Discordant Behaviors Research Articles

Cr(VI) uptake by a new adsorbent of CTAB–modified carbonized coal: Experimental and advanced statistical physics studies

The interaction between cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and carbonized coal (CC) resulted in the fabrication of a novel adsorbent (CTAB/CC). The new composite was characterized and applied for hexavalent chromium Cr(VI) uptake at three temperatures (25, 35, and 45 °C) and solution pH 2.0. Based on the correlation coefficient (R2) and Chi–squared (χ2) values, Langmuir with maximum removal capacities of 78.67, 81.74, and 82.58 mg g−1 described adequately the attained experimental data at 25, 35, and 45 °C, respectively. Advanced statistical physics models were applied to better understand the interaction between Cr(VI) ions and CTAB/CC active sites. Steric, energetic and thermodynamics parameters for the satisfactory model (monolayer with two energies) were deeply interpreted. The active sites number (n) was in the range of 0.76 to 1.8 reflecting the presence of multi–docking and multi–ionic mechanisms in Cr(VI) adsorption onto CTAB/CC composite. By increasing temperature from 25 to 45 °C, the receptor sites density (NM) reduced from 45.83 to 22.76 mg g−1 for N1M, but improved from 22.23 to 55.01 mg g−1 for N2M (i.e., discordant behaviors). Energetically, the Cr(VI) adsorption onto the CTAB/CC adsorbent was endothermic and related to physical forces (i.e. <40 kJ mol−1). Adsorption capacities (Qsat1 and Qsat2) were enhanced with temperature, which confirmed the endothermic character of the removal processes. Steric and energetic parameters were involved in controlling the adsorption of Cr(VI) on CTAB/CC product. Thermodynamic parameters revealed the spontaneous nature and viability of Cr(VI) adsorption onto the CTAB/CC composite.

Traffic-flow analysis for source-side DDoS recognition on 5G environments

This paper introduces a novel approach for detecting the participation of a protected network device in flooding-based Distributed Denial of Service attacks. With this purpose, the traffic flows are inspected at source-side looking for discordant behaviors. In contrast to most previous solutions, the proposal assumes the non-stationarity and heterogeneity inherent in the emergent communication environment. In particular, the approach takes advantage of the monitorization and knowledge acquisition capabilities implemented in the SELFNET (H2020-ICT-2014-2/671672) project, which facilitates its implementation as a self-organizing solution on 5G mobile networks. Monitorization, feature extraction and knowledge acquisition tasks are carried out on centralized control plane, hence the proposed architecture minimizes the impact on operational performance and prompts the end-points mobility. The preliminary results observed when considering different metrics, adjustment parameters, and a dataset with traffic observed in 61 real devices proven efficiency when distinguishing normal activities from DDoS behaviors of different intensity. With an optimal granularity selection, the highest AUC reached values close to 1.0 when measured under the most intense attacks, hence demonstrating optimal TPR and FPR relationships by adapting to the instantiated use cases.

Sexual Orientation Group Differences in Perceived Stress and Depressive Symptoms Among Young Adults in the United States.

Overall, sexual minorities have poorer mental health than heterosexual individuals, and stress is thought to underlie such disparities. However, sexual minorities include both those identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) and many who do not (e.g., individuals identifying as mostly heterosexual, or as heterosexual but with discordant same-sex attractions or behaviors), and little is known about the mental health or stress experiences of non-LGB identified sexual minorities. This study assessed perceived stress and depressive symptom differences between concordant heterosexual individuals and three groups of sexual minority young adults (LGB, mostly heterosexual, and discordant heterosexual individuals). Data were from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, Wave IV (2008-2009). Descriptive and bivariate statistics were estimated. Path analyses assessed whether perceived stress mediated differences in depressive symptomatology. Analyses were weighted and gender-stratified. Mostly heterosexual individuals comprised the largest sexual minority group, for both men (3.58%) and women (15.88%). All sexual minority groups reported significantly more depressive symptoms than concordant heterosexual individuals, for both men and women (all P < 0.05). Among women, all sexual minority groups reported significantly higher perceived stress than concordant heterosexual individuals (all P < 0.05), which partially mediated elevations in depressive symptomatology (all P < 0.05). Mostly-heterosexual-identified men reported significantly higher perceived stress than concordant heterosexual men (P < 0.01), which partially mediated elevations in depressive symptomatology (P < 0.01). Our results underscore the importance of assessing sexual orientation comprehensively to fully understand sexual minority health disparities. Additional research should examine the stressors specific to different sexual minority groups.

