4353 research outputs found
Sort by
Spinning at the Border: Employee Activism in \u27Big PR\u27
Get PDFThis article extends Coombs and Holladay’s (2018) social issues management model to provide new perspectives on activism and public relations. It also fills a gap in the literature on internal activism by analyzing the case of The Ogilvy Group and their employees, many of whom pushed for the agency to resign its work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Through a textual analysis of a leaked transcript documenting a meeting between Ogilvy management and internal activist employees, the communicative tasks of definition, legitimation, and awareness (Coombs & Holladay, 2018) are explored in a way that complicates identity and power. As public relations practitioners are increasingly called upon to either advocate for or against social issues, this study provides an interesting contrast, showing one interpretation of what happens when there is dissension in the ranks
Water-Air Interfaces as Environments to Address the Water Paradox in Prebiotic Chemistry: A Physical Chemistry Perspective
No full textThe asymmetric water-air interface provides a dynamic aqueous environment with properties that are often very different than bulk aqueous or gaseous phases and promotes reactions that are thermodynamically, kinetically, or otherwise unfavorable in bulk water. Prebiotic chemistry faces a key challenge: water is necessary for life yet reduces the efficiency of many biomolecular synthesis reactions. This perspective considers water-air interfaces as auspicious reaction environments for abiotic synthesis. We discuss recent evidence that (1) water-air interfaces promote condensation reactions including peptide synthesis, phosphorylation, and oligomerization; (2) photochemistry at water-air interfaces may have been a significant source of prebiotic molecular complexity, given the lack of oxygen and increased availability of near-ultraviolet radiation on early Earth; and (3) water-air interfaces can promote spontaneous reduction and oxidation reactions, potentially providing protometabolic pathways. Life likely began within a relatively short time frame, and water-air interfaces offer promising environments for simultaneous and efficient biomolecule production
EarDynamic: An Ear Canal Deformation Based Continuous User Authentication Using In-Ear Wearables
No full textBiometric-based authentication is gaining increasing attention for wearables and mobile applications. Meanwhile, the growing adoption of sensors in wearables also provides opportunities to capture novel wearable biometrics. In this work, we propose EarDynamic, an ear canal deformation based user authentication using in-ear wearables. EarDynamic provides continuous and passive user authentication and is transparent to users. It leverages ear canal deformation that combines the unique static geometry and dynamic motions of the ear canal when the user is speaking for authentication. It utilizes an acoustic sensing approach to capture the ear canal deformation with the built-in microphone and speaker of the in-ear wearable. Specifically, it first emits well-designed inaudible beep signals and records the reflected signals from the ear canal. It then analyzes the reflected signals and extracts fine-grained acoustic features that correspond to the ear canal deformation for user authentication. Our extensive experimental evaluation shows that EarDynamic can achieve a recall of 97.38% and an F1 score of 96.84%. Results also show that our system works well under different noisy environments with various daily activities
One Hundred Years of the Gender Gap in Examination Results at the University of Oxford
No full textThis paper uses a newly discovered data set on examination results by gender from 1913 to 1986 to show that the gender gap in examinations at the University of Oxford has existed for over a century. We show that after declining for almost 70 years the gender gap in Firsts increased significantly after the introduction of coresidence–the admission of women to formerly men’s colleges in 1974. The gap in Thirds between men and women increased between 1953 and 1977 but then declined significantly after the mixing of the colleges. We found that coresidence affected the gender gap in both Arts and Sciences and Combined subjects, not just in sciences as was commonly believed
Body Image in Older Women: A Mediator of BMI and Wellness Behaviors
No full textNegative body image is prevalent among mid- and late-life women. In younger women, negative body image is associated with reduced quality of life (QOL) when controlling for body mass index (BMI), and mediates the relationship between obesity and emotional wellbeing. Yet, much remains unknown about body image in older populations. In our sample of women aged 50–86 (N = 181), negative body image mediated the relationship between BMI and sleep, all four domains of QOL, negative affect, nutritious food consumption, and psychosocial impairment, but not enjoyment of physical activity. Findings suggest negative body image impacts the wellbeing of older women
A Dimensão Utópica na Filosofia do Melhoramento Social em Adam Smith [The Utopian Dimension in the Philosophy of Social Betterment in Adam Smith]
No full textAdam Smith não se concentra na criação de um mundo ideal, mas no entendimento de que mudanças sociais para melhor são um produto não intencional do comércio. Além disso, como que para destacar a concretude dessas mudanças, ele vê o crescimento populacional como a forma de medir essa melhoria da sociedade.
