Invasion of the Clones: Animal Cloning and the Potential Implications on the Future of Human Cloning and Cloning Legislation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Internationally

Cloning is an area of science that changes daily; with advances being made constantly. This technology has caused great controversy in the United States and across the world. The issue has raised religious, ethical, technical and legal concerns. This paper is broken into four parts in order to best address the complex area of cloning technology. Part one will be a review of the history of the science of cloning and the history of animal cloning. Part two will be a discussion of the risks and benefits of cloning. Part three will address ethical and religious concerns surrounding human cloning. Part four will be a discussion of legislative responses to the possibility of human cloning in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as international responses of organizations such as the AMA, the United Nations, the WHO, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (“UNESCO”)

Disruption to control network function correlates with altered dynamic connectivity in the wider autism spectrum.

Autism is a common developmental condition with a wide, variable range of co-occurring neuropsychiatric symptoms. Contrasting with most extant studies, we explored whole-brain functional organization at multiple levels simultaneously in a large subject group reflecting autism's clinical diversity, and present the first network-based analysis of transient brain states, or dynamic connectivity, in autism. Disruption to inter-network and inter-system connectivity, rather than within individual networks, predominated. We identified coupling disruption in the anterior-posterior default mode axis, and among specific control networks specialized for task start cues and the maintenance of domain-independent task positive status, specifically between the right fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks and default mode network subsystems. These appear to propagate downstream in autism, with significantly dampened subject oscillations between brain states, and dynamic connectivity configuration differences. Our account proposes specific motifs that may provide candidates for neuroimaging biomarkers within heterogeneous clinical populations in this diverse condition

Open borders, closed minds: the discursive construction of national identity in North Cyprus

The article investigates the discursive construction of a Turkish Cypriot national identity by the newspapers in North Cyprus. It questions the representation and reconstruction processes of national identity within the press and examines the various practices employed to mobilize readers around certain national imaginings. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the article analyses news reports of the opening of border crossings in Cyprus in 2003, based on their content, the strategies used in the production of national identity and the linguistic means employed in the process. In this way, the nationalist tendencies embedded in news discourses, as well as discriminatory and exclusive practices, are sought out

The Reinforcing Properties of Drugs of Abuse are Attenuated by Naltrexone in Caenorhabditis elegans

poster abstractDrug addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease premised on compulsive drug seeking. Previous work from our lab demonstrated that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) can be used to examine the reinforcing properties of drugs of abuse. A successful model for studying the reinforcing effects of drugs in C. elegans would greatly aid efforts to discover potential therapeutic interventions for drug addiction. The present study examined preference for morphine, ethanol, cocaine, and a cannabinoid agonist (CB agonist) in C. elegans and the effect of naltrexone, an opioid antagonist, on this behavior. Six-well agar test plates were utilized to test drug preference. Each well had two circular target zones equidistant from the center; 4μl of the targeted drug or water were placed in the center of one of the two target zones within each well. Worms in one group were pre-treated with 10mM naltrexone, while controls were pre-treated with 0.97 mM HCl for 30 min prior to testing. Worms in each treatment group were then placed in the center of each well and allowed to move freely for 30 minutes-images were captured at 10 and 30 minutes. Animals treated with vehicle displayed a significant preference for the aforementioned drugs relative to controls; naltrexone pretreatment significantly ameliorated this effect. Naltrexone had no effect on food or chemoatractant preference, indicating that the effects of naltrexone on drug preference are selective and not due to disruption in general behaviors. These findings suggest that the reinforcing properties of drugs of abuse can be examined in C. elegans and this model may be useful for screening potential pharmacotherapies for drug abuse

Yeast Vaccine Vector Including Immunostimulatory And Antigenic Polypeptides And Methods Of Using The Same

Vaccine compositions including a yeast comprising an immunostimulatory polypeptide and optionally an antigenic polypeptide are provided herein. The immunostimulatory polypeptide and the antigenic polypeptide are expressed or displayed on the surface of the yeast vaccine composition. Methods of using the vaccine composition to vaccinate subjects are also provided

