Identification Of Class Research Articles

The Variation Between Subjective and Objective Class Positions in South Africa the Distance Between Perception and Reality

The study is an exploratory attempt to assess the relationship between individuals' objective class position and subjective social positions in the South African hierarchy. While objective class dynamics have received much attention in South Africa, less is known about the subjective social position individuals place themselves. The study aims to make use of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) dataset and assess the relationship between objective and subjective class positions in South Africa. The results show considerable variation between objective and subjective class positions, with a strong middling tendency among all objective class groups in South Africa. The study also shows that this middling tendency has increased in the last decade in South Africa, predominantly due to individuals overestimating their social positions. With a large share of South Africans living close or below the poverty line, there is a clear biasedness of South Africans placing themselves in the middle of society, deviating from their lower objective position. The study further measures the variation between objective and subjective social positions to create a novel class scheme of inflated, deflated, and concordant class perceptions. These biased perceptions are then compared to socio-economic characteristics, showing that gender, race, and education are closely related to bias perceptions in South Africa. Furthermore, the increasing nature of high inequality and social unrest events in South Africa prompts the study also to assess the different social and political attitudes by varying objective and subjective class schemes. The results show that among the subjective class identification, individuals in higher perceived class positions tend to be less angered towards inequality, have lower redistribution preferences, and perceive a weaker conflict between the rich and the poor. These results confirm the impact perceived social positions and biased perceptions could have on social and political attitudes in South Africa. Attitudes that have been considered relevant in voting behavior and social policy formulation models. The results of the paper provides some vital information for policy makers on the dynamics behind subjective class and bias perceptions in South Africa.

Analysis of the association between image resolution and landscape metrics using multi-sensor LULC maps

This study aims to investigate the changes in landscape metrics with varying spatial resolution from Sentinel-2 (10 m), SPOT 7 (1.5 m), Pleaides (0.5 m), and Worldview-4 (0.3 m) images. We implemented Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) techniques to all images to identify 21 land use and land cover (LULC) classes, which were then used to calculate several landscape metrics. We performed the Welch hypothesis testing on the class-level landscape metrics and applied Standardized Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with the correlation matrix to reveal the multivariate pattern of landscape metrics. Our results showed that 10 m and even the 1.5 m spatial resolutions cannot guarantee the identification of all LULC classes, and class areas change with varying spatial resolution (sometimes with 200% differences). Sentinel-2 images have some limitations, specifically from the landscape ecological planning perspective; on the other hand, Pleaides and Worldview-4 seem good alternatives to understand habitats’ viability and landscape isolation/connectivity.

Brown bear skin-borne secretions display evidence of individuality and age-sex variation

Scent originates from excretions and secretions, and its chemical complexity in mammals translates into a diverse mode of signalling. Identifying how information is encoded can help to establish the mechanisms of olfactory communication and the use of odours as chemical signals. Building upon existing behavioural and histological literature, we examined the chemical profile of secretions used for scent marking by a solitary, non-territorial carnivore, the brown bear (Ursus arctos). We investigated the incidence, abundance, and uniqueness of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from cutaneous glandular secretions of 12 wild brown bears collected during late and post-breeding season, and assessed whether age-sex class, body site, and individual identity explained profile variation. VOC profiles varied in the average number of compounds, compound incidence, and compound abundance by age-sex class and individual identity (when individuals were grouped by sex), but not by body site. Mature males differed from other age-sex classes, secreting fewer compounds on average with the least variance between individuals. Compound uniqueness varied by body site and age for both males and females and across individuals. Our results indicate that brown bear skin-borne secretions may facilitate age-sex class and individual recognition, which can contribute towards further understanding of mating systems and social behaviour.

