Who Was Robert, And Why Do We Still Follow His Rules, Anyway?

His search led him back to the Middle Ages and the origins of English parliamentary procedure. More modern versions by Thomas Jefferson and Luther Cushing influenced him. After experimenting with and modifying meeting rules, he published what we now know as Robert’s Rules of Order. His intention nearly 130 years ago was a 16-page pamphlet. The 2000 Revised Version of the book now has 643 pages! When Judy read Chapter One she discovered that these rules were recommend for “deliberative assemblies” or larger groups of over a dozen members. ~ from the articl

Who is Robert? Why Do We Still Follow His Meeting Rules, Anyway?

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Base-modified GDP-mannose derivatives and their substrate activity towards a yeast mannosyltransferase

We have previously developed a new class of inhibitors and chemical probes for glycosyltransferases through base-modification of the sugar-nucleotide donor. The key feature of these donor analogues is the presence of an additional substituent at the nucleobase. To date, the application of this general concept has been limited to UDP-sugars and UDP-sugar-dependent glycosyltransferases. Herein, we report for the first time the application of our approach to a GDP-mannose-dependent mannosyltransferase. We have prepared four GDP-mannose derivatives with an additional substituent at either position 6 or 8 of the nucleobase. These donor analogues were recognised as donor substrates by the mannosyltransferase Kre2p from yeast, albeit with significantly lower turnover rates than the natural donor GDP-mannose. The presence of the additional substituent also redirected enzyme activity from glycosyl transfer to donor hydrolysis. Taken together, our results suggest that modification of the donor nucleobase is, in principle, a viable strategy for probe and inhibitor development against GDP-mannose-dependent GTs

Cybercrime is (often) boring: maintaining the infrastructure of cybercrime economies

It is generally accepted that the widespread availability of specialist services has helped drive the growth of cybercrime in the past fifteen to twenty years. Individuals and groups involved in cybercrime no longer need to build their own botnet or send their own spam because they can pay others to do these things. What has seldom been remarked upon is the amount of tedious administrative and maintenance work put in by these specialist suppliers. There is much discussion of the technically sophisticated work of developing new strains of malware or identifying zero-day exploits but the mundane nature of the day to day tasks of operating infrastructure has been almost entirely overlooked. Running bulletproof hosting services, herding botnets, or scanning for reflectors to use in a denial of service attack is unglamorous and tedious work, and is little different in character from the activity of legitimate sysadmins. We provide three case studies of specialist services that underpin illicit economies and map out their characteristics using qualitative sociological research involving interviews with infrastructure providers and scraped data from webforums and chat channels. This enables us to identify some of the distinct cultural and economic factors which attend this infrastructural work and to note, in particular, how its boring nature leads to burnout and the withdrawal of services. This leads us to suggest ways in which this new understanding could open novel avenues for the disruption of cybercrime.This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Preface: Little Development Devices / Humanitarian Goods

A brief introduction to the idea behind Issue Number Nine, and the concepts associated with it

Effects of fetal position on the loading of the fetal brain during the onset of the second stage of labour

During vaginal labour, the delivery requires the fetal head to mould to accommodate the geometric constraints of the birth canal. Excessive moulding can produce brain injuries and long-term sequelae. Understanding the loading of the fetal brain during the second stage of labour (fully dilated cervix, active pushing, and expulsion of fetus) could thus help predict the safety of the newborn during vaginal delivery. To this end, this study proposes a finite element model of the fetal head and maternal canal environment that is capable of predicting the stresses experienced by the fetal brain at the onset of the second phase of labour. Both fetal and maternal models were adapted from existing studies to represent the geometry of full-term pregnancy. Two fetal positions were compared: left-occiput-anterior and left-occiput-posterior. The results demonstrate that left-occiput-anterior position reduces the maternal tissue deformation, at the cost of higher stress in the fetal brain. In both cases, stress is concentrated underneath the sutures, though the location varies depending on the presentation. In summary, this study provides a patient-specific simulation platform for the study of vaginal labour and its effect on both the fetal brain and maternal anatomy. Finally, it is suggested that such an approach has the potential to be used by obstetricians to support their decision-making processes through the simulation of various delivery scenarios

