Alien Registration- Latimer, Minnie A. (Pittsfield, Somerset County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/6601/thumbnail.jp

In Whose Interest? The Need for Consistency in to Whom, and about Whom, Australian Public Interest Whistleblowers can make Protected Disclosures

Since the 1990s Australia’s nine jurisdictions have passed (or, in the case of the Northern Territory, proposed to pass) public sector whistleblower legislation. The legislation, which reflects different political origins and legislative aims, is not consistent in many respects and there are few common tests across the jurisdictions. This article analyses two issues - who the Australian whistleblowercan disclose to, and who the whistleblower can make protected disclosures about. The examination of these issues indicates inconsistencies in the public law whistleblower laws enacted since the 1990s. This inconsistency is not sensible in Australia’s national economy, where an employee in one State can make a protected disclosure, but an employee in another cannot make the same disclosure. This article supports the election commitment of the Rudd federal government in 2007 to introduce best practice federal whistleblowing legislation which will hopefully overcome shortcomings analysed in this article

Modeling large scale species abundance with latent spatial processes

Modeling species abundance patterns using local environmental features is an important, current problem in ecology. The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) in South Africa is a global hot spot of diversity and endemism, and provides a rich class of species abundance data for such modeling. Here, we propose a multi-stage Bayesian hierarchical model for explaining species abundance over this region. Our model is specified at areal level, where the CFR is divided into roughly $37{,}000$ one minute grid cells; species abundance is observed at some locations within some cells. The abundance values are ordinally categorized. Environmental and soil-type factors, likely to influence the abundance pattern, are included in the model. We formulate the empirical abundance pattern as a degraded version of the potential pattern, with the degradation effect accomplished in two stages. First, we adjust for land use transformation and then we adjust for measurement error, hence misclassification error, to yield the observed abundance classifications. An important point in this analysis is that only $28$ of the grid cells have been sampled and that, for sampled grid cells, the number of sampled locations ranges from one to more than one hundred. Still, we are able to develop potential and transformed abundance surfaces over the entire region. In the hierarchical framework, categorical abundance classifications are induced by continuous latent surfaces. The degradation model above is built on the latent scale. On this scale, an areal level spatial regression model was used for modeling the dependence of species abundance on the environmental factors.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS335 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Controversies in the Management of Endometrial Carcinoma: An Update

Endometrial carcinoma is the commonest type of female genital tract malignancy in the developed countries. Endometrial carcinoma is usually confined to the uterus at the time of diagnosis and as such usually carries an excellent prognosis with high curability. Our understanding and management of endometrial cancer have continuously developed. Current controversies focus on screening and early detection, the extent of nodal surgery, and the changing roles of radiation therapy and chemotherapy and will be discussed in this paper

Neutrino tomography

Neutrinos are produced in weak interactions as states with definite flavor—electron, muon, or tau—and these flavor states are superpositions of states of different mass. As a neutrino propagates through space, the different mass eigenstates interfere, resulting in time-dependent flavor oscillation. Though matter is transparent to neutrinos, the flavor oscillation probability is modified when neutrinos travel through matter. Herein, we present an introduction to neutrino propagation through matter in a manner accessible to advanced undergraduate students. As an interesting application, we consider neutrino propagation through matter with a piecewise-constant density profile. This scenario has relevance in neutrino tomography, in which the density profile of matter, like the Earth\u27s interior, can be probed via a broad-spectrum neutrino beam. We provide an idealized example to demonstrate the principle of neutrino tomography

Implications of the Dirac CP phase upon parametric resonance for sub-GeV neutrinos

We perform an analytic and numerical study of parametric resonance in a three-neutrino framework for sub-GeV neutrinos which travel through a periodic density profile. Commensurate with the initial level of approximation, we develop a parametric resonance condition similar to the exact condition for two-neutrino systems. For a castle-wall density profile, the νe→νμ oscillation probability is enhanced significantly and bounded by cos2θ23. The CP phase δ enters into the oscillation probability as a phase shift. For several cases, we examine the interplay between the characteristics of the castle-wall profile and the CP phase and determine which profiles maximize the separation between oscillations with δ=0,±π2,π. We also consider neutrinos which travel along a chord through the Earth, passing from the mantle to core and back to mantle again. Significant enhancement of the oscillation probability is seen even in the case in which the neutrino energy is far from the MSW resonant energies. At 500 GeV, the difference between oscillation probabilities with δ=0 and δ=π2 is maximized

Challenges and methodologies in using progression free survival as a surrogate for overall survival In oncology