Finding the Proverbial Needle: Improving Minority Class Identification Under Extreme Class Imbalance

Finding the Proverbial Needle: Improving Minority Class Identification Under Extreme Class Imbalance

Charity and philanthropy in Middle East history

AbstractUntil the late 20th century, few studies focused on the history of charity and philanthropy in the Middle East from the medieval to modern periods. The work that explored this subject largely concentrated on the ideals of charitable practices, such as the faith‐based tenets of social welfare as an Islamic communal practice and the religiously mandated form of almsgiving (zakat). But during the late 1990s, a new generation of scholars challenged the assumption of charity across the region as only a pious act and sought to address the dearth of literature on the subject. They shifted critical focus onto the history of philanthropy to consider and account for the social, economic, and political structures that shaped a wide range of charitable practices, activities, institutions, benefactors, and recipients. They also interrogated how communities determined the parameters of need, developed notions of the “deserving poor,” and mediated the relationship between the ideals and practices of beneficence. Overlapping fields such as social history and women's studies as well as analytics of gender, class, and national identity informed and advanced historical studies of charity and philanthropy across the Middle East. The subfield continues to innovate with new work across academic disciplines and new publishing venues for further studies of charity in the region across time periods.

A MALDI-TOF MS library for rapid identification of human commensal gut bacteria from the class Clostridia.

Microbial isolates from culture can be identified using 16S or whole-genome sequencing which generates substantial costs and requires time and expertise. Protein fingerprinting via Matrix-assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is widely used for rapid bacterial identification in routine diagnostics but shows a poor performance and resolution on commensal bacteria due to currently limited database entries. The aim of this study was to develop a MALDI-TOF MS plugin database (CLOSTRI-TOF) allowing for rapid identification of non-pathogenic human commensal gastrointestinal bacteria. We constructed a database containing mass spectral profiles (MSP) from 142 bacterial strains representing 47 species and 21 genera within the class Clostridia. Each strain-specific MSP was constructed using >20 raw spectra measured on a microflex Biotyper system (Bruker-Daltonics) from two independent cultures. For validation, we used 58 sequence-confirmed strains and the CLOSTRI-TOF database successfully identified 98 and 93% of the strains, respectively, in two independent laboratories. Next, we applied the database to 326 isolates from stool of healthy Swiss volunteers and identified 264 (82%) of all isolates (compared to 170 (52.1%) with the Bruker-Daltonics library alone), thus classifying 60% of the formerly unknown isolates. We describe a new open-source MSP database for fast and accurate identification of the Clostridia class from the human gut microbiota. CLOSTRI-TOF expands the number of species which can be rapidly identified by MALDI-TOF MS.

From male dominance to sharing: partner’s class and female political party identification 1964–2010

ABSTRACT Has the dominating influence of husband’s/male partner’s class position on his wife’s/partners’ political party identification declined in Britain? Contrary to predictions, previous research did not reveal a decline in male dominance. We claim a more accurate test by using a theoretical-based cohort design and more appropriate models. To investigate the relative impact of women’s and their men’s class position, we analyse married and partnered women in the British Election Surveys and distinguish four cohorts with a 1888–1991-birth range and model the relative impact of spouse’s class positions with adjusted logistic diagonal reference models allowing the absolute association to change over time. The results show that in case the husband is self-employed, a skilled labourer/foreman or an unskilled/semiskilled labourer, there are no cohort changes in the relative association and women weight their own class position equal to that of husband’s class position. However, there is a substantial cohort effect in case the husband has a salariat or lower white-collar class position. In such cases, there is a male dominance class association, but this disappeared for the most recent (i.e. 1961–1991) birth-cohort. For most classes, a sharing-model (both partners equally important) is for the youngest cohort the most appropriate description.

ADS-Classif: A Robust Tool for Classifying Documents from Diverse Sources Using Weighted Domain-Specific Vocabulary

Extracting domain-specific words from the domain corpus to build vocabulary and identifying classes represented by domain-specific vocabulary is a challenging task in classifying text. Several comprehensive domain-specific techniques have been developed to build specific domain vocabulary but they lack generality and also do not consider the degree of the word's relevance. This paper proposes a supervised generic algorithmic model to create a domain-specific vocabulary. The model identifies domain-indicative word combinations from labeled real-time domain corpus, calculates their weights and logged their inclusion time to understand their semantic behavior in the present era of development. Further, a framework ADS-Classif is also developed using vocabulary to classify real-time documents extracted from different sources and test the domain-specific vocabulary's significance. Experimental results show that the approach leads to the accurate identification of domain classes for test documents compared with classical classifiers Naïve Bayes and Support Vector Machine.

