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Introduction: One of the principal limiting factors to achieving cures in patients with cancer is drug resistance. Drug repositioning is the application of FDA-approved drug compounds for novel indications beyond the scope of the drug’s original intended use. This approach offers advantages over traditional drug development by reducing development costs and providing shorter paths to approval, as drug safety has already been established during the drug’s original regulatory process. One approach for computational drug repositioning involves generating a disease gene expression signature and then identifying a drug that can reverse this disease signature. In this study, we extracted drug resistance signatures from the I-SPY 2 TRIAL by comparing gene expression profiles of responder and non-responder patients stratified by treatment and molecular subtype. We then applied our drug repositioning pipeline to predict compounds that can reverse the gene expression profiles of these drug resistance signatures. We hypothesize that reversing these drug resistance signatures will resensitize tumors to treatment and improve patient outcome. Methods: We first generated the drug resistance signatures by performing differential expression between responders (RCB 0/I) and non-responders (RCB III) within treatment arms and molecular subtypes. An optimal log fold-change cutoff was selected for each signature by identifying the cutoff that best separates the responder and non-responder samples using k-means clustering. We then applied our drug repositioning pipeline to identify compounds that significantly reverse these signatures using the drug perturbation profiles generated in a breast cancer cell line in the Connectivity Map v2 dataset. Briefly, the pipeline uses a non- parametric, rank-based pattern-matching strategy based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistic to assess the enrichment of resistance genes in a ranked drug gene expression list. Significance of each prediction is estimated from a null distribution of scores generated from random gene signatures. Results: We found that few individual genes are shared among the resistance signatures across the treatment arms and molecular subtypes, with the most common genes present in only 5/17 of the treatment arm and molecular subtype groups. At the pathway-level, however, we found that immune-related pathways are generally enriched among the responders and estrogen-response pathways are generally enriched among the non-responders. Although most of our drug predictions are unique to treatment arms and molecular subtypes, our drug repositioning pipeline identified the selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) fulvestrant as a compound that can potentially reverse resistance across a majority of the treatment arms and molecular subtypes. Conclusion: We applied our drug repositioning pipeline to identify novel agents to sensitize drug-resistant tumors in the I-SPY 2+ clinical trial and identified a SERD, fulvestrant, as a potential candidate for multiple molecular subtypes and treatment arms. Citation Format: Katharine Yu, Amrita Basu, Christina Yau, Denise Wolf, Gillian Hirst, Laura Sit, Nicholas O’Grady, Thelma Brown, I-SPY 2 TRIAL Investigators, Angela DeMichele, Don Berry, Nola Hylton, Doug Yee, Laura Esserman, Laura van 't Veer, Marina Sirota. Computational drug repositioning for the identification of new agents to sensitize drug-resistant breast tumors across treatment arms and molecular subtypes [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Virtual Symposium; 2020 Dec 8-11; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PS11-04.

Indian democracy, which was once considered remarkable in scale and duration, has been weakened by the rise of xenophobic nationalism and threats to religious minorities. Although these trends were...

Bama is perhaps the most prominent of contemporary Tamil Dalit writers and also figures among the best known Dalit writers across India. Writing from the periphery, Bama’s literary writing is a pioneering invasion in Tamil Dalit fiction. The intersectionality of her gender, class and religion creates her marginalised position in the society. From such a position, she investigates the multiple layers of oppression that operate in the lives of Dalits and more specifically in the lives of Parayar women of Tamil Nadu. Her novels Karukku (1992) and Sangati (1994) are autobiographical literary narratives which are as much about her as they are about her community. She writes as a Dalit woman about the experiences of Dalit women in her works. Karukku is in many ways an uncommon autobiography. It grows out of a particular moment: a personal upheaval and turbulence in the author’s life which drives her to make sense of her life as woman, Christian and also Dalit. The events of Bama’s life are not arranged according to a simple, linear or chronological order but rather repeated from different perspectives, grouped under different themes. It is her driving quest for integrity as a woman, a Dalit and a Christian that shapes this autobiographical novel. This chapter focuses on the intersectional marginalities expressed in Karukku. It also traces the close link between education and empowerment that Bama posits as tools that could liberate women from her gender, caste and religious identity which otherwise only ensure their degraded and repressed existence.

