Diverse Set Of Factors Research Articles

A Data Driven Model for Predicting the Academic Performance of Students Employing ANN-PSO Hybrid Approach

Predicting student performance is critically important to foster a positive and conductive learning environment and to maximize educational potential. However, student performance is a very challenging metric to forecast owing to the wide and diverse set of factors which may affect student performance. By developing an accurate data driven model, we can identify potential drop outs and take countermeasures to evade such scenarios. Additionally, different additional inputs can be tailor made to cater to the specific needs of the different categories of students. The aim however, is not to discriminate among students but rather come up with strategies to compensate for lacuna in the prevailing teaching methods. This paper presents a data driven approach to predict student academic performance based on the deep neural network model. Data optimization has been done employing the principal component analysis. The performance of the proposed system has been evaluated in terms of the prediction accuracy.

Experimental Investigation for Detecting Mitotic Cells in Medical Image using an Automated Algorithm

Cancer of the breast is a malignant tumour that originates in the cells of the breast tissue. It is by far the most common kind of cancer found in females around the world, with a projected 2.3 million new cases will be discovered in the year 2020 alone. It is projected that one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their life, despite the fact that breast cancer can also occur in men. Breast cancer is a complex condition that can arise from a diverse set of factors, express itself in a variety of ways, and can be treated in a variety of ways. Ductal carcinoma in situ, invasive ductal carcinoma, and invasive lobular carcinoma are all different subtypes. Both the available treatment options and the expected outcome of breast cancer are very variable depending on the particular subtype of the illness. Breast cancer risk factors include drinking alcohol and not getting enough exercise, as well as getting older, having a family history of the disease, having genetic mutations, being exposed to estrogens, and having a family history of the disease. There is not always a connection between having risk factors and developing breast cancer, despite the fact that there can be a link between the two. The prognosis and treatment options for breast cancer are highly dependent on the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis. During staging, the extent to which the cancer has spread throughout the body and how far it has progressed are both measured. The TNM system, the IAFCM system, the ACM system, and the MPIG system are just few of the staging systems that are used to classify breast cancer. These staging systems consider not only the size of the tumor but also whether or not lymph nodes are involved and whether or not distant metastases are present. The severity of breast cancer symptoms can vary widely, depending not only on the subtype of the disease but also on how far along it has progressed. Alterations in the size or shape of the breast, discharge from the nipple, and alterations in the skin of the breast (such as redness or dimpling) are all common indications. On the other hand, not all cases of breast cancer present themselves in a visible manner, and mammography and other forms of routine screening may be able to detect some of these cases. Options for treating breast cancer vary depending on the patient's condition and the stage of the disease, as well as the patient's overall health and their preferences towards therapy. Common examples of medical interventions include surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and targeted therapy. Other examples include. In certain cases, it may be appropriate to participate in more than one form of treatment.

Faculty engagement in university-industry research partnerships: findings from a developing country

ABSTRACT University-industry research partnerships are crucial for promoting university entrepreneurship. Faculty as key instigators play a critical role in developing such partnerships. Previous studies demonstrate that faculty engagement depends on a diverse set of factors. Drawing on individual interviews with 76 faculty members from eight public and private universities in Kazakhstan, this study explores factors affecting faculty decisions to engage in industry research partnerships in a developing country. Applying the personal engagement theory, we found that despite perceiving industry partnerships as personally meaningful and being driven by extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, faculty engagement in industry research partnerships in Kazakhstan is limited. The reasons for this are faculty members’ feelings of low safety and availability caused by structural-, organisational- and individual-level barriers and challenges. We also found that some of these barriers and challenges can be more specific for developing countries that tend to have immature economies, suffer from corruption, have limited research capacity, and invest less in research activities.

