidate causal variants were then assessed for correlation with asthma-associated phenotypes in African American children and adults. RESULTS: Our studies revealed nine novel African-specific common variants, enriched on a high-risk asthma haplotype, which regulated the expression of GSDMA in airway epithelial cells and were associated with features of severe asthma. Using ENCODE annotations, ATAC-seq, and pcHi-C, we narrowed the associations to two candidate causal variants that are associated with features of T2 low severe asthma. CONCLUSIONS: Previously unknown genetic variation at the 17q12-21 childhood-onset asthma locus contributes to asthma severity in individuals with African ancestries. We suggest that many other population-specific variants that have not been discovered in GWAS contribute to the genetic risk for asthma and other common diseases

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Severe early onset preeclampsia: short and long term clinical, psychosocial and biochemical aspects

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy specific disorder commonly defined as de novo hypertension and proteinuria after 20 weeks gestational age. It occurs in approximately 3-5% of pregnancies and it is still a major cause of both foetal and maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide1. As extensive research has not yet elucidated the aetiology of preeclampsia, there are no rational preventive or therapeutic interventions available. The only rational treatment is delivery, which benefits the mother but is not in the interest of the foetus, if remote from term. Early onset preeclampsia (<32 weeks’ gestational age) occurs in less than 1% of pregnancies. It is, however often associated with maternal morbidity as the risk of progression to severe maternal disease is inversely related with gestational age at onset2. Resulting prematurity is therefore the main cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity in patients with severe preeclampsia3. Although the discussion is ongoing, perinatal survival is suggested to be increased in patients with preterm preeclampsia by expectant, non-interventional management. This temporising treatment option to lengthen pregnancy includes the use of antihypertensive medication to control hypertension, magnesium sulphate to prevent eclampsia and corticosteroids to enhance foetal lung maturity4. With optimal maternal haemodynamic status and reassuring foetal condition this results on average in an extension of 2 weeks. Prolongation of these pregnancies is a great challenge for clinicians to balance between potential maternal risks on one the eve hand and possible foetal benefits on the other. Clinical controversies regarding prolongation of preterm preeclamptic pregnancies still exist – also taking into account that preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the Netherlands5 - a debate which is even more pronounced in very preterm pregnancies with questionable foetal viability6-9. Do maternal risks of prolongation of these very early pregnancies outweigh the chances of neonatal survival? Counselling of women with very early onset preeclampsia not only comprises of knowledge of the outcome of those particular pregnancies, but also knowledge of outcomes of future pregnancies of these women is of major clinical importance. This thesis opens with a review of the literature on identifiable risk factors of preeclampsia

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21