I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy: new approaches to slash fiction

This thesis uses slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural to suggest two new slash typologies. While existing frameworks — romantopia (concerned with sex) and intimatopia (concerned with intimacy) — are useful, I argue that many slash stories fall outside the scope of these two terms into two newly proposed categories: paratopia and monstropia. Paratopic slash is centrally concerned with psychological change or geographical repositioning and realises, like romantopia and intimatopia, potentials of homosocial desire. Monstropic slash is centrally concerned with perversity and realises potentials of homosexual panic; it is a genre of slash fiction until now unexplored by slash scholarship. To illustrate these frameworks I discuss Supernatural slash stories in detail. Supernatural was chosen to illustrate both paratopia and monstropia because it is arguably a text that promotes homosexual panic as much as it does homosocial desire. I also argue that Supernatural slash, which would ordinarily be classified as romantopic or intimatopic, is paratopic due to the changes necessary to negotiate the characters’ homophobia and authentically present them in either sexual or intimate love. In conclusion, I argue that paratopia and monstropia are useful frameworks for understanding the ‘other worlds’ that slash inhabits — worlds beyond the reach of ‘topias’ romantopia and intimatopia

MARKET STRUCTURE AND INNOVATION INTENSITY IN AGRICULTURAL BIOTECH

Consolidations and spin-offs in the agricultural biotechnology industry and the growing links of multinational corporations with the food and feed industry have been the subject of considerable discussion among academics, policy makers, consumers, and farmers. Most of the research by academic and overnment institutions has focused on the reasons for consolidation. Little theoretical or empirical research has examined the impact of this consolidation. We adapt an endogenous growth model of industry structure and R&D to agricultural biotechnology and empirically estimate the model. These empirical estimates, the main focus of the paper, indicate that industry consolidation influences the amount and direction of research, which then feeds back to influence industry structure.Agribusiness, Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Crowdsourcing Image Extraction and Annotation: Software Development and Case Study

We describe the development of web-based software that facilitates large-scale, crowdsourced image extraction and annotation within image-heavy corpora that are of interest to the digital humanities. An application of this software is then detailed and evaluated through a case study where it was deployed within Amazon Mechanical Turk to extract and annotate faces from the archives of Time magazine. Annotation labels included categories such as age, gender, and race that were subsequently used to train machine learning models. The systemization of our crowdsourced data collection and worker quality verification procedures are detailed within this case study. We outline a data verification methodology that used validation images and required only two annotations per image to produce high-fidelity data that has comparable results to methods using five annotations per image. Finally, we provide instructions for customizing our software to meet the needs for other studies, with the goal of offering this resource to researchers undertaking the analysis of objects within other image-heavy archives

Polarimetric airborne scientific instrument, mark 2, an ice‐sounding airborne synthetic aperture radar for subglacial 3D imagery

Polarimetric Airborne Scientific INstrument, mark 2 (PASIN2) is a 150 MHz coherent pulsed radar with the purpose of deep ice sounding for bedrock, subglacial channels and ice‐water interface detection in Antarctica. It is designed and operated by the British Antarctic Survey from 2014. With multiple antennas, oriented along and across‐track, for transmission and reception, it enables polarimetric 3D estimation of the ice base with a single pass, reducing the gridding density of the survey paths. The off‐line data processing stream consists of channel calibration; 2D synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging based on back‐projection, for along‐track and range dimensions; and finally, a direction of arrival estimation (DoA) of the remaining across‐track angle, by modifying the non‐linear MUSIC algorithm. Calibration flights, during the Antarctic Summer campaigns in 16/17 and 19/20 seasons, assessed and validated the instrument and processing performances. Imaging flights over ice streams and ice shelves close to grounding lines demonstrate the 3D sensing capabilities. By resolving directional ambiguities and accounting for reflector across‐track location, the true ice thickness and bed elevation are obtained, thereby removing the error of the usual assumption of vertical DoA, that greatly influence the output of flow models of ice dynamics

Polarimetric airborne scientific instrument, mark 2, an ice‐sounding airborne synthetic aperture radar for subglacial 3D imagery

Polarimetric Airborne Scientific INstrument, mark 2 (PASIN2) is a 150 MHz coherent pulsed radar with the purpose of deep ice sounding for bedrock, subglacial channels and ice-water interface detection in Antarctica. It is designed and operated by the British Antarctic Survey from 2014. With multiple antennas, oriented along and across-track, for transmission and reception, it enables polarimetric 3D estimation of the ice base with a single pass, reducing the gridding density of the survey paths. The off-line data processing stream consists of channel calibration; 2D synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging based on back-projection, for along-track and range dimensions; and finally, a direction of arrival estimation (DoA) of the remaining across-track angle, by modifying the non-linear MUSIC algorithm. Calibration flights, during the Antarctic Summer campaigns in 16/17 and 19/20 seasons, assessed and validated the instrument and processing performances. Imaging flights over ice streams and ice shelves close to grounding lines demonstrate the 3D sensing capabilities. By resolving directional ambiguities and accounting for reflector across-track location, the true ice thickness and bed elevation are obtained, thereby removing the error of the usual assumption of vertical DoA, that greatly influence the output of flow models of ice dynamics

Prevalence of occupational moral injury and post-traumatic embitterment disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