Ensemble-based face expression recognition approach for image sentiment analysis

<span>Sentiment analysis based on images is an evolving area of study. Developing a reliable facial expression recognition (FER) device remains a difficult challenge as recognizing emotional feelings reflected in an image is dependent on a diverse set of factors. This paper presented an ensemble-based model for FER that incorporates multiple classification models: i) customized convolutional neural network (CNN), ii) ResNet50, and iii) InceptionV3. The model averaging ensemble classifier method is used to ensemble the predictions from the three models. Subsequently, the proposed FER model is trained and tested on a dataset with an uncontrolled environment (FER-2013 dataset). The experiment demonstrated that ensembling multiple classifiers outperformed all single classifiers in classifying positive and neutral expressions (91.7%, 81.7% and 76.5% accuracy rate for happy, surprise, and neutral, respectively). However, when classifying disgust, anger, and sadness, the ResNet50 model alone is the better choice. Although the Custom CNN performs the best in classifying fear expression (55.7% accuracy), the proposed FER model can still classify fear expression with comparable performance (52.8% accuracy). This paper demonstrated the potential of using the ensemble-based method to enhance the performance of FER. As a result, the proposed FER model has shown a 72.3% accuracy rate.</span>

Evaluation of access to electricity and the socioeconomic effects in rural and urban expanses of Nigeria

PurposeRecently, multidimensional aspects of poverty has been increasingly focused on which includes education, economy and health, while access to modern energy such as stable electricity is also one of the possible solution; thus, this article aims to divulge the relation between access to electricity and progression in socioeconomic status in urban and rural areas of Nigeria in an attempt to propose a sustainable framework for access to electricity.Design/methodology/approachDemographic and health survey data are collected using four categories of model of questionnaires. A standard questionnaire was designed to gather information on features of the household's dwelling element and attributes of visitors and usual residents between the 2018 period. Biomarker questionnaire was used to gather biomarker data on men, women and children. Logistic model estimation technique was employed to estimate the socioeconomic factors affecting access to electricity in Nigeria.FindingsThese studies discovered that there are diverse set of factors affecting access to electricity in Nigeria especially in the rural areas. However, respondent residing in rural areas are still largely deprived access to electricity; most importantly, households with no access to electricity are more likely to use self-generating sets as revealed. Additionally, empirical findings indicated that the higher the level of your education and wealth, the higher the likelihood of having access to electricity in Nigeria. These factors included political will to connect the rural areas to the national grid, development of other infrastructures in those deprived areas and others.Practical implicationsThe problem confronting access to electricity in Nigeria has three components. The first is the significance of those deprived access to electricity in the rural areas and the physical resources needed to connect them to the national grid. The second is the political willingness of the government to have equitable distribution of public goods evenly between rural and urban areas especially on electricity access which will go a long way in reducing poverty in Nigeria. The third is lack of robust national development plans and strategy to tackle the problems facing electricity access in Nigeria.Social implicationsAs the rate of socioeconomic status/development increases, access to electricity is anticipated to rise up in Nigeria.Originality/valueThe findings can be used by the policy makers to address problems facing access to electricity in Nigeria.

Advanced Discretisation and Visualisation Methods for Performance Profiling of Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are typically organised as a fleet in a wind park, subject to similar, but varying, environmental conditions. This makes it possible to assess and benchmark a turbine’s output performance by comparing it to the other assets in the fleet. However, such a comparison cannot be performed straightforwardly on time series production data since the performance of a wind turbine is affected by a diverse set of factors (e.g., weather conditions). All these factors also produce a continuous stream of data, which, if discretised in an appropriate fashion, might allow us to uncover relevant insights into the turbine’s operations and behaviour. In this paper, we exploit the outcome of two inherently different discretisation approaches by statistical and visual analytics. As the first discretisation method, a complex layered integration approach is used. The DNA-like outcome allows us to apply advanced visual analytics, facilitating insightful operating mode monitoring. The second discretisation approach is applying a novel circular binning approach, capitalising on the circular nature of the angular variables. The resulting bins are then used to construct circular power maps and extract prototypical profiles via non-negative matrix factorisation, enabling us to detect anomalies and perform production forecasts.