Objectives: A primary outcome in oncology trials is overall survival (OS). However, to estimate OS accurately requires a sufficient number of patients to have died, which may take a long time. If an alternative end point is sufficiently highly correlated with OS, it can be used as a surrogate. Progression-free survival (PFS) is the surrogate most often used in oncology, but does not always satisfy the correlation conditions for surrogacy. We analyze the methodologies used when extrapolating from PFS to OS. Methods: Davis et al. previously reviewed the use of surrogate end points in oncology, using papers published between 2001 and 2011. We extend this, reviewing papers published between 2012 and 2016. We also examine the reporting of statistical methods to assess the strength of surrogacy. Results: The findings from 2012 to 2016 do not differ substantially from those of 2001 to 2011: the same factors are shown to affect the relationship between PFS and OS. The proportion of papers reporting individual patient data (IPD), strongly recommended for full assessment of surrogacy, remains low: 33 percent. A wide range of methods has been used to determine the appropriateness of surrogates. While usually adhering to reporting standards, the standard of scholarship appears sometimes to be questionable and the reporting of results often haphazard. Conclusions: Standards of analysis and reporting PFS to OS surrogate studies should be improved by increasing the rigor of statistical reporting and by agreeing to a minimum set of reporting guidelines. Moreover, the use of IPD to assess surrogacy should increase

Attenuated Virulence and Biofilm Formation in Staphylococcus aureus following Sublethal Exposure to Triclosan

Sub-effective exposure of Staphylococcus aureus to the biocide triclosan can reportedly induce a small colony variant (SCV) phenotype in Staphylococcus aureus. S. aureus SCVs are characterised by slow growth rates, reduced pigmentation and lowered antimicrobial susceptibility. Whilst they may exhibit enhanced intracellular survival, there are conflicting reports regarding their pathogenicity. The current study reports the characteristics of a SCV-like strain of S. aureus, created by repeated passage on sub-lethal triclosan concentrations. S. aureus ATCC 6538 (P0) was serially exposed ten times to concentration gradients of triclosan to generate strain P10. This strain was then further passaged ten times on triclosan-free medium (designated x10). The minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations of triclosan for P0, P10 and x10 were determined and growth rates measured in biofilm and planktonic culture. Haemolysin, DNAse and coagulase activities were measured and virulence determined using a Galleria mellonella pathogenicity model. Strain P10 exhibited decreased susceptibility to triclosan and characteristics of a SCV phenotype, including considerably reduced growth rate and the formation of pinpoint colonies. However, this strain also had delayed coagulase production, impaired haemolysis (p<0.01), was defective in biofilm formation and DNAase activity, and displayed significantly attenuated virulence. Colony size, haemolysis, coagulase activity and virulence were only partially restored in strain x10, whereas planktonic growth rate was fully restored. However, x10 was at least as defective in biofilm formation and DNAse production as P10. These data suggest that although repeated exposure to triclosan may result in a SCV-like phenotype, this is not necessarily associated with increased virulence, and adapted bacteria may exhibit other functional deficiencies

Survival extrapolation in cancer immunotherapy: a validation-based case study

Background: Immune-checkpoint inhibitors may provide long-term survival benefits via a cured proportion, yet data are usually insufficient to prove this upon submission to health technology assessment bodies. Objective: We revisited the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence assessment of ipilimumab in melanoma (TA319). We used updated data from the pivotal trial to assess the accuracy of the extrapolation methods used and compared these to previously unused techniques to establish whether an alternative extrapolation may have provided more accurate survival projections. Methods: We compared projections from the piecewise survival model used in TA319 and those produced by alternative models (fit to trial data with minimum follow-up of 3 years) to a longer-term data cut (5-year follow-up). We also compared projections to external data to help assess validity. Alternative approaches considered were parametric, spline-based, mixture, and mixture-cure models. Results: Only the survival model used in TA319 and a mixture-cure model provided 5-year survival predictions close to those observed in the 5-year follow-up data set. Standard parametric, spline, and non–curative-mixture models substantially underestimated 5-year survival. Survival estimates from the TA319 model and the mixture-cure model diverge considerably after 5 years and remain unvalidated. Conclusions: In our case study, only models that incorporated an element of external information (through a cure fraction combined with background mortality rates or using registry data) provided accurate estimates of 5-year survival. Flexible models that were able to capture the complex hazard functions observed during the trial, but which did not incorporate external information, extrapolated poorly

Predicting the sound insulation of lightweight sandwich panels

The sound insulation of three sandwich panels was modelled using simple sound insulation prediction methods, but the agreement between theory and experiment was not very good. The effective Young&#039;s modulus was determined over a wide frequency from the resonant frequencies of three beams of different lengths. The effective Young&#039;s modulus was found to reduce with increasing frequency as has been predicted in the literature. This decrease is due to the core starting to shear rather than bend because its Young&#039;s modulus is much less than the Young&#039;s moduli of the skins. Unfortunately the agreement between theory and experiment was still not very good. This is because many of the prediction frequencies occur in the critical frequency dip because of the variation of the Young&#039;s modulus with frequency