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Web applications are built to be accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, many web applications are inaccessible to people with special needs or disabilities. In this work, we show a methodology used to make web applications more accessible to a diverse group of people. The process includes two phases: evaluation and improvement. In the first phase, the Web Accessibility Barrier (WAB) score metric together with the Accessibility Failure Rate (AFR) metric are used to evaluate web applications. In the second phase changes suggested by accessibility checker tool are implemented in the software to enhance the metrics values and reach the target level of accessibility. The open-source chat application, Zulip, is used as a case study to show the effectiveness of this approach. © 2021 IEEE.

Healthy workplaces promote inclusionary behaviors. When nurses experience exclusionary behaviors such as bullying and incivility, there may also be hidden issues with acceptance of diversity in the workplace environment. Educating nursing staff on the importance of variations in age, culture, gender, sex, race, ethnicity, and religion in the workplace can help facilitate communication among staff. For example, organizations can use educational forums to discuss how different cultures vary in the addressing of conflict within the workplace; some cultures may prefer to reach consensus rather than be confrontational. Chapter 5 discusses strategies that nurses and organizations can implement, such as Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS). TeamSTEPPS is a curriculum that can be used to improve teamwork skills, communication, and build team collaboration. © 2021, IGI Global.

Global hyperon polarization, P¯H, in Au+Au collisions over a large range of collision energy, sNN, was recently measured and successfully reproduced by hydrodynamic and transport models with intense fluid vorticity of the quark-gluon plasma. While naïve extrapolation of data trends suggests a large P¯H as the collision energy is reduced, the behavior of P¯H at small sNN¡7.7 GeV is unknown. Operating the STAR experiment in fixed-target mode, we measured the polarization of Λ hyperons along the direction of global angular momentum in Au+Au collisions at sNN=3 GeV. The observation of substantial polarization of 4.91±0.81(stat.)±0.15(syst.)% in these collisions may require a reexamination of the viscosity of any fluid created in the collision, of the thermalization timescale of rotational modes, and of hadronic mechanisms to produce global polarization. © 2021 American Physical Society.

According to first-principle lattice QCD calculations, the transition from quark-gluon plasma to hadronic matter is a smooth crossover in the region μB≤Tc. In this range the ratio, C6/C2, of net-baryon distributions are predicted to be negative. In this Letter, we report the first measurement of the midrapidity net-proton C6/C2 from 27, 54.4, and 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The dependence on collision centrality and kinematic acceptance in (pT, y) are analyzed. While for 27 and 54.4 GeV collisions the C6/C2 values are close to zero within uncertainties, it is observed that for 200 GeV collisions, the C6/C2 ratio becomes progressively negative from peripheral to central collisions. Transport model calculations without critical dynamics predict mostly positive values except for the most central collisions within uncertainties. These observations seem to favor a smooth crossover in the high-energy nuclear collisions at top RHIC energy. © 2021 American Physical Society.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore an emerging ethical theory for the Digital Age – Flourishing Ethics – which will likely be applicable in many different cultures worldwide, addressing not only human concerns but also activities, decisions and consequences of robots, cyborgs, artificially intelligent agents and other new digital technologies. Design/methodology/approach: In the past, a number of influential ethical theories in Western philosophy have focused upon choice and autonomy, or pleasure and pain or fairness and justice. These are important ethical concepts, but we consider “flourishing” to be a broader “umbrella concept” under which all of the above ideas can be included, plus additional ethical ideas from cultures in other regions of the world (for example, Buddhist, Muslim, Confucianist cultures and others). Before explaining the applied approach, this study discusses relevant ideas of four example thinkers who emphasize flourishing in their ethics writings: Aristotle, Norbert Wiener, James Moor and Simon Rogerson. Findings: Flourishing Ethics is not a single ethical theory. It is “an approach,” a “family” of similar ethical theories which can be successfully applied to humans in many different cultures, as well as to non-human agents arising from new digital technologies. Originality/value: This appears to be the first extended analysis of the emerging flourishing ethics “family” of theories. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Our research objective is to compare the effectiveness of standard online learning methods versus the utilization of virtual reality in education in terms of student focus and information retention. Our proposed platform will have identical lesson plans in virtual reality as our online learning methods. Eye gaze tracking and a recall test will be used on both platforms to measure focus on the screen and retention, respectively. The ultimate goal of the project is to use this data to evaluate the effectiveness of VR as a digital learning environment. © 2021 IEEE.