Yeast vaccine vector including immunostimulatory and antigenic polypeptides and methods of using the same

Vaccine compositions including a yeast comprising an immunostimulatory polypeptide and optionally an antigenic polypeptide are provided herein. The immunostimulatory polypeptide and the antigenic polypeptide are expressed or displayed on the surface of the yeast vaccine composition. Methods of using the vaccine composition to vaccinate subjects are also provided

FINJ: A Fault Injection Tool for HPC Systems

We present FINJ, a high-level fault injection tool for High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems, with a focus on the management of complex experiments. FINJ provides support for custom workloads and allows generation of anomalous conditions through the use of fault-triggering executable programs. FINJ can also be integrated seamlessly with most other lower-level fault injection tools, allowing users to create and monitor a variety of highly-complex and diverse fault conditions in HPC systems that would be difficult to recreate in practice. FINJ is suitable for experiments involving many, potentially interacting nodes, making it a very versatile design and evaluation tool.Comment: To be presented at the 11th Resilience Workshop in the 2018 Euro-Par conferenc

The METCRAX II Field Experiment: A Study of Downslope Windstorm-Type Flows in Arizona\u2019s Meteor Crater

The second Meteor Crater Experiment (METCRAX II) was conducted in October 2013 at Arizona\u2019s Meteor Crater. The experiment was designed to investigate nighttime downslope windstorm 12type flows that form regularly above the inner southwest sidewall of the 1.2-km diameter crater as a southwesterly mesoscale katabatic flow cascades over the crater rim. The objective of METCRAX II is to determine the causes of these strong, intermittent, and turbulent inflows that bring warm-air intrusions into the southwest part of the crater. This article provides an overview of the scientific goals of the experiment; summarizes the measurements, the crater topography, and the synoptic meteorology of the study period; and presents initial analysis results

Provider imposed restrictions to clients\u27 access to family planning in urban Uttar Pradesh, India: A mixed methods study

Background Medical barriers refer to unnecessary policies or procedures imposed by health care providers that are not necessarily medically advised; these restrictions impede clients\u27 access to family planning (FP). This mixed methods study investigates provider imposed barriers to provision of FP using recent quantitative and qualitative data from urban Uttar Pradesh, India. Methods Baseline quantitative data were collected in six cities in Uttar Pradesh, India from service delivery points (SDP), using facility audits, exit interviews, and provider surveys; for this study, the focus is on the provider surveys. More than 250 providers were surveyed in each city. Providers were asked about the FP methods they provide, and if they restrict clients\u27 access to each method based on age, parity, partner consent, or marital status. For the qualitative research, we conducted one-on-one interviews with 21 service providers in four of the six cities in Uttar Pradesh. Each interview lasted approximately 45 minutes. Results The quantitative findings show that providers restrict clients\u27 access to spacing and long-acting and permanent methods of FP based on age, parity, partner consent and marital status. Qualitative findings reinforce that providers, at times, make judgments about their clients\u27 education, FP needs and ability to understand FP options thereby imposing unnecessary barriers to FP methods. Conclusions Provider restrictions on FP methods are common in these urban Uttar Pradesh sites. This means that women who are young, unmarried, have few or no children, do not have the support of their partner, or are less educated may not be able to access or use FP or their preferred method. These findings highlight the need for in-service training for staff, with a focus on reviewing current guidelines and eligibility criteria for provision of methods

Parents, children and the porous boundaries of the sexual family in law and popular culture

This article focuses on a perceived ideological overlap between popular cultural and judicial treatments of sex and conjugality that contributes to a discursive construction of parenthood and parenting. The author perceives that in both legal and popular cultural texts, there is a sense in which notions of ‘natural’ childhood are discursively constituted as being put at risk by those who reproduce outside of dominant sexual norms, and that signs of normative sexuality (typically in the form of heterosexual coupling) may be treated as a sign of safety. These ideas are rooted in ancient associations between fertility, sexuality and femininity that can also be traced in the historical development of the English language. With the help of commentators such as Martha Fineman, the article situates parents and children within a discourse of family which prioritises conjugality, with consequences for the ways in which the internal and external boundaries of families are delineated