* Foreword Susan V. Berresford. * Introduction Amrita Basu. Asia * Discovering the Positive Within the Negative: The Womens Movement in a Changing China Naihua Zhang with Wu Xu. * From Chipko to Sati: The Contemporary Indian Womens Movement Radha Kumar. * Men in Seclusion, Women in Public: Rokeyas Dream and Womens Struggles in Bangladesh Roushan Jahan. * Rebirthing Babaye: The Womens Movement in the Philippines Lilia Quindoza Santiago. Africa And The Middle East * The Dawn of a New Day: Redefining South African Feminism Amanda Kemp, Nozizwe Madlala, Asha Moodley, and Elaine Salo. * The Many Faces of Feminism in Namibia Dianne Hubbard and Colette Solomon. * The Mother of Warriors and Her Daughters: The Womens Movement in Kenya Wilhelmina Oduol and Wanjiku Mukabi Kabira. * Wifeism and Activism: The Nigerian Womens Movement Hussaina Abdullah. * Claiming Feminism, Claiming Nationalism: Womens Activism in the Occupied Territories Islah Jad. Latin America * Out of the Kitchens and onto the Streets: Womens Activism in Peru Cecilia Blondet. * Democracy in the Country and in the Home: The Womens Movement in Chile Alicia Frohmann and Teresa Valds. * Brazilian Feminism and Womens Movements: A Two-Way Street Vera Soares, Ana Alice Alcantara Costa, Cristina Maria Buarque, Denise Dourado Dora, and Wania SantAnna. * Building Bridges: The Growth of Popular Feminism in Mexico Marta Lamas, Alicia Martnez, Mara Luisa Tarrs, and Esperanza Tun (translated by Ellen Calmus). Russia, Europe, And The United States * Democracy Without Women Is No Democracy: Womens Struggles in Postcommunist Russia Elizabeth Waters and Anastasia Posadskaya. * Finding a Voice: Women in Postcommunist Central Europe Elzbieta Matynia. * Extending the Boundaries of Citizenship: Womens Movements of Western Europe Jane Jenson. * Feminism Lives: Building a Multicultural Womens Movement in the United States Leslie R. Wolfe and Jennifer Tucker.

Scholarship on women’s movements emerged historically from feminist activism. Writing by predominantly white, middle class feminists about women’s movements that were led by the same demographic, g...

Among the many issues that feminists have debated, three stand out for their urgency and significance: the relationship of theory to practice, universalism to particularism, and the transnational to the local and national. Feminism as theory continues to have a complicated and vexed relationship to women's activism. Even women who engage in struggles that observers might term feminist do not necessarily share feminist identities or participate in women's movements. Similarly, feminists continue to be troubled by universalism. Although certain forms of universalism are integral to most feminisms, Western feminist universalism has been presumptuous in condemning non-Western practices with scant understanding of the cultural and historical contexts which give them meaning. Feminist movements in the global South have sometimes been undermined by Western funded projects which have narrowed the agendas and constituencies of women's movements and by hegemonic Western feminists' appropriation of local discourses. As I elaborate below, I believe that debates about global feminisms have influenced Nussbaum's work and its reception. I begin by describing the key tenets of the human capabilities approach and show how it represents an advance over human rights. I then place capabilities in the context of women's movements transnationally. I assess the different ways in which national states and transnational organizations impede and support the recognition of capabilities. I argue that social movements have a critical role to play in determining and realizing capabilities. Capabilities represent a clear and deliberate advance over human rights in addressing relations between universalism and particularism, theory and practice, and transnationalism and nationalism. (1) Human rights advocates primarily focus on civil and political rights and have traditionally neglected rights within the private domain of the family. By contrast, Nussbaum rejects the view that civil, political, economic, and social rights should be attained sequentially and argues that capabilities are interdependent: the recognition of one of them requires the recognition of others. In Frontiers of Justice she states, [C]apabilities cover the terrain occupied by both the so-called first-generation rights (political and civil liberties) and the socalled second generation rights (economic and social rights). And they play a similar role, providing an account of extremely important fundamental entitlements that can be used as a basis both for constitutional thought within a nation and for thinking about universal justice. (2) Nussbaum identifies ten basic capabilities which, if realized, would enable people to achieve human dignity. They include literacy, liberty of conscience, political participation, freedom from physical violence, engaging in economic transactions, and developing the senses and practical reason. (3) She argues that justice demands that ali citizens should achieve the thresholds that the capabilities approach specifies. Human rights advocates have tended to ignore the role of the state in addressing socio-economic inequalities. By contrast, Nussbaum identifies a key role for the nation-state in realizing capabilities and recognizes the futility of rights and of equality of opportunity when people lack the resources to make meaningful choices. She develops an outcome-oriented approach which supports substantial freedoms. She argues that the radical potential of liberalism lies in forging links between individual freedom and state responsibility. In contrast to traditional human rights perspectives, feminism influences Nussbaum's conception of key capabilities. "Senses, Imagination, and Thought," encompass" Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think and to reason... [and]to use the imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing expressive works and events of one's own choice, (religious, literary, musical, etc). …