Suffering experiences of people with cancer undergoing chemotherapy: A meta-ethnographic study.

This meta-ethnography had the objectives of identifying, evaluating, and summarizing the findings of qualitative studies regarding the suffering experiences of people undergoing chemotherapy, as well as developing an explanatory conceptual structure regarding what affects these experiences. A systematic literature review was carried out, covering the past 10 years, in the following databases: CINAHL, Embase, Medline, LILACS and Scopus. By using meta-ethnographic synthesis methods, the following themes were found: the pain of loss; evaluating, measuring, and neutralizing the threat; and social contours of suffering. The experience of living with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy was synthesized into a theoretical-explanatory model with a structure that resembles barbed-wire loops. The model expresses people's suffering experiences as marked by the feeling of loss, restraint of emotions, and resilience. While transcendent movements broke the cycle of suffering, resilience emerged as a learning experience that made patients more resistant to the pain of loss. The results indicated a complex and diverse set of factors that influence suffering, which confirmed that experiences are individual, comprehensive, and continuously reinterpreted.

A Shared Signaling Network That Maintains Erythroid Homeostasis By Activating Stress Erythropoiesis Regulates Inflammation: Implications for the Anemia of Chronic Inflammation

Anemia is a common secondary pathology resulting from inflammatory diseases including cancer or infection. Its exact prevalence is difficult to determine, yet its contributions to the morbidity and mortality of patients and its negative impact on quality of life are clear. Despite the diverse set of factors that can lead to inflammatory anemia, its core pathology of hyperinflammation, iron dysregulation, and lack of red cell production suggests the possibility of a common etiology. Inflammation induces pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNFα, IL-1β and IFNγ that drive myelopoiesis at the expense of steady state bone marrow erythropoiesis. In addition, other cytokines increase the expression of hepcidin, haptoglobin and hemopexin by the liver, leading to the sequestration of iron. While limiting iron can be beneficial in the context of infection, the consequence of this restriction is a further reduction in red cell production in the bone marrow. To compensate for the loss of bone marrow erythropoiesis, inflammation induces stress erythropoiesis in the spleen or liver.Stress erythropoiesis is regulated by different signals which include BMP4 and GDF15 and utilizes stress erythroid progenitors that are distinct from steady state erythroid progenitors. Our work shows that in contrast to steady state erythropoiesis, pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNFα promote the proliferation of stress erythroid progenitors, while anti-inflammatory signals such as PGJ2 and IL-10 promote their differentiation. These studies demonstrate that the expansion and differentiation stages of stress erythropoiesis are coordinated with, and influenced by, signals that initiate and resolve inflammation. In addition, we show that this regulation is reciprocal. Signals that regulate the differentiation of stress erythroid progenitors (GDF15 and BMP4) promote the resolution of inflammation. Mice infected with the model gut pathogen Citrobacter rodentium, exhibit stress erythropoiesis in the spleen, while steady state erythropoiesis in the bone marrow is suppressed until pathogen clearance. We observed that hepcidin expression in the liver increases initially, but then decreases as the expression of erythroferrone by stress erythroid progenitors increased in the spleen, but not the bone marrow. Using mice mutant for GDF15 (GDF15-/-) and for BMP4 signaling (flexed-tail f/f), which exhibit defective stress erythropoiesis, we observed that the expression of hepcidin was dysregulated suggesting that stress erythroid progenitors are responsible for iron regulation at this time. In addition, infection of mutant mice led to increased lethality. During peak infection, we observed morphological differences in the colons of these mice indicative of increased inflammation and systemic infection. These changes were associated with increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes, as well as decreased numbers of FoxP3+ regulatory T-cells (Tregs). Using naïve CD4+ T-cells isolated from uninfected control, f/f or GDF15-/- mice, we observed significantly altered gene expression from mutant T-cells following Treg induction in vitro. However, the addition of BMP4 and GDF15 into these cultures rescued Treg development of mutant naïve T-cells and enhanced Treg development of naïve control T cells. Analysis of the BMP4 and GDF15 signaling pathways in both stress erythroid progenitor differentiation and in Treg development revealed that in both systems these signals converge on the transcription factor HIF1α.Taken together these data support a new model showing that the loss of steady state erythropoiesis due to pro-inflammatory signals is balanced by the activation of stress erythropoiesis by those same factors. Similarly, the differentiation of stress erythroid progenitors appears to regulate iron, and is itself regulated by the same signals that drive the development of Tregs and the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines during immune resolution. This work supports a novel model where initiation and resolution of inflammatory immune responses are co-regulated with stress erythropoiesis, which allows for a robust immune response while maintaining erythroid homeostasis. Furthermore, this model predicts that alterations to this shared signaling network will underlie the development of chronic inflammatory anemia. DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Emotional sentiment analysis for a group of people based on transfer learning with a multi-modal system

