Overlap In Membership Research Articles

Nothing means anything if everything means something: exploring the issues of coping profiles and the person-centered approach

ABSTRACT Background Adopting a person-centered approach to coping potentially allows researchers to explore the multifaceted nature of the construct. However, this increasingly adopted approach also has limitations. Namely, employing cluster or latent profile analysis to investigate coping through a person-centered lens often brings a lack of generalizability and subjectivity in interpreting the generated profiles. As such, this study aimed to explore the impact of varied methodology in person-centered investigations of coping profiles. Methods 682 university students’ (M = 21.3 years old, SD = 3.5) responses to the COPE Inventory were analyzed across item, subscale, and higher-order category levels using cluster and latent profile analysis to produce 6 finalized models for cross-method comparison. Results Throughout 19 analyses, approach coping, avoidance coping, low coping, and help-seeking profiles were consistently identified, alluding to the potential of universal coping trends. However, membership overlap across COPE structures and methodology was largely inconsistent, with individual participants classified into theoretically distinct profiles based on the methodology employed. Conclusion While evidence suggests latent profile analysis provides a more rigorous approach, the significant impact of minor methodological variations urges a reevaluation of person-centered approaches and incorporation of multi-construct data to enhance the understanding of coping profiles.

Formation mechanisms of intra-organizational membership overlap: a longitudinal network analysis of membership data from the International Communication Association

Abstract Social entities are linked and interdependent through shared members, a phenomenon described as niche overlap. Using archival data on yearly affiliations of International Communication Association (ICA) members with divisions and interest groups over a 9-year period, this study conducts a longitudinal network analysis to examine the formation mechanisms of intra-organizational niche overlap among organizational subunits. The results of the temporal exponential random graph model suggest the absence of dominant ICA subunits whose topic areas are broad enough to integrate different specializations through membership overlap. Triadic closure facilitates the sharing of members among three subunits, leading to a cohesive internal structure and limited brokerage opportunities. Subunits with smaller membership sizes are more likely to have membership overlap, particularly with larger subunits. Positive affinity relations between subunits, characterized by the sharing of scarce resources within the organization, contribute to the formation of membership overlap.

Temporal Dietary Pattern Cluster Membership Varies on Weekdays and Weekends but Both Link to Health

BackgroundEnergy and dietary quality are known to differ between weekdays and weekends. Data-driven approaches that incorporate time, amount, and duration of dietary intake have previously been used to partition participants’ daily weekday dietary intake time series into clusters representing weekday temporal dietary patterns (TDPs) linked to health indicators in United States adults. Yet, neither the relationship of weekend day TDPs to health indicators nor how the TDP membership may change from weekday to weekend is known. ObjectivesThis study was conducted to determine the association between TDPs on weekdays and weekend days and health indicators [diet quality, waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), and obesity] and their overlap among participants. MethodsA weekday and weekend day 24-hour dietary recall of 9494 nonpregnant United States adults aged 20–65 years from the cross-sectional National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2018 was used to determine the timing and amount of energy intake. Modified dynamic time warping and kernel k-means algorithm clustered participants into 4 TDPs on weekdays and weekend days. Multivariate regression models determined the associations between TDPs and health indicators, controlling for potential confounders and adjusting for the survey design and multiple comparisons. The percentages of overlap in cluster membership between TDPs on weekdays and weekend days were also determined. ResultsUnited States adults with a TDP of evenly spaced, energy-balanced eating occasions, representing the TDP of more than one-third of all adults on weekdays and weekends, had significantly higher diet quality, lower BMI, WC, and odds of obesity when compared to those with other TDPs. Membership of most United States adults to TDPs varied from weekdays to weekends. ConclusionsBoth weekday and weekend TDPs were significantly associated with health indicators. TDP membership of most United States adults was not consistent on weekdays and weekends.