Image and video processing is currently active research field during the past few years. Different coding schemes are available in the literature for image and video compression to improve compression ratio while maintaining picture quality. Many of the algorithms use ROI coding such as saliency based concept using different image features. But very few works related to depth cues preserving compression. In this paper, we present a behavioral study to state that the images compressed using defocus cue preserving compression yields better depth perception as compared to standard JPEG compression. We compare images compressed using different schemes against the original image. We collect data from different participants by showing original and compressed images to them. The responses are analyzed using analysis of variance. The analysis shows that the images compressed using defocus cue based compression provides the better perception of the raw image as compared to standard JPEG compressed image.

Understandings of social movements have changed dramatically from purportedly scientific but in fact heavily normative accounts that depicted mass action as anomic and irrational. Reification reached its peak in North American social science during the 1950s and 1960s when scholars made a sharp disciplinary and conceptual distinction between conventional and unconventional politics. William Gamson aptly notes, “Political science claimed ‘normal’ prescribed politics as its bailiwick, leaving social movements to the social psychologist whose intellectual tools prepare him to better understand the irrational.” Since the 1970s, social movement scholarship has taken several turns. First, the resource mobilization approach challenged assumptions about the irrational character of social movements by demonstrating the significance of their organizations, networks, and resources. Next, scholars argued that social movements emerge when political opportunities exist and sought to link the emergence and growth of social movements to changes in the political environment. Scholars then emphasized the cultural dimensions of protest by exploring how social movements framed their demands and drew upon earlier repertoires of contention. Social movements are collective actions that challenge authorities to effect change. Although their goals differ, many of their cultural repertoires are similar. They combine ideological appeals with symbolic acts and discourses to identify and interpret what they deem social injustice. Movements call on people to take personal risks even when the odds are against them. They crystallize deeply held identities and beliefs and simultaneously express popular anger, frustration, pride, and fear. They rouse people to action by providing them with a sense of efficacy, common purpose, and the possibility of a better, if idealized, world. They appeal to moral values to purify what is commonly seen as the dirty world of politics. Social movements are less constrained than parties in the ideologies they promote, the constituencies they represent, the demands they make, and the tactics and strategies they deploy. Social movements are simultaneously expressive and instrumental, and voluntaristic and organized. Their emotionally charged activity entails purposeful interactions with the state. David Meyer comments, “Unlike pigeons in Skinner's boxes, people who make movements are moral and instrumental actors, if not always narrowly ‘rational calculators.’” Movements often affirm established moral codes even as they question and subvert them.

