US foreign policy on transitional justice: case studies on Cambodia, Liberia and Colombia

The US has been involved in the majority of transitional justice measures established since the 1990s. This study explores this phenomenon by examining the forces that shape US foreign policy on transitional justice. It first investigates US influence on the evolution of the field, and then traces US involvement in three illustrative cases in order to establish what US involvement entails, why the US gets involved and how the US has impacted individual measures and the field as a whole. The cases include: the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia; the trial of Liberian President Charles Taylor and the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and the Justice and Peace Process in Colombia. These cases represent different transitional justice measures, transition types and geographic regions – all key dimensions in the field. These measures were also all established in the 2000s, a period which reflects a different historical moment in the field’s evolution. The cases shed light on the actors who play a key role in the field – from presidential administrations to Congress to the State Department and others. The study is based on nearly 200 interviews and archival research undertaken in the US, The Hague, Cambodia, Liberia and Colombia, providing a strong basis on which to draw conclusions about US foreign policy on transitional justice

The experiences of family members witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative:An adapted meta-narrative literature review

Background: Addressing the concerns of family members is an important aspect of palliative and end-of-life care. One aspect that commonly causes family caregivers concern is the decline of patients’ oral fluid intake in the last few days of life.  Aim: To map the narratives in which family members’ experiences of witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative have been researched, review the findings within each narrative and consider directions for future research.  Design: An adapted meta-narrative review approach.  Data Sources: The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Applied Health Literature, Medline, PsycINFO, Psycharticles and Scopus databases were searched for relevant research published between January 1982 and December 2017. Quality was assessed using the Quality Assessment and Review Instrument.  Results: A total of 22 papers met the inclusion criteria. No study focused specifically on the experiences of family members when witnessing the diminishing drinking of dying relatives. However, research about diminishing drinking was identified within studies broadly focusing on cancer cachexia, clinical decision-making about hydration and/or nutrition and support in a hospice context. The research indicates that family members’ experiences of diminishing drinking vary with their views about the significance of drinking, dying well and their expectations of themselves and healthcare professionals.  Conclusion: While some understanding of the topic can be inferred from research in related areas, there is a paucity of information specifically about family members’ experiences when witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative

Elastic instability in stratified core annular flow

We study experimentally the interfacial instability between a layer of dilute polymer solution and water flowing in a thin capillary. The use of microfluidic devices allows us to observe and quantify in great detail the features of the flow. At low velocities, the flow takes the form of a straight jet, while at high velocities, steady or advected wavy jets are produced. We demonstrate that the transition between these flow regimes is purely elastic -- it is caused by viscoelasticity of the polymer solution only. The linear stability analysis of the flow in the short-wave approximation captures quantitatively the flow diagram. Surprisingly, unstable flows are observed for strong velocities, whereas convected flows are observed for low velocities. We demonstrate that this instability can be used to measure rheological properties of dilute polymer solutions that are difficult to assess otherwise.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment: First Detection of High Velocity Milky Way Bar Stars

Commissioning observations with the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, have produced radial velocities (RVs) for ~4700 K/M-giant stars in the Milky Way bulge. These high-resolution (R \sim 22,500), high-S/N (>100 per resolution element), near-infrared (1.51-1.70 um; NIR) spectra provide accurate RVs (epsilon_v~0.2 km/s) for the sample of stars in 18 Galactic bulge fields spanning -1-32 deg. This represents the largest NIR high-resolution spectroscopic sample of giant stars ever assembled in this region of the Galaxy. A cold (sigma_v~30 km/s), high-velocity peak (V_GSR \sim +200 km/s) is found to comprise a significant fraction (~10%) of stars in many of these fields. These high RVs have not been detected in previous MW surveys and are not expected for a simple, circularly rotating disk. Preliminary distance estimates rule out an origin from the background Sagittarius tidal stream or a new stream in the MW disk. Comparison to various Galactic models suggests that these high RVs are best explained by stars in orbits of the Galactic bar potential, although some observational features remain unexplained.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Tracing chemical evolution over the extent of the Milky Way's Disk with APOGEE Red Clump Stars

