Gender and the Americanist James

This review essay asserts that Aaron Kamugisha’s 2019 Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition, for all its brilliance, does not do justice to the thought of C. L. R. James, especially in relation to gender. After claiming that Kamugisha mostly misses the emancipatory and at times radical aspects of James’s feminist thinking, which was developed most fully during his years in the United States (1938–52), the author allows that the omission appears to be not deliberate but an unintended consequence of Kamugisha’s faithful following of the dominant North Atlantic interpretation of the “American James.” In particular, the author sees Kamugisha as seeming to accept without question the hegemonic Americanist assumption that James took a romantic excursion in the United States, and thus Beyond Coloniality neglects the deeply gendered analysis at the heart of James’s 1950 manuscript that eventually found publication in 1993 as American Civilization. Although James certainly never got out of “gender jail” in his lifetime, American Civilization betrayed his hopeful vision of escape. This essay proposes to Kamugisha that a careful and independent reading of this text could have revealed James as a far more sophisticated failure than the virtually helpless figure drawn in Beyond Coloniality.

Differing Benefits of Artificial Intelligence-based Computer-aided Diagnosis (AI-CAD) for Breast US According to Workflow and Experience Level

Background: To evaluate how artificial intelligence-based computer-assisted diagnosis (AI-CAD) for breast ultrasound (US) influences diagnostic performance and agreements between radiologists with varying experience levels in different workflows.Methods: From Apr 2017 to Jun 2018, images of 492 breast lesions (200 malignant and 292 benign masses) in 472 women were included. Six radiologists (3 inexperienced with < 1 year of experience, 3 experienced with 10-15 years of experience) individually reviewed US images with and without the aid of AI-CAD, first in sequential and then in independent reading. Diagnostic performances and interobserver agreements were calculated and compared between radiologists and AI-CAD. Results: After implementing AI-CAD, specificity, PPV and accuracy significantly improved, regardless of experience and workflow (all P<0.001, respectively). Overall area under the receiving operator characteristics curve (AUC) significantly increased in independent reading, but only for inexperienced radiologists. Agreements for BI-RADS descriptors generally increased when AI-CAD was used (κ=0.29-0.63 to 0.35-0.73). Inexperienced radiologists tended to concede to AI-CAD results more easily than experienced radiologists, especially in independent reading (P<0.001). Conversion rates for final assessment changes from BI-RADS 2 or 3 to BI-RADS higher than 4a or vice versa were also significantly higher in independent reading than sequential reading (overall: 15.8% and 6.2%, respectively, P<0.001) for both inexperienced and experienced radiologists. Conclusions: Using AI-CAD to interpret breast US improves the specificity, PPV and accuracy of radiologists regardless of experience level. AI-CAD may work better in independent reading to improve diagnostic performance and agreements between radiologists, especially for inexperienced radiologists.Trial registration: retrospectively registered

Literary Reading Lesson in First Grade

The author of the article proposes for consideration one of the possible options for a lesson in literary reading in the first grade, in which N.N. Nosov “Steps”. The process of reading and working with the text organized by the teacher allows solving subject and metasubject learning problems. The used methodology contributes to the development of educational activities in first-graders. The article provides examples of tasks differentiated by the level of complexity, which take into account the capabilities of children who read well and not well enough. Acquaintance with the work of the writer N.N. Nosova continues at the lesson with reading another of his works - the story “On the Hill”. Conversations conducted by the teacher and collective discussion of the content of the read texts help him to determine not only the degree of their conscious perception by first graders, but also to include children in an active educational dialogue, to form their interest in independent reading.