ObjectivesOccupational moral injury and post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED) describe the psychological distress caused by exposure to injustice at work. This meta-analysis aims to determine the prevalence of occupational moral injury and PTED and establish whether prevalence estimates differ depending on occupation.DesignA systematic review and meta-analysis.Data sourcesGoogle Scholar, PubMed, APA PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, ScienceDirect and Sage Journals Online were searched in June 2020 and updated in November 2022.Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesObservational studies that measured prevalence or average scores of moral injury, or PTED in any occupational group and any geographical location.Data extraction and synthesisTwo independent reviewers screened and coded eligible studies. Study design, participant demographics, sampling method, location, measurement tool and prevalence or average scores were extracted. Risk of bias was assessed using the Quality Assessment Checklist for Prevalence Studies tool. Meta-analysis was conducted using random effects models. Results that could not be combined were summarised qualitatively in a narrative synthesis using the Guidance for Systematic Reviews.ResultsIn total, 88 studies across armed forces and veterans, healthcare, first responders, educators, journalists, child protection service employees, the unemployed, public-sector employees and mixed occupations were included. Studies included in each separate meta-analysis based on the measure used ranged from 2 to 30. The pooled prevalence of clinically relevant moral injury in healthcare professionals was 45%, and exposure to any potentially morally injurious event (PMIE) across occupations was 67%. Exposure to transgressions by others and betrayal was significantly lower in the armed forces than civilian occupations. Pooled prevalence of PTED across occupations was 26%.ConclusionExposure to PMIEs, moral injury symptoms and PTED are prevalent at work and exposure to transgressions by others and betrayal are more likely in civilian occupations than the armed forces.Prospero registration numberCRD42020191766

SOX11 expression correlates to promoter methylation and regulates tumor growth in hematopoietic malignancies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The transcription factor SOX11 plays an important role in embryonic development of the central nervous system (CNS) and is expressed in the adult immature neuron but is normally not expressed in any other adult tissue. It has recently been reported to be implicated in various malignant neoplasms, including several lymphoproliferative diseases, by its specific expression and in some cases correlation to prognosis. SOX11 has been shown to prevent gliomagenesis <it>in vivo </it>but the causes and consequences of aberrant expression of <it>SOX11 </it>outside the CNS remain unexplained.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We now show the first function of <it>SOX11 </it>in lymphoproliferative diseases, by demonstrating <it>in vitro </it>its direct involvement in growth regulation, as assessed by siRNA-mediated silencing and ectopic overexpression in hematopoietic malignancies. Gene Chip analysis identified cell cycle regulatory pathways, including Rb-E2F, to be associated with SOX11-induced growth reduction. Furthermore, promoter analysis revealed that <it>SOX11 </it>is silenced through DNA methylation in B cell lymphomas, suggesting that its regulation is epigenetically controlled.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The data show that SOX11 is not a bystander but an active and central regulator of cellular growth, as both siRNA-mediated knock-down and ectopic overexpression of <it>SOX11 </it>resulted in altered proliferation. Thus, these data demonstrate a tumor suppressor function for <it>SOX11 </it>in hematopoietic malignancies and revealed a potential epigenetic regulation of this developmentally involved gene.</p

Reviews

C.S. Lewis, Poetry, and the Great War 1914-1918. John Bremer. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher. Collected Poems. Hope Mirrlees. Ed. and intro. Sandeep Parmar. Reviewed by Nicholas Birns. Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers. William Gray. Reviewed by Scott McLaren. C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages. Robert Boenig. Reviewed by Holly Ordway. Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations. Edited by Lynnette Porter. Reviewed by Janet Brennan Croft. Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development. Sandra J. Lindow. Reviewed by Carl Badgley. Hobbit Place-names: A Linguistic Excursion Through the Shire. Rainer Nagel. Reviewed by Troels Forchhammer. The Broken Scythe: Death and Immortality in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Roberto Arduini and Claudio A. Testi. Reviewed by Harley J. Sims. The Hobbit Tarot. Terry Donaldson (author of guide pamphlet) and Peter Pracownik (artist). Reviewed by Emily A Auger. The Lord of the Rings Tarot Deck and Card Game. Terry Donaldson (author of guidebook), Peter Pracownik (artist), and Mike Fitzgerald (game rules). Reviewed by Emily A Auger. J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter. Edited by Cynthia J. Hallett and Peggy J. Huey. Reviewed by Janet Brennan Croft

iCOP:live forensics to reveal previously unknown criminal media on P2P networks

The increasing levels of criminal media being shared in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks pose a significant challenge to law enforcement agencies. One of the main priorities for P2P investigators is to identify cases where a user is actively engaged in the production of child sexual abuse (CSA) media – they can be indicators of recent or on-going child abuse. Although a number of P2P monitoring tools exist to detect paedophile activity in such networks, they typically rely on hash value databases of known CSA media. As a result, these tools are not able to adequately triage the thousands of results they retrieve, nor can they identify new child abuse media that are being released on to a network. In this paper, we present a new intelligent forensics approach that incorporates the advantages of artificial intelligence and machine learning theory to automatically flag new/previously unseen CSA media to investigators. Additionally, the research was extensively discussed with law enforcement cybercrime specialists from different European countries and Interpol. The approach has been implemented into the iCOP toolkit, a software package that is designed to perform live forensic analysis on a P2P network environment. In addition, the system offers secondary features, such as showing on-line sharers of known CSA files and the ability to see other files shared by the same GUID or other IP addresses used by the same P2P client. Finally, our evaluation on real CSA case data shows high degrees of accuracy, while hands-on trials with law enforcement officers demonstrate the toolkit’s complementarity to extant investigative workflows