Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

The Social Construction Of Life: Critical Thinking About Biology In Society, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

This book aims to expand the boundaries of the influences that readers consider when interpreting the practices and products of the life sciences ("biology") and their impact on society. The chapter topics include: Interpreting Ideas of Nature; The structure of origin stories; Multiple layers in influencing an audience: The case of Darwin's On the Origin of Species; Metaphors of coordination and development; What causes a disease?—the consequences of hereditarianism in the case of pellagra; How changeable are IQ test scores?; Social negotiations around genetic screening; Intersecting processes involving genes and environment.

Each chapter consists of 5 parts:

1. Introduce simple …

Question Answering For Suicide Risk Assessment Using Reddit, Amanuel Alambo, Usha Lokala, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amelia Gyrard, Randon S. Welton, Jyotishman Pathak, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Mental Health America designed ten questionnaires that are used to determine the risk of mental disorders. They are also commonly used by Mental Health Professionals (MHPs) to assess suicidality. Specifically, the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), a widely used suicide assessment questionnaire, helps MHPs determine the severity of suicide risk and offer an appropriate treatment. A major challenge in suicide treatment is the social stigma wherein the patient feels reluctance in discussing his/her conditions with an MHP, which leads to inaccurate assessment and treatment of patients. On the other hand, the same patient is comfortable freely discussing his/her mental …

What If Our Beliefs About A System Are Not Wholly Accurate? What If?, Gary Langford

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

For most people, a system is a construct with vexing complexities, many many parts, and perhaps wrapped with a goal or intention. Add to that simple construct a set of terminologies that are commonly applied when speaking of “systems” and we just might have veered away from discoveries of imminent importance. Ask yourself, “You said it was a system, but how did that statement help you solve your problem? How far off would we have to be in our perception of systemsness for us to make mistakes of consequence? One Hundred Billion are lost annually in software projects that failed …

Finding Truth In Fake News: Reverse Plagiarism And Other Models Of Classification, Matthew Przybyla, David Tran, Amber Whelpley, Daniel W. Engels

SMU Data Science Review

As the digital age creates new ways of spreading news, fake stories are propagated to widen audiences. A majority of people obtain both fake and truthful news without knowing which is which. There is not currently a reliable and efficient method to identify “fake news”. Several ways of detecting fake news have been produced, but the various algorithms have low accuracy of detection and the definition of what makes a news item ‘fake’ remains unclear. In this paper, we propose a new method of detecting on of fake news through comparison to other news items on the same topic, as …

Front Matter

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents (V. 31, 2019)

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Evidence Of Early 17th-Century Glass Beadmaking In And Around Rouen, France, Karlis Karklins, Adelphine Bonneau

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Material evidence of a local drawn-glass beadmaking industry was uncovered in the old section of Rouen, France, in 1869 during street construction. Composed of production tubes and wasters (most of which exhibit evidence of a speo heat rounding), the material is attributed to the early part of the 17th century. It is significant as many of the recorded varieties have correlatives at archaeological sites in eastern North America occupied during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. These include a 7-layer chevron, Nueva Cadiz varieties, and frit-core beads. It is, therefore, quite possible that some of the American specimens may …

Glass And Enamel Beadmaking In Normandy, Circa 1590-1635, Brad Loewen

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The archaeological study of glass bead proveniences raises theoretical questions regarding the idea of “beadmaking centers” as defined by typological, technological, and geochemical means. Also important for defining beadmaking centers are historical sources in various languages. In the 19th century, French scholars interested in glassmaking in Normandy noted beadmaking ca. 1590-1635. Their publications show a rural cottage industry in the county of Eu and the forest of Brotonne, and an urban guild of patenôtriers in Rouen. While the historical data mostly show the production and export of rosary beads, the Normandy “beadmaking center” coincides with a major outfitting region of …

Even More On Frit-Core Beads, Karlis Karklins

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

This article corrects the dating of a frit-core bead from Quebec reported in 2018, and reports three new find sites, two in North America and one in Europe. One of the American sites was occupied well past the 1560-1610 date range proposed for these beads, while the other is situated well to the south of all the others. The third site is in Rouen, France, where two different types were found with wasters from the production of drawn glass beads.

Glass Beads From Iron Age And Early Medieval Scotland, Heather Christie

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The dialog surrounding glass beads found in Scottish contexts is limited, particularly those found in Iron Age and Early Medieval contexts. These discussions focus largely on a narrative of diffusion from neighboring groups. This paper, however, examines the beads from a local perspective and finds that they differ significantly from those found in contemporary neighboring contexts. In fact, designs such as the triskele, marbled, and whirl beads do not appear elsewhere in the world and demonstrate significant skill and artistry on the part of local populations within Scotland. Colors also differ from neighboring groups, with deep blues and bright yellows …

A Glass Bead Sequence For South America Based On Collections From Brazil And Guyana, William T. Billeck, Meredith P. Luze

