Their Clothes Spoke Louder Than Their Words: How Three Founding Fathers Used Clothes to Convey Their Patriotism

explores another aspect of the founders' fight for American liberty – their clothing choices. Showing how their national pride permeated even seemingly trivial aspects of the founders' lives, Ms. Rosenthal's work frames the American Revolution as not only a plight for independence, but the process of inventing a uniquely American national identity.Two hundred and thirty-six years after the Declaration of Independence, Americans remain fascinated by the country's founding generation, and the enterprising spirit that motivated them to forge the new nation. History senior Kristina Rosenthal'sAmericans remain fascinated by the country's founding generationundergraduat

Toward a Taxonomy of Modeling Difficulties: A Multi-Modal Study on Individual Modeling Processes

Conceptual modeling is an essential activity during information systems development and, accordingly, a learning task faced by students of Information Systems. Presently, surprisingly little is known about how learning processes of conceptual modeling proceed, and about modeling difficulties learners experience. In this study, we integrate complementary modes of observation of learners\u27 modeling processes to identify modeling difficulties these learners face while performing a data modeling task using a modeling tool. We use the concept of cognitive breakdowns to analyze verbal protocols, recordings of learner-tool interactions and video recordings of learners\u27 modeling processes and survey learners about modeling difficulties. Our study identifies five types of modeling difficulties relating to different aspects of constructing conceptual data models, i.e., entity types, relationship types, attributes, and cardinalities. The identified types of modeling difficulties motivate a taxonomic theory of modeling difficulties intended to inform design science research on tool support for learners of conceptual modeling

Modeling styles in conceptual data modeling: Reflecting observations in a series of multimodal studies

A modeling style characterizes a modeler’s sequencing of processing a modeling task in terms of applying the modeling language and its language concepts while constructing a conceptual model. Presently, surprisingly little is known about the different modeling styles modelers exhibit when performing conceptual data modeling. In this research, we combine complementary modes of observation including audio-visual protocols, recorded modeler-tool interactions, and pre-/post-modeling surveys of modelers to identify modeling styles in 24 data modeling processes performed by modelers at different stages of experience in data modeling. Our study identifies and characterizes three distinct modeling styles refining our current knowledge about data modeling processes and informing design science research on style-specific, targeted modeling (software tool) support for data modelers

Business Process Simulation: A Systematic Literature Review

Business process simulation marks an essential Business Process Management technique for analysing business processes and for reasoning about process improvement. Despite its importance, literature is lacking a comprehensive, updated overview of research contributions to the field of business process simulation. In this systematic literature review, we assess the present state of research on business process simulation including prior work between 1990 and 2016. Results reported in the present study assist in advancing the discussion on future research on business process simulation by compiling and analysing prior work. The present literature review focuses on prior research involving conceptual business process models, e.g., BPMN models, with a graphical model representation as a starting point for business process simulation and excludes other foundations to build simulation models

A browser-based modeling tool for studying the learning of conceptual modeling based on a multi-modal data collection approach

How do we learn conceptual modeling? What are common learning difficulties? Which tool support assists learners in what respect? The paper at hand reports on the design and development of a browser-based modeling tool integrated with a learning observatory in support of learning conceptual modeling and of studying the learning of conceptual modeling. Implementing a multimodal data collection approach, the learning observatory tracks learner-tool interactions, records verbal data from learners and surveys learners about their learning processes to provide for analyses at the individual and aggregate learner levels in the quest for identifying patterns of learning processes, learning barriers and difficulties. We report on the current state of prototype development, discuss its software architecture and outline future development steps

Intra-urban vulnerability to heat-related mortality in New York City, 1997–2006

AbstractThe health impacts of exposure to summertime heat are a significant problem in New York City (NYC) and for many cities and are expected to increase with a warming climate. Most studies on heat-related mortality have examined risk factors at the municipal or regional scale and may have missed the intra-urban variation of vulnerability that might inform prevention strategies. We evaluated whether place-based characteristics (socioeconomic/demographic and health factors, as well as the built and biophysical environment) may be associated with greater risk of heat-related mortality for seniors during heat events in NYC. As a measure of relative vulnerability to heat, we used the natural cause mortality rate ratio among those aged 65 and over (MRR65+), comparing extremely hot days (maximum heat index 100°F+) to all warm season days, across 1997–2006 for NYC’s 59 Community Districts and 42 United Hospital Fund neighborhoods. Significant positive associations were found between the MRR65+ and neighborhood-level characteristics: poverty, poor housing conditions, lower rates of access to air-conditioning, impervious land cover, surface temperatures aggregated to the area-level, and seniors’ hypertension. Percent Black/African American and household poverty were strong negative predictors of seniors’ air conditioning access in multivariate regression analysis

