The Futility of Exoplanet Biosignatures

The ultimate goal of astrobiology is to determine the distribution and diversity of life in the universe. But as the word "biosignature" suggests, what will be detected is not life itself, but an observation implicating a particular process associated with living systems. Technical constraints and our limited access to other worlds suggest we are more likely to detect an out-of-equilibrium suite of gasses than a writhing octopus. Yet, anything short of a writhing octopus will raise skepticism among astrobiologists about what has been detected. Resolving that skepticism requires a theory to delineate processes due to life and those due solely to abiotic mechanisms. This poses an existential question for the endeavor of life detection: How do astrobiologists plan to detect life via features shared between non-living and living systems? We argue that you cannot without an underlying theory of life. We illustrate this by analyzing the hypothetical detection of an "Earth 2.0" exoplanet. In the absence of a theory of life, we argue the community should focus on identifying unambiguous features of life via four areas of active research: understanding the principles of life on Earth, building life in the lab, detecting life in the solar system and searching for technosignatures. Ultimately, we ask, what exactly do astrobiologists hope to learn by searching for life?Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 1 bo

Images, Silences, and the Archival Record: An Interview with Michelle Caswell

Dr. Michelle Caswell is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her book, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (2014), which explores the role of archives and records in the construction of memory about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia through a collection of mug shots taken at Tuol Sleng prison, won the 2015 Waldo Grifford Leland award for Best Publication from the Society of American Archivists. Caswell is also the co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository which documents and provides access to the diverse stories of South Asian Americans

CEO compensation: a question of ethics

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 19).The outrageous corporate accounting and fraud scandals in the past years have all but demolished investors' faith in our accounting framework. One big area of concern is executive compensation. In 1992, Congress enacted section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code, which limited executive compensation that is deductible to one million dollars a year. As an alternative, stock option plans have gained popularity. The reporting for these plans is very controversial however, as different methods produce vastly different expenses, both in size and timing. Another concern of many investors is earnings management, the concept of timing revenues and expenses in order to steady and inflate earnings. This has many implications within executive reporting as the method chosen can greatly affect compensation expense, both in size and consistency, and thus manage earnings. This paper will focus on both deontological and teleological ethical models in order to show the inherent inconsistencies contained within the intrinsic method of option reporting. The study also demonstrates ethical standards already existing within the accounting field which are irreconcilable with the intrinsic method of reporting. Both teleological and deontological models are used to demonstrate the current required method's shortfalls and prove the fair value method does not in fact violate the principles

Newtonian Approach to the Matter Power Spectrum of the Generalized Chaplygin Gas

We model the cosmic medium as the mixture of a generalized Chaplygin gas and a pressureless matter component. Within a neo-Newtonian approach we compute the matter power spectrum. The 2dFGRS data are used to discriminate between unified models of the dark sector and different models, for which there is separate dark matter, in addition to that accounted for by the generalized Chaplygin gas. Leaving the corresponding density parameters free, we find that the unified models are strongly disfavored. On the other hand, using unified model priors, the observational data are also well described, in particular for small and large values of the generalized Chaplygin gas parameter $\alpha$.Comment: Latex file, 5 pages, 11 figures in eps format. For the proceedings of the conference Dark Energy and Dark Matter, 7-11 july 2008, Lyon, Franc

Senior Recital: Eric Donaldson, trumpet and flugelhorn & Erik Kosman, percussion

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degrees Bachelor of Music in Music Education. Mr. Donaldson studies trumpet with Douglas Lindsey. Mr. Kosman studies percussion with John Lawless.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1456/thumbnail.jp

A Theoryâ based Didactic Offering Physicians a Method for Learning and Teaching Others About Human Trafficking

Emergency clinicians are on the frontlines of identifying and caring for trafficked persons. However, most emergency providers have never received training on trafficking, and studies report a significant knowledge gap involving this important topic. Workshops often employ a â trainâ theâ trainerâ model to address cliniciansâ knowledge gaps involving various topics (including trafficking). By offering participants knowledge and skills needed to both understand relevant content and teach this content to future learners, this model aims at promoting widespread dissemination of essential information. However, current trainâ theâ trainer workshops typically involve full or multiday sessions and employ multimodal instructional techniques, making them time and resource intensive for both participants and facilitators.To address these challenges, we created a 50â minute trainâ theâ trainer workshop to teach emergency clinicians the knowledge and skills needed to recognize and care for trafficked patients while providing instructional techniques to teach learners this content in the clinical environment. Learning theory and principles informed the choice of instructional methods and were employed when designing the paperâ based learning guides that functioned as this intervention’s primary instructional resource. Guides contained detailed scripts used to perform roleâ playing exercises. These â scripted guidesâ were designed for participants to learn important content while simultaneously practicing techniques to teach this content to one another. They provided the scaffolding necessary to independently direct learning during the workshop (with minimal facilitator intervention), while also being carefully formatted and organized to create an accessible tool for future use during clinical teaching.The session was implemented at the 2018 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. Based on participantsâ selfâ assessment using a retrospective preâ post test, the workshop was successful in creating a trainâ theâ trainer model that is brief, requiring minimal facilitator resources and offers instruction on both content knowledge and instructional methods to disseminate this knowledge to future learners.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/1/aet210206_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/2/aet210206.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/3/aet210206-sup-0001-DataS1.pd