Identifying emotional sentiment projected in an image is a tedious task, considering the fact that sentiment represented by an image could depend on a very diverse set of factors. This paper presents a novel approach to predict the emotional sentiment of a group of people in a variety of environments. The proposed technique uses local facial features of subjects along with global scene features to estimate the type of emotional sentiment in group-level emotion recognition. Two separate convolutional neural networks based on different architectures are designed to predict group-level emotions into three categories: negative, neutral and positive. The first convolutional neural network referred as Scene-model, learns the global features in data. A novel partial fine-tuning process is proposed to train the model on task-specific data. The second convolutional model referred as Face-model is trained on facial expression datasets to learn the emotional status of subjects in an image. Joint distribution of the global (scene) and local (face) features is modeled using long short-term memory networks. This joint distribution is converted into class scores using softmax regression-based model.

A Review of Osteosarcoma Therapeutics

Osteosarcoma is a rare but deadly cancer, predominantly affecting both adolescent and young adult populations. Osteosarcoma occurs when an aggressive malignant neoplasm arises from transformed cells of mesenchymal origin, which eventually produce a malignancy in the osteoid. Diagnosis of osteosarcoma typically results from symptoms of pain or swelling in the bone, which can be confirmed through laboratory testing of alkaline phosphatase and lactate dehydrogenase levels as well the detection of microscopic and macroscopic lesions. Pathogenesis of osteosarcoma is caused by a diverse set of factors including physical agents, radiation, chromosomal aberrations and viral infection which dysregulate cellular functions. Current research focuses on understanding how microRNAs play a role in osteosarcoma and other aggressive cancers. In this review, we discuss current treatments options including chemoresistant strategies and immunotherapies that show promise at combating osteosarcoma and other cancers.

Corporate voluntary disclosure practices and its association with corporate attributes: an empirical investigation of listed and non-listed commercial banks in Bangladesh

The study evaluates the level of the voluntary disclosure practices of 27 listed and non-listed banks in Bangladesh; whether there is any significant association between bank's specific attributes (i.e., size, profitability, age, and ownership structure) and the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports over the period of the study. To measure the level of voluntary information disclosure in the annual reports of each individual bank for each year, the study considered a two-step process: 1) construction of the voluntary disclosure index; 2) scoring the voluntary information disclosure items. For analysing the study, some statistical methods (descriptive statistics, OLS regression model, correlation analysis) have been considered. The result reveals that, a diverse set of factors influence the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of the banks. The study has the implication for current professional practice and is in important addition to existing literature in the arena of voluntary disclosure and the strategy of disclosure. The study also finds that, the bank's size and profitability have the positive relationship with the level of voluntary disclosure. On the other hand, bank's age and ownership structure have the negative relationship with the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports.