Unions, Class Identification, and Policy Attitudes

Compared to other Western democracies, in the United States fewer people subjectively identify as working class historically and many working-class individuals think of themselves as middle class. This likely has important political implications. We argue, however, that union membership can strengthen identification with the working class, through communications from leaders and interactions among members. Using General Social Survey data from five decades, we develop an original multi-indicator IRT-based measure of objective class status and find that union membership makes it more likely that individuals identify as working class, across all objective class groups. Panel data analysis shows that union membership predicts future working-class identification but that the opposite is not true, suggesting that these associations are causal. Finally, we show that identifying with the working rather than middle or upper class is associated with more support for redistribution and the welfare state.

A strange and sublime longing: Looking back at childhood in Calcutta in A Strange and Sublime Address and The Blue Bedspread

Childhood is a universal trope in literature, where the figure of the child engenders feelings of pity, affection or horror in readers. This article will examine two novels — A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri ([1991] 2016) and The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha ([1995] 2009) — in order to explore how narratives about childhood in the city of Calcutta, one nostalgic and the other traumatic, deploy the figure of the child within the bhadralok milieu, to convey a nostalgic mood for the idea of Bengali middle class identity. This article engages with the possibility of how nostalgia for an apparently declining middle class is glossed by a seemingly interiorized reflection of bhadralok domesticity juxtaposed with a bleaker self-aware representation, seen through the eyes of children.

A linear discriminant analysis model of imbalanced associative learning in the mushroom body compartment

To adapt to their environments, animals learn associations between sensory stimuli and unconditioned stimuli. In invertebrates, olfactory associative learning primarily occurs in the mushroom body, which is segregated into separate compartments. Within each compartment, Kenyon cells (KCs) encoding sparse odor representations project onto mushroom body output neurons (MBONs) whose outputs guide behavior. Associated with each compartment is a dopamine neuron (DAN) that modulates plasticity of the KC-MBON synapses within the compartment. Interestingly, DAN-induced plasticity of the KC-MBON synapse is imbalanced in the sense that it only weakens the synapse and is temporally sparse. We propose a normative mechanistic model of the MBON as a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier that predicts the presence of an unconditioned stimulus (class identity) given a KC odor representation (feature vector). Starting from a principled LDA objective function and under the assumption of temporally sparse DAN activity, we derive an online algorithm which maps onto the mushroom body compartment. Our model accounts for the imbalanced learning at the KC-MBON synapse and makes testable predictions that provide clear contrasts with existing models.

Varieties of White Working-Class Identity

The present work demonstrates that, contrary to popular political narratives, working-class White Americans are far from monolithic in their class identities, social attitudes, and political preferences. Latent profile analysis is used to distinguish three types of identity in a nationally representative sample of working-class Whites: Working Class Patriots, who valorize responsibility, embrace national identity, and disparage the poor; Class Conflict Aware, who regard social class as a structural phenomenon and ascribe elitist attitudes to higher classes; and Working Class Connected, who embrace working-class identity, sympathize with the poor, and feel disrespected because of the work they do. This identity typology appears unique to working-class Whites and is associated with distinct patterns of attitudes regarding immigration, race, and politics, such that Class Conflict Aware and Working Class Connected Whites are considerably more progressive than are Working Class Patriots. Implications for electoral politics and race relations are discussed.

Revisiting Migraine: The Evolving Pathophysiology and the Expanding Management Armamentarium.

Migraine affects about one billion people worldwide yearly and is one of the most common neurologic illnesses, with a high prevalence and morbidity, particularly among young adults and females. Migraine is associated with many comorbidities, includingstress, sleep difficulties, and suicidal ideation. Migraine, despite its widespread occurrence, is underdiagnosed and undertreated. Because of the complicated and primarily unknown mechanisms of migraine formation, several social and biological risk factors, such as hormone imbalances, genetic and epigenetic impacts, and cardiovascular, neurological, and autoimmune illnesses, have been proposed. Through the mid-20th century diversion of the now-defunct vascular theory, the pathophysiology of migraine has developed from a historical study of the "humours" to a distinct entity as a neurological disorder. The range of therapeutic targets has broadened significantly, increasing the number of specialized clinical trials. Understanding the biology of migraine through careful research has resulted in the identification of major therapeutic classes: (i)triptans, serotonin 5-HT1B/1D receptor agonists, (ii) gepants, calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonists, (iii) ditans, 5-HT1F receptor agonists, (iv) CGRPmonoclonal antibodies, and (v) glurants, mGlu5 modulators, with further targets being explored. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the most recent literature on epidemiology and risk factors and exposes knowledge gaps.