Cumulative Environmental Vulnerability and Environmental Justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley

The identification of “environmental justice (EJ) communities” is an increasingly common element in environmental planning, policy, and regulation. As a result, the choice of methods to define and identify these communities is a critical and often contentious process. This contentiousness is, in turn, a factor of the lack of a commonly accepted method, the concern among many EJ advocates and some regulators that existing frameworks are inadequate, and ultimately, the significant consequences of such designations for both public policy and community residents. With the aim of assisting regulators and advocates to more strategically focus their efforts, the authors developed a Cumulative Environmental Vulnerability Assessment (CEVA). This CEVA is composed of a Cumulative Environmental Hazard Index and a Social Vulnerability Index, with a Health Index as a reference. Applying CEVA produces spatial analysis that identifies the places that are subject to both the highest concentrations of cumulative environmental hazards and the fewest social, economic and political resources to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to these conditions. We recommended that these areas receive special consideration in permitting, monitoring, and enforcement actions, as well as investments in public participation, capacity building, and community economic development

Rheumatoid Arthritis Naive T Cells Share Hypermethylation Sites With Synoviocytes.

ObjectiveTo determine whether differentially methylated CpGs in synovium-derived fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were also differentially methylated in RA peripheral blood (PB) samples.MethodsFor this study, 371 genome-wide DNA methylation profiles were measured using Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChips in PB samples from 63 patients with RA and 31 unaffected control subjects, specifically in the cell subsets of CD14+ monocytes, CD19+ B cells, CD4+ memory T cells, and CD4+ naive T cells.ResultsOf 5,532 hypermethylated FLS candidate CpGs, 1,056 were hypermethylated in CD4+ naive T cells from RA PB compared to control PB. In analyses of a second set of CpG candidates based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms from a genome-wide association study of RA, 1 significantly hypermethylated CpG in CD4+ memory T cells and 18 significant CpGs (6 hypomethylated, 12 hypermethylated) in CD4+ naive T cells were found. A prediction score based on the hypermethylated FLS candidates had an area under the curve of 0.73 for association with RA case status, which compared favorably to the association of RA with the HLA-DRB1 shared epitope risk allele and with a validated RA genetic risk score.ConclusionFLS-representative DNA methylation signatures derived from the PB may prove to be valuable biomarkers for the risk of RA or for disease status

Returning home: heritage work among the Stl'atl'imx of the Lower Lillooet River Valley

This article focusses on heritage practices in the tensioned landscape of the Stl’atl’imx (pronounced Stat-lee-um) people of the Lower Lillooet River Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Displaced from their traditional territories and cultural traditions through the colonial encounter, they are enacting, challenging and remaking their heritage as part of their long term goal to reclaim their land and return ‘home’. I draw on three examples of their heritage work: graveyard cleaning, the shifting ‘official’/‘unofficial’ heritage of a wagon road, and marshalling of the mountain named Nsvq’ts (pronounced In-SHUCK-ch) in order to illustrate how the past is strategically mobilised in order to substantiate positions in the present. While this paper focusses on heritage in an Indigenous and postcolonial context, I contend that the dynamics of heritage practices outlined here are applicable to all heritage practices

The observational legacy of preon stars - probing new physics beyond the LHC

We discuss possible ways to observationally detect the superdense cosmic objects composed of hypothetical sub-constituent fermions beneath the quark/lepton level, recently proposed by us. The characteristic mass and size of such objects depend on the compositeness scale, and their huge density cannot arise within a context of quarks and leptons alone. Their eventual observation would therefore be a direct vindication of physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, possibly far beyond the reach of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner. If relic objects of this type exist, they can possibly be detected by present and future x-ray observatories, high-frequency gravitational wave detectors, and seismological detectors. To have a realistic detection rate, i.e., to be observable, they must necessarily constitute a significant fraction of cold dark matter.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Added one reference [24]. Reformulated the discussion at the end of Section II. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.