The thin blue line-up: Comparing eyewitness performance by police and civilians

Police officers are often believed to provide more reliable testimony than civilian eyewitnesses. We reviewed the available empirical evidence for this belief. There is some evidence to suggest that police officers do indeed report more accurate details about witnessed events than civilians do, particularly concerning crime-relevant details. That research finding does not translate directly to practice, however, since an average difference between police and civilian witnesses does not mean that a particular police officer in a specific case should be believed over a particular civilian eyewitness. More importantly, police officers are no better than civilians at identifying a perpetrator from a line-up and may even be more likely to make a false identification. Because eyewitness misidentifications have far more severe consequences than misreported event details, expert witnesses in court should warn decision-makers that police officers are at least as likely as the average eyewitness to falsely identify an innocent person

Ensuring Integrated Water Resource Management in Tanzania Benefits All

The introduction of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the early 1990s by international donors has led to some important new knowledge about availability and uses of water resources in Tanzania. However, more needs to be done to recognise the priorities of the rural majority of small-scale users, and not just those of donors, the environmental lobby and foreign investors in land and water. Greater efforts also need to be made by the basin offices to regulate high-impact users, and to work with existing district and local government structures that have developed and managed water to serve the rural majority since independence, rather than create additional top-down parallel institutional layers.Norwegian Research Counci

Formal water rights in rural Tanzania: Deepening the dichotomy?

Water rights / Water law / Water scarcity / Water use / Water users’ associations / Irrigation water / Cost recovery

Еліпсис – один із найважливіших шляхів поповнення складу мінімальних фразеологічних одиниць

Стаття присвячена актуальній науковій проблемі, пов'язаній із аналізом спеціального фрагмента фразеологічного корпусу української мови - мінімальним ідіомам. Описуються два види фразеологічного еліпсиса.Статья посвящена актуальной научной проблеме, связанной с анализом специального фрагмента фразеологического корпуса украинского языка - минимальным идиомам. Описываются два вида фразеологического элипсиса.The article is dedicated to the scientific actual problem, connected with the analysis of special fragment in phraseological structure of the Ukrainian language - minimal idioms. Two types of phraseological ellipsis described

Fraglight:shedding light on broken pointcuts in evolving aspect-oriented software

Pointcut fragility is a well-documented problem in Aspect-Oriented Programming; changes to the base-code can lead to join points incorrectly falling in or out of the scope of pointcuts. Deciding which pointcuts have broken due to base-code changes is a daunting venture, especially in large and complex systems. We demonstrate an automated tool called FRAGLIGHT that recommends a set of pointcuts that are likely to require modification due to a particular base-code change. The underlying approach is rooted in harnessing unique and arbitrarily deep structural commonality between program elements corresponding to join points selected by a pointcut in a particular software version. Patterns describing such commonality are used to recommend pointcuts that have potentially broken with a degree of confidence as the developer is typing. Our tool is implemented as an extension to the Mylyn Eclipse IDE plug-in, which maintains focused contexts of entities relevant to a task

Migraine and vascular disease biomarkers: A population-based case-control study.

Background The underpinnings of the migraine-stroke association remain uncertain, but endothelial activation is a potential mechanism. We evaluated the association of migraine and vascular disease biomarkers in a community-based population. Methods Participants (300 women, 117 men) were recruited as a part of the Dutch CAMERA 1 (Cerebral Abnormalities in Migraine, an Epidemiologic Risk Analysis) study. Participants were aged 30-60 (mean 48) years, 155 migraine had with aura (MA), 128 migraine without aura (MO), and 134 were controls with no severe headaches. Plasma concentrations of fibrinogen, Factor II, D-dimer, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and von Willebrand factor antigen were compared between groups, also stratifying by sex. Results Fibrinogen and hs-CRP were elevated in migraineurs compared to controls. In logistic regression analyses, MO and MA had increased likelihood of elevated fibrinogen, and MA had increased likelihood of elevated Factor II and hs-CRP. Fibrinogen and Factor II were associated with MA in women but not men. In the migraine subgroup, the total number of years of aura, but not headache, predicted elevated hs-CRP, and the average number of aura, but not headache, attacks predicted all biomarkers but Factor II. Conclusions Elevated vascular biomarkers were associated with migraine, particularly MA, as well as with years of aura and number of aura attacks

