An Evaluation of the Cost of Family Law Disputes: Measuring the Cost Implication of Various Dispute Resolution Methods

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice contracted the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family to conduct a project measuring the cost implications of various dispute resolution methods for resolving family law disputes. Despite the greater emphasis in recent years on the importance of access to justice and the need to resolve family matters outside the court, there is little research on the effectiveness of various dispute resolution methods, and even less on the cost of the different approaches

Pseudospectral Calculation of the Wavefunction of Helium and the Negative Hydrogen Ion

We study the numerical solution of the non-relativistic Schr\"{o}dinger equation for two-electron atoms in ground and excited S-states using pseudospectral (PS) methods of calculation. The calculation achieves convergence rates for the energy, Cauchy error in the wavefunction, and variance in local energy that are exponentially fast for all practical purposes. The method requires three separate subdomains to handle the wavefunction's cusp-like behavior near the two-particle coalescences. The use of three subdomains is essential to maintaining exponential convergence. A comparison of several different treatments of the cusps and the semi-infinite domain suggest that the simplest prescription is sufficient. For many purposes it proves unnecessary to handle the logarithmic behavior near the three-particle coalescence in a special way. The PS method has many virtues: no explicit assumptions need be made about the asymptotic behavior of the wavefunction near cusps or at large distances, the local energy is exactly equal to the calculated global energy at all collocation points, local errors go down everywhere with increasing resolution, the effective basis using Chebyshev polynomials is complete and simple, and the method is easily extensible to other bound states. This study serves as a proof-of-principle of the method for more general two- and possibly three-electron applications.Comment: 23 pages, 20 figures, 2 tables, Final refereed version - Some references added, some stylistic changes, added paragraph to matrix methods section, added last sentence to abstract

The N2K Consortium. II. A Transiting Hot Saturn Around HD 149026 With a Large Dense Core

Doppler measurements from Subaru and Keck have revealed radial velocity variations in the V=8.15, G0IV star HD 149026 consistent with a Saturn-Mass planet in a 2.8766 day orbit. Photometric observations at Fairborn Observatory have detected three complete transit events with depths of 0.003 mag at the predicted times of conjunction. HD 149026 is now the second brightest star with a transiting extrasolar planet. The mass of the star, based on interpolation of stellar evolutionary models, is 1.3 +/- 0.1 solar masses; together with the Doppler amplitude, K=43.3 m s^-1, we derive a planet mass Msin(i)=0.36 Mjup, and orbital radius of 0.042 AU. HD 149026 is chromospherically inactive and metal-rich with spectroscopically derived [Fe/H]=+0.36, Teff=6147 K, log g=4.26 and vsin(i)=6.0 km s^-1. Based on Teff and the stellar luminosity of 2.72 Lsun, we derive a stellar radius of 1.45 Rsun. Modeling of the three photometric transits provides an orbital inclination of 85.3 +/- 1.0 degrees and (including the uncertainty in the stellar radius) a planet radius of 0.725 +/- 0.05 Rjup. Models for this planet mass and radius suggest the presence of a ~67 Mearth core composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This substantial planet core would be difficult to construct by gravitational instability.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures, accepted by the Astrophysical Journa

1957: Abilene Christian College Bible Lectures - Full Text

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Recent work on human nature: Beyond traditional essences

Kronfeldner M, Roughley N, Toepfer G. Recent work on human nature: Beyond traditional essences. Philosophy Compass. 2014;9(9):642-652.Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: (1) conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, (2) eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and (3) constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive (descriptivism), explanatory (explanativism), definitional (taxonomic relationalism), or explanatory and definitional (property cluster essentialism). These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts

The ENIGMA Stroke Recovery Working Group: Big data neuroimaging to study brain–behavior relationships after stroke

The goal of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta‐Analysis (ENIGMA) Stroke Recovery working group is to understand brain and behavior relationships using well‐powered meta‐ and mega‐analytic approaches. ENIGMA Stroke Recovery has data from over 2,100 stroke patients collected across 39 research studies and 10 countries around the world, comprising the largest multisite retrospective stroke data collaboration to date. This article outlines the efforts taken by the ENIGMA Stroke Recovery working group to develop neuroinformatics protocols and methods to manage multisite stroke brain magnetic resonance imaging, behavioral and demographics data. Specifically, the processes for scalable data intake and preprocessing, multisite data harmonization, and large‐scale stroke lesion analysis are described, and challenges unique to this type of big data collaboration in stroke research are discussed. Finally, future directions and limitations, as well as recommendations for improved data harmonization through prospective data collection and data management, are provided

Parent-of-origin-specific allelic associations among 106 genomic loci for age at menarche.

Age at menarche is a marker of timing of puberty in females. It varies widely between individuals, is a heritable trait and is associated with risks for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and all-cause mortality. Studies of rare human disorders of puberty and animal models point to a complex hypothalamic-pituitary-hormonal regulation, but the mechanisms that determine pubertal timing and underlie its links to disease risk remain unclear. Here, using genome-wide and custom-genotyping arrays in up to 182,416 women of European descent from 57 studies, we found robust evidence (P < 5 × 10(-8)) for 123 signals at 106 genomic loci associated with age at menarche. Many loci were associated with other pubertal traits in both sexes, and there was substantial overlap with genes implicated in body mass index and various diseases, including rare disorders of puberty. Menarche signals were enriched in imprinted regions, with three loci (DLK1-WDR25, MKRN3-MAGEL2 and KCNK9) demonstrating parent-of-origin-specific associations concordant with known parental expression patterns. Pathway analyses implicated nuclear hormone receptors, particularly retinoic acid and γ-aminobutyric acid-B2 receptor signalling, among novel mechanisms that regulate pubertal timing in humans. Our findings suggest a genetic architecture involving at least hundreds of common variants in the coordinated timing of the pubertal transition