Human Rights in Russia and the Former Soviet Republics: Political Repression of Islam

Central Asia, once one of the least known regions in the world, has become important to the United States since 9/11, the resulting U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the new “War on Terror.” Tajikistan, often considered the poorest and most obscure of the five Central Asian “Stans,” was thrust into the public view when it became useful to the United States in its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan

Inherited Toxicity: An Expanded Concept of Sustainability for Preservation

Sustainability is a concept that has been accepted as a foundation for professional practice, and toxicity of materials is gaining concern. While the topic of material toxicity is generally addressed with regard to new materials, the built environment represents a history of embedded toxins. However, this aspect of ‘inherited toxicity’ is scarcely addressed. Considering the toxic potential associated with 20th century building materials, this will grow more critical for the preservation field to address in coming years. In response to the increasing regulation of copper in both Europe and the US, the case study at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower (1956) is an exploration of whether or not an acute environmental impact from the building’s exterior copper elements exists, the results of which are assessed based on an expanded toxicology of copper

Strengthening social work education in mental health: change through inter-professional collaboration

The impacts of mental health issues are widely documented in the literature, and Social Work as a profession is challenged to respond effectively to these issues. Strengthening social work education in mental health is accordingly gaining in importance so as to enable social work students to respond effectively to these challenges through appropriate knowledge, skills, and the ability to apply these in practice. This paper presents one approach towards strengthening social work education as utilised in the 'Social Worker as a Member of a Multidisciplinary Team' project at James Cook University. It is based on the premise that inter-professional education and collaborative process, the research team identified the areas of Competence, Compassion, and Confidence as the areas that need to be strengthened in the curriculum to meet the current needs and standards of professional practice of social workers in mental health; and also identified some methods towards embedding these in the social work curriculum. The paper closes with highlighting the need for such interprofessional collaborations and the synergies that they bring to curriculum development as well as presenting some of the areas of further research that have emerged through the process

Work in Progress -- Instrumentation on a Truss Adapted for Pre-College Outreach

Engineering content is a valuable addition to pre-college instruction in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) since it applies scientific concepts, illustrates scientific relevance and technology, and provides measurement opportunities. Also, complex systems and interactions can be shown. This work describes outreach resources using a seven-member instrumented truss apparatus. This aluminum bench-top model is scaled to support up to fifty pounds. Electrical resistance gauges are installed on several members for strain measurement. The resource set includes the truss apparatus, instrumentation, a PowerPoint presentation, and a background document. The pre-college objective is a set of demonstration resources for middle or high school classrooms. Effective outreach design is modeled by tailoring to accommodate curriculum standards, level-appropriate concept terms, and grade continuity. The resources were developed by students in an interdisciplinary college class on sensors and structures. The development activities involved testing the models and measurements and refining the construction. Selected resources were implemented and evaluated in a local middle school classroom. The interdisciplinary content includes structural, force analysis, sensing, and measurement components

The Role of Race in Admission to a Dual Diagnosis Unit Versus General Inpatient Psychiatric Unit in those with Active Substance Use

Psychiatric disorders are highly comorbid with substance use disorders, and the presence of co-occurring conditions increases severity of illness and complicates recovery. Those with comorbid mental illness and substance use disorders may benefit from specialized services, specifically integrated dual diagnosis treatment. Admission to a dual diagnosis unit requires health care providers to consider a number of factors, including severity of illness, psychiatric history, bed availability, and providers’ perceived likelihood of benefit of specialized services. Ideally, decisions regarding the necessity of substance use treatment are made independent of race, and yet, racial disparities exist among those who are offered substance use treatment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the demographic differences of patients who are identified as having active substance use admitted from the comprehensive psychiatric emergency program (CPEP) to a dual diagnosis unit versus those admitted to a general inpatient psychiatric unit. Our study consists of a retrospective analysis of patients, aged 18–90 (n = 100), admitted to either a dual diagnosis unit (8B) or general psychiatric unit (6K) at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI), a private metropolitan hospital in New York City, between November 1st to November 30th, 2020. We hypothesized that there are racial disparities in unit assignments while accounting for a variety of potentially relevant demographic and clinical variables. The primary outcome was a comparison of demographic factors, particularly racial composition, of those admitted to the dual diagnosis unit versus those admitted to the general psychiatric unit. After accounting for 6 clinical and 3 other demographic variables, patients of Black race were over 5 times more likely (adjusted odds ratio 5.31; P = 0.011) to be assigned to 8B than patients of White, Asian, or Other race. Additional contributors to 8B assignment were male gender, IM or IV PRNs, and documented substance use ('Table 1'). There were no significant differences between Black and Non-Black patients in rates of substance use detected on toxicology ('Table 2'). These findings suggest that race may be a driving factor in unit assignment, and unconscious racial bias may potentially confound admission decision-making, limiting access to available resources and services for some populations. More research is needed to understand factors contributing to racial disparities in substance use treatment