Tuning stability of titania-supported Fischer-Tropsch catalysts:Impact of surface area and noble metal promotion

Cobalt oxidation is a relevant deactivation pathway of titania-supported cobalt catalysts used in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS). To work towards more stable catalysts, we studied the effect of the surface area of the titania support and noble metal promotion on cobalt oxidation under simulated high conversion conditions. Mössbauer spectroscopy was used to follow the evolution of cobalt during reduction and FTS operation as a function of the steam pressure. The reduction of the oxidic cobalt precursor becomes more difficult due to stronger metal-support interactions when the titania surface area is increased. The reducibility was so low for cobalt on GP350 titania (surface area 283 m2/g) that the catalytical activity was negligible. Although cobalt was more difficult to reduce on P90 titania (94 m2/g) than on commonly used P25 titania (50 m2/g), the Co/P90 catalyst showed increased resistance against cobalt sintering and higher FTS performance than Co/P25. The addition of platinum to Co/P90 led to a higher reduction degree of cobalt and a higher cobalt dispersion, representing a catalyst with promising performance at relatively low steam pressure. Nevertheless, the stronger cobalt-titania interactions result in more extensive deactivation at high steam pressure due to oxidation.</p

Low-Density Granulocytes Are a Novel Immunopathological Feature in Both Multiple Sclerosis and Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder

Objective: To investigate whether low-density granulocytes (LDGs) are an immunophenotypic feature of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) or neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD). Methods: Blood samples were collected from 20 patients with NMOSD and 17 patients with MS, as well as from 15 patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and 23 Healthy Donors (HD). We isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with density gradient separation and stained the cells with antibodies against CD14, CD15, CD16, and CD45, and analyzed the cells by flow cytometry or imaging flow cytometry. We defined LDGs as CD14-CD15(high) and calculated their share in total PBMC leukocytes (CD45+) as well as the share of CD16(hi) LDGs. Clinical data on disease course, medication, and antibody status were obtained. Results: LDGs were significantly more common in MS and NMOSD than in HDs, comparable to SLE samples (median values HD 0.2%, MS 0.9%, NMOSD 2.1%, SLE 4.3%). 0/23 of the HDs, but 17/20 NMOSD and 11/17 MS samples as well as 13/15 SLE samples had at least 0.7 % LDGs. NMOSD patients without continuous immunosuppressive treatment had significantly more LDGs compared to their treated counterparts. LDG nuclear morphology ranged from segmented to rounded, suggesting a heterogeneity within the group. Conclusion: LDGs are a feature of the immunophenotype in some patients with MS and NMOSD

Chemical Abundance Gradients in the Star-Forming Ring Galaxies

Ring waves of star formation, propagating outwardly in the galactic disks, leave chemical abundance gradients in their wakes. We show that the relative [Fe/O] abundance gradients in ring galaxies can be used as a tool for determining the role of the SNIa explosions in their chemical enrichment. We consider two mechanisms which can create outwardly propagating star forming rings in a purely gaseous disk -- a self-induced wave and a density wave, and demonstrate that the radial distribution of the relative [Fe/O] abundance gradients does not depend on the particular mechanism of the wave formation or on the parameters of the star-forming process. We show that the [Fe/O] profile is determined by the velocity of the wave, initial mass function, and the initial chemical composition of the star-forming gas. If the role of SNIa explosions is negligible in the chemical enrichment, the ratio [Fe/O] remains constant throughout the galactic disk with a steep gradient at the wave front. If SNIa stars are important in the production of cosmic iron, the [Fe/O] ratio has gradient in the wake of the star-forming wave with the value depending on the frequency of SNIa explosions.Comment: Uses aas2pp4.sty and epsfig.sty, 7 pages including one figure To appear in Astrophysical Journa