Detecting discordance enrichment among a series of two-sample genome-wide expression data sets

BackgroundWith the current microarray and RNA-seq technologies, two-sample genome-wide expression data have been widely collected in biological and medical studies. The related differential expression analysis and gene set enrichment analysis have been frequently conducted. Integrative analysis can be conducted when multiple data sets are available. In practice, discordant molecular behaviors among a series of data sets can be of biological and clinical interest.MethodsIn this study, a statistical method is proposed for detecting discordance gene set enrichment. Our method is based on a two-level multivariate normal mixture model. It is statistically efficient with linearly increased parameter space when the number of data sets is increased. The model-based probability of discordance enrichment can be calculated for gene set detection.ResultsWe apply our method to a microarray expression data set collected from forty-five matched tumor/non-tumor pairs of tissues for studying pancreatic cancer. We divided the data set into a series of non-overlapping subsets according to the tumor/non-tumor paired expression ratio of gene PNLIP (pancreatic lipase, recently shown it association with pancreatic cancer). The log-ratio ranges from a negative value (e.g. more expressed in non-tumor tissue) to a positive value (e.g. more expressed in tumor tissue). Our purpose is to understand whether any gene sets are enriched in discordant behaviors among these subsets (when the log-ratio is increased from negative to positive). We focus on KEGG pathways. The detected pathways will be useful for our further understanding of the role of gene PNLIP in pancreatic cancer research. Among the top list of detected pathways, the neuroactive ligand receptor interaction and olfactory transduction pathways are the most significant two. Then, we consider gene TP53 that is well-known for its role as tumor suppressor in cancer research. The log-ratio also ranges from a negative value (e.g. more expressed in non-tumor tissue) to a positive value (e.g. more expressed in tumor tissue). We divided the microarray data set again according to the expression ratio of gene TP53. After the discordance enrichment analysis, we observed overall similar results and the above two pathways are still the most significant detections. More interestingly, only these two pathways have been identified for their association with pancreatic cancer in a pathway analysis of genome-wide association study (GWAS) data.ConclusionsThis study illustrates that some disease-related pathways can be enriched in discordant molecular behaviors when an important disease-related gene changes its expression. Our proposed statistical method is useful in the detection of these pathways. Furthermore, our method can also be applied to genome-wide expression data collected by the recent RNA-seq technology.

SCOREM: statistical consolidation of redundant expression measures

Many platforms for genome-wide analysis of gene expression contain ‘redundant’ measures for the same gene. For example, the most highly utilized platforms for gene expression microarrays, Affymetrix GeneChip® arrays, have as many as ten or more probe sets for some genes. Occasionally, individual probe sets for the same gene report different trends in expression across experimental conditions, a situation that must be resolved in order to accurately interpret the data. We developed an algorithm, SCOREM, for determining the level of agreement between such probe sets, utilizing a statistical test of concordance, Kendall's W coefficient of concordance, and a graph-searching algorithm for the identification of concordant probe sets. We also present methods for consolidating concordant groups into a single value for its corresponding gene and for post hoc analysis of discordant groups. By combining statistical consolidation with sequence analysis, SCOREM possesses the unique ability to identify biologically meaningful discordant behaviors, including differing behaviors in alternate RNA isoforms and tissue-specific patterns of expression. When consolidating concordant behaviors, SCOREM outperforms other methods in detecting both differential expression and overrepresented functional categories.