In this article we demonstrate the use and usefulness of new materialism as an analytic lens in applied qualitative inquiry. Intended as a possible entry point to applied inquiry after the ontological turn, we draw on Barad's agential realism to analyze three existing transcripts of focus groups conducted with healthcare workers, traditional birth attendants, and mothers to explore the postnatal care referral behavior of traditional birth attendants in Nigeria. We describe elements of our data analysis process including deep reading, summoning of the inquiry, delaying the inquiry, attuning to glowing data, and writing. We explore how the research phenomenon enacted agential cuts that distinguished participants (healthcare workers, traditional birth attendants, and mothers) and relayed their participation in the focus group. We show how the inclusion of the mothers' babies and the transcripts themselves made available some understandings at the possible exclusion of others. Our Baradian, new materialist analysis shows the inextricability of interview materials (things) and language (discourse) and demonstrates that all applied research is bounded and affected by its material conditions. As a point of entry, we hope our illustration sensitizes applied qualitative researchers to how research decisions, research materials, and research cultures produce what can be known and lived within and beyond the research encounter. © 2021 Nova Southeastern University. All rights reserved.

The pervasive nature of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) transcription in the mammalian genomes has changed our protein-centric view of genomes. But the identification of lncRNAs is an important task to discover their functional role in species. The rapid development of next-generation sequencing technology leveraged the opportunity to discover many lncRNA transcripts. However, the cost and time-consuming nature of transcriptomics verification techniques barred the research community from focusing on lncRNA identification. To overcome these challenges we developed LNCRI (Long Non-Coding RNA Identifier), a novel machine learning (ML)-based tool for the identification of lncRNA transcripts. We leveraged weighted k-mer, pseudo nucleotide composition, hexamer usage bias, Fickett score, information of open reading frame, UTR regions, and HMMER score as a feature set to develop LNCRI. LNCRI outperformed other existing models in the task of distinguishing lncRNA transcripts from protein-coding mRNA transcripts with high accuracy in human and mouse. LNCRI also outperformed the existing tools for cross-species prediction on chimpanzee, monkey, gorilla, orangutan, cow, pig, frog and zebrafish. We applied the SHAP algorithm to demonstrate the importance of most dominating features that were leveraged in the model. We believe our tool will support the research community to identify the lncRNA transcripts in a highly accurate manner. The benchmark datasets and source code are available in GitHub: http://github.com/smusleh/LNCRI. © 2013 IEEE.

The Life and Times of Chinua Achebe introduces readers to the life, literary works, and times of arguably the most widely-read African novelist of recent times, an icon, both in continental Africa and abroad. The book weaves together the story of Chinua Achebe, a young Igboman whose novel Things Fall Apart opened the eyes of the world to a more realistic image of Africa that was warped by generations of European travelers, colonists, and writers. Whilst continuing to write further influential novels and essays, Achebe also taught other African writers to use their skills to help their national leaders to fight for their freedoms in the post-colonial era, as internal warfare compounded the damage caused by European powers during the colonial era. In this book Kalu Ogbaa, an esteemed expert on Achebe and his works, draws on extensive research and personal interviews with the great man and his colleagues and friends, to tell the story of Achebe and his work. This intimate and powerful new biography will be essential reading for students and scholars of Chinua Achebe, and to anyone with an interest in the literature and post-colonial politics of Africa. © 2022 Kalu Ogbaa.

The purpose of this paper is to advance breakthrough research that further extends, as well as enrichens, our understanding of organizations. This is a companion article to “CEO Archetype Identity Drives Organization Culture” previously published in this journal. Archetypes are merely a special case of metaphors. In this paper, we generalize the concept of leadership archetypes to organization metaphors, adding original dimensions to existing concepts and theories of organizational diagnosis. Thus, the present research brings a new enlightening perspective to this field. Data from the past organization studies featured in this article involve the Zaltman Metaphorical Elicitation Technique (ZMET) embedded in qualitative in-depth personal interviews. These studies explore the impact of management styles on organization structure and functions. In each study metaphors were elicited from leaders and followers, and generated insights and action-oriented strategies to meet organizational challenges © 2021. American Psychological Association