The effect of internal and external determinants of electricity projects in Libya

PurposeIn recent times, electricity as one of the most important energy sources has witnessed considerable decreases in consumption figures. These cutbacks have been mainly due to the growing increasing living standards, minimal governance and political fracture. Thus, this paper aims to appraise the supply of electricity side in an attempt to propose a sustainable electricity framework.Design/methodology/approachThe reviewed literature identified a gap within the previous literature which had not previously been investigated; however, to carry out the investigation, a research strategy had to be formulated. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with managers, engineers and electrical professionals. Prior to the commencement of the main study, a preliminary pilot study was carried out among ten senior practitioners in the General Electric Company of Libya. The purpose of the pilot study was to assess clarity of questions, timing and suitability of the respondents for the study, and to establish its reliability and validity.FindingsFrom the aspect of the demand, the study found that there was a diverse set of factors that affect electricity demand in Libya. These included the average real price of electricity, the real value of the imported electrical appliances, gross domestic product, population, the temperature difference and the lagged electricity demand. Secondly, from the aspect of electricity supply, the study found that there was a diverse set of factors that affect electricity projects in Libya or even the development of existing projects. These factors included electricity demand, political effects, recession, oil prices and improved development of other infrastructure.Research limitations/implicationsDue to limitations in time and cost, political instability in the country and the lack of security, the entire analysis was only of the demand for electricity in Libya based on data collected from secondary sources and primary data resources. The ordinary least squares method of regression used for the purpose of quantitative analysis only included the factors related to the demand for electricity in Libya. It is worth noting that the research work did not include any quantitative analysis that comprised factors related to the supply of electricity in the country. Such an analysis could have technically carved the ways to augment the supply of electricity. Therefore, the context of the research work is one-sided that focuses primarily on the demand.Practical implicationsThe problem confronting development of electricity projects in Libya has three components: The first is the national significance of the projects as a physical resource. The second is the conflict arising politically from within. The third is the lack of consideration given to the specific resource management issues associated with the projects within the government plans and policy statements. In addition, participants further claimed that there were three more independent factors that could affect the level of electricity demand in Libya. These were urbanisation, industrialisation and literacy rates.Social implicationsThe participants also believed that as the rate of socio-economic development increases, the demand for electricity is expected to rise. Urbanisation, industrialisation and literacy rates are some of the developments which will exert more demand pressure on the electricity supply. The participants claimed that the government should take into account the urbanisation rates in Libya in the energy policy formulation. Electricity companies can also take a cue from the urbanisation trends and other socio-economic developments to plan the delivery of electricity according to the rising demand.Originality/valueThis study appraised the supply of electricity side in Libya and proposed a sustainable framework that could be used by policymakers to address energy demand issues in Libya.

External Validation of a Survival Nomogram for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Using the National Cancer Database

Survival nomograms offer individualized predictions using a more diverse set of factors than traditional staging measures, including the American Joint Committee on Cancer Tumor Node Metastasis (AJCC TNM) Staging System. A nomogram predicting overall survival (OS) for resected, non-metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been previously derived from Asian patients. The present study aims to determine the nomogram's predictive capability in the US using the National Cancer Database (NCDB). This was a retrospective review of adults with resected, non-metastatic NSCLC entered into the NCDB between 2004 and 2012. Concordance indices and calibration plots analyzed discrimination and calibration, respectively. Multivariate analysis was also used. A total of 57,313 patients were included in this study. The predominant histologies were adenocarcinoma (48.2%) and squamous cell carcinoma (31.3%), and patients were diagnosed with stage I-A (38.3%), stage I-B (22.7%), stage II-A (14.2%), stage II-B (11.5%), and stage III-A (13.3%). Median OS was 74 months. 1-, 3- and 5-year OS rates were 89.8% [95% confidence interval (CI) 89.5-90.0%], 71.1% (95% CI 70.7-71.6%), and 55.7% (95% CI 54.7-56.6%), respectively. The nomogram's concordance index (C-index) was 0.804 (95% CI 0.792-0.817). AJCC TNM staging demonstrated higher discrimination (C-index 0.833, 95% CI 0.821-0.840). The nomogram's individualized estimates accurately predicted survival in this patient collective, demonstrating higher discrimination in this population than in the developer's cohorts. However, the generalized survival estimates provided by traditional staging demonstrated superior predictive capability; therefore, AJCC TNM staging should remain the gold standard for the prognostication of resected NSCLC in the US.

