Final Report of the Indiana University Cyberinfrastructure Research Taskforce

The Cyberinfrastructure Research Taskforce met during the 2004-05 academic year to consider Indiana University’s (IU) needs for shared cyberinfrastructure investments. In particular, the charge to the taskforce asked scholars to focus on needs that could help support a doubling of IU’s externally funded research by 2010-2011. This report to the IU Vice President for Research & Information Technology conveys 10 specific recommendations. It recognizes both current progress in cyberinfrastructure development while also proposing new directions for cyberinfrastructure needs and opportunities. In summary, the recommendations affirm a continuity of investment in the core IT infrastructure that is the foundation for advanced cyberinfrastructure. Developing deep capabilities for serving the complete research data lifecycle emerged as a clear and pervasive theme across many disciplines. The recommendations provide guidance for storage capacity; data movement across networks; collection, annotation and provenance; and data publishing, curation, and custodianship. The taskforce advocated “continuing without pause” renewed investment in IU’s High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and visualization facilities and strongly advocated HPC as a competitive necessity for data-intensive scholarship. Beyond the technology investments, the taskforce gave considerable analysis to scholars’ needs in making productive use of cyberinfrastructure. The taskforce recommends investments in an array of subsidized and chargeback consulting services, complexity-hiding interfaces, and training programs that each are discipline-facing in their orientation rather than a homogenized one-size-fits-all. Finally, developing and sustaining advanced cyberinfrastructure will be impossible with only university sources of funding. The taskforce strongly advocates aggressive partnerships and leadership at the state, national, and international levels to compete for all forms of external funding to continue incremental evolution of IU’s cyberinfrastructure. The report itself provides many more details beyond these recommendations. Diverse scholarly endeavors are evolving their use of cyberinfrastructure in different ways. Nevertheless, the themes and specific recommendations presented here represent a resounding consensus view across these disciplines for the shared cyberinfrastructure needs of IU’s scholars

Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF): Indiana-Purdue Grid (IP-Grid)

NSF Award ID: ACI-0338618 Project Dates: 10/1/03-9/30/0

Call Me Caitlyn: Making and making over the 'authentic' transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this 'wrong body' paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain

The effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine versus varenicline for smoking cessation in an Australian population: a study protocol for a randomized controlled non-inferiority trial

Smoking cessation medications are effective but often underutilised because of costs and side effects. Cytisine is a plant-based smoking cessation medication with over 50 years of use in Central and Eastern Europe. While cytisine has been found to be well-tolerated and more effective than nicotine replacement therapy, direct comparison with varenicline have not been conducted. This study evaluates the effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine compared with varenicline.Two arm, parallel group, randomised, non-inferiority trial, with allocation concealment and blinded outcome assessment.Australian population-based study.Adult daily smokers (N=1266) interested in quitting will be recruited through advertisements and Quitline telephone-based cessation support services.Eligible participants will be randomised (1:1 ratio) to receive either cytisine capsules (25-day supply) or varenicline tablets (12-week supply), prescribed in accordance with the manufacturer's recommended dosing regimen. The medication will be mailed to each participant's nominated residential address. All participants will also be offered standard Quitline behavioural support (up to six 10-12 minute sessions).Assessments will be undertaken by telephone at baseline, 4- and 7-months post-randomisation. Participants will also be contacted twice (two and four weeks post-randomisation) to ascertain adverse events, treatment adherence and smoking status. The primary outcome will be self-reported 6-month continuous abstinence from smoking, verified by carbon monoxide at 7-month follow-up. We will also evaluate the relative safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine compared with varenicline. Secondary outcomes will include self-reported continuous and 7-day point prevalence abstinence and cigarette consumption at each follow-up interview.If cytisine is as effective as varenicline, its lower cost and natural plant-based composition may make it an acceptable and affordable smoking cessation medication that could save millions of lives worldwide

"My husband, my hero": selling the political spouses in the 2010 general election.

In spite of a record number of female parliamentary candidates, the 2010 general election campaign became notable for the intensity of coverage given to the female spouses of the three main party leaders. We find that this resulted from a combination of party communication strategy, established media discourses, and the agency and visibility of the wives themselves. First, Labour and the Conservatives were the most prominent in integrating their leaders’ wives into their campaigns, often to counter the less marketable qualities of the leaders themselves. Second, while mainstream media outlets—particularly newspapers—sought to cover all three women, they did so drawing upon established gender-based conventions, focussing on the wives’ physical appearance and apparent dedication to their husbands. Third, while the wife of the Liberal Democrat leader opted for limited and strategic contact with media, the wives of the Conservative and Labour leaders exploited a range of new media platforms, combining official party websites, personal blogs, and webcasts. We argue that any assessment of the role of the spouses of party leaders has to look at media-driven priorities only alongside the various strategies open to parties and individuals in managing media activities. We also suggest that there is room to use the coverage of leaders’ spouses to explore the development, limits, and gender politics of any shift toward presidentialism

Smoking and vaping patterns during pregnancy and the postpartum: a longitudinal UK cohort survey

Introduction: There is limited information about longitudinal patterns of vaping during pregnancy and the postpartum. We describe the prevalence, frequency, and reasons for vaping throughout pregnancy and postpartum. We also describe temporal patterns in pregnant women’s vaping. Methods: A longitudinal cohort study across England and Scotland, with questionnaires in early pregnancy (8-24 weeks gestation), late pregnancy (34-38 weeks) and 3 months postpartum. A total of 750 women, aged 16 years or over, who were either current smokers, vapers or had smoked in the 3 months before pregnancy, were recruited between June and November 2017. Results: Vaping prevalence was 15.9% (n=119/750) in early pregnancy: 12.4% (n=93/750) were dual users and 3.5% (n=26/750) exclusive vapers. Late pregnancy vaping prevalence was 17.8% (n=68/383): 12.5% (n=48/383) were dual users and 5.2% (n=20/383) exclusive vapers. Postpartum vaping prevalence was 23.1% (n=95/411): 14.6% (n=60/411) were dual users and 8.5% (n=35/411) exclusive vapers. The most frequently reported reason to vape among all vapers was to quit smoking. A total of 316 women completed all three surveys: 2.6% (n=8/316) were exclusive vapers in early pregnancy with most remaining exclusive vapers postpartum (n=6/8, 75%). Of the 11.5% (n=35/316) dual users in early pregnancy, 31.4% (n=11/35) were exclusive smokers by the postpartum. Conclusion: Vaping prevalence was between 15.9% and 23.1% during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and the majority were dual users. Vaping habits of exclusive vapers remains stable throughout pregnancy and the postpartum. However, the vaping habits of dual users varies, with a third exclusively smoking in the postpartum