Genome-Wide Gene-Set Analysis Identifies Molecular Mechanisms Associated with ALS.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal late-onset motor neuron disease characterized by the loss of the upper and lower motor neurons. Our understanding of the molecular basis of ALS pathology remains elusive, complicating the development of efficient treatment. Gene-set analyses of genome-wide data have offered insight into the biological processes and pathways of complex diseases and can suggest new hypotheses regarding causal mechanisms. Our aim in this study was to identify and explore biological pathways and other gene sets having genomic association to ALS. Two cohorts of genomic data from the dbGaP repository were combined: (a) the largest available ALS individual-level genotype dataset (N = 12,319), and (b) a similarly sized control cohort (N = 13,210). Following comprehensive quality control pipelines, imputation and meta-analysis, we assembled a large European descent ALS-control cohort of 9244 ALS cases and 12,795 healthy controls represented by genetic variants of 19,242 genes. Multi-marker analysis of genomic annotation (MAGMA) gene-set analysis was applied to an extensive collection of 31,454 gene sets from the molecular signatures database (MSigDB). Statistically significant associations were observed for gene sets related to immune response, apoptosis, lipid metabolism, neuron differentiation, muscle cell function, synaptic plasticity and development. We also report novel interactions between gene sets, suggestive of mechanistic overlaps. A manual meta-categorization and enrichment mapping approach is used to explore the overlap of gene membership between significant gene sets, revealing a number of shared mechanisms.

KASP genotyping and semi-quantitation of G275E mutation in the α6 subunit of Thrips palmi nAChR gene conferring spinetoram resistance.

Pesticide resistance is a long-standing and growing problem in the chemical control of invertebrate pests. Molecular diagnostic methods can facilitate pesticide resistance management by accurately and efficiently detecting resistant mutations and their frequency. In this study, the kompetitive allele specific PCR (KASP) approach, a technology for high-throughput single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping, is validated as a useful method for characterizing genotypes at a pesticide-resistance locus for the first time. We focus on the spinetoram resistance mutation of G275E in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha 6 (nAChR α6) subunit gene of Thrips palmi. Of the 341 individuals of Thrips palmi tested, 98.24% were successfully genotyped, with 100% concordance with Sanger sequencing results. We then quantitatively mixed genomic DNA of known genotypes to establish 21 DNA mixtures with a resistant allele frequency ranging from 0 to 100% at steps of 5%. The linear discriminant analysis (LDA) showed that 75.8% of original grouped cases were correctly classified; six groups had no overlap in membership (resistant allele frequency: 0%, 5%, 10-75%, 80-85%, 90-95%, and 100%). When we chose 11 pooled samples with 10% steps for LDA, 84.4% of original grouped cases were correctly classified; seven groups had no overlap in membership (0%, 10%, 20-30%, 40-70%, 80%, 90%, 100%). The results indicated that KASP applied to pooled samples may provide a semi-quantitative estimate of resistance. Our study points to the suitability of KASP for high-throughput genotyping of genotypes affecting pesticide resistance and semi-quantitative assessments of resistance allele frequencies in populations. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

The Institutionalization of International Law at a Crossroads: Pacifists, Jurists, and the Creation of the ILA and the IDI

The International Law Association (ILA) and the Institut de Droit International (IDI) were both founded in 1873 at a critical juncture in the history of pacifism and internationalism, in the immediate aftermath of the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War and the 1872 British-American Alabama arbitration. Frustrated by the blatant violations of international rules during the war and then emboldened by the arbitral resolution of the protracted Alabama dispute between Britain and the United States, pacifists and international jurists joined forces to promote an ordered system of international law and advocate for legalized international dispute settlement. The aim was to marshal the scattered reformist forces of international law in furtherance of international legal reform—“international law needed to be institutionalized,” as Gerald Fitzmaurice put it.1 This resulted in the almost simultaneous establishment of the pacifism-originated ILA and the legal-scientism-oriented IDI, and helped to explain the similarity in institutional telos and the high degree of overlap in membership between the two institutions in their early years.2 Nevertheless, the ILA and the IDI differed in their working agendas and strategies. In terms of agendas, while the ILA tended to adopt an idealist view of international law hardly succumbing to compromises, the IDI mainly adhered to a scientifically pragmatic approach. With respect to strategies, the ILA sought social influence based on expansive membership, while the IDI's membership consisted of a limited number of international jurists. Despite changes over time, these organizational structures and distinctions between the two institutions at their founding moment are still visible.