Tactical release of a sexually-selected pheromone in a swordtail fish

© The Authors, 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 6 (2011): e16994, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016994.Chemical communication plays a critical role in sexual selection and speciation in fishes; however, it is generally assumed that most fish pheromones are passively released since most fishes lack specialized scent glands or scent-marking behavior. Swordtails (genus Xiphophorus) are widely used in studies of female mate choice, and female response to male chemical cues is important to sexual selection, reproductive isolation, and hybridization. However, it is unclear whether females are attending to passively produced cues, or to pheromones produced in the context of communication. We used fluorescein dye injections to visualize pulsed urine release in male sheepshead swordtails, Xiphophorus birchmanni. Simultaneous-choice assays of mating preference showed that females attend to species- and sex-specific chemical cues emitted in male urine. Males urinated more frequently in the presence and proximity of an audience (conspecific females). In the wild, males preferentially courted upstream of females, facilitating transmission of pheromone cues. Males in a teleost fish have evolved sophisticated temporal and spatial control of pheromone release, comparable to that found in terrestrial animals. Pheromones are released specifically in a communicative context, and the timing and positioning of release favors efficient signal transmission.This work was funded by the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov), IOB-0447665

Plasma cell-free DNA methylation analysis for ovarian cancer detection: Analysis of samples from a case-control study and an ovarian cancer screening tria

Analysis of cell-free DNA methylation (cfDNAme), alone or combined with CA125, could help to detect ovarian cancers earlier and may reduce mortality. We assessed cfDNAme in regions of ZNF154, C2CD4D and WNT6 via targeted bisulfite sequencing in diagnostic and early detection (preceding diagnosis) settings. Diagnostic samples were obtained via prospective blood collection in cell-free DNA tubes in a convenience series of patients with a pelvic mass. Early detection samples were matched case-control samples derived from the UK Familial Ovarian Cancer Screening Study (UKFOCSS). In the diagnostic set (ncases  = 27, ncontrols  = 41), the specificity of cfDNAme was 97.6% (95% CI: 87.1%-99.9%). High-risk cancers were detected with a sensitivity of 80% (56.3%-94.3%). Combination of cfDNAme and CA125 resulted in a sensitivity of 94.4% (72.7%-99.9%) for high-risk cancers. Despite technical issues in the early detection set (ncases  = 29, ncontrols  = 29), the specificity of cfDNAme was 100% (88.1%-100.0%). We detected 27.3% (6.0%-61.0%) of high-risk cases with relatively lower genomic DNA (gDNA) contamination. The sensitivity rose to 33.3% (7.5%-70.1%) in samples taken <1 year before diagnosis. We detected ovarian cancer in several patients up to 1 year before diagnosis despite technical limitations associated with archival samples (UKFOCSS). Combined cfDNAme and CA125 assessment may improve ovarian cancer screening in high-risk populations, but future large-scale prospective studies will be required to validate current findings

Prevalence of PCR Detectable Malaria Infection among Febrile Patients with a Negative Plasmodium falciparum Specific Rapid Diagnostic Test in Zanzibar

We screened for malaria in 594 blood samples from febrile patients who tested negative by a Plasmodium falciparum-specific histidine-rich protein-2-based rapid diagnostic test at 12 health facilities in Zanzibar districts North A and Micheweni, from May to August 2010. Screening was with microscopy, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting the cytochrome b gene (cytbPCR) of the four major human malaria species, and quantitative PCR (qPCR). The prevalence of cytbPCR-detectable malaria infection was 2% (12 of 594), including 8 P. falciparum, 3 Plasmodium malariae, and 1 Plasmodium vivax infections. Microscopy identified 4 of 8 P. falciparum infections. Parasite density as estimated by microscopy or qPCR was > 4,000 parasites/μL in 5 of 8 cytbPCR-detectable P. falciparum infections. The infections that were missed by the rapid diagnostic test represent a particular challenge in malaria elimination settings and highlight the need for more sensitive point-of-care diagnostic tools to improve case detection of all human malaria species in febrile patients