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Industrial Distraction
Full text linkThere are myriad techniques industry actors use to shape the public understanding of science. While a naive view of this sort of influence might assume these techniques typically involve fraud and/or outright deception, the truth is more nuanced. The aim of this paper is to analyze one common technique where industry actors fund and share research that is accurate and (often) high quality, but nonetheless misleads the public on important matters of fact. The technique in question involves reshaping the causal understanding of some phenomenon with distracting information. We call this \emph{industrial distraction}. We use case studies and causal models to illustrate how industrial distraction works, and how it can negatively impact belief and decision making even for rational learners. As we argue, this analysis is relevant to discussions about science policy, and also to philosophical and social scientific debates about how to define and understand misleading content
A DFT assessment of the activation barrier for concerted proton transfer in cyclic water clusters (H2O)n where n = 3–8
Full text linkCurrently the proton mobility in water clusters is an area that is relatively unexplored and very important for biochemical and catalytic processes occurring in water. We therefore investigate the barrier for proton transfer in a concerted fashion in water clusters where n = 3–8. Our findings at the B3LYP/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory indicate that protons can transfer in a low barrier process of 15.5 kJ/mol per H-bond. This is still larger than the average thermal energy at 298 K and therefore suggests that proton tunneling is also happening in water. We reveal the dynamic behavior of protons in cyclic water clusters in which concerted proton transfer occurs through an intermediate Zundel cation. We also offer the proton transfer barrier per H-bond in cyclic water clusters as a function of the size of the water cluster. This study helps in the understanding of the dynamic properties of protons in water
XGBoost Model for Predicting Property Prices in the UK Real Estate Market
Full text linkAbstract. This study contributes to the enhancement of the predictive models and mitigating regression problem, using data science machine learning approach. It critically evaluates studies that have been done within the predictive valuation, forecasting models, using the current technological trends in machine learning, through the proposed framework: Sustainable Feature Machine Learning Agile Framework (SFMLAF). SFMLAF suggests that our proposed model based on XGBoost demonstrated better accuracy based on these results; utilizing the following validation metrics: XGBoost RMSE: 0.444, MAPE: 1.94%, MAE: 0.234. The required datasets were sourced online from the UK government property sold dataset, under the Open Government licence v.3.0, focusing on four UK cities with the following data observations: London: 658,337, Peterborough: 44,635, Leeds: 102,984, and Manchester: 154,626. In conclusion, the proposed predictive model aims to deliver practical benefits for real estate professionals, homebuyers and sellers by enhancing the accuracy and reliability of property valuation in the UK market
Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the ‘Male Lesbian’ in the American Second Wave
Full text linkA slur, a joke or a post-structuralist case of mistaken identity. To the extent that the male lesbian has been discussed, she has figured dismissively. Yet throughout the period historicised as American feminism's second wave, potentially thousands of trans femmes organised under this identity. Despite being entirely overlooked in scholarship, the lesbian feminism articulated by a community of femme-for-femme trans femmes in the 1970s constitutes one of the most enduring and intellectually significant subsets of lesbian feminism to come out of the second wave. That they have yet to be historicised and theorised represents an injustice at the level of epistemology itself, wherein trans women are able to speak as trans, but not as lesbians. Reconstructing the archive of trans lesbian feminism that was developed by Sally Douglas in 1970 and then popularised through her organisation the Salmacis Society the year after, this article proposes that the existence of Salmacis disrupts dominant ideas of necessary antagonisms between ‘trans’ and ‘lesbian’ in the 1970s, and we highlight how the distinctly trans, sex-positive, lesbian femme-inism of the organisation can reanimate lesbian feminism today
Virginia Prince, Robert Stoller and the Trans Feminist Intellectual History of the Sex/Gender Distinction
Full text linkScholars have begun to genealogize the sex/gender distinction, pointing out that it was not a second-wave feminist invention, but in fact has its roots in the clinical research of US sexologists. However, the influence of trans individuals on the development of these clinicians’ thought tends to go unacknowledged. Beginning with correspondence between Virginia Prince, a trans pharmacologist, and Robert Stoller, an influential psychiatrist, this paper demonstrates that Prince was a highly significant influence in the development of the sex/gender distinction. Revisiting Prince’s rationale for distinguishing between sex and gender historicizes the inbuilt conservatism and weaponizable currency of the heuristic