Towards increasing regime complexity? Why member states drive overlaps between international organisations

Multilateral cooperation in international organisations is characterised by regime complexity. The literature usually adopts a policy-focused perspective studying the properties, effects, and dynamics within given regime complexes for different policy areas. Yet few accounts of why states drive regime complexity have been provided in the literature. Therefore, we adopt a state-focused perspective and observe how states differ in the extent to which they foster complexity through overlapping memberships and policy competencies in international organisations. In order to explain this variation, we extract state motivations from the regime complexity literature, but also incorporate the role of geopolitical opportunity structures for complexity as well as interactions between both elements. The empirical analysis reveals that the power to pursue self-interests leads to duplicated policy competencies, whereas duplicating international organisation memberships by creating new international organisations or joining existing ones is costly and a less favoured route towards pursuing substantive gains. The motivation to gain external reputation also positively influences the overlap in membership and policy competencies. Moreover, the number of neighbouring states and the disappearance of deep-rooted ideological cleavages are important opportunity structures for states furthering complexity. Opportunity structures also reinforce the positive effect of power to pursue self-interests and external reputation motivations on complexity. Thus, we contribute to regime complexity research in showing that not all states equally foster regime complexity and this relationship is dependent on a specific context.

A constrained factor mixture analysis model for consistent and inconsistent respondents to mixed-worded scales.

Mixed-worded scales require a more careful reading and answering process than scales with only one type of wording. The present study is about the unintended consequences of using such scales, because typically, not all respondents answer positively and negatively worded items consistently. This population heterogeneity-meaning that there are distinct groups of consistently and inconsistently answering respondents-may arguably underlie wording-related effects in mixed-worded scales. We formulated a constrained factor mixture analysis model that operationalized these two assumed classes of respondents. We investigated five data sets that contained four mixed-worded attitude scales, large-scale samples from three countries (Germany, Australia, and the U.S.), and two age groups (children and adolescents). The constrained factor mixture analysis model showed estimated parameter patterns in line with theoretical expectations and consistently outperformed its more traditional competitor, confirmatory factor analysis with one global and one orthogonal method factor across all used data sets. We found proportions of between 7% and 20% of respondents belonging to the inconsistent classes. To further substantiate and validate the interpretation of the proposed model, we related class membership to theoretically relevant respondent characteristics such as reading achievement, cognitive skills, or conscientiousness. Further, we undertook an initial exploration of the overlap in inconsistent respondents' class membership across time and across scales within a survey. The article discusses implications for future research as well as for the use of mixed-worded scales. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Identifying Competition and Mutualism between Online Groups

Platforms often host multiple online groups with overlapping topics and members. How can researchers and designers understand how related groups affect each other? Inspired by population ecology, prior research in social computing and human-computer interaction has studied related groups by correlating group size with degrees of overlap in content and membership, but has produced puzzling results: overlap is associated with competition in some contexts but with mutual-ism in others. We suggest that this inconsistency results from aggregating intergroup relationships into an overall environmental effect that obscures the diversity of competition and mutualism among related groups. Drawing on the framework of community ecology, we introduce a time-series method for inferring competition and mutualism. We then use this frame-work to inform a large-scale analysis of clusters of subreddits that all have high user overlap. We find that mutualism is more common than competition.

Institutional overlap and access to medicines in MERCOSUR and UNASUR (2008–2018). Cooperation before the collapse?