Reentrance, the return of a system from an ordered phase to a previously encountered less-ordered one as a controlled parameter is continuously varied, is a recurring theme found in disparate physical systems, yet its microscopic cause is often not investigated thoroughly. Here, through detailed characterization and theoretical modeling, we uncover the microscopic mechanism behind reentrance in the strongly frustrated pyrochlore antiferromagnet Er2Sn2O7. We use single crystal heat capacity measurements to expose that Er2Sn2O7 exhibits multiple instances of reentrance in its magnetic field B vs temperature T phase diagram for magnetic fields along three cubic high symmetry directions. Through classical Monte Carlo simulations, mean field theory, and classical linear spin-wave expansions, we argue that the origins of the multiple occurrences of reentrance observed in Er2Sn2O7 are linked to soft modes. These soft modes arise from phase competition and enhance thermal fluctuations that entropically stabilize a specific ordered phase, resulting in an increased transition temperature for certain field values and thus the reentrant behavior. Our work represents a detailed examination into the mechanisms responsible for reentrance in a frustrated magnet and may serve as a template for the interpretation of reentrant phenomena in other physical systems. © 2021 American Physical Society.

Importance: Transphobia and stigma remain barriers to seeking mental health care for gender-diverse adolescents. Objective: To examine the utility of brief social contact-based video interventions of transgender protagonists with depression to reduce transphobia and depression-related stigma and increase treatment-seeking intentions among adolescents in the general population. Design, Setting, and Participants: During August 2021, a total of 1437 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 video-based conditions in a 2:2:1:1 ratio: (1) transgender adolescent girls, (2) transgender adolescent boys, (3) cisgender adolescent girls, or (4) cisgender adolescent boys. Interventions: In each of the approximately 110-second videos, an empowered presenter shared their personal story about coping with depression and reaching out for help. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was the score on the Attitudes Toward Transgender Men and Women (ATTMW) scale. Secondary outcomes were (1) a "gender thermometer" rating for warmth in transgender perception, (2) the Depression Stigma Scale (DSS) score, and (3) the General Health-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) score. Results: Of the 1437 randomized participants, 1098 (76%) completed the postintervention assessment and passed all the validity tests (mean [SD] age, 16.9 [1.2] years; 481 [44%] male; 640 [58%] White). A significant change in attitudes toward transgender youth was found within the intervention group only (mean [SD] ATTMW scores: intervention group, 34.6 [23.1] at baseline to 32.8 [24.2] after intervention; P ¡.001; control group, 33.5 [23.4] at baseline to 32.4 [24.1] after intervention; P =.01). The mean (SD) total DSS scores decreased significantly across study groups (intervention: 1.3 [3.3]; control: 1.7 [3.3]; P ¡.001). A significant increase in intention to seek help from a parent was found in the intervention (mean [SD] GHSQ score, 0.2 [1.1]) and control (mean [SD] GHSQ score, 0.3 [1.2]) groups (P ¡.001), as was a decrease in those not wanting to seek help from anyone (mean [SD] GHSQ score: intervention, 0.2 [1.6], P =.009; control, 0.3 [1.2], P ¡.001) Secondary analyses revealed significant differences in baseline ATTMW scores and intervention effects between transgender and gender-diverse and cisgender participants and between lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGBQ) and straight participants (F = 36.7, P ¡.001) and heterosexual participants (F = 37.0, P ¡.001). A significant difference was also found in mean (SD) transgender warmth scores from baseline to after intervention between groups (2.6° [13.1°] in the intervention group vs 0.4° [8.3°] in the control group; P ¡.001). Conclusions and Relevance: In this randomized clinical trial, brief social contact-based videos proved efficacious in reducing transphobia and depression-related stigma and in increasing treatment-seeking intentions among adolescents in the general population. By personifying, individualizing, and providing face and voice to the experience of transgender youth, other adolescents, especially those who are cisgender and/or of a heterosexual orientation, can gain empathetic insights into the lives of their often marginalized and stigmatized fellow youth. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04969003. © 2022 Collabra: Psychology. All rights reserved.