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Glass trade bead assemblages recovered during archaeological investigations at nine sites by Smithsonian archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans in Brazil in 1948 and 1949 and Guyana in 1952 and 1953 date to multiple time periods, including the early 17th, mid-18th, mid-19th, and mid-20th centuries. The assemblages are used to show that the glass bead chronologies developed in North America are directly applicable to South America and that there is a global glass bead sequence related to European colonialism. White drawn glass beads were independently dated by comparison with known composition changes through time in how the glass was made …

Beads: Journal Of The Society Of Bead Researchers - Volume 31 (Complete)

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews And End Matter

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The Glory of Beads: The Rise and Fall of the Società Veneziana per l’Industria delle Conterie, by Nicole Anderson, reviewed by Rosanna Falabella. La cartelle veneziane del Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano, by Giorgio Teruzzi, Chiara Colombo, and Irene Mineo, reviewed by Stefany Tomalin. Glass Bead Trade in Northeast Africa: The Evidence from Meroitic and Post-Meroitic Nubia, by Joanna Then-Obłuska, with Barbara Wagner, reviewed by Karlis Karklins.

Faraway Flix: Connecting To International Students Through Film, Laura Bohuski

DLTS Faculty Publications

WKU has, at any given time, about 20,000 students enrolled in university programs across four campuses. WKU is a campus that is actively engaged in making international connections, so much so that its current vision statement asserts that WKU is “a leading American university with international reach.”1 Western’s drive to establish and maintain international connections has been successful: of the 20,000 students currently attending WKU, 1,300 are international students from 70 seventy different countries.2 With such a diverse student population, many of the departments at Western are actively engaged in developing programs to help connect our extensive international population with …

A Metrics-Based Assessment Of Scotland's Science Landscape (2007-2016), Başak Candemir Phd, Eleonora Palmaro

Public Reports

Elsevier was commissioned by the Scottish Science Advisory Council (SSAC), to undertake a bibliometric-based assessment of the performance of Scotland’s scientific research base to provide ministers, officials and interested stakeholders with an objective overview. Similar analysis has been conducted for the UK, Scotland and Wales separately, in the past. Of course, publication outputs relate to only one of the many facets of the research system, but they do at least give an indication of the publication performance relative to other countries.

The report tracks the performance of Scotland’s scientific research base over a ten-year period (2007-2016), analysing a number of …

Malaysia: Knowledge Destination For Research Excellence, Wei-Wei Cheng, Sarah Huggett, Zuraidah Abd Manaf Phd, David Reggio Phd, Alexander Van Servellen, Sumeet Rohatgi, Jiangtao Yu, Muhammed Fauzi Mohd Zain Phd

Public Reports

This report is a collaborative publication between the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education Malaysia, Elsevier, and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). It combines multiple data sources and analyses to provide a multifaceted view of Malaysia’s research and university ranking performance between 2014 and 2018 contrasted with selected comparator countries and regions.

Malaysia is an attractive research destination and highly productive in terms of number of highly cited publications per unit of funding spend on Gross Expenditure on Research & Development (GERD). Malaysia’s story deserves attention and recognition. Its intent to become a developed knowledge-based economy has been supported by strong …

Melanoma Research Insights: Impact, Trends, Opportunities, Elsevier Analytical Services

Public Reports

Melanoma is a type of cancer that occurs when the skin cells that produce melanin become malignant. This report examines the landscape of melanoma research using Scopus, a source-neutral abstract and citation database, curated by independent subject matter experts.

South Asia: Challenges And Benefits Of A Research Collaboration In A Diverse Region, World Bank, Elsevier

Public Reports

This report examines the scholarly output of South Asian countries at national and regional levels. The analysis evaluates national policies, examines regional trends, and benchmarks the research performance of South Asian countries against global comparators such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. In this report, scholarly output refers to the number of scholarly publications produced by a country and indexed in Scopus®, including work by domestic academics as well as international collaborations.

Automatic Identification Of Individual Drugs In Death Certificates, Soon Jye Kho, Amit Sheth, Olivier Bodenreider

Kno.e.sis Publications

Background:

Establishing trends of drug overdoses requires the identification of individual drugs in death certificates, not supported by coding with the International Classification of Diseases. However, identifying drug mentions from the literal portion of death certificates remains challenging due to the variability of drug names.

Objectives:

To automatically identify individual drugs in death certificates.

Methods:

We use RxNorm to collect variants for drug names (generic names, synonyms, brand names) and we algorithmically generate common misspellings. We use this automatically compiled list to identify drug mentions from 703,106 death certificates and compare the performance of our automated approach to that of …

From The City To The Cloud: Charles Williams’S Image Of The City As An Affirmation Of Artificial Intelligence, Michael Paulus

SPU Works

style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">A number of Christian intellectuals who lived through the “catastrophic” twentieth century had a deep distrust of “technological innovation.” C. S. Lewis lamented the impact of technology on education, Dorothy L. Sayers lamented the impact of technology on community, and J. R. R. Tolkien lamented the impact of technology on the environment. Jacques Ellul saw technology as a human rejection of God’s work. For Ellul, this was the meaning of the city: from its primordial origins through its apocalyptic end, the city was a “counter-creation”—a technological negation of God’s Edenic creation. style="font-family: "Times New Roman", …