Maintaining a Heterosexual Identity: Sexual Meanings Among a Sample of Heterosexually Identified Men Who Have Sex with Men

Heterosexually identified men who have sex with men are an understudied group for whom there is little knowledge of the social and sexual meanings of their same-sex encounters. This study employed qualitative methods to better understand the maintenance of a heterosexual identity in the face of discordant sexual behaviors. Open-ended, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 heterosexually identified men (M age, 39.85 years) who reported at least one sexual encounter with a male in the previous year but not more than one sexual encounter per month with a male. Of the participants, 61.9% were African American/black, 28.6% were currently married, 71.4% reported current substance use, and 57.1% were HIV infected. Participants did not consider their same-sex activities as discrepant with their heterosexual identity as these activities were coded as infrequent, recreational, accidental, or an economic necessity. They avoided intimacy by depersonalizing male sexual partners, limiting gestures (e.g., kissing, hugging, eye contact, conversation), and by distancing themselves from gay-identified venues. Participants transferred responsibility for their same-sex sexual activities by blaming external factors, such as a fight with their wife or substance use, for the sexual encounters. Despite their ability to compartmentalize these sexual encounters, many participants expressed guilt and shame when discussing their same sex experiences.

HSA: Beyond BMD with DXA

The measurement of bone mineral density is a surrogate for the measurement of bone strength. Bone strength is comprised of many components including, but not limited to bone architecture, geometry, cortical porosity and tissue mineralization density. A new application for dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), called hip structural or hip strength analysis (HSA), allows the measurement of geometric contributions to bone strength in the proximal femur. With this approach, the cross-sectional area, section modulus and buckling ratio can be quantified. These parameters are measures of strength in axial compression or bending. The limitations of HSA with DXA are primarily those associated with the two-dimensional nature of DXA. Because of the two-dimensional nature of DXA, assumptions must be made regarding the symmetry of the bone cross-sections used in the HSA regions of interest. In one proprietary approach to HSA, an index, called the Femur Strength Index, has been created in an attempt to relate the force of a fall on the greater trochanter to the strength of the proximal femur. Studies using HSA with DXA have demonstrated discordant behaviors between the bone mineral density (BMD) and the section modulus. The geometric parameters are predictive of fracture risk although they do not seem to be better predictors of risk than a conventional measurement of BMD. Various bone active agents have been shown to have desirable effects on these geometric parameters. Direct measurement of these components of bone strength may result in improved fracture risk prediction or therapeutic monitoring. Minimally, a better understanding of the changes in these components of bone strength in disease and during therapy may result from HSA.

Variation in the stability of cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus) pair relationships: the roles of males, females, and mate compatibility

AbstractPair relationships and their emergent properties represent potentially significant sources of proximate and ultimate influence on mating systems, but the study of such relational factors has been rare compared to the volume of literature dedicated to individual-level measures of mate quality. This study assessed variation in the stability of pair relationships in cockatiels (Nymphicus hollandicus) and sought sources for that variation in both the behavior of mated individuals and their compatibility. Pair relationships represent an especially salient aspect of the social system of cockatiels, a socially monogamous species with long-term pairing.In a semi-natural, captive setting, this study compared (1) the social interactions between cockatiel mates to those individuals' interactions with opposite-sex non-mates, (2) the roles of males and females in pair relationships, and (3) the various pairs in their displays of intrapair and extrapair interactions. We also assessed the behavioral features underlying pair relationships by examining the interrelationships among social behaviors within pairs and the degree to which emergent properties structure pair relationships. Interactions between mates, as compared to opposite-sex non-mates, were characterized by closer proximity, greater behavioral synchrony, less aggression, more allopreening, and greater sexual behavior. Males and females displayed little dimorphism in many intrapair and extrapair behaviors; however, males approached and courted their mates more than females did, and males but not females exhibited more intersexual aggression to non-mates than to their mates. Social interactions between mates varied significantly among pairs in ways that reflected variation in the degree of behavioral compatibility between mates. In other words, suites of highly correlated behaviors characterized the interactions between mates such that pairs exhibiting greater affiliative or accordant behaviors exhibited less aggressive or discordant behaviors and vice versa. Emergent properties appeared to play an especially important role in compatibility. By examining significant within-species variation in pair relationships, this study complements the increasing knowledge of mating relationships gained from comparative studies and illustrates the importance of emergent, pair-level behavior in the maintenance of long-term monogamous pair-bonds.

