The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

On election night, counts showed very different numbers than the exit polls predicted; and the differentials were all in the same direction.The media have largely ignored this discrepancy (although the blogosphere has been abuzz), suggesting either that the polls were flawed, or that the differential was within normal sampling error, a statistical anomaly, or could otherwise be easily explained away. In this report, I examine the validity of exit poll data, sampling error, the likelihood of statistical anomaly, and other explanations thus far offered to explain this discrepancy

My Systems Thinking Before and After a Year of Social Systems Sciences

The paper reflects on the following three systems thinking books: Fred E. Emery & E L Trist. Towards a Social Ecology, Plenum Press, New York, 1973: Due to many references both personal and in print made to Eric Trist, and, to a lesser degree, Fred Emery, I wanted to familiarize myself with their work. Russell L. Ackoff & Fred E. Emery. On Purposeful Systems, Intersystems, Seaside CA, 1972: I had wanted to read it since having sat in on several sessions of your course in behavioral variables last spring. Russell L. Ackoff. Creating the Corporate Future, J. Wiley & Sons, New York, 1983: Assigned for the course. I went ahead to read the whole thing in order to get started on our interactive design project, and also to do my own personal idealized design

Response Dynamics of Entorhinal Cortex in Awake, Anesthetized, and Bulbotomized Rats. <i>Brain Research</i> <b>911</b>(2)

The generation of oscillatory activity may be crucial to brain function. The coordination of individual neurons into rhythmic and coherently active populations is thought to result from interactions between excitatory and inhibitory cells mediated by local feedback connections. By using extracellular recording wires and silicon microprobes to measure electrically evoked damped oscillatory responses at the level of neural populations in the entorhinal cortex, and by using current-source density analysis to determine the spatial pattern of evoked responses, we show that the propagation of activity through the cortical circuit and consequent oscillations in the local field potential are dependent upon background neural activity. Pharmacological manipulations as well as surgical disconnection of the olfactory bulb serve to quell the background excitatory input incident to entorhinal cortex, resulting in evoked responses without characteristic oscillations and showing no signs of polysynaptic feedback. Electrical stimulation at 200 Hz applied to the lateral olfactory tract provides a substitute for the normal background activity emanating from the bulb and enables the generation of oscillatory responses once again. We conclude that a nonzero background level of activity is necessary and sufficient to sustain normal oscillatory responses and polysynaptic transmission through the entorhinal cortex

Film advance indicator

A film advancement indicator which includes an optical sensor that detects the rotational movement of a disc that rotates only when the film advance is described. When the film does not advance, an indicator light is activated. A counter is included in the electronic circuit to determine the number of film frames advanced

Finite volume study of electric polarizabilities from lattice QCD

Knowledge of the electric polarizability is crucial to understanding the interactions of hadrons with electromagnetic fields. The neutron polarizability is very sensitive to the quark mass and is expected to diverge in the chiral limit. Here we present results for the electric polarizability of the neutron, neutral pion, and neutral kaon on eight ensembles with nHYP-smeared clover dynamical fermions with two different pion masses (227 and 306 MeV). These are currently the lightest pion masses used in polarizability studies. For each pion mass we compute the polarizability at four different volumes and perform an infinite volume extrapolation for the three hadrons. Along with the infinite volume extrapolation we conduct a chiral extrapolation for the kaon polarizability to the physical point. We compare our results for the neutron polarizability to predictions from chiral perturbation theory.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure

Normal pregnancy is associated with an increase in thrombin generation from the very early stages of the first trimester

Background: Pregnancy is a hypercoagulable state associated with an increased risk of venous thrombosis, which begins during the first trimester, but the exact time of onset is unknown. Thrombin generation, a laboratory marker of thrombosis risk, increases during normal pregnancy but it is unclear exactly how early this increase occurs. Methods: We assessed thrombin generation by Calibrated Automated Thrombography in women undergoing natural cycle in vitro fertilization, who subsequently gave birth at term following a normal pregnancy (n = 22). Blood samples were taken just prior to conception and repeated five times during very early pregnancy, up to Day 59 estimated gestation. Results: Mean Endogenous Thrombin Potential (ETP), peak thrombin generation and Velocity Index (VI) increased significantly from pre-pregnancy to Day 43 gestation (p = 0.024–0.0004). This change persisted to Day 59 gestation. The mean of the percentage change from baseline, accounting for inter-individual variation, in ETP, peak thrombin and VI increased significantly from pre-pregnancy to Day 32 gestation (p = 0.0351–&lt;0.0001) with the mean increase from baseline persisting to Day 59 gestation. Conclusion: Thrombin generation increases significantly during the very early stages of normal pregnancy when compared to the pre-pregnancy state. The increased risk of venous thrombosis therefore likely begins very early in a woman's pregnancy, suggesting that women considered clinically to be at high thrombotic risk should start thromboprophylaxis as early as possible after a positive pregnancy test