ABSTRACT The proliferation of international and regional organisations in the last decades led to increasing overlap of memberships and mandates in social policy areas. Whereas the literature has explored the benefits and perils of institutional overlap though neglecting the social policy dimension of such processes, studies on regionalism have focused on single cases of regional organisations. This paper breaks new ground by examining the effects of the overlap in membership, health mandates and institutional mechanisms between the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) between 2008 and 2018. It focuses on two cases of access to medicines: the creation of the medicine price bank and the price negotiation of high-cost medicines. Our argument is that the overlap was positive, leading to an incipient trend towards cooperation. This was facilitated by the membership structure, the expertise already accumulated in the region and the relations and networks among those involved in health regional cooperation. Overall, the article deepens our understanding of the conditions under which regional organisations, even in the context of institutional overlap, can contribute to adequately respond to transnational challenges, which, as global health, are not only persistent, but also profoundly affect our societies.

In the hands of a few: Disaster recovery committee networks

When disaster strikes, urban planners often rely on feedback and guidance from committees of officials, residents, and interest groups when crafting reconstruction policy. Focusing on recovery planning committees after Japan's 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters, we compile and analyze a dataset on committee membership patterns across 39 committees with 657 members. Using descriptive statistics and social network analysis, we examine 1) how community representation through membership varied among committees, and 2) in what ways did committees share members, interlinking members from certain interests groups. This study finds that community representation varies considerably among committees, negatively related to the prevalence of experts, bureaucrats, and business interests. Committee membership overlap occurred heavily along geographic boundaries, bridged by engineers and government officials. Engineers and government bureaucrats also tend to be connected to more members of the committee network than community representatives, giving them prized positions to disseminate ideas about best practices in recovery. This study underscores the importance of diversity and community representation in disaster recovery planning to facilitate equal participation, information access, and policy implementation across communities.

From Sentimentality to Science: Social Utility, Feminist Eugenics and The End of The Road in Progressive Era America

ABSTRACTGiven the sensational appeal of Katherine Davis's The End of the Road, leading to its unofficial designation in The Exhibitor's Herald as ‘the most talked about Picture in America’ in 1919, it is surprising the film has not received greater critical attention for its peculiarly feminist eugenic vision. Reading The End of the Road alongside other US government hygiene films and contemporaneous journal articles and medical texts, I reveal a different vision of Progressive Era eugenics than that found in the well‐known work of Shelley Stamp, Martin Pernick and Stacie Colwell. Drawing a distinction between what the progressives themselves termed ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ eugenics, I explore hygiene cinema's unexpected intersection with first‐wave feminism, progressive economics and welfare reform. In so doing, I reveal a window into a nearly‐forgotten feminist counter‐culture that briefly attained governmental support due to the overlap in membership between the American Social Hygiene Association and the US War Department. At the centre of this vision is The End of the Road’s eugenic heroine, Mary, who is neither a wife nor a mother but a college‐educated working woman who promotes the ‘development of oneself for the service of mankind’.

What evidence is required to determine whether infants infer the kinship of third parties? A commentary on Spokes and Spelke (2017)

Research into the cognitive capacities of infants has revealed a rich assortment of competencies that help to structure inferences across multiple content domains. Despite these advances, researchers have paid relatively little attention to a domain crucial to social life: kinship. One recent exception is a set of studies by Spokes and Spelke (2017), who report evidence that 15 to 18-month-old infants expect social affiliation between two babies receiving care from the same adult. The experiments reported by Spokes and Spelke raise the key question of whether infants harbor intuitions regarding kinship—and provide tantalizing hints that they do. But determining whether the infant inferences found in these experiments in fact do implicate a kin-specific psychology is not straightforward, as kinship and social group membership overlap. Researchers need a set of criteria for ascertaining whether individuals (preverbal infants in particular but also children and adults alike) infer kinship—the likely genetic relatedness—between agents based on interactions with a common 3rd party and then use this information to guide expectations of behavior. Here, we consider the nature of evidence that would be needed to establish in principle that infants make inferences specific to kinship. In doing so, we link the developmental literature on infant social cognition to adult kin detection research, which has previously grappled with the question of what evidentiary standards reasonably establish the presence of kin-specific inferences. In light of prior empirical and theoretical work, we advance four criteria for establishing the presence of tacit knowledge of kinship, assess the extent to which the studies presented by S&S meet these criteria, and use the criteria to inform and spark directions for future research.

The Future of Deep Free Trade Agreements: The Convergence of TPP (and CPTPP) and CETA?

Focusing on Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) as deep free trade agreements (FTAs) that concentrate on regulatory disciplines, this article examines a key question concerning the future of deep FTAs: do deep FTAs converge and, if so, why? It argues that, first, deep FTAs converge in their approach to trade and investment in two crucial respects: regulatory disciplines and dispute settlement. CPTPP narrows its gap with CETA through suspending rules in arguably most controversial aspects of TPP (i.e. intellectual property and investor-state dispute settlement [ISDS]). Differences emerge but are not unbridgeable, and convergence varies depending on the area. Second, the reasons for the convergence include shared FTA objectives (particularly regulatory protection), the development of FTA rules from WTO norms, and other factors (e.g. the lessons drawn from previous ISDS experience, the inherent limit of FTAs, and membership overlap). Finally, the convergence of deep FTAs has the potential to bridge most if not all differences if there is political willingness.

Abstract PD6-02: Immunological differences between primary and metastatic breast cancer

Abstract Background: Little is known about how the immune microenvironment of breast cancer evolves during disease progression. Immunological differences between primary and metastatic lesions may explain discordant results of clinical trials that showed low tumor response rates with immune checkpoint therapy in metastatic breast cancer but high rates of pathologic complete response in early stage disease. The goal of this project was to examine TIL counts, PD-L1 protein expression and immune gene mRNA expression in primary tumors (P) and metastatic lesions (M). Methods: FFPE blocks of primary breast cancers and core needle biopsies of matching distant metastases from 54 patients (n=104 samples). TIL count was assessed on H&E slides for 39 paired tissues and is reported as % of TIL in the stroma. PD-L1 protein expression was detected with immunohistochemistry (IHC, E1L3N antibody) in 36 pairs, samples with > 1% cells showing staining were considered PD-L1 positive which was determined separately for tumor and stroma. The expression of 770 immune-related genes was measured using the Nanostring PanCancer Immune Gene Panel in 31 P and 17 M, including 10 paired cases. Genes were organized into 14 immune cell type (total T, Th1, Treg, Total CD8, exhausted CD8, Cytotoxic T, B, NK, NK-CD56, Mast cell, CD45, Dendritic cell, macrophage, neutrophil) and 22 immune function metagenes. Differences in mean expression in P and M were assessed using Fisher exact and Mann-Whitney tests without adjustment for multiple comparisons due to overlap in metagene membership. Results: Mean TIL counts (14% vs 20%, p=0.026) and stromal PD-L1 positivity by IHC (14% vs 54%, p=0.004) were significantly lower in M. PD-L1 positivity in tumor cells was similar (25% in M vs 42%, in P p=0.14). The total TIL gene expression score (2.48 vs 2.8 p=0.018) and all immune cell type metagenes, except neutrophils, had lower absolute expression levels in M. The relative abundance of neutrophils (0.035 vs -0.38, p=0.0001) and macrophages (0.62 vs 0.38 p=0.0013) increased in M. Among the 22 immune function metagenes, T, B and NK cell functions, cytotoxicity, chemokine and TNF superfamily expression, regulation and pathogen defense were significantly lower in M and none showed significantly increased expression in M. Pro-inflammatory/immune-activating cytokines of IL-6, CCL-5,-12,-19,-22 and CXCL-5,-9,-10,-11 were all significantly lower in M. The greatest drop was seen for CXCL-9 (2243 vs 422, p<0.0001) and CCL-19 (2537 vs 309, p<0.0001). No cytokine showed increased expression in M. Only 6 immune genes (C7, GPI, MAPK1, TAB1, TLR5, PVR) showed significantly higher (p<0.05) expression in M, the greatest increase was for Complement C7 (member of the terminal complement pathway membrane attack complex; 484 vs 3499, p=0.03) and GPI (glucose 6-phosphate isomerase that induces immunoglobulin secretion; 1967 vs 3011, p=0.01). Conclusions: Breast cancer metastases exist in an attenuated immune microenvironment. Most immune cell subtypes, immune functions, and immune-associated gene expression are lower in M compared to P, consistent with immune escape. Metastatic lesions have higher relative abundance of macrophages and neutrophils, which suggest new therapeutic opportunities. Citation Format: Szekely B, Bossuyt V, Li X, Baine M, Silber A, Sanft T, Hofstatter E, Mougalian S, Baghwagar S, Neumeister V, Pelekanou V, Hatzis C, Pusztai L. Immunological differences between primary and metastatic breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2017 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PD6-02.