Can we all get along? The interpersonal challenge at work

Researchers suggest that acting rudely or showing disregard for others contributes to an increasing incivility in the workplace. The analysis of workplace incivility indicates there is more to interpersonal interaction in the American workplace than the positive image of water-cooler conversations, lunchroom camaraderie, or after-work happy hours. Rather, we are also likely to find a range of discordant behaviors exhibited by employees toward their coworkers and by managers toward their subordinates. These behaviors may be overtly aggressive and violent, or subtle and unthreatening. Several reasons for this trend toward incivility are explored.

Constructing Medieval Sexuality

Lochrie, Karma, Peggy McCracken, and James A. Schultz, eds. Constructing Medieval Sexuality. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. 205 pp. $ 18.98 paperback, $47.98 hardcover. The collection of essays under review originated at a conference on medieval sexualities hosted by the Newberry Library in Chicago, March 4-5, 1994. By the time this review appears considerable time will have passed since the conference and the publication of the proceedings (1997). By now, the issues addressed by the contributors have moved from the margins into the mainstream of what is now called Cultural Studies, whether the object of critical attention is contemporary or medieval literature. Having emerged as an important mode of criticism during the eighties, this cultural turn enthusiastically embraces the many different research directions (feminism, gender, masculinities, ethnicities, and race) that continue to greatly enliven literary and historical studies. Just how much has happened in this area of research is reviewed by Bruce Smith in his article Premodern Sexualities, PMLA 115.3 (2000): 318-29. In keeping with the cultural studies approach, the contributors have each chosen texts that go beyond the medieval literary canon drawing on a great variety of clerical and lay materials. In the introduction, the editors review the basic assumptions of the conference and of this volume, to wit, how medieval sexualities are constructed and what the historical and cultural forces were that brought them forth, influenced, suppressed, and fostered them. The editors pay their respect to but also declare their difference from Michel Foucault, who has dominated our thinking about sexuality, gender, and power during the past decades. This gesture signals a growing independence of medieval cultural studies from the man who has helped launch a new way of looking at so many cultural preoccupations and phenomena, but whose judgments on earlier texts and periods, upon closer inspection, have been found in need of further investigation. The contributors investigate paradigms of gender, sexuality, and culture from many different vantagepoints. In the end, they bring to light numerous textual aspects and visual clues that, heretofore, have remained hidden or ignored. Dyan Elliott's look at sin, the devil, and (sexual) pollution in the very early Middle Ages, specifically in the works of St. Augustine, convinces us that not only can the devil read minds (almost a commonplace in medieval demonology), but we, thanks to her, can read much more clearly between the lines of ostensibly traditional texts. James Schultz does the profession a similar service by unfolding the clothing that covers the male and female bodies in the Middle High German version of the classic love/death tale of Tristan. While research into the various aspects of love and desire has kept Tristan scholars busy for decades, in his modest yet profoundly knowledgeable and engaging way, Schultz sheds new light on the medieval construction of gender and, in this case, class. He notes that, for all their unisex qualities, medieval clothing and, by extension, courtly behavior, do always play on gender (differences), and on relationships of power, domination, and submission. Making the text speak to us through its silences, Joan Cadden turns to Peter of Abano, who, normally not shy about stating his theological or medical opinions, does withhold, by his own admission, information about sodomy, and about who practices it and why. According to Peter, nature's rules fall victim to transgression in the form of discordant and irregular behaviors; these rules are also broken by seemingly monstrous occurrences that are, upon closer inspection, very much part of this same nature. …