The ocean and coasts are largely absent from the “Green New Deal” proposal. In response to the limited attention paid to the sustainability and equitable governance approaches of the blue economy, a US “Blue New Deal” has been proposed aiming to protect the health of the ocean and support coastal communities' adaptation to climate change. The Blue New Deal emerged as a central policy proposal from 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to enhance the role of the blue economy while simultaneously addressing the climate crisis. Through a just transitions analysis, this article evaluates the proposal for a US Blue New Deal — as designed by Senator Elizabeth Warren — that would be applied towards enhancing socioeconomic resiliency, environmental justice, and addressing social inequities. As part of a critical policy analysis evaluating the areas of focus Warren's Blue New Deal presents, environmental justice and sustainability are central to the success of managing, and enhancing the role of, the blue economy. The challenges facing the Blue New Deal reflect a “one size fits all” federal approach that has implications for addressing multifaceted obstacles in key sectors of the blue economy, its governance, and tackling interconnected crises that exacerbate socioeconomic inequities and vulnerabilities of marginalised coastal communities. This article proposes a blue justice framework for the Blue New Deal that seeks to address the tensions and contradictions that exist in its current form and indicates how a comprehensive policy framework can enhance the sustainability and equitable involvement of the blue economy. The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2022 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) is a promising meta-heuristic method developed based on the intelligent conduct of crows in nature. This algorithm lacks a good representation of its individuals’ memory, and as with many other meta-heuristics it faces a problem in efficiently balancing exploration and exploitation. These defects may lead to early convergence to local optima. To cope with such issues, we proposed a Memory based Hybrid CSA (MHCSA) with the use of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. This hybridization approach was proposed to reinforce the diversity ability of CSA and balance its search abilities for promising solutions to achieve robust search performance. The memory element of MHCSA was initialized with the best solution (pbest) of PSO to exploit the most promising search areas. The best positions of the CSA’s individuals are improved using the best solution found so far (gbest) and (pbest) of PSO. Another flaw of CSA is the use of fixed flight length and awareness probability for crows to control exploration and exploitation features, respectively. This issue was circumvented here by replacing these constants with adaptive functions in order to provide a better balance between exploration and exploitation over the course of iterations. The competence of MHCSA was revealed by testing it on seventy-three standard and computationally complex benchmark functions. Its applicability was substantiated by solving seven engineering design problems. The results showed that the problem of early convergence was eliminated by MHCSA and that the balance of exploration and exploitation was further improved. Further, MHCSA ranked first among CSA, PSO, robust variants of CSA and other strong competing methods in terms of accuracy and stability. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Modeling of nonlinear industrial systems embraces two key stages: selection of a model structure with a compact parameter list, and selection of an algorithm to estimate the parameter list values. Thus, there is a need to develop a sufficiently adequate model to characterize the behavior of industrial systems to represent experimental data sets. The data collected for many industrial systems may be subject to the existence of high non-linearity and multiple constraints. Meanwhile, creating a thoroughgoing model for an industrial process is essential for model-based control systems. In this work, we explore the use of a proposed Enhanced version of the Cuckoo Search (ECS) algorithm to address a parameter estimation problem for both linear and nonlinear model structures of a real winding process. The performance of the developed models was compared with other mainstream meta-heuristics when they were targeted to model the same process. Moreover, these models were compared with other models developed based on some conventional modeling methods. Several evaluation tests were performed to judge the efficiency of the developed models based on ECS, which showed superior performance in both training and testing cases over that achieved by other modeling methods. © 2022, This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply.

When our photovoice research intersected with the COVID-19 pandemic, we were thrust into a new world of adapting the method in the virtual environment. Between both authors, we had over two decades of experience implementing photovoice. However, that involved tried and true methods of working face to face and side by side with people in community-based settings. This article describes lessons learned from two virtual photovoice projects. One involved pivoting from a project already well underway in person to online and the other was designed for virtual implementation since that was the only option available. Key considerations discussed are navigating our institutional review boards, adapting project management, building community online, and sharing results and advocacy for social change. Dilemmas and key decisions in each of these areas are described for practitioners and community-based researchers who need or seek to transition their photovoice research to the virtual environment. Practical tips and strategies for implementation are described and offered to photovoice researchers.