Discussions on peace often assume there is agreement about how the term peace is to be defined, rarely reflect on its meaning in the context of economics, and, when its connotations are gendered, this is done through the lens of women as essentially peaceful beings. In order to have a wider discussion about peace Meridians assembled a Roundtable, during the Women Waging Peace conference, at Harvard University in November 2000. The women who participated in this Meridians-initiated, tape-recorded conversation were invited on the basis of their diverse disciplines, their wide range of geographical interests, and their different approaches to thinking about peace. After providing a short background, the participants were invited to present their definitions of peace. What follows is a transcript, edited by all the participants, of that discussion.

O(NE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT contributions of the recent wave of historical and anthropological scholarship on community identities is to analyze the complex manner in which identities are constructed and to study how such constructions influence their enactment. Similar arguments have been made about caste and "communal" categories and conflicts (see, for example, Dirks 1992; Pandey 1990 and 1992). Political theorists and philosophers have contributed to dismantling old categories by exploring the diverse meanings, possibilities, and limits of secularism in India (Bhargav 1994; Bilgrami 1994; Chatterjee 1994). Given these important methodological and theoretical developments, which focus on the construction of community identities, are there distinctive contributions that students of Indian politics can make to the study of community conflicts? The essays in this symposium provide several important responses to this question. Political scientists (although not political theorists) generally remain committed to explaining the growth of community conflicts. Indeed, one might argue that if recent critical scholarship on community identities signals a warning about the dangers of parsimonious causal analysis, the essays in this symposium identify dangers in prematurely abandoning the project of explaining how, why, and with what consequences community conflicts have grown in India. One of their underlying assumptions is that, however much we have learned about community conflicts at the local level, we have yet to establish satisfactory generalizations about the conditions under which they emerge and subsequently decline or flourish. Furthermore, all of the authors implicitly link their quest for explanation with an emphasis on a comparative approach that explores the relationship between conflicts at the national and provincial (state) levels and highlights regional differences within India. Related to this emphasis on a comparative approach is a concern with the explicitly political dimensions of community conflicts. How broadly the authors define the domain of the political varies, from Kohli, who accords primacy to the character

Political conflicts around religious, caste and regional identities have multiplied in India. Whether one views these “million mutinies” as symptomatic of a growing crisis of governability or of a democratic revolution, analytical questions abound. Why is there apparently more violent conflict around identity politics in India today than at any time since Independence? To what extent do the character and intensity of recent conflicts differ from those of the past? What lessons can we learn from cases where community demands have been successfully accommodated? And, relatedly, what measures might alleviate the widespread destruction of life and property and create the sense of predictability on which all social order rests? The following essays analyze both the growing incidence of violent ethnic conflict in India and some of the conditions for their resolution.

Appropriating Gender explores the paradoxical relationship of women to religious politics in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Contrary to the hopes of feminists, many women have responded to religious nationalist appeals; contrary to the hopes of religious nationalists, they have also asserted their gender, class, caste, and religious identities; contrary to the hopes of nation states, they have often challenged state policies and practices. Through a comparative South Asia perspective, Appropriating Gender explores the varied meanings and expressions of gender identity through time, by location, and according to political context. The first work to focus on women's agency and activism within the South Asian context, Appropriating Gender is an outstanding contribution to the field of gender studies.

We present a novel perception-driven approach to low-cost tele-presence systems, to support immersive experience in continuity between projected video and conferencing room.We use geometry and spectral correction to impart for perceptual continuity to the whole scene. The geometric correction comes from a learning-based approach to identifying horizontal and vertical surfaces. Our method redraws the projected video to match its vanishing point with that of the conference room in which it is projected. We quantify intuitive concepts such as the depth-of-field using a Gabor filter analysis of overall images of the conference room. We equalise spectral features across the projected video and the conference room, for spectral continuity between the two.

Political conflicts around religious, caste and regional identities have multiplied in India. This volume brings together original essays that help us understand the growing incidence of community conflicts in India.

One of the liveliest debates in women’s studies concerns the extent to which feminist theory and practice derive solely from the experiences of white, Western, largely middle class women. The emergence of women’s movements in the Third World has undoubtedly challenged the association of Western with feminist. However, the problem is not so easily resolved; at least in South Asia, women’s movements are located precisely among the Westernized urban middle classes.