Introduction: The Object in France Today

Gilles Lipovetsky has aptly characterized the last two decades of the twentieth century as a period of ideologies crumbling into ethical ambiguity and contradictory values... This introductory material is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol20/iss2/2 The Object in France Today Martine Antic University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Gilles Lipovetsky has aptly characterized the last two decades of the twentieth century as a period of ideologies crumbling into ethical ambiguity and contradictory values. As belief in ideals has faded, they have ceased to function as models for ordering sociopolitical networks and world views. And now, in the ideological ruins piling up in the midst of dissonant discourses and discordant behaviors, the representational modalities of dilapidated utopias are the relics retrieved in archeological attempts to define the current fin de siecle: Le monde contemporain offre le tableau du capitalisme imperialiste liberal apres qu' il a triomphe de ses deux derniers challengers, le fascisme et le communisme: ainsi parlerait le marxisme, s'il n' etait pas defunt `Today's world offers the portrait of imperialist liberal capitalism having triumphed over its last two challengers: fascism and communism; or so Marxism would say, if it weren't defunct' (Lyotard 200). A transitional era par excellence, the moribund twentieth century is listlessly trying to define what it was, at a moment when, as Jameson says, the meaning of history escapes us. In the age of recycling we are witnesses at the trial of originality; literary and artistic production is being questioned: one of the greatest paradoxes of contemporary is that at a time when the image reigns supreme the very notion of a creative imagination seems under mounting threat (Kearney 3). For Virilio and Kittler the artist's individuality is questionable now that computerized information and infography can be adapted for the generation of texts and images. Synthesized images are in fact not images of something, they are devoid of a reference and have no object. For Baudrillard the synthesized image, like the video image, is caught up in an epidemic. contagion des images qui s'engendrent elles-memes sans 1 Antle: Introduction: The Object in France Today Published by New Prairie Press 316 STCL, Volume 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1996) reference a un reel ou a un imaginaire est-elle mettle virtuellement sans limites, et cet engendrement sans limites produitl'information comme catastrophe 'The epidemic of self-engendering images that do not refer to any real or imaginary world is virtually uncontrollable, and this limitless proliferation produces information as catastrophe' (Illusion 85). Referenceless images are reality dummies, a sham set up in lieu of reality; as such, they bring into question our relationship to the real. The profusion of such referenceless images attests to a fascination with simulation in today's societies, and to what Clement Rosset calls ce desk d'aucune chose reelle `this desire for nothing real' which releve en somme d'un attrait du vide qui se manifeste aussi, et de maniere plus exemplaire encore, dans une halucination qui fait periodiquement 'la une' de l'actualite philosophique ou litteraire: rid& d'une fin du monde probable et imminente 'arises from the attraction of the void, which is manifest in the hallucination that periodically is the center of a philosophical or literary attention: the presumption that the end of the world is near' (78). This vision of a world where we are no more than passive spectators has its gurus and its opponents. Eco attacks it in what he calls cultural guerrilla warfare. Kearney has developed a series of strategies of resistance to the dangers of simulation. All levels of society reflect a re-narrativization of socio-political phenomena. Deprived of all notions of transcendence, objects are deformed and de-realized. Their appearance and content are questioned. The city has been taken over by the megalopolis. The supermodern, as Marc Auge calls the contemporary era, produces non-lieux nonplaces,' the generic loci of banality, such as airports and hypermarkets. Pacific Bell's cable project introduces today in France the notion of a film industry without film. Virilio's zero degree of life style and Baudrillard's xerox degree of culture show up in the novels of the 1980s and 1990s, as a new generation of writers, while still assuming the primacy of the written word, is transforming literature and its characters according to the contradictions of contemporary culture. I have selected four texts as examples. 1. In Jean-Philippe Toussaint's La Salle de bain (The Bathroom 1985), an immobilized character is reduced to the zero degree of life style. In this and other of Toussaint's texts we witness the disappearance of the object as it is situated and mediated by a series of screens and windows. Vision is constantly pro2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 20, Iss. 2 [1996], Art. 2 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol20/iss2/2 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1392