Better Policies and International Governance

Summary The World Development Report represents a welcome change from the World Bank's previous conceptions of the state and development. It is more nuanced, and recognises the intimate relationships between economics and other realms – notably politics – as well as the complexity of these links. The role of states and institutions in development is finally taken seriously, as is the necessity for their reinvigoration and for increasing their capabilities. However, the strictly political dimension of these states must be more deeply analysed, and more attention paid to international governance, which is particularly important for weak states in a globalised world. These issues are important if the World Bank itself is to be a more effective actor and more successfully promote reform

Planetary Construction Zones in Occultation: Discovery of an Extrasolar Ring System Transiting a Young Sun-like Star and Future Prospects for Detecting Eclipses by Circumsecondary and Circumplanetary Disks

The large relative sizes of circumstellar and circumplanetary disks imply that they might be seen in eclipse in stellar light curves. We estimate that a survey of ~10^4 young (~10 Myr old) post-accretion pre-MS stars monitored for ~10 years should yield at least a few deep eclipses from circumplanetary disks and disks surrounding low mass companion stars. We present photometric and spectroscopic data for a pre-MS K5 star (1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6), a newly discovered ~0.9 Msun member of the ~16 Myr-old Upper Cen-Lup subgroup of Sco-Cen at a kinematic distance of 128 pc. SuperWASP and ASAS light curves for this star show a remarkably long, deep, and complex eclipse event centered on 29 April 2007. At least 5 multi-day dimming events of >0.5 mag are identified, with a >3.3 mag deep eclipse bracketed by two pairs of ~1 mag eclipses symmetrically occurring +-12 days and +-26 days before and after. Hence, significant dimming of the star was taking place on and off over at least a ~54 day period in 2007, and a strong >1 mag dimming event occurred over a ~12 day span. We place a firm lower limit on the period of 850 days (i.e. the orbital radius of the eclipser must be >1.7 AU and orbital velocity must be <22 km/s). The shape of the light curve is similar to the lop-sided eclipses of the Be star EE Cep. We suspect that this new star is being eclipsed by a low-mass object orbited by a dense inner disk, girded by at least 3 dusty rings of lower optical depth. Between these rings are at least two annuli of near-zero optical depth (i.e. gaps), possibly cleared out by planets or moons, depending on the nature of the secondary. For possible periods in the range 2.33-200 yr, the estimated total ring mass is ~8-0.4 Mmoon (if the rings have optical opacity similar to Saturn's rings), and the edge of the outermost detected ring has orbital radius ~0.4-0.09 AU.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press, 13 figure

Cross-sectional study comparing cognitive function in treatment responsive versus treatment non-responsive schizophrenia: evidence from the STRATA study

Background 70%–84% of individuals with antipsychotic treatment resistance show non-response from the first episode. Emerging cross-sectional evidence comparing cognitive profiles in treatment resistant schizophrenia to treatment-responsive schizophrenia has indicated that verbal memory and language functions may be more impaired in treatment resistance. We sought to confirm this finding by comparing cognitive performance between antipsychotic non-responders (NR) and responders (R) using a brief cognitive battery for schizophrenia, with a primary focus on verbal tasks compared against other measures of cognition. Design Cross-sectional. Setting This cross-sectional study recruited antipsychotic treatment R and antipsychotic NR across four UK sites. Cognitive performance was assessed using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS). Participants One hundred and six participants aged 18–65 years with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder were recruited according to their treatment response, with 52 NR and 54 R cases. Outcomes Composite and subscale scores of cognitive performance on the BACS. Group (R vs NR) differences in cognitive scores were investigated using univariable and multivariable linear regressions adjusted for age, gender and illness duration. Results Univariable regression models observed no significant differences between R and NR groups on any measure of the BACS, including verbal memory (ß=−1.99, 95% CI −6.63 to 2.66, p=0.398) and verbal fluency (ß=1.23, 95% CI −2.46 to 4.91, p=0.510). This pattern of findings was consistent in multivariable models. Conclusions The lack of group difference in cognition in our sample is likely due to a lack of clinical distinction between our groups. Future investigations should aim to use machine learning methods using longitudinal first episode samples to identify responder subtypes within schizophrenia, and how cognitive factors may interact within this