Representations Of Group Research Articles

Fairness, Bias, and Ethics in AI: Exploring the Factors Affecting Student Performance

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a data science tool for education has enormous potential for increasing student performance and course outcomes. However, the growing concern about fairness, bias, and ethics in AI systems requires a careful examination of these issues in an educational context. Using AI and predictive modelling tools, this paper explores the aspects influencing student performance and course success. The Open University Learning Analytics Dataset (OULAD) is analysed using several AI techniques (logistic regression and random forest) in this study to reveal insights about fairness, ethics, and potential biases. This dataset has been used by hundreds of studies to explore how educational data mining can provide information on students. However, potential bias or unfairness in that dataset could undermine the results and any conclusions made from them. To gain insights into the dataset's properties, this was analysed using a typical data science methodology, which included data collecting, cleaning, and exploratory data analysis using Python. By applying AI-based predictive models, this study aims to detect potential biases and their impact on student outcomes. Fairness and ethical considerations are central to the analysis as the representation of various demographic groups and any disparities are evaluated in course results. The goal is to provide useful insights on the proper use of AI in education, while also maintaining equitable and transparent decision-making procedures. The findings shed light on the complicated interplay between artificial intelligence, fairness, and ethics in the context of student performance and course success. As artificial intelligence continues to influence the educational landscape, this study will provide useful ideas for encouraging fairness and minimising biases, resulting in a more inclusive and equal learning environment.

Internalized Oppression: Exploring the Nuanced Experiences of Gender and Sexuality in Historically Black Colleges and Universities

In the American South at the turn of the twentieth century, quality education was scarce and legislative laws were put in place to ensure that African American individuals remained far away from Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). As a result, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) became a catalyst for change in this “separate but equal” society. This article will explore the significance of HBCUs in elevating Black Americans throughout the twentieth century, while also assessing the conservative nature of the institutions and their inflexibility towards the various nuances of African American communities. While it is not particular to HBCUs, a tolerance of toxic masculinity and severe conservatism has resulted in starkly different Black experiences for cis-gendered heterosexual men, in contrast to cisgendered women and other members of the 2SLGBTQI+ community. By investigating various experiences within HBCUs, this article will explain the unifying and uplifting benefits for Black individuals in these institutions, as well as its many divisive components. My research will strive to analyze and properly convey the various nuanced experiences throughout HBCUs and assess the variety of factors that have led to these underrepresented interactions. This article will provide an understanding of how HBCUs have and continue to reflect American society but also demonstrate their role in various Black communities and their representation of non-dominant Black groups from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Mainstreaming queerness in Thai boys’ love narratives: Impact on gay identity perceptions in Bangkok’s society

The intricate interplay between media representation and experiences of minority groups in Southeast Asia necessitates a comprehensive analysis of popular culture’s impact on marginalized communities. This mixed-method study investigates the portrayal of homosexual male characters in contemporary Thai Boy’s Love (BL) series and its connection to the authentic experiences of gay men in Bangkok. Through interviews with the casting team and producers of a prominent BL series, the research aims to elucidate the creative process underpinning these portrayals. The study further examines the perceptions and identity development of gay men as depicted in BL narratives, and how heterosexual women viewers interpret this representation. A questionnaire involving 330 participants of diverse orientations indicates that 78.6% of gay men consider BL narratives to be misrepresentative, while 69% of heterosexual women perceive them as accurate, raising concerns about the influence of media representations on identity formation within the gay community. Moreover, the marked disparities in beliefs regarding whether gay individuals aspire to the appearance portrayed by BL characters (with 98.3% of heterosexuals, 60% of bisexuals, and 100% of lesbians concurring, in contrast to 71.8% of gay respondents dissenting) emphasize the significance of diverse and accurate representation in shaping identities and self-perception.