Discovery of Potent and Exquisitely Selective Inhibitors of Kinase CK1 with Tunable Isoform Selectivity.

Casein kinases 1 (CK1) are key signaling molecules that have emerged recently as attractive therapeutic targets in particular for the treatment of hematological malignancies. Herein, we report the identification of a new class of potent and highly selective inhibitors of CK1α, δ and ϵ. Based on their optimal in vitro and in vivo profiles and their exclusive selectivity, MU1250, MU1500 and MU1742 were selected as quality chemical probes for those CK1 isoforms. At proper concentrations, MU1250 and MU1500 allow for specific targeting of CK1δ or dual inhibition of CK1δ/ϵ in cells. The compound MU1742 also efficiently inhibits CK1α and, to our knowledge, represents the first potent and highly selective inhibitor of this enzyme. In addition, we demonstrate that the central 1H-pyrrolo[2,3-b]pyridine-imidazole pharmacophore can be used as the basis of highly selective inhibitors of other therapeutically relevant protein kinases, e.g. p38α, as exemplified by the compound MU1299.

Discovery of Potent and Exquisitely Selective Inhibitors of Kinase CK1 with Tunable Isoform Selectivity

AbstractCasein kinases 1 (CK1) are key signaling molecules that have emerged recently as attractive therapeutic targets in particular for the treatment of hematological malignancies. Herein, we report the identification of a new class of potent and highly selective inhibitors of CK1α, δ and ϵ. Based on their optimal in vitro and in vivo profiles and their exclusive selectivity, MU1250, MU1500 and MU1742 were selected as quality chemical probes for those CK1 isoforms. At proper concentrations, MU1250 and MU1500 allow for specific targeting of CK1δ or dual inhibition of CK1δ/ϵ in cells. The compound MU1742 also efficiently inhibits CK1α and, to our knowledge, represents the first potent and highly selective inhibitor of this enzyme. In addition, we demonstrate that the central 1H‐pyrrolo[2,3‐b]pyridine‐imidazole pharmacophore can be used as the basis of highly selective inhibitors of other therapeutically relevant protein kinases, e.g. p38α, as exemplified by the compound MU1299.

Bovine Reproductions: Animal Husbandry and Acclimatization in the Cattle Paintings and Prints of Rosa Bonheur

The mutability and physical perfectibility of animal bodies was a scientific and aesthetic preoccupation in nineteenth‐century France, channelling anxieties about class, race and national identity into projects of breeding domestic animals. This essay explores how the animal painter Rosa Bonheur figured an imagined agricultural superabundance through depictions of both European and ‘exotic' imported bovines. The cattle that so often functioned throughout art history as illustrated zoological specimens or landscape staffage emerge in these portrayals as central protagonists rich in fur, fat, and muscular force. The seemingly anodyne cow thereby became symbolically charged, associated with both capitalist modernization and pastoral idyll.

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon for the Working Man”: Environmental Conflict and Working-Class Politics in Oregon Timber Country, 1970–Present

Abstract This article focusing on Oregon's timber industry contributes to recent efforts to chart the longer history of working-class conservativism, while also arguing that environmental change and conflict played a central role in shaping the political leanings and class identities of white, rural workers in resource extraction industries. It pays particular attention to Oregon's independent contracting and milling operations—small, often family-owned enterprises where the lines separating labor and capital were blurry at best and where bosses and employers alike viewed unions and working-class radicals with deep skepticism. Independent contractors became the dominant form of labor relations in Oregon's timber industry in the 1970s, largely because of changes to the forest wrought by decades of overharvests and the flight of large timber corporations. Workers unmoored by capital flight increasingly turned to independent contractors and thus began to believe that their economic futures depended on maintaining close ties with their employers. This sense grew stronger in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Oregon environmentalists began seeking new restrictions on logging to protect the habitat of the northern spotted owl — restrictions that threatened to further reduce timber-based employment and exacerbate the economic problems of rural, timber-dependent communities. Workers and employers joined together in more visible coalitions, held together by a shared populist outrage at the urban, liberal, and affluent elite who, in their view, were responsible for their economic precarity. This view remains evident in Oregon today, where a new movement that joins bosses and workers, Timber Unity, has coalesced to fight proposed legislation intended to address climate change.