Equation of state and strength of diamond in high pressure ramp loading

Diamond is used extensively as a component in high energy density experiments, but existing equation of state (EOS) models do not capture its observed response to dynamic loading. In particular, in contrast with first principles theoretical EOS models, no solid-solid phase changes have been detected, and no general-purpose EOS models match the measured ambient isotherm. We have performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations of the diamond phase to ~10TPa, well beyond its predicted range of thermodynamic stability, and used these results as the basis of a Mie-Greuneisen EOS. We also performed DFT calculations of the elastic moduli, and calibrated an algebraic elasticity model for use in simulations. We then estimated the flow stress of diamond by comparison with the stress-density relation measured experimentally in ramp-loading experiments. The resulting constitutive model allows us to place a constraint on the Taylor-Quinney factor (the fraction of plastic work converted to heat) from the observation that diamond does not melt on ramp compression

Theoretical and experimental investigation of the equation of state of boron plasmas

We report a theoretical equation of state (EOS) table for boron across a wide range of temperatures (5.1$\times$10$^4$-5.2$\times$10$^8$ K) and densities (0.25-49 g/cm$^3$), and experimental shock Hugoniot data at unprecedented high pressures (5608$\pm$118 GPa). The calculations are performed with full, first-principles methods combining path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) at high temperatures and density functional theory molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) methods at lower temperatures. PIMC and DFT-MD cross-validate each other by providing coherent EOS (difference $<$1.5 Hartree/boron in energy and $<$5% in pressure) at 5.1$\times$10$^5$ K. The Hugoniot measurement is conducted at the National Ignition Facility using a planar shock platform. The pressure-density relation found in our shock experiment is on top of the shock Hugoniot profile predicted with our first-principles EOS and a semi-empirical EOS table (LEOS 50). We investigate the self diffusivity and the effect of thermal and pressure-driven ionization on the EOS and shock compression behavior in high pressure and temperature conditions We study the performance sensitivity of a polar direct-drive exploding pusher platform to pressure variations based on comparison of the first-principles calculations with LEOS 50 via 1D hydrodynamic simulations. The results are valuable for future theoretical and experimental studies and engineering design in high energy density research. (LLNL-JRNL-748227)Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 2 table

Modeling islet enhancers using deep learning identifies candidate causal variants at loci associated with T2D and glycemic traits.

Genetic association studies have identified hundreds of independent signals associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related traits. Despite these successes, the identification of specific causal variants underlying a genetic association signal remains challenging. In this study, we describe a deep learning (DL) method to analyze the impact of sequence variants on enhancers. Focusing on pancreatic islets, a T2D relevant tissue, we show that our model learns islet-specific transcription factor (TF) regulatory patterns and can be used to prioritize candidate causal variants. At 101 genetic signals associated with T2D and related glycemic traits where multiple variants occur in linkage disequilibrium, our method nominates a single causal variant for each association signal, including three variants previously shown to alter reporter activity in islet-relevant cell types. For another signal associated with blood glucose levels, we biochemically test all candidate causal variants from statistical fine-mapping using a pancreatic islet beta cell line and show biochemical evidence of allelic effects on TF binding for the model-prioritized variant. To aid in future research, we publicly distribute our model and islet enhancer perturbation scores across ~67 million genetic variants. We anticipate that DL methods like the one presented in this study will enhance the prioritization of candidate causal variants for functional studies