PHCDTI: A multichannel parallel high-order feature crossover model for DTIs prediction

The exploration of non-covalent interactions between drugs and proteins (NCIs) has significantly improved the performance of drug–target interactions (DTIs) prediction models. However, existing methods for simulating NCIs are limited to single or multiple interactions, ignoring the combinatorial effects (i.e., high-order crossover between drugs and proteins (HOC-D&P)) that can arise when multiple NCIs coexist. To overcome this limitation, a multi-channel parallel high-order prediction model (PHCDTI) is proposed, aiming to simulate the complex interactions between drugs and proteins, thereby modeling HOC-D&P. Firstly, a tri-channel parallel model structure is constructed, allowing each channel to independently learn the interaction patterns between drug molecules and amino acid groups. Secondly, the three channels are designed from low-order to high-order, incorporating linear, inner-product, and pair-interaction feature crossover methods to simulate the complex interactions between drug molecules and amino acid groups. The stacking of residual connections enables the model to effectively model HOC-D&P. Additionally, by utilizing multi-head attention mechanisms for inner product and squeeze-excitation networks (SENET) for pair-interaction, the interpretability of the NCIs modeling process and the specific representation of drug molecules or amino acid groups are achieved. PHCDTI was evaluated on three benchmark datasets in four experimental settings, and the results indicated that it outperformed the most recent baseline model. In all cases, the average accuracy, precision, recall, AUC, and AUPR of PHCDTI are improved over the best baseline model by 3.56%, 6.06%, 3.99%, 2.50%, and 8.11%, respectively. Moreover, strong information filtering capabilities were exhibited by PHCDTI, with the effectiveness of the three-channel design confirmed by ablation studies. Finally, a case study on the human γ-aminobutyric acid receptors (GABARs) demonstrated that PHCDTI can serve as a powerful tool for real-world drug screening and design.

A universal framework for entanglement detection under group symmetry

One of the fundamental questions in quantum information theory is determining entanglement of quantum states, which is generally an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we prove that all PPT (π―A⊗πB) -invariant quantum states are separable if and only if all extremal unital positive (πB,πA) -covariant maps are decomposable where πA,πB are unitary representations of a compact group and π A is irreducible. Moreover, an extremal unital positive (πB,πA) -covariant map L is decomposable if and only if L is completely positive or completely copositive. We then apply these results to prove that all PPT quantum channels of the form Φ(ρ)=aTr(ρ)dIdd+bρ+cρT+(1−a−b−c)diag(ρ) are entanglement-breaking, and that there is no A-BC PPT-entangled (U⊗U―⊗U) -invariant tripartite quantum state. The former strengthens some conclusions in (Vollbrecht and Werner 2001 Phys. Rev. A 64 062307; Kopszak et al 2020 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 53 395306), and the latter resolves some open questions raised in (Collins et al 2018 Linear Algebra Appl. 555 398–411).

Representation of coxeter group and orthogonal group

The paper is primarily divided into two parts. The main focus of the first part is the construction of a representation of Coxeter groups. This begins with the definition of the Coxeter system and connected components, followed by the introduction of the length function and subsequent theorems. The faithfulness of this representation is then proven, allowing for the identification of isomorphisms that enable the final classification of finite Coxeter groups. This classification is achieved by leveraging the established relationship between irreducible representations of Coxeter groups and positive definite quadratic forms. Given the strong connection between Coxeter groups and orthogonal groups, the primary objective of the second part is to create a specific representation of orthogonal groups. This is accomplished through an examination of the decomposition of harmonic polynomials into subspaces of homogeneous harmonic polynomials, using the action of O(2) on these subspaces. The paper concludes by drawing connections to results in Invariant Theory, demonstrating the applicability of the presented concepts in a more general duality context.

Symmetry constraints and spectral crossing in a Mott insulator with Green's function zeros

Lattice symmetries are central to the characterization of electronic topology. Recently, it was shown that Green's function eigenvectors form a representation of the space group. This formulation has allowed the identification of gapless topological states even when quasiparticles are absent. Here we demonstrate the profundity of the framework in the extreme case, when interactions lead to a Mott insulator, through a solvable model with long-range interactions. We find that both Mott poles and zeros are subject to the symmetry constraints, and relate the symmetry-enforced spectral crossings to degeneracies of the original noninteracting eigenstates. Our results lead to new understandings of topological quantum materials and highlight the utility of interacting Green's functions toward their symmetry-based design. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Unisingular subgroups of symplectic groups over [formula omitted]

