Respected science writer Rebecca Skloot unearths the story of the African American woman from Baltimore, Maryland, whose virulent strain of cervical cancer cells were harvested and grown for medical research. Black history, health disparities, and bench science converge in this entertaining, sociopolitical, anthropological account that relates how one poor African American woman changed the field of cancer research, and nobody knew it for 60 years.
This tutorial gives a basic introduction to use of the Maxent program for maximum entropy modelling of species’ geographic distributions, written by Steven Phillips, Miro Dudik, and Rob Schapire, with support from AT&T Labs-Research, Princeton University, and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History.
Muhammed Adil Yatkin, Mihkel Korgesaar, Jani Romanoff
et al.
Current neural network (NN) models can learn patterns from data points with historical dependence. Specifically, in natural language processing (NLP), sequential learning has transitioned from recurrence-based architectures to transformer-based architectures. However, it is unknown which NN architectures will perform the best on datasets containing deformation history due to mechanical loading. Thus, this study ascertains the appropriateness of 1D-convolutional, recurrent, and transformer-based architectures for predicting deformation localization based on the earlier states in the form of deformation history. Following this investigation, the crucial incompatibility issues between the mathematical computation of the prediction process in the best-performing NN architectures and the actual values derived from the natural physical properties of the deformation paths are examined in detail.
Dislocations in ceramics have enjoyed a long yet underappreciated research history. This brief historical overview and reflection on the current challenges provides new insights into using this line defect as a rediscovered tool for engineering functional ceramics.
Komala Subramanyam Cherukuri, Pranav Abishai Moses, Aisa Sakata
et al.
Oral histories are vital records of lived experience, particularly within communities affected by systemic injustice and historical erasure. Effective and efficient analysis of their oral history archives can promote access and understanding of the oral histories. However, Large-scale analysis of these archives remains limited due to their unstructured format, emotional complexity, and high annotation costs. This paper presents a scalable framework to automate semantic and sentiment annotation for Japanese American Incarceration Oral History. Using LLMs, we construct a high-quality dataset, evaluate multiple models, and test prompt engineering strategies in historically sensitive contexts. Our multiphase approach combines expert annotation, prompt design, and LLM evaluation with ChatGPT, Llama, and Qwen. We labeled 558 sentences from 15 narrators for sentiment and semantic classification, then evaluated zero-shot, few-shot, and RAG strategies. For semantic classification, ChatGPT achieved the highest F1 score (88.71%), followed by Llama (84.99%) and Qwen (83.72%). For sentiment analysis, Llama slightly outperformed Qwen (82.66%) and ChatGPT (82.29%), with all models showing comparable results. The best prompt configurations were used to annotate 92,191 sentences from 1,002 interviews in the JAIOH collection. Our findings show that LLMs can effectively perform semantic and sentiment annotation across large oral history collections when guided by well-designed prompts. This study provides a reusable annotation pipeline and practical guidance for applying LLMs in culturally sensitive archival analysis. By bridging archival ethics with scalable NLP techniques, this work lays the groundwork for responsible use of artificial intelligence in digital humanities and preservation of collective memory. GitHub: https://github.com/kc6699c/LLM4OralHistoryAnalysis.
Considering inflationary magnetogenesis induced by time-dependent kinetic and axial couplings of a massless Abelian vector boson field breaking the conformal invariance we show in this article that, surprisingly, the spectral shape of the large-scale primordial magnetic field power spectrum is insensitive to the post-inflationary history, namely the barotropic parameter ($w$) and the gauge coupling functions of the post-inflationary era.
Eelco Runia’s view of historical time is that the now and the past exert an alternating influence on each other. The most prominent expression of this is a dialogue between the historian and the historical actors in which the historian creates metonyms, replacement terms, for how historical actors are defined, which affects the description of the past. In this paper, Runia’s conception of historical time has been tested through an empirical investigation into the changing descriptions of the process of rejecting the aether hypothesis, 1858-2022. After the process of phasing the aether out of physics had previously been explained as being caused by the gradual acceptance of the theory of relativity, the cause was suddenly superseded in the 1990s by the Michelson-Morley experiment conducted in the
1880s. During the 21st century, however, the aether once again returned as a concept. The reason for the changes, is the conclusion, could possibly be due to the ambition to give a rational picture of the development of natural science at every point in time
A finales del siglo XIX, la industria azucarera argentina ingresó en su primer ciclo de sobreproducción. Tras casi dos décadas de crecimiento, en 1895 se superaron las necesidades del consumo interno, cuya consecuencia directa fue la abrupta caída de los precios. Los intereses involucrados instrumentaron diferentes soluciones, concluyendo que sólo mediante la exportación lograrían estabilizar la plaza doméstica. Así, se ensayaron convenios entre productores y comercializadores, se gestionaron subsidios a la exportación, y se formó la “Unión Azucarera Argentina” S. A., encargada –en principio– de comprar los stocks y dosificar las ventas dentro y fuera del país para elevar las cotizaciones. La historiografía muestra considerables avances en el análisis de esta crisis, el accionar corporativo y los entretelones de la sanción de leyes de primas a la exportación. Con todo, un estudio centrado en esta firma comercial –fundamental en la arquitectura político/empresarial orientada a la exportación–, permitirá acercarnos con mayor detalle a la conformación y funcionamiento de acuerdos comerciales intrasectoriales, para dialogar con las interpretaciones generales sobre esta coyuntura y aportar nueva evidencia sobre las primeras prácticas colusorias en la industria argentina.