Review of Stephen Robertson, 'Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935'
No full textReview of Stephen Robertson, 'Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935
Time-space dynamics of income segregation in the city of Milan
No full textTraditional approaches to urban income segregation focus on static residential patterns, often failing to capture the dynamic nature of social
mixing at the neighborhood level. We leverage high-resolution location-based data from mobile phones to capture the interplay of three
different income groups (high, medium, and low) based on their daily routines. The three income groups define a novel 3D space
embedded in the temporal dynamics of urban activities, which we propose as a framework to analyze social mixing. This framework
offers a more detailed perspective on social interactions, closely linked to the geographical features of each neighborhood. While nighttime
residential patterns show high segregation, the working hours foster inclusion, with the city center showing heightened levels of
interaction. As evening sets in, leisure areas emerge as potential facilitators for social interactions, depending on urban features such as
public transport and various Points Of Interest. These characteristics significantly modulate the magnitude and type of social stratification
involved in social mixing, underscoring the significance of urban design in bridging or widening socio-economic divides
On the state—nonstate theory of hypnosis: network and topological EEG findings
Full text linkHypnosis is a state of consciousness spontaneously occurring or induced through various techniques. Its occurrence is more likely in individuals with high scores of hypnotizability (highs) than in low hypnotizables (lows). The study aimed to assess the topological homogeneity within highs and lows during neutral hypnosis, and the EEG topological characteristics of highs and lows before and after hypnotic induction experienced as an altered state of consciousness only by highs. Sixteen highs and 16 lows were enrolled, informed that they would be submitted to hypnotic induction and studied across a session including open and closed eyes waking rest, hypnotic induction, neutral hypnosis, and post hypnosis open eyes rest. EEG was monitored throughout the session. Network analysis showed greater identifiability (less homogeneity) among lows than among highs. It revealed a similar pattern of changes in functional connectivity and topological properties—homological persistence and persistent entropy, which describe multiscale integration patterns—in the two groups across the session. Findings suggest that neutral hypnosis represents a modulation of the ordinary consciousness within its physiological variability rather than a distinct physiological state. Neither network nor topological differences account for the different subjective experiences of highs and lows
Gender Biases in Online Communication: A Case Study of Soccer
Full text linkSocial media and digital platforms allow us to freely and easily express our opinions to a wide audience. In this study, we investigate gender-based differences in online communication, specifically on Twitter (now X), in the context of soccer, by analyzing patterns of participation, sentiment, and engagement across male and female users. As one of the most popular sports, soccer engages a diverse audience on social media, regardless of expertise.
We collected 9.5 million tweets related to soccer in English and Portuguese during three months (March - June 2022). Only 18.38\% tweets were identified as written by women, highlighting a possible gender gap already in the number of people who participated actively in this topic.
We analyze tweets in Portuguese and English, as these languages represent different perspectives on soccer. English serves as a proxy for global discussions, while Portuguese reflects more localized but deeply engaged communities. We observe that women and men communicate more between each other in Portuguese than in English, exhibiting lower homophily within their social networks. However, this difference in homophily does not appear to influence how women and men express emotions and sentiments, suggesting that these aspects may be shaped by other factors such as societal expectations, gender role socialization, online community dynamics, visibility constraints, or other gender-related norms and characteristics. Women express their emotions more intensely in response to events than men, regardless of the differences in the number of tweets, and men tend to be more negative in their tweets than women. Our study reveals persistent gender gaps across both weeks and hours through qualitative and quantitative analyses, including detailed text-level and network-level examinations. These findings underscore the importance of identifying and reporting gender disparities in online communication to foster more inclusive spaces where individuals can freely express their opinions