Antimicrobial Resistance.

The development of antibiotics is considered among the most important advances of modern science. Antibiotics have saved millions of lives. However, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens this progress and presents significant risks to human health. To identify factors associated with AMR, the current epidemiology of important resistant organisms, and possible solutions to the AMR problem. PubMed (2000-2016), NIH REPORTER, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases were searched for articles and entries related to AMR, focusing on epidemiology, clinical effects of AMR, discovery of novel agents to treat AMR bacterial infections, and nonpharmacological strategies to eliminate or modify AMR bacteria. In addition to articles and entries found in these databases, selected health policy reports and public health guidance documents were reviewed. Of 217 articles, databases, and reports identified, 103 were selected for review. The increase in AMR has been driven by a diverse set of factors, including inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and sales, use of antibiotics outside of the health care sector, and genetic factors intrinsic to bacteria. The problem has been exacerbated by inadequate economic incentives for pharmaceutical development of new antimicrobial agents. A range of specific AMR concerns, including carbapenem- and colistin-resistant gram-negative organisms, pose a clinical challenge. Alternative approaches to address the AMR threat include new methods of antibacterial drug identification and strategies that neutralize virulence factors. Antimicrobial resistance poses significant challenges for current clinical care. Modified use of antimicrobial agents and public health interventions, coupled with novel antimicrobial strategies, may help mitigate the effect of multidrug-resistant organisms in the future.

Circumcision Status and Time to Sexual Debut Among Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Six Demographic and Health Surveys.

This paper examines the relationship between circumcision status and timing of sexual debut among unmarried youth in Sub-Saharan Africa using Demographic and Health Surveys. Results from survival analysis indicate that the association between circumcision and timing of first sex is place and context specific. Compared to uncircumcised, circumcised men in Rwanda, Uganda and Namibia hasten sexual initiation, whilst circumcised youth in Ethiopia and Mali delayed sex initiation. In Togo however, we found parity in timing to sexual debut. Our multivariate results reveal that, knowledge of HIV/AIDS risk and educational level also feed into the association between circumcision and timing of sex initiation- implying that efforts to prevent new HIV infection through circumcision could benefit from a proper understanding of how diverse set of factors interact in specific contexts to shape youth's decisions to initiate early sex.

Achieving Placement Stability

Placement stability as an outcome goal in child welfare performance measurement is grounded in the importance of providing stability for children as they are developing attachments and relationships to caregivers. Research shows that many children are vulnerable to placement instability, especially those who have been in long term foster care. This literature review provides an overview of the federal placement stability measure. It then summarizes the diverse set of factors has been found to be associated with placement instability, including characteristics of the child and family of origin, placement type and quality, and the child welfare system and services. Promising practices aimed at promoting placement stability are summarized, followed by questions designed to foster discussion about the relationship of the evidence to child welfare practice.

Determinants of overdose incidents among illicit opioid users in 5 Canadian cities.