We measure the absolute proper motion of Leo I using a WFPC2/HST data set that spans up to 10 yr to date the longest time baseline utilized for this satellite. The measurement relies on ∼2300 Leo I stars located near the center of light of the galaxy; the correction to absolute proper motion is based on 174 Gaia EDR3 stars and 10 galaxies. Having generated highly precise, relative proper motions for all Gaia EDR3 stars in our WFPC2 field of study, our correction to the absolute EDR3 system does not rely on these Gaia stars being Leo I members. This new determination also benefits from a recently improved astrometric calibration of WFPC2. The resulting proper-motion value, (μ α , μ δ ) = (-0.007 0.035, - 0.119 0.026) mas yr-1 is in agreement with recent, large-area, Gaia EDR3-based determinations. We discuss all the recent measurements of Leo I's proper motion and adopt a combined, multistudy average of (μ α 3 meas,μ δ 3 meas)=(-0.036±0.016,-0.130±0.010) mas yr-1. This value of absolute proper motion for Leo I indicates its orbital pole is well aligned with that of the vast polar structure, defined by the majority of the brightest dwarf spheroidal satellites of the Milky Way. © 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

This study explores how individuals react to COVID-19 prevention measures in relation to their national cultural values and health belief factors. Specifically, guided by the most relevant Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the health belief model (HBM), this study tested a conceptual framework through conducting a survey of the U.S. adult population. The study results did not support Hofstede’s classification of the U.S. to be among the most individualistic culture with the lowest level of uncertainty avoidance in the world. Demographic factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, and education were found to be significantly related to collectivistic tendency and/or uncertainty avoidance. Findings also demonstrated that the tendency for collectivism and uncertainty avoidance were both relevant to people’s intention to adopt COVID-19 prevention measures. Results of testing the HBM variables revealed that perceived barriers, perceived self-efficacy, and cues to action were significantly related to preventive behavioral intentions. This study highlights the importance of considering subculture factors when promoting COVID-19 preventive measures in a multicultural society. © 2022 Atlantic Journal of Communication.

Relationship strain or dissolution between new parents can affect the co-parenting relationship and parenting engagement. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a relationship-strengthening intervention on parenting behaviors among adolescent couples. Data from a pilot randomized control trial conducted with predominantly Black and Latino couples were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. Observed intervention * time effects and intervention * time * gender effects were not statistically significant, but had small to moderate effect sizes. Intervention couples demonstrated increased parenting sense of competence compared to control couples. Gender differences in intervention effects were observed for both parenting experiences and parenting engagement. Given the pilot nature of the study, these findings provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of this couple-based intervention for improving parenting outcomes. Future research should assess the intervention in a larger sample and leverage technology-based approaches as methods for content delivery. © The Author(s) 2022.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe the atmospheres and surface properties of hot, terrestrial planets via emission spectroscopy. We identify 18 potentially terrestrial planet candidates detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) that would make ideal targets for these observations. These planet candidates cover a broad range of planet radii (R p ∼0.6-2.0R ) and orbit stars of various magnitudes (K s = 5.78-10.78, V = 8.4-15.69) and effective temperatures (T eff ∼3000-6000 K). We use ground-based observations collected through the TESS Follow-up Observing Program (TFOP) and two vetting tools - DAVE and TRICERATOPS - to assess the reliabilities of these candidates as planets. We validate 13 planets: TOI-206 b, TOI-500 b, TOI-544 b, TOI-833 b, TOI-1075 b, TOI-1411 b, TOI-1442 b, TOI-1693 b, TOI-1860 b, TOI-2260 b, TOI-2411 b, TOI-2427 b, and TOI-2445 b. Seven of these planets (TOI-206 b, TOI-500 b, TOI-1075 b, TOI-1442 b, TOI-2260 b, TOI-2411 b, and TOI-2445 b) are ultra-short-period planets. TOI-1860 is the youngest (133 ± 26 Myr) solar twin with a known planet to date. TOI-2260 is a young (321 ± 96 Myr) G dwarf that is among the most metal-rich ([Fe/H] = 0.22 ± 0.06 dex) stars to host an ultra-short-period planet. With an estimated equilibrium temperature of 1/42600 K, TOI-2260 b is also the fourth hottest known planet with R p ¡ 2 R . © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.