Este artículo tiene como propósito comprender y visibilizar la situación de desigualdad racial en la zona de Río Raposo localizada en El Tigre, que se conecta con la ciudad de Buenaventura y se caracteriza por afrontar una situación de marginalidad social, cultural, política y económica, lo que ha generado la vulnerabilidad de las comunidades que allí habitan; así como, prácticas enmarcadas entre la exclusión y el olvido de las problemáticas de sus habitantes. Con el fin de explicitar el escenario de la violencia, el conflicto y la inequidad que enmarcan esta región, se recurrió al relato y la narrativa de una docente, cuyo ejercicio pedagógico tiene lugar en la Institución Educativa Jaime Roock. Desde este contexto educativo, se abordan los desafíos educativos y las tensiones entre el dominio colonial y la descolonización, así como la lucha de una comunidad afrodescendiente, la cual refleja el impacto considerable de una pandemia que cada día devela la situación de desigualdad, así como su manifestación social y cultural en la lucha, la manifestación y la búsqueda por la emancipación política, sociocultural y humana.
Git metadata contains rich information for developers to understand the overall context of a large software development project. Thus it can help new developers, managers, and testers understand the history of development without needing to dig into a large pile of unfamiliar source code. However, the current tools for Git visualization are not adequate to analyze and explore the metadata: They focus mainly on improving the usability of Git commands instead of on helping users understand the development history. Furthermore, they do not scale for large and complex Git commit graphs, which can play an important role in understanding the overall development history. In this paper, we present Githru, an interactive visual analytics system that enables developers to effectively understand the context of development history through the interactive exploration of Git metadata. We design an interactive visual encoding idiom to represent a large Git graph in a scalable manner while preserving the topological structures in the Git graph. To enable scalable exploration of a large Git commit graph, we propose novel techniques (graph reconstruction, clustering, and Context-Preserving Squash Merge (CSM) methods) to abstract a large-scale Git commit graph. Based on these Git commit graph abstraction techniques, Githru provides an interactive summary view to help users gain an overview of the development history and a comparison view in which users can compare different clusters of commits. The efficacy of Githru has been demonstrated by case studies with domain experts using real-world, in-house datasets from a large software development team at a major international IT company. A controlled user study with 12 developers comparing Githru to previous tools also confirms the effectiveness of Githru in terms of task completion time.
Maude Wagner, Francine Grodstein, Karen Leffondre
et al.
Long-term behavioral and health risk factors constitute a primary focus of research on the etiology of chronic diseases. Yet, identifying critical time-windows during which risk factors have the strongest impact on disease risk is challenging. To assess the trajectory of association of an exposure history with an outcome, the weighted cumulative exposure index (WCIE) has been proposed, with weights reflecting the relative importance of exposures at different times. However, WCIE is restricted to a complete observed error-free exposure whereas exposures are often measured with intermittent missingness and error. Moreover, it rarely explores exposure history that is very distant from the outcome as usually sought in life-course epidemiology. We extend the WCIE methodology to (i) exposures that are intermittently measured with error, and (ii) contexts where the exposure time-window precedes the outcome time-window using a landmark approach. First, the individual exposure history up to the landmark time is estimated using a mixed model that handles missing data and error in exposure measurement, and the predicted complete error-free exposure history is derived. Then the WCIE methodology is applied to assess the trajectory of association between the predicted exposure history and the health outcome collected after the landmark time. In our context, the health outcome is a longitudinal marker analyzed using a mixed model. A simulation study first demonstrates the correct inference obtained with this approach. Then, applied to the Nurses' Health Study (19,415 women) to investigate the association between BMI history (collected from midlife) and subsequent cognitive decline after age 70. In conclusion, this approach, easy to implement, provides a flexible tool for studying complex dynamic relationships and identifying critical time windows while accounting for exposure measurement errors.
Petra N. Tang, J. J. Eldridge, Elizabeth R. Stanway
et al.
We compare the impacts of uncertainties in both binary population synthesis models and the cosmic star formation history on the predicted rates of Gravitational Wave compact binary merger (GW) events. These uncertainties cause the predicted rates of GW events to vary by up to an order of magnitude. Varying the volume-averaged star formation rate density history of the Universe causes the weakest change to our predictions, while varying the metallicity evolution has the strongest effect. Double neutron-star merger rates are more sensitive to assumed neutron-star kick velocity than the cosmic star formation history. Varying certain parameters affects merger rates in different ways depending on the mass of the merging compact objects; thus some of the degeneracy may be broken by looking at all the event rates rather than restricting ourselves to one class of mergers.
Grigore Vasile Herman, Dorina Camelia Ilieș, Răzvan Dumbravă
et al.
The present study aims to create and implement a methodology for the quantification of the functions performed by the tourist information and promotion centers in the creation of the tourist destination image. This desideratum comes from the need for a judicious allocation of the resources needed for the building and operation of such structures in close correlation with the need for their implementation taking into account the spatial distribution. Thus, starting from 10 defining indicators (10 attributions), a quantification model of the National Tourist Information and Pomotion Centre (TIPC) role was made on four value levels (insignificant, minor, medium and major), a model that was then applied to all NTIPCs respondents in Romania. According to the methodology developed in the present study, on a general level, it is clear that NTIPCs have a minor role in creating and promoting the image of tourist destination, while at the particular level, there is a relatively similar situation, with the existence of particularities defining them, which are detached from the analysis of each tourist information and promotion center.