Dispelling the Myths About the Battered Woman\u27s Defense: Towards a New Understanding

This essay explores the growth of the use of self-defense by battered women from a historical perspective in order to explain the magnitude of the prejudices these defendants face. The essay suggests that a redefinition of Battered Woman\u27s Syndrome will ease much of the criticism from feminists and eliminate the confusion in the legal profession surrounding the use of self-defense by battered women. The essay also pushes for a redefinition of the concept of imminence to encompass the realities of a battered woman\u27s life

Computing Variances from Data with Complex Sampling Designs: A Comparison of Stata and SPSS

Most of the data sets available through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are based on complex sampling designs involving multi-stage sampling, stratification, and clustering. These complex designs require appropriate statistical techniques to calculate the variance. Stata employs specialized methods that appropriately adjust for the complex designs, while SPSS does not. Researchers using SPSS must obtain the design effects through NCES and adjust the standard errors generated by SPSS with these values. This presentation addresses the pros and cons of recommending Stata or SPSS to novice researchers. The first presenter teaches research methods to doctoral students and uses Stata to conduct research with NCES data. She uses SPSS to teach her research methods course, due to its user-friendly interface. The second presenter is a doctoral student conducting dissertation research with NCES data. In his professional life as an institutional researcher, he uses SPSS. NCES data sets are a rich resource, but the complex sampling designs create conceptual issues beyond the immediate grasp of most doctoral candidates in the field. The session considers and invites comment on the best approaches to introducing new researchers to complex sampling designs in order to enable them to use NCES data.

A nonequilibrium thermodynamic approach to biological energy conversion systems

Energy conversion devices are commonly built from individual subunits in order to increase the force or flow that can be obtained from the device. Examples occur in both engineering and biology and include the cylinders of an internal combustion engine, the plates of a battery, the cross-bridges of muscle, and the active transport complexes in a cell membrane;This work describes the behavior of assemblies of individual energy converting subunits. The linear phenomenological laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics are used as constitutional equations that describe the relationship between the forces and flows of a subunit. These relationships along with the restrictions imposed because of the organization of the system are used to derive equations relating the overall flows and forces. Two types of systems have been considered where the total input flow is the sum of the individual input flows, and the output flow is either also the sum of the subunit flows or is the same as each subunit flow. Most of the effort has been directed toward describing systems in which the subunits are not all phenomenologically identical and the fractions of subunit types vary. Systems containing two distinct types of subunit have been studied. Several properties are investigated, including limiting operating states and the input flows needed to support these states. An overall coupling coefficient is derived that represents an effectiveness factor for the system. More complex systems are briefly discussed;As an example, muscle contraction has been considered as a system where the output flow is the same for each subunit. Unfortunately, because it is not yet possible to measure the number of active subunits in muscle, applications of the theory is limited to describing properties that do not depend on the number of subunits. These include the maximum contraction velocity, the isometric rate of adenosine triphosphate hydrolysis, and the system coupling. The theory is applied to phosphorylation, calcium binding and isoenzymes variations that have been found to affect the mechanical and chemical properties of muscle

No Way Out? The Question of Unilateral Withdrawals or Referrals to the ICC and Other Human Rights Courts

This Article addresses the consequent issue: What if a state, self-referring or referring the situation in another country, changes its mind and attempts to withdraw its ICC referral? What is the role and appropriate response of the ICC at that point? This issue becomes especially relevant and pressing as events in Uganda unfold and the possibility looms of an attempted withdrawal of Uganda\u27s referral. This Article examines the Rome Statute, the drafting history, and the expert commentaries, together with the statutory and case law of the other major human rights courts and bodies, and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties ( Vienna Convention ), in an effort to provide a comprehensive analysis of whether a state party can lawfully withdraw a referral from the ICC. To set the stage, it first examines the self-referral phenomenon and explores the reasons why attempted withdrawal of self-referrals is likely to arise

A single mutation in the envelope protein modulates flavivirus antigenicity, stability, and pathogenesis

The structural flexibility or 'breathing' of the envelope (E) protein of flaviviruses allows virions to sample an ensemble of conformations at equilibrium. The molecular basis and functional consequences of virus conformational dynamics are poorly understood. Here, we identified a single mutation at residue 198 (T198F) of the West Nile virus (WNV) E protein domain I-II hinge that regulates virus breathing. The T198F mutation resulted in a ~70-fold increase in sensitivity to neutralization by a monoclonal antibody targeting a cryptic epitope in the fusion loop. Increased exposure of this otherwise poorly accessible fusion loop epitope was accompanied by reduced virus stability in solution at physiological temperatures. Introduction of a mutation at the analogous residue of dengue virus (DENV), but not Zika virus (ZIKV), E protein also increased accessibility of the cryptic fusion loop epitope and decreased virus stability in solution, suggesting that this residue modulates the structural ensembles sampled by distinct flaviviruses at equilibrium in a context dependent manner. Although the T198F mutation did not substantially impair WNV growth kinetics in vitro, studies in mice revealed attenuation of WNV T198F infection. Overall, our study provides insight into the molecular basis and the in vitro and in vivo consequences of flavivirus breathing