Properly Substituted Benzimidazoles as a New Promising Class of Nicotinate Phosphoribosyltransferase (NAPRT) Modulators.

The prevention of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) biosynthesis is considered an attractive therapeutic approach against cancer, considering that tumor cells are characterized by an increased need for NAD to fuel their reprogrammed metabolism. On the other hand, the decline of NAD is a hallmark of some pathological conditions, including neurodegeneration and metabolic diseases, and boosting NAD biosynthesis has proven to be of therapeutic relevance. Therefore, targeting the enzymes nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT) and nicotinate phosphoribosyltransferase (NAPRT), which regulate NAD biosynthesis from nicotinamide (NAM) and nicotinic acid (NA), respectively, is considered a promising strategy to modulate intracellular NAD pool. While potent NAMPT inhibitors and activators have been developed, the search for NAPRT modulators is still in its infancy. In this work, we report on the identification of a new class of NAPRT modulators bearing the 1,2-dimethylbenzimidazole scaffold properly substituted in position 5. In particular, compounds 24, 31, and 32 emerged as the first NAPRT activators reported so far, while 18 behaved as a noncompetitive inhibitor toward NA (Ki = 338 µM) and a mixed inhibitor toward phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate (PRPP) (Ki = 134 µM). From in vitro pharmacokinetic studies, compound 18 showed an overall good ADME profile. To rationalize the obtained results, docking studies were performed on the NAPRT structure. Moreover, a preliminary pharmacophore model was built to shed light on the shift from inhibitors to activators.

An experimental investigation of cutmark analysis of sharp force trauma in the Bronze Age

Many studies of Bronze Age weaponry have focused on demonstrating the capability and effectiveness of weapons in a combat context, with little or no observation of the osteological evidence for weapon use and trauma. Downing and Fibiger (2017) is the only study to have taken into consideration cutmark analysis of trauma sustained by Bronze Age weapons. The results of their study demonstrated a need for further research to distinguish between cutmarks sustained by Bronze Age swords and dirks, as the two weapons produced cutmarks with similar macroscopic morphologies. The aim of the current study is to re-evaluate the macroscopic and microscopic morphologies of a Late Bronze Age sword and Late Bronze Age dirk to identify characteristics to distinguish wound patterns from these weapons. A total of 13 strikes were performed by the weapons against two Synbone® cylinders and three Sus scrofa forelimbs. The cutmarks produced were analysed macroscopically, microscopically and metrically to observe distinguishing morphologies and discern between the cutmarks sustained by the two weapons. Results showed cutmarks sustained by the Bronze Age sword and dirk exhibited no distinguishing morphologies. Both weapons produced cutmarks characteristic of both knife and sword weapon classes demonstrating that current standards for identification of weapon class are not appropriate for Bronze Age weaponry. Further research should aim to provide a more suited classification system for diagnosing weapon class specifically for distinguishing the Bronze Age sword and dirk.

Gender, Christianity, and Peace in Chinese Women's International Thought 1914–1953

AbstractThis paper uncovers the various understandings of peace formulated by Chinese Christian women in the period from the First World War to the Korean War Armistice (1914–1953). In both the literature on Christianity in China and the histories of the national and international women's movements, Chinese Christian women have been subjected to multiple exclusions based on their race, class, gender, and religious identity. Drawing on the memoirs and writings of key Chinese Christian women thinkers active in international women's and Christian networks such as Deng Yuzhi 鄧欲志 and Zeng Baosun 曾寶蓀, as well as all less well-known female students writing in missionary school yearbooks, I dissect how Chinese Christian women variously constructed and deployed their own understanding of peace. How did they appropriate, adapt, or reject the rhetoric of “sisterhood” and maternalist arguments about women's supposed peace-making faculties circulating in the international women's movement for their own purposes? How did they fuse Christianity with early twentieth-century interpretations of Confucian ideas about peace and racial harmony? In what ways did Chinese Christian women active in Communist and Nationalist networks seek to deploy their own understanding of a “Just Peace” during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Korean War? Chinese Christian women's formulations of peace can help us to critically rethink European-centered chronologies of the women's movement and history of women's international thought.