Children's Databases - Safety and Privacy

This report describes in detail the policy background, the systems that are being built, the problems with them, and the legal situation in the UK. An appendix looks at Europe, and examines in particular detail how France and Germany have dealt with these issues. Our report concludes with three suggested regulatory action strategies for the Commissioner: one minimal strategy in which he tackles only the clear breaches of the law, one moderate strategy in which he seeks to educate departments and agencies and guide them towards best practice, and finally a vigorous option in which he would seek to bring UK data protection practice in these areas more in line with normal practice in Europe, and indeed with our obligations under European law

Government Policy in Support of Domestic Agriculture: Costs and Benefits, The United States

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with an increased rate of diabetes.

ObjectiveChronic infections could be contributing to the socioeconomic gradient in chronic diseases. Although chronic infections have been associated with increased levels of inflammatory cytokines and cardiovascular disease, there is limited evidence on how infections affect risk of diabetes.Research design and methodsWe examined the association between serological evidence of chronic viral and bacterial infections and incident diabetes in a prospective cohort of Latino elderly. We analyzed data on 782 individuals aged >60 years and diabetes-free in 1998-1999, whose blood was tested for antibodies to herpes simplex virus 1, varicella virus, cytomegalovirus, Helicobacter pylori, and Toxoplasma gondii and who were followed until June 2008. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate the relative incidence rate of diabetes by serostatus, with adjustment for age, sex, education, cardiovascular disease, smoking, and cholesterol levels.ResultsIndividuals seropositive for herpes simplex virus 1, varicella virus, cytomegalovirus, and T. gondii did not show an increased rate of diabetes, whereas those who were seropositive for H. pylori at enrollment were 2.7 times more likely at any given time to develop diabetes than seronegative individuals (hazard ratio 2.69 [95% CI 1.10-6.60]). Controlling for insulin resistance, C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 did not attenuate the effect of H. pylori infection.ConclusionsWe demonstrated for the first time that H. pylori infection leads to an increased rate of incident diabetes in a prospective cohort study. Our findings implicate a potential role for antibiotic and gastrointestinal treatment in preventing diabetes

Screened thermonuclear reactions and predictive stellar evolution of detached double-lined eclipsing binaries

The low energy fusion cross sections of charged-particle nuclear reactions (and the respective reaction rates) in stellar plasmas are enhanced due to plasma screening effects. We study the impact of those effects on predictive stellar evolution simulations for detached double-lined eclipsing binaries. We follow the evolution of binary systems (pre-main sequence or main sequence stars) with precisely determined radii and masses from 1.1Mo to 23Mo (from their birth until their present state). The results indicate that all the discrepancies between the screened and unscreened models (in terms of luminosity, stellar radius, and effective temperature) are within the observational uncertainties. Moreover, no nucleosynthetic or compositional variation was found due to screening corrections. Therefore all thermonuclear screening effects on the charged-particle nuclear reactions that occur in the binary stars considered in this work (from their birth until their present state) can be totally disregarded. In other words, all relevant charged-particle nuclear reactions can be safely assumed to take place in a vacuum, thus simplifying and accelerating the simulation processes.Comment: 5 RevTex pages,no figures. Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Matching Conditions in Atomistic-Continuum Modeling of Materials

A new class of matching condition between the atomistic and continuum regions is presented for the multi-scale modeling of crystals. They ensure the accurate passage of large scale information between the atomistic and continuum regions and at the same time minimize the reflection of phonons at the interface. These matching conditions can be made adaptive if we choose appropriate weight functions. Applications to dislocation dynamics and friction between two-dimensional atomically flat crystal surfaces are described.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Active tectonics in the Gulf of California and seismicity (M > 3.0) for the period 2002–2014

We present a catalog of accurate epicenter coordinates of earthquakes located in the Gulf of California (GoC) in the period 2002–2014 that permits us to analyze the seismotectonics and to estimate the depth of the seismogenic zone of this region. For the period April 2002 to December 2014 we use body-wave arrival times from regional stations of the Broadband Seismological Network of the GoC (RESBAN) operated by CICESE to improve hypocenter locations reported by global catalogs. For the northern region of the GoC (30°N–32°N) we added relocated events from the 2011-Hauksson-Yang-Shearer, Waveform Relocated Earthquake Catalog for Southern California (Hauksson et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2007). From October 2005 to October 2006 we incorporated hypcenters located by Sumy et al. (2013) in the southern GoC combining an array of ocean-bottom seismographs, of the SCOOBA experiment, with onshore stations of the NARS-Baja array. This well constrained catalog of seismicity highlights zones of active tectonics and seismic deformation within the North America-Pacific plate boundary. We estimate that the minimum magnitude of completeness of this catalog is Mc = 3.3 ± 0.1 and the b = 0.92 ± 0.04 value of the Gutenberg-Richter relation. We find that most earthquakes in the southern GoC are generated by transform faults and this region is more active than the central GoC region. However, the northern region, where most deformation is generated by oblique faults is as active as the southern region. We used the ISC catalog to evaluate the size distribution of seismicity of these regions, and the b value of the Gutenberg-Richter relation and found that b is slightly lower in the central GoC (b = 0.86 ± 0.02) compared to the northern (b = 1.14 ± 0.04) and the southern (b = 1.11 ± 0.04) regions. We observed seismicity that occurs in the Stable Central Peninsular Province, despite the fact that significant active deformation has not been identified in this region

Early Dust Formation and a Massive Progenitor for SN 2011ja?