Drug overdose is a major cause of death and illness among illicit drug users. Previous research has indicated that most illicit drug users experience nonfatal overdoses and has suggested a variety of factors that are associated with risk of overdose. In this study, we examined the occurrence of and the factors associated with nonfatal overdoses within a Canadian sample of illicit opioid users not enrolled in treatment at the time of study recruitment. Interviewers used a standard questionnaire to collect data on sociodemographic characteristics, drug use, health and health care, experience in the criminal justice system and treatment for drug problems; they also performed standard assessments for mental health and infectious disease. The association between overdose and sociodemographic and drug-use factors was examined with chi(2) and t test analyses; marginally significant variables were examined with logistic regression to determine independent effects. A total of 679 subjects were interviewed; 651 provided answers sufficient for this analysis. One hundred and twelve (17.2%) of the 651 respondents reported an overdose episode in the previous 6 months. In the logistic regression analysis (after adjustment for sociodemographic factors), homelessness, noninjection use of hydromorphone in the past 30 days and involvement in drug treatment in the past 12 months were predictors of overdose (p < 0.05). Overdose poses a considerable health risk for illicit opioid users. We found that a diverse set of factors was associated with overdose episodes. Prevention efforts will likely be more effective if they can be directed to specific causal factors.

THE URBAN CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL ACTIVISM

This article examines the contextual determinants of two types of NAACP activism between 1930 and 1939. They are the justice-oriented outreach of insurgency (e.g., a civil rights rally), and chapter-building activities (e.g., electing committee chairpersons). Activism is analyzed using a more diverse set of factors than previous research on the sociopolitical context of social movements. Specifically, I examine historical urbanization and prior racial institutional development in 136 urban counties of the United States, about 95% of the 1930 African American urban system. WLS regression is used to provide a strong statistical basis for understanding the structural power and liberation context of these two distinct types of activism during the uniquely constrained Depression Era. Both insurgency and chapter-building activities increased due to the expanding non-southern location of African Americans and the effects of WWI-era declines in the population of foreign-born hites. They declined as a result of extreme racial-occupational segregation in the local area and being distant from a predominantly African American county. The factors shaping the two types of activism were not equal, in part due to both shared and non-shared determinants. A particularly instructive finding was that wage growth served as a lever of social control, being negatively related to insurgency. Viewed together, the findings clearly point to the joint influence of economic and noneconomic factors in shaping NAACP activism during the 1930s, and enhance our understanding of the broader determinants of Africans activism generally.

The Urban Context of Historical Activism: NAACP Depression Era Insurgency and Organization-Building Activity

This article examines the contextual determinants of two types of NAACP activism between 1930 and 1939. They are the justice-oriented outreach of insurgency (e.g., a civil rights rally), and chapter-building activities (e.g., electing committee chairpersons). Activism is analyzed using a more diverse set of factors than previous research on the sociopolitical context of social movements. Specifically, I examine historical urbanization and prior racial institutional development in 136 urban counties of the United States, about 95% of the 1930 African American urban system. WLS regression is used to provide a strong statistical basis for understanding the structural power and liberation context of these two distinct types of activism during the uniquely constrained Depression Era. Both insurgency and chapter-building activities increased due to the expanding non-southern location of African Americans and the effects of WWI-era declines in the population of foreign-born hites. They declined as a result of extreme racial-occupational segregation in the local area and being distant from a predominantly African American county. The factors shaping the two types of activism were not equal, in part due to both shared and non-shared determinants. A particularly instructive finding was that wage growth served as a lever of social control, being negatively related to insurgency. Viewed together, the findings clearly point to the joint influence of economic and noneconomic factors in shaping NAACP activism during the 1930s, and enhance our understanding of the broader determinants of Africans activism generally.

New Seismic Design Provisions for Diaphragms in Precast Concrete Parking Structures

Diaphragm damage was observed in several precast concrete parking structures following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. In order to reduce the likelihood of damage in future earthquakes, the design provisions for chord reinforcement in diaphragms were modified in the 1997 Uniform Building Code, and new provisions for selecting web reinforcement were introduced in the 1999 ACI Building Code. This paper focuses on recent changes to the ACI Building Code and summarizes the results of a series of analyses of idealized buildings to demonstrate that diaphragms proportioned in accordance with earlier codes may be vulnerable to seismic damage. A diverse set of factors, including the orientation of precast members and the stress-strain characteristics of welded wire fabric, contributed to the observed damage in precast concrete parking structures.