A linear group is called unisingular if every element of it has eigenvalue 1. In this paper we develop some general machinery for the study of unisingular irreducible linear groups. A motivation for the study of such groups comes from several sources, including algebraic geometry, Galois theory, finite group theory and representation theory. In particular, a certain aspect of the theory of abelian varieties requires the knowledge of unisingular irreducible subgroups of the symplectic groups over the field of two elements, and in this paper we concentrate on this special case of the general problem. A more special but important question is that of the existence of such subgroups in the symplectic groups of particular degrees. We answer this question for almost all degrees 2n<250, specifically, the question remains open only 7 values of n.

Exploring Diversity in North American Academic Pediatric Otolaryngology.

Representation of women and minority groups is traditionally low in Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery (OHNS). This cross-sectional study aims to assess the difference in gender and racial/ethnic representation within Academic North American pediatric OHNS. Cross-sectional study of North American pediatric OHNS faculty websites. North America. Canadian and American residency program registries were searched for accredited OHNS programs. Pediatric OHNS faculty were identified through program websites. Information regarding gender, race/ethnicity, time in practice, research productivity, academic title, and leadership positions was extracted from public profiles and Scopus. Demographic and academic data was also extracted for OHNS and pediatric OHNS department/division chairs. North American academic pediatric OHNS websites listed 516 surgeons, of whom 39.9% were women. Most surgeons were perceived as White (69.0%), followed by Asian (24.0%), Hispanic (3.7%), and Black (3.3%). Women surgeons had lower h-indices, less publications, and less citations than men (P < .001). Despite women surgeons having fewer years in practice (median 8.0 vs 13.0, P < .001), gender-differences in h-index persisted when controlling for years in practice (P < .05). Men surgeons had higher academic titles (P < .001), but there was no gender difference in leadership roles while accounting for years in practice (P = .559). White surgeons had higher academic titles than non-White surgeons (P = .018). There was no racial/ethnic difference in leadership roles (P = .392). Most pediatric OHNS surgeons are men and/or White. Significant gender-differences in research productivity and academic title exist, however surgeons of racial/ethnic minority have similar research productivity as their racial/ethnic majority counterparts.

Streaming with more diversity? A comparison of the representation of minorities in broadcasting versus streaming television content

This study focused on the representation of minority groups on television, following the idea(l) that television as a mirror of society should convey a well-balanced representation of society. The current study extends previous research in that it analyses the potential for differences between regular broadcasters and streaming platforms, due to the latter’s public commitments to diversity and inclusion. Our results reveal that on Dutch prime-time television and popular streaming platforms women and seniors are underrepresented, whilst sexual minorities are overrepresented on public broadcasters and ethnic minorities on all platforms. Furthermore, results revealed that public nor commercial broadcasters nor popular streaming platforms succeed in being a fully inclusive, diverse, equitable, and representative reflection of Dutch society.

Enzymatic glycosylation of aloesone performed by plant UDP-dependent glycosyltransferases.

Aloesone is a bioactive natural product and biosynthetic precursor of rare glucosides found in rhubarb and some aloe plants including Aloe vera. This study aimed to investigate biocatalytic aloesone glycosylation and more than 400 uridine diphosphate-dependent glycosyltransferase (UGT) candidates, including multifunctional and promiscuous enzymes from a variety of plant species were assayed. As a result, 137 selective aloesone UGTs were discovered, including four from the natural producer rhubarb. Rhubarb UGT72B49 was further studied and its catalytic constants (kcat=0.00092±0.00003s-1, KM=30±2.5μM) as well as temperature and pH optima (50°C and pH7, respectively) were determined. We further aimed to find an efficient aloesone glycosylating enzyme with potential application for biocatalytic production of the glucoside. We discovered UGT71C1 from Arabidopsis thaliana as an efficient aloesone UGT showing a 167-fold higher catalytic efficiency compared to that of UGT72B49. Interestingly, sequence analysis of all the 137 newly identified aloesone UGTs showed that they belong to different phylogenetic groups, with the highest representation in groups B, D, E, F and L. Finally, our study indicates that aloesone C-glycosylation is highly specific and rare, since it was not possible to achieve in an efficient manner with any of the 422 UGTs assayed, including multifunctional GTs and 28 known C-UGTs.

Topological boundaries of representations and coideals

For a locally compact quantum group G, a (left) coideal is a (left) G-invariant von Neumann subalgebra of L∞(G). We introduce and analyze various generalizations of amenability and coamenability to coideals of discrete and compact quantum groups. We focus on a particular class of coideals found in the category of compact quantum groups, which are associated with a compact quasi-subgroup. This class includes all coideals of the quotient type. We also introduce the notion of a Furstenberg-Hamana boundary for representations of discrete quantum groups and use it to study amenability and coamenability properties of coideals. We then prove that a coideal of a compact quantum group that is associated with a compact quasi-subgroup is coamenable if and only if its codual coideal is G-injective. If G is a unimodular or an exact discrete quantum group, we can replace G-injectivity in the latter statement with the weaker condition of relative amenability. This result leads to a complete characterization of the unique trace property. Specifically, a unimodular discrete quantum group G has the unique trace property if and only if the action of G on its noncommutative Furstenberg boundary is faithful. We also demonstrated that if a unimodular discrete quantum group G is C⁎-simple then it has the unique trace property. These findings are the quantum analogs of the groundbreaking results of Breuillard, Kalantar, Kennedy, and Ozawa and they provide answers to questions posted by Kalantar, Kasprzak, Skalski, and Vergnioux.

Group Theory on Quasisymmetry and Protected Near Degeneracy.

In solid state systems, group representation theory is powerful in characterizing the behavior of quasiparticles, notably the energy degeneracy. While conventional group theory is effective in answering yes-or-no questions related to symmetry breaking, its application to determining the magnitude of energy splitting resulting from symmetry lowering is limited. Here, we propose a theory on quasisymmetry and near degeneracy, thereby expanding the applicability of group theory to address questions regarding large-or-small energy splitting. Defined within the degenerate subspace of an unperturbed Hamiltonian, quasisymmetries form an enlarged symmetry group eliminating the first-order splitting. This framework ensures that the magnitude of splitting arises as a second-order effect of symmetry-lowering perturbations, such as external fields and spin-orbit coupling. We systematically tabulate the quasisymmetry groups within 32 crystallographic point groups and find all the possible unitary quasisymmetry group structures regarding double degeneracy. Applying our theory to the realistic material AgLa, we predict a "quasi-Dirac semimetal" phase characterized by two tiny-gap band anticrossings.

Regional bias in monolingual English language models

In Natural Language Processing (NLP), pre-trained language models (LLMs) are widely employed and refined for various tasks. These models have shown considerable social and geographic biases creating skewed or even unfair representations of certain groups. Research focuses on biases toward L2 (English as a second language) regions but neglects bias within L1 (first language) regions. In this work, we ask if there is regional bias within L1 regions already inherent in pre-trained LLMs and, if so, what the consequences are in terms of downstream model performance. We contribute an investigation framework specifically tailored for low-resource regions, offering a method to identify bias without imposing strict requirements for labeled datasets. Our research reveals subtle geographic variations in the word embeddings of BERT, even in cultures traditionally perceived as similar. These nuanced features, once captured, have the potential to significantly impact downstream tasks. Generally, models exhibit comparable performance on datasets that share similarities, and conversely, performance may diverge when datasets differ in their nuanced features embedded within the language. It is crucial to note that estimating model performance solely based on standard benchmark datasets may not necessarily apply to the datasets with distinct features from the benchmark datasets. Our proposed framework plays a pivotal role in identifying and addressing biases detected in word embeddings, particularly evident in low-resource regions such as New Zealand.

On the lifting problem of representations of a metacyclic group

We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a modular representation of a group G=Cph⋊Cm in a field of characteristic p>0 to be lifted to a representation over local principal ideal domain of characteristic zero containing the ph roots of unity.