SN 2011ja was a bright (I = -18.3) Type II supernova occurring in the nearby edge on spiral galaxy NGC 4945. Flat-topped and multi-peaked H-alpha and H-beta spectral emission lines appear between 64 - 84 days post-explosion, indicating interaction with a disc-like circumstellar medium inclined 30-45 degrees from edge-on. After day 84 an increase in the H- and K-band flux along with heavy attenuation of the red wing of the emission lines are strong indications of early dust formation, likely located in the cool dense shell created between the forward shock of the SN ejecta and the reverse shock created as the ejecta plows into the existing CSM. Radiative transfer modeling reveals both ~1.5 x 10^-4 Msun of pre-existing dust located ~ 10^16.7 cm away and ~ 5 x 10^-5 Msun of newly formed dust. Spectral observations after 1.5 years reveal the possibility that the fading SN is located within a young (3-6 Myr) massive stellar cluster, which when combined with tentative 56Ni mass estimates of 0.2 Msun may indicate a massive (> 25 Msun) progenitor for SN 2011ja.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to MNRAS awaiting final referee repor

Detecting the harmonics of oscillations with time-variable frequencies

A method is introduced for the spectral analysis of complex noisy signals containing several frequency components. It enables components that are independent to be distinguished from the harmonics of nonsinusoidal oscillatory processes of lower frequency. The method is based on mutual information and surrogate testing combined with the wavelet transform, and it is applicable to relatively short time series containing frequencies that are time variable. Where the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a process can be identified, the characteristic shape of the corresponding oscillation can be determined, enabling adaptive filtering to remove other components and nonoscillatory noise from the signal. Thus the total bandwidth of the signal can be correctly partitioned and the power associated with each component then can be quantified more accurately. The method is first demonstrated on numerical examples. It is then used to identify the higher harmonics of oscillations in human skin blood flow, both spontaneous and associated with periodic iontophoresis of a vasodilatory agent. The method should be equally relevant to all situations where signals of comparable complexity are encountered, including applications in astrophysics, engineering, and electrical circuits, as well as in other areas of physiology and biology

Effects of the Pesticides Atrazine, Metoachlor and Diazinon and Binary Mixtures on Proliferation of Human Fibroblasts

The frequent and heavy use of pesticides in agriculture has led to the contamination of surface and ground waters worldwide. Many questions have arisen about the human health effects of exposure to these pesticides and their mixtures. Most of the information about the adverse human health effects due to environmental contaminants comes from studies that focus on exposure to single rather than multiple contaminants since many of the environmental regulations regarding levels of xenobiotic contamination refer only to individual compounds. In this study, MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) cell proliferation assays were performed with normal human fibroblasts to test the toxicity of environmentally relevant levels of three of the most heavily used pesticides in the United States: atrazine, metolachlor and diazinon, either alone or in binary mixtures. MTT analysis showed a statistically significant decrease in cell proliferation compared to the control at low levels of each of the three single pesticides tested (\u3e 0.8 ppb (parts per billion) atrazine, \u3e 1.6 ppb metolachlor and \u3e 1.6 ppb diazinon) as well as with binary mixtures of either atrazine and metolachlor or atrazine and diazinon. When experimental results were compared to predictions of toxicity based on the response addition model, the mixture of atrazine and metolachlor was shown to generally be antagonistic, while the mixture of atrazine and diazinon resulted in additive responses. These findings, along with other studies, indicate that current regulatory standards for pesticides in drinking water may not sufficiently protect human health

Improved test of Lorentz Invariance in Electrodynamics using Rotating Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillators

We present new results from our test of Lorentz invariance, which compares two orthogonal cryogenic sapphire microwave oscillators rotating in the lab. We have now acquired over 1 year of data, allowing us to avoid the short data set approximation (less than 1 year) that assumes no cancelation occurs between the $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}$ and $\tilde{\kappa}_{o+}$ parameters from the photon sector of the standard model extension. Thus, we are able to place independent limits on all eight $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}$ and $\tilde{\kappa}_{o+}$ parameters. Our results represents up to a factor of 10 improvement over previous non rotating measurements (which independently constrained 7 parameters), and is a slight improvement (except for $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}^{ZZ}$) over results from previous rotating experiments that assumed the short data set approximation. Also, an analysis in the Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl framework allows us to place a new limit on the isotropy parameter $P_{MM}=\delta-\beta+{1/2}$ of $9.4(8.1)\times10^{-11}$, an improvement of a factor of 2.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.