Contextualised Concerns: The Online Privacy Attitudes of Young Adults

Abstract. Existing research into online privacy attitudes, whilst useful, remains insufficient. This paper begins by outlining the shortcomings of this existing research before offering a fresh approach which is inspired by Solove's notion of "situated and dynamic" privacy. With reference to ongoing PhD research it is argued that the generation of rich, situated data can help us to understand privacy attitudes in context. In this research semi-structured interviews are being used in order to grasp how young adults understand, manage, and negotiate their privacy across online settings. The paper concludes with a call for further qualitative research into online privacy attitudes and suggests focusing on more niche online settings than Facebook

Automated Docking of α-(1,4)- and α-(1,6)-Linked Glucosyl Trisaccharides in the Glucoamylase Active Site

Low-energy conformers of five α-(1,4)- and α-(1,6)-linked glucosyl trisaccharides were flexibly docked into the glucoamylase active site using AutoDock 2.2. To ensure that all significant conformational space was searched, the starting trisaccharide conformers for docking were all possible combinations of the corresponding disaccharide low-energy conformers. All docked trisaccharides occupied subsites −1 and +1 in very similar modes to those of corresponding nonreducing-end disaccharides. For linear substrates, full binding at subsite +2 occurred only when the substrate reducing end was α-(1,4)-linked, with hydrogen-bonding with the hydroxymethyl group being the only polar interaction there. Given the absence of other important interactions at this subsite, multiple substrate conformations are allowed. For the one docked branched substrate, steric hindrance in the α-(1,6)-glycosidic oxygen suggests that the active-site residues have to change position for hydrolysis to occur. Subsite +1 of the glucoamylase active site allows flexibility in binding but, at least inAspergillus glucoamylases, subsite +2 selectively binds substrates α-(1,4)-linked between subsites +1 and +2. Enzyme engineering to limit substrate flexibility at subsite +2 could improve glucoamylase industrial properties

Opportunities for Public Aquariums to Increase the Sustainability of the Aquatic Animal Trade

The global aquatic pet trade encompasses a wide diversity of freshwater and marine organisms. While relying on a continual supply of healthy, vibrant aquatic animals, few sustainability initiatives exist within this sector. Public aquariums overlap this industry by acquiring many of the same species through the same sources. End users are also similar, as many aquarium visitors are home aquarists. Here we posit that this overlap with the pet trade gives aquariums significant opportunity to increase the sustainability of the trade in aquarium fishes and invertebrates. Improving the sustainability ethos and practices of the aquatic pet trade can carry a conservation benefit in terms of less waste, and protection of intact functioning ecosystems, at the same time as maintaining its economic and educational benefits and impacts. The relationship would also move forward the goal of public aquariums to advance aquatic conservation in a broad sense. For example, many public aquariums in North America have been instrumental in working with the seafood industry to enact positive change toward increased sustainability. The actions include being good consumers themselves, providing technical knowledge, and providing educational and outreach opportunities. These same opportunities exist for public aquariums to partner with the ornamental fish trade, which will serve to improve business, create new, more ethical and more dependable sources of aquatic animals for public aquariums, and perhaps most important, possibly transform the home aquarium industry from a threat, into a positive force for aquatic conservation. Zoo Biol. 32:1-12, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Conformational analysis of gossypol and its derivatives by molecular mechanics

Conformations and inversion pathways leading to racemization of all the tautomers of gossypol, gossypolone, anhydrogossypol, and a diethylamine Schiff\u27s base of gossypol were investigated with MM3(2000). All forms have hindered rotation because of clashes between the methyl carbon atom and oxygen-containing moieties ortho to the bond linking the two naphthalene rings. Inversion energies generally agree with available experimental data. Gossypol preferentially inverts in its dihemiacetal tautomeric form through the cis pathway (where similar groups clash). Gossypolone inverts more easily than gossypol, and preferentially through the trans pathway (where dissimilar groups clash) when one of its outer rings has an enol-keto group and the other has an aldehyde group. Anhydrogossypol racemizes through the cis pathway. The bridge bond and the ortho exo-cyclic bonds in all the structures bend from planarity, and the inner naphthalene rings pucker to accommodate the inversion. For gossypol, the transition is achieved through greater bending of the exo-cyclic bonds (up to 12°) and less distortion of the inner benzyl rings (q≤0.34 Å), (up to 12.7°) . For gossypolone the transition occurs with greater distortion of the inner benzyl rings (q≤0.63 Å) and less out-of-plane bending (up to 8.4°). By isolating individual clashes, their contribution to the overall barrier can be analyzed, as shown for the dialdehyde tautomer of gossypol