Adam Smith does not focus on the creation of an ideal world, but on the understanding that societal changes for the better are an unintentional product of commerce. Furthermore, as if to highlight the concreteness of these changes, he sees population growth as the way to measure this betterment of society
Seeded Crystal Growth of Internally Mixed Organic–Inorganic Aerosols: Impact of Organic Phase State
No full textAtmospheric aerosols are complex with both inorganic and organic components. The soluble inorganics can transition between aqueous and crystalline phases through efflorescence and deliquescence. This study focuses on the efflorescence of (NH4)2SO4/organic particles by seeded crystal growth through contact with a crystal of (NH4)2SO4. Seeded crystal growth is known to effectively shut down supersaturation of aqueous aerosols. Here, we investigate whether organics can inhibit seeded crystal growth. We demonstrate that poly(ethylene glycol) 400 (PEG-400), which phase-separates from the aqueous (NH4)2SO4 and forms a core–shell structure, did not inhibit seeded crystal growth of (NH4)2SO4 at all relative humidity (RH) values below deliquescence RH. The PEG-400 layer was not viscous enough to prevent the diffusion of species through the coating. In contrast, we find that although raffinose, which stays homogeneously mixed with (NH4)2SO4, did not inhibit seeded crystal growth at RH \u3e 45%, it did inhibit heterogeneous efflorescence at lower humidities. Viscosity measurements using an electrodynamic balance show a significant increase in viscosity as humidity was lowered, suggesting that inhibited diffusion of water and ions prevented efflorescence. The observed efflorescence at the higher RH also demonstrates that collisions can induce efflorescence of mixed aerosols that would otherwise not homogeneously effloresce
Don’t Blame Me, Blame Those Around Me: How Family and Friends Induce Unethical Acts
No full textWhile family and close friends often encourage prosocial behaviors, their influence can also be malevolent. The current research examines how people react to scenarios where a close other pressures a protagonist to commit an unethical act. The vignettes varied who was encouraging the unethical act (family vs. peer), level of pressure (low vs. high), who benefits from the action (self vs. close other) while also considering whether participants resided in an independent or collectivistic culture (U.S. vs. India). Results revealed that pressure from family, compared to friends, was more powerful for U.S. participants than Indian participants. More pressure increased the likelihood of committing the unethical act and decreased perceived responsibility. However, failing to comply resulted in substantial anticipated social rejection, especially if the unethical act benefits the close other. Although family and friends often teach us good morals, that influence can also open the door for potential unethical behaviors
Universality in Kinetic Models of Circadian Rhythms in \u3cem\u3eArabidopsis thaliana\u3c/em\u3e
No full textBiological evolution has endowed the plant Arabidopsis thaliana with genetically regulated circadian rhythms. A number of authors have published kinetic models for these oscillating chemical reactions based on a network of interacting genes. To investigate the hypothesis that the Arabidopsis circadian dynamical system is poised near a Hopf bifurcation like some other biological oscillators, we varied the kinetic parameters in the models and searched for bifurcations. Finding that each model does exhibit a supercritical Hopf bifurcation, we performed a weakly nonlinear analysis near the bifurcation points to derive the Stuart-Landau amplitude equation. To illustrate a common dynamical structure, we scaled the numerical solutions to the models with the asymptotic solutions to the Stuart-Landau equation to collapse the circadian oscillations onto two universal curves-one for amplitude, and one for frequency. However, some models are close to bifurcation while others are far, some models are post-bifurcation while others are pre-bifurcation, and kinetic parameters that lead to a bifurcation in some models do not lead to a bifurcation in others. Future kinetic modeling can make use of our analysis to ensure models are consistent with each other and with the dynamics of the Arabidopsis circadian rhythm
Using Experimentally Calibrated Regularized Stokeslets to Assess Bacterial Flagellar Motility Near a Surface
Get PDFThe presence of a nearby boundary is likely to be important in the life cycle and evolution of motile flagellate bacteria. This has led many authors to employ numerical simulations to model near-surface bacterial motion and compute hydrodynamic boundary effects. A common choice has been the method of images for regularized Stokeslets (MIRS); however, the method requires discretization sizes and regularization parameters that are not specified by any theory. To determine appropriate regularization parameters for given discretization choices in MIRS, we conducted dynamically similar macroscopic experiments and fit the simulations to the data. In the experiments, we measured the torque on cylinders and helices of different wavelengths as they rotated in a viscous fluid at various distances to a boundary. We found that differences between experiments and optimized simulations were less than 5% when using surface discretizations for cylinders and centerline discretizations for helices. Having determined optimal regularization parameters, we used MIRS to simulate an idealized free-swimming bacterium constructed of a cylindrical cell body and a helical flagellum moving near a boundary. We assessed the swimming performance of many bacterial morphologies by computing swimming speed, motor rotation rate, Purcell’s propulsive efficiency, energy cost per swimming distance, and a new metabolic energy cost defined to be the energy cost per body mass per swimming distance. All five measures predicted that the optimal flagellar wavelength is eight times the helical radius independently of body size and surface proximity. Although the measures disagreed on the optimal body size, they all predicted that body size is an important factor in the energy cost of bacterial motility near and far from a surface