Representation of Racial Diversity on US Plastic Surgery Websites: A Cross-sectional Study: Racial Diversity on Plastic Surgery Websites.

The racial diversity portrayed in plastic and reconstructive surgery (PRS) media is an important indicator of an inclusive environment for potential patients. To evaluate the degree to which PRS websites demonstrate inclusivity, we assessed the racial composition of both patients and plastic surgeons depicted on the most visited academic and private PRS websites to determine the extent to which racial diversity is represented. A cross-sectional study was conducted in September 2023. The 10 most visited websites in each state were identified. Sociodemographic characteristics including race and sex of patients and plastic surgeons, as well as the type of practice, were collected. Race was classified according to individuals' Fitzpatrick Phototypes into White and non-White. Differences in patient and surgeon representation were compared to the 2020 US Census and the 2020 ASPS demographics using χ2 tests. Subgroup analyses were conducted to identify differences by type of practice and region. We analyzed a total of 2,752 patients from 462 websites belonging to 930 plastic surgeons. PRS websites were predominantly from private practices (93%). Regarding patient representation, 92.6% were female, 7.4% were male, 87.6% were White, and 12.4% were non-White. The surgeon population on the studied webpages was 75.1% male, 92.1% White, and 7.8% non-White. Statistically significant differences were found in the patient population when compared to the 2020 national (P < 0.001) and regional (P < 0.001) US Census demographics and the 2020 ASPS Statistics Report (P < 0.001). Although minority representation was significantly higher on academic websites compared to private practice (22.9% vs. 12.1%; P = 0.007), both were significantly lower than the percentage of minority patients undergoing PRS. This study illuminates racial disparities in the representation of racial groups among patients and plastic surgeons in the most frequented plastic surgery websites. Moreover, it underscores the imperative to bolster racial diversity within the digital content of both private and academic PRS websites. Greater racial representation can foster a more inclusive perception of the plastic surgery field, which may potentially broaden access to care and enrich the professional landscape.

On the regular representation of solvable Lie groups with open coadjoint quasi-orbits

On the regular representation of solvable Lie groups with open coadjoint quasi-orbits

Circle-valued angle structures and obstruction theory

We study spaces of circle-valued angle structures, introduced by Feng Luo, on ideal triangulations of 3-manifolds. We prove that the connected components of these spaces are enumerated by certain cohomology groups of the 3-manifold with [Formula: see text]-coefficients. Our main theorem shows that this establishes a geometrically natural bijection between the connected components of the spaces of circle-valued angle structures and the obstruction classes to lifting boundary-parabolic PSL[Formula: see text]-representations of the fundamental group of the 3-manifold to boundary-unipotent representations into SL[Formula: see text]. In particular, these connected components have topological and algebraic significance independent of the ideal triangulations chosen to construct them. The motivation and main application of this study is to understand the domain of the state-integral defining the meromorphic 3D-index of Garoufalidis and Kashaev, necessary in order to classify the boundary-parabolic representations contributing to its asymptotics.

Unipotent Representations, Theta Correspondences, and Quantum Induction

In this paper, we construct unipotent representations for the real orthagonal groups and the metaplectic groups in the sense of Vogan. Our construction is based on quantum induction which involves the compositions of even number of theta correspondences. In particular, our results imply that there are irreducible unitary representations attached to each special nilpotent orbit.

A Stone–von Neumann equivalence of categories for smooth representations of the Heisenberg group

The classical Stone–von Neumann theorem relates the irreducible unitary representations of the Heisenberg group Hn to non-trivial unitary characters of its center Z, and plays a crucial role in the construction of the oscillator representation for the metaplectic group. In this paper we extend these ideas to non-unitary and non-irreducible representations, thereby obtaining an equivalence of categories between certain representations of Z and those of Hn. Our main result is a smooth equivalence, which involves the fundamental ideas of du Cloux on differentiable representations and smooth imprimitivity systems for Nash groups. We show how to extend the oscillator representation to the smooth setting and give an application to degenerate Whittaker models for representations of reductive groups. We also include an algebraic equivalence, which can be regarded as a generalization of Kashiwara’s lemma from the theory of D-modules.