Die »Notwendigkeit eines Vaters für das Kind« und der Zugang lesbischer Frauen zur Reproduktionsmedizin (The child’s need for a father and access to assisted reproductive technologies by lesbians)

This chapter provides an overview of two broad areas relating to lesbians’ use of reproductive services for family building. First, it identifies strategies used in the building of ‘planned’ lesbian families – where a lesbian couple, the genetic mother and the social or ‘co’ mother, plan their family together - and in which children are raised from birth without the presence of a father. Second, it reviews policy and legislation regulating and restricting lesbians’ use of reproductive services in a number of countries both globally and specifically in Europe, before considering in more detail the ‘need for a father’ debate in the United Kingdom that resulted in legislative provisions effective from October 2009, formally ending discrimination against lesbians seeking to access fertility services in the United Kingdo

Five minutes with Mark Blyth: “Turn it into things people can understand, let go of the academese, and people will engage”

Mark Blyth became the accidental star of the political blogosphere last year when he appeared in a video promoting the key message behind his upcoming book ‘Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea’. Here he explains why being unreadable helps economists get their message across, how fan and hate mail have become part of his professional life and how his latest project illustrates that there is a market for academic ideas

Baby Gammy: the responsibilities of ART professionals in international surrogacy

The 'Baby Gammy' case has sparked worldwide interest and comment. At the time of writing at least some of the 'facts' of what happened, when, and why remain contested. However, as Sascha Callaghan and Ainsley Newson note in their commentary (see BioNews 766), the case highlights troubling issues that have been exercising the minds of some of us for some time (1-4). Among the key questions that Callaghan and Newson ask are: whether it is 'reasonable [for rich countries] to outsource reproductive requirements to countries where women from deprived backgrounds can obtain a slice of the baby marketplace?' and 'whether selling reproductive services between countries is moral?'; the latter begging the question of whether selling reproductive services anywhere is moral

What Munn Missed: The Queensland Schools of Arts

American Librarian Ralph Munn\u27s historic tour of Australian libraries in 1934 is well documented. Along with Ernest Pitt, Chief Librarian of the State Library of Victoria, he spent nearly ten weeks travelling from Sydney and back again, visiting libraries in all the state capitals and many regional towns throughout the country. Munn\u27s trip was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was then, through its Dominions fund, turning attention to philanthropic opportunities in the Antipodes. The resulting report, Australian Libraries: A Survey of Conditions and Suggestions for their Improvement (commonly referred to as the Munn-Pitt Report) is often credited with initiating the public library movement in Australia. [excerpt

Heat conduction from irregular surfaces

The effect of irregularities on the rate of heat conduction from a two-dimensional isothermal surface into a semi infinite medium is considered. The effect of protrusions, depressions, and surface roughness is quantified in terms of the displacement of the linear temperature profile prevailing far from the surface. This shift, coined the displacement length, is designated as an appropriate global measure of the effect of the surface indentations incorporating the particular details of the possibly intricate geometry. To compute the displacement length, Laplace's equation describing the temperature distribution in the semi-infinite space above the surface is solved numerically by a modified Schwarz-Christoffel transformation whose computation requires solving a system of highly non-linear algebraic equations by iterative methods, and an integral equation method originating from the single-layer integral representation of a harmonic function involving the periodic Green's function. The conformal mapping method is superior in that it is capable of handling with high accuracy a large number of vertices and intricate wall geometries. On the other hand, the boundary integral method yields the displacement length as part of the solution. Families of polygonal wall shapes composed of segments in regular, irregular, and random arrangement are considered, and pre-fractal geometries consisting of large numbers of vertices are analyzed. The results illustrate the effect of wall geometry on the flux distribution and on the overall enhancement in the rate of transport for regular and complex wall shapes

Empyema necessitans and a persistent air leak associated with rupture of an anaerobic lung abscess due to bacteroides

No abstract available

Deformation of an elastic cell in a uniform stream and in a circulatory flow

The deformation of a circular, inextensible elastic cell is examined when the cell is placed into two different background potential flows: a uniform stream and a circulatory flow induced by a point vortex located inside the cell. In a circulatory flow a cell may deform into a mode m shape with m-fold rotational symmetry. In a uniform stream, shapes with two-fold rotational symmetry tend to be selected. In a weak stream a cell deforms linearly into an ellipse with either its major or its minor axis aligned with the oncoming flow. This marks an interesting difference with a bubble with constant surface tension in a uniform stream, which can only deform into a mode 2 shape with its major axis perpendicular to the stream (Vanden-Broeck & Keller, 1980b). In general, as the strength of the uniform stream is increased from zero, solutions emerge continuously from the cell configurations in quiescent fluid found by Flaherty et al. (1972). A richly populated solution space is described with multiple solution branches which either terminate when a cell reaches a state with a point of self-contact or loop round to continuously connect cell states which exist under identical conditions in the absence of flow