RHPTree—Risk Hierarchical Pattern Tree for Scalable Long Pattern Mining

Risk patterns are crucial in biomedical research and have served as an important factor in precision health and disease prevention. Despite recent development in parallel and high-performance computing, existing risk pattern mining methods still struggle with problems caused by large-scale datasets, such as redundant candidate generation, inability to discover long significant patterns, and prolonged post pattern filtering. In this article, we propose a novel dynamic tree structure, Risk Hierarchical Pattern Tree (RHPTree), and a top-down search method, RHPSearch, which are capable of efficiently analyzing a large volume of data and overcoming the limitations of previous works. The dynamic nature of the RHPTree avoids costly tree reconstruction for the iterative search process and dataset updates. We also introduce two specialized search methods, the extended target search (RHPSearch-TS) and the parallel search approach (RHPSearch-SD), to further speed up the retrieval of certain items of interest. Experiments on both UCI machine learning datasets and sampled datasets of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI)—Simon’s Simplex Collection (SSC) datasets demonstrate that our method is not only faster but also more effective in identifying comprehensive long risk patterns than existing works. Moreover, the proposed new tree structure is generic and applicable to other pattern mining problems.

Project Lotus: A really cool community-based initiative assisting women post-homelessness

In Canada, recent conservative estimates report upwards of 235,000 individuals are homeless on a given night. Of those experiencing precarious housing situations, women make up approximately 30% and are among the most vulnerable. Their residential insecurity has been further exacerbated with the community and social restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing resources that assist women experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity are often stretched to the limit dealing with emergency and crisis housing situations, with less focus on post-shelter supports. To address this issue, a community-based participatory research initiative ‘Project Lotus - Hope Together’ was established in Montreal. Grounded in the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health Framework, the overarching goal of this research is to co-design a housing supports program for women leaving a shelter stay. We created a cross-sectorial Advisory Committee consisting of women with lived experiences of homelessness, service providers, community leaders, and researchers. To date, we have conducted preliminary research (literature review, interviews with women with lived experience of homelessness, stakeholder meetings) to identity what has assisted women through this transition, and what barriers exist. We have also held virtual community consultation meetings to discuss preliminary findings of recommendations of key components that should be in a post-shelter support program for women. This presentation outlines the current findings and highlights the importance of participatory research. Implementing whole person care in the area of women’s homelessness requires both a comprehensive and individualized approach to help women and children secure home, health, and a sustainable future.

Mapping Nefarious Social Media Actors to Speed-up Covid-19 Fact-checking

This report presents the outcomes of a project aimed at developing and testing a prototype tool that supports and speeds-up the work of fact-checkers and de-bunkers by surfacing and ranking potentially problematic information circulated on social media with a content-agnostic approach. The tool itself is the result of a multi-year research activity carried on within the Mapping Italian News Research Program of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo to study the strategies, tactics and goals of information operations aimed at manipulating the Italian public opinion by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the contemporary media ecosystem. This research activity led to developing original studies, public reports, new methods, maps and tools employed to study the activity of Italian nefarious social media actors aimed at amplifying the reach and impact of problematic information by coordinating their efforts. Tracking these actors proved instrumental to observe the “infodemic” unraveling during the early days of COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Combining this existing knowledge with a range of original tools and data sources provided by Meta’s Facebook Open Research Initiative (Fort) and by The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter, the report: documents those early days by highlighting a list of widely viewed and interacted links circulated on Facebook; traces the establishment, growth and evolution of Italian covid-skeptic coordinated networks on Facebook; presents a comprehensive and updated map of the activities performed by these networks of nefarious social media actors; unveils a set of original tactics and strategies employed by these actors to adjust their operations to the mitigation efforts adopted by social media platforms to reduce the spread of problematic information; describes the circulation of three specific piece of problematic information; provides an overview of the outcomes of the testing phase (carried out in collaboration with Facta.news) of a prototype tool that surfaces and ranks potentially problematic information circulated on social media with a content-agnostic approach.

DAYLIGHT VARIABILITY AND HUMAN PERCEPTION with reference to selected Contemporary Residential Spaces in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Visual perception of a space is influenced by the composition and behaviour of light. Daylight as a natural element, creates different atmospheres in the same space by its variation of intensity, colour, and direction. It creates dynamic shadow patterns, fluctuating brightness and contrast levels. Although the capacity to create variation - therefore contrast, is an important characteristic of daylight - it is often neglected in research, where comfort and visual performance take prominence. This is a research initiative to emphasise the value of daylight variation on spatial quality and human perception. The research adopts a two-step process, where, digital images are first mapped to generate contrast diagrams, and secondly, the generated digital images form the basis for a survey utilising a seven-point semantic differential scale, to explore the relationship between daylight variability and human perception. The temporal variation of daylight is explored by diagramming the spatial images at selected times of the day and year. The scope of the study is limited to selected contemporary residential spaces and focus on the manner of integrating daylight into spaces. Results show that a direct relationship between daylight variability and human perception for side lit spaces is not evident, yet it is evident in top lit options.

US SOLAS Science Report

The Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) (http://www.solas-int.org/) is an international research initiative focused on understanding the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere that are critical elements of climate and global biogeochemical cycles. Following the release of the SOLAS Decadal Science Plan (2015-2025) (Brévière et al., 2016), the Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction Committee (OAIC) was formed as a subcommittee of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Scientific Steering Committee to coordinate US SOLAS efforts and activities, facilitate interactions among atmospheric and ocean scientists, and strengthen US contributions to international SOLAS. In October 2019, with support from OCB, the OAIC convened an open community workshop, Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions: Scoping directions for new research with the goal of fostering new collaborations and identifying knowledge gaps and high-priority science questions to formulate a US SOLAS Science Plan. Based on presentations and discussions at the workshop, the OAIC and workshop participants have developed this US SOLAS Science Plan. The first part of the workshop and this Science Plan were purposefully designed around the five themes of the SOLAS Decadal Science Plan (2015-2025) (Brévière et al., 2016) to provide a common set of research priorities and ensure a more cohesive US contribution to international SOLAS.

The auxílio emergencial and stringent social distancing policies in Brazil: the impact on mobility and non-work travel outside the home

Non-pharmaceutical interventions to increase physical distancing have been instrumental in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Governments have enacted stringent public health policies that impose limits on mobility outside the household. However, for containment policies to be effective, there is a growing understanding that emergency aid programs must be designed to ensure that the most vulnerable receive financial and in-kind aid resources to support their ability to “stay at home.” In this study, we use survey data from an Oxford USP-FGV collaborative research initiative to empirically assess the effectiveness of these two policies in reducing mobility with an eye to those at-risk or living in conditions of poverty in eight Brazilian capitals. We learn that, in general, neither stringent public health policies and receipt nor promised receipt of the Auxílio Emergencial were effective in limiting mobility outside of the home. We do, however, find limited evidence that receipt or promised receipt of the Auxílio Emergencial marginally limited non-work trips outside of the home, especially in city/state combinations with stringent public health policies. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of our findings.

Autism-Associated DNA Methylation at Birth From Multiple Tissues Is Enriched for Autism Genes in the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation

Background: Pregnancy measures of DNA methylation, an epigenetic mark, may be associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) development in children. Few ASD studies have considered prospective designs with DNA methylation measured in multiple tissues and tested overlap with ASD genetic risk loci.Objectives: To estimate associations between DNA methylation in maternal blood, cord blood, and placenta and later diagnosis of ASD, and to evaluate enrichment of ASD-associated DNA methylation for known ASD-associated genes.Methods: In the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation (EARLI), an ASD-enriched risk birth cohort, genome-scale maternal blood (early n = 140 and late n = 75 pregnancy), infant cord blood (n = 133), and placenta (maternal n = 106 and fetal n = 107 compartments) DNA methylation was assessed on the Illumina 450k HumanMethylation array and compared to ASD diagnosis at 36 months of age. Differences in site-specific and global methylation were tested with ASD, as well as enrichment of single site associations for ASD risk genes (n = 881) from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) database.Results: No individual DNA methylation site was associated with ASD at genome-wide significance, however, individual DNA methylation sites nominally associated with ASD (P < 0.05) in each tissue were highly enriched for SFARI genes (cord blood P = 7.9 × 10–29, maternal blood early pregnancy P = 6.1 × 10–27, maternal blood late pregnancy P = 2.8 × 10–16, maternal placenta P = 5.6 × 10–15, fetal placenta P = 1.3 × 10–20). DNA methylation sites nominally associated with ASD across all five tissues overlapped at 144 (29.5%) SFARI genes.Conclusion: DNA methylation sites nominally associated with later ASD diagnosis in multiple tissues were enriched for ASD risk genes. Our multi-tissue study demonstrates the utility of examining DNA methylation prior to ASD diagnosis.

Patriotism, Competition, Nationalism, and Respect for the Military in U.S. Sports: Public recognition of American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism

Using new data from the National Sports and Society Survey (N = 3,993), this study first examines the extent to which U.S. adults recognize that sports teach love of country, competition as a way of life, respect for the military, and that U.S. sports teach how to be American. We characterize this sport and society process as American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism (AISN). Then, multiple regression analyses are used to assess the extent to which dominant statuses, indicators of traditionalism, and sports fandom are associated with beliefs about American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism and its component values. Results suggest that U.S. adults commonly agree that sports teach love of country, competition as a way of life, respect for the military, and how to be American; they are especially likely to agree that sports teach competition as a way of life and love of country. Many U.S. adults also recognize sports as teaching respect for the military and how to be American, but most do not. In addition, as expected, identifying as male, heterosexual, Christian, Republican, and as more of a sports fan are consistently and positively associated with agreeing that sports teach patriotic, capitalistic, militaristic, and nationalistic values. In contrast to expectations, we find evidence that White adults are less likely than Black and Latinx adults to recognize AISN and its component values; college educated adults are also less likely than those with a high school education or less to agree that sports teach patriotism, capitalism, militarism, and nationalism. This may be because sports have traditionally been perceived to offer more inclusive and fairer social and economic opportunities, for Nonwhites and the less educated. Regardless, it is important to continue to research which cultural messages are promoted through sports, why, and to what effect. The present study advances this research initiative.