Ignoring the elephant in the room? Assessing the impact of the European Union on the Development Assistance Committee's role in international development

AbstractThis article studies the impact of the European Union (EU) on the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). While the literature thus far has focused on the external challenges for the DAC's role in international development, this study argues that the EU should be taken into account as well. By focusing on the cases of policy coherence for development and the concessionality of official development assistance (ODA) loans, we show that the EU poses a structural challenge for the DAC's role in international development given the strong overlap in membership between both institutions and the Union's changing nature as a development actor.

Measuring the Impact of Multiple Air Pollution Agreements on Global CO2Emissions

This paper studies the effect on CO 2 emissions of the various agreements that follow the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention and are related to acid rain problems. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of 150 countries over the period 1970–2008 and deals with the problems linked to the analysis of multiple agreements (e.g., time and membership overlap). We show that ratifying an additional treaty has a significant and negative impact on the level of CO 2 emissions, even if it is not targeted toward CO 2 . (JEL Q53, Q54)

Identification with Multiple Groups in Multiethnic Middle Schools: What Predicts Social Ingroup Overlap?

Self-definition becomes a central task during early adolescence, as youth identify with multiple social groups. Focusing on ethnic identification and identification with other salient social ingroups (e.g., those based on extracurricular activities), we examined predictors of perceived ingroup membership overlap among ethnically diverse adolescents (n=1264; M age=12.51; 53% female). Social ingroup overlap remained relatively stable, but decreased, across the seventh to eighth grade. The number of cross-ethnic classmates in seventh grade predicted lower overlap in the eighth grade, and cross-ethnic friendships by eighth grade mediated this association. Findings underscore the opportunities provided by multiethnic middle schools for youth to connect and befriend one another across ethnic lines, as well as to foster divergent social identities that are associated with positive intergroup attitudes.

Discovering missing me edges across social networks

Distinct social networks are interconnected via membership overlap, which plays a key role when crossing information is investigated in the context of multiple-social-network analysis. Unfortunately, users do not always make their membership to two distinct social networks explicit, by specifying the so-called me edge (practically, corresponding to a link between the two accounts), thus missing a potentially very useful information. As a consequence, discovering missing me edges is an important problem to address in this context with potential powerful applications. In this paper, we propose a common-neighbor approach to detecting missing me edges, which returns good results in real-life settings. Indeed, an experimental campaign shows both that the state-of-the-art common-neighbor approaches cannot be effectively applied to our problem and, conversely, that our approach returns precise and complete results.

A new form of assortativity in online social networks

The term assortativity indicates the tendency, for a network node, to be directly connected to other nodes that are someway similar. In more technical terms, a given feature is assortative in a network if the probability that an arc exists between two nodes having this feature is greater than the probability that an arc exists between two generic nodes. The role of assortativity in real-world and online social networks has been largely investigated in the literature, in which, starting from degree assortativity, several forms of assortativity have been analyzed. When moving from a single-social-network to a multiple-social-network perspective, new specific traits can be studied, also under the assortativity magnifying glass. This is the case of membership overlap among networks (i.e., the fact that people belong to more online social networks) as expression of different traits of users׳ personality. In this paper, we deal with the above issue, by defining two different measures of membership overlap assortativity, called Loose and Constrained Inter-social-network Assortativity, respectively and by observing that in two of the most representative online social networks, namely Facebook and Twitter, membership overlap is assortative.