We employ the first two years of data from the near-infrared, high-resolution SDSS-III/APOGEE spectroscopic survey to investigate the distribution of metallicity and alpha-element abundances of stars over a large part of the Milky Way disk. Using a sample of ~10,000 kinematically-unbiased red-clump stars with ~5% distance accuracy as tracers, the [alpha/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] distribution of this sample exhibits a bimodality in [alpha/Fe] at intermediate metallicities, -0.9<[Fe/H]<-0.2, but at higher metallicities ([Fe/H]=+0.2) the two sequences smoothly merge. We investigate the effects of the APOGEE selection function and volume filling fraction and find that these have little qualitative impact on the alpha-element abundance patterns. The described abundance pattern is found throughout the range 5<R<11 kpc and 0<|Z|<2 kpc across the Galaxy. The [alpha/Fe] trend of the high-alpha sequence is surprisingly constant throughout the Galaxy, with little variation from region to region (~10%). Using simple galactic chemical evolution models we derive an average star formation efficiency (SFE) in the high-alpha sequence of ~4.5E-10 1/yr, which is quite close to the nearly-constant value found in molecular-gas-dominated regions of nearby spirals. This result suggests that the early evolution of the Milky Way disk was characterized by stars that shared a similar star formation history and were formed in a well-mixed, turbulent, and molecular-dominated ISM with a gas consumption timescale (1/SFE) of ~2 Gyr. Finally, while the two alpha-element sequences in the inner Galaxy can be explained by a single chemical evolutionary track this cannot hold in the outer Galaxy, requiring instead a mix of two or more populations with distinct enrichment histories.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Cardiorespiratory and Biomechanical Changes with Hippotherapy in Children with and without Cerebral Palsy

Hippotherapy utilizes the rhythmic movement of the horse to improve functional abilities and quality of life of individuals with neurological impairments. Little is known regarding the changes in body segment kinematics and cardiovascular responses of the rider due to the therapy. A change in the magnitude of pelvic displacement (PD) may allow those who use the therapy to more easily perform activities of daily living. Also, reduced cardiovascular stress to similar physical activities may be an important, but overlooked, therapeutic benefit of hippotherapy. The purpose of this study was to characterize PD and cardiorespiratory (CR) responses to simulated horseback riding (SHR) and walking in children with minimal-to-moderate spastic cerebral palsy (CP) before and after eight weeks of hippotherapy. These results were compared to healthy children undergoing the same protocol. Our hypothesis was that eight weeks of hippotherapy would elicit an increase in PD and reduced CR response during SHR and treadmill walking in children with CP. Eight children with CP (1 female, 7 males; 10 + 4 years of age; height 54 + 10 in; weight 70.2 + 34.3 lb) and eight healthy children (5 females, 3 males; 11 + 2 years of age; height 59 + 6 in; weight 104.6 + 33.4 lb) underwent similar hippotherapy training. Before and after the intervention, both groups completed simulated horseback riding (SHR) at an intensity approximating a fast walk (0.65 Hz) and walked on a treadmill (1 mph, 0% grade). PD along the anterior-posterior, superior-inferior and medial-lateral axes and HR, VO2, VE, SBP, and DBP were measured at steady-state exercise. Mean arterial pressure and rate pressure product were calculated. Prior to hippotherapy, PD was increased in healthy children (p = 0.032) but CR responses were similar in both groups during SHR (p \u3e 0.05 for all). Treadmill walking elicited greater PD and CR responses compared to SHR in both groups and significantly greater responses in CP compared to healthy children (p \u3c 0.05 for all). Eight weeks of hippotherapy did not alter acute responses. Our findings demonstrate treadmill walking at 1 mph elicits greater PD and CR responses than SHR. The walking responses are more pronounced in children with CP compared to healthy children. Observable cardiovascular adaptations or kinematic changes in children with CP are unaffected by short-term hippotherapy training

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected