The Psychological Consequences of Judically Imposed Closets in Child Custody and Visitation Disputes Involving Gay or Lesbian Parents

This article examines child custody and visitation cases in which courts operate under the assumption that parents who live openly as sexual minorities will harm their children. Based on this assumption, courts frequently impose restrictions on parents, requiring them to live closeted lives in order to have access to their children. Part I of this article introduces the concept of the judicially imposed closet as courts have applied it through several custody and visitation cases. Part II examines social science research concerning the psychological impact of family secrets on parents and children as well as research on sexual minority parenting. This research does not support the assumption of custody and visitation courts that it is harmful to children when their parents live openly as sexual minorities. Part III analyzes how, in cases involving sexual minority parenting, such as same-gender marriage, foster care, and adoption, the underlying assumption is that sexual minority parents who are open about their sexual orientation are raising happy, healthy, and well-adjusted children. Part IV then compares adoption cases with child custody and visitation cases examining how the same set of facts in an adoption case would be used against a sexual minority parent in a custody or visitation case. Finally, Part V argues that if courts were to treat sexual orientation as a neutral factor, as they do in most of the adoption cases involving sexual minority parents, then the courts could properly focus on assessing each parent\u27s child-raising abilities, investigating the nature of the parent-child relationship, and preserving the emotional attachment of the children to their parents. It is these factors, not a parent\u27s sexual orientation, that are relevant to determining the true best interests of the children in custody and visitation disputes

Ambiguities in recurrence-based complex network representations of time series

Recently, different approaches have been proposed for studying basic properties of time series from a complex network perspective. In this work, the corresponding potentials and limitations of networks based on recurrences in phase space are investigated in some detail. We discuss the main requirements that permit a feasible system-theoretic interpretation of network topology in terms of dynamically invariant phase-space properties. Possible artifacts induced by disregarding these requirements are pointed out and systematically studied. Finally, a rigorous interpretation of the clustering coefficient and the betweenness centrality in terms of invariant objects is proposed

Myocardial Insulin Resistance: An Overview of Its Causes, Effects, and Potential Therapy

Abstract: Insulin resistance ensues when normal physiological concentrations of insulin are unable to induce effective cellular insulin signalling and glucose uptake by insulin sensitive tissues. It is caused by several abnormalities that include; 1) an overabundance of circulating free fatty acids (and dyslipidaemia), 2) systemic inflammation caused by increased tissue and circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines, and, 3) over activation of the systemic and organ specific renin-angiotensin systems. Although usually associated with obesity, insulin resistance is not a condition that only afflicts obese individuals. Dyslipidaemia which is implicated in the aetiology of insulin resistance can be caused by adipose tissue expansion (obesity) or the increased consumption of lipogenic fructose which has profound effects on liver metabolism and serum lipid profiles. The primary reason fructose is implicated in insulin resistance is because it induces hepatic lipogenesis which would directly contribute to dyslipidaemia and increased lipid deposition in adipose tissue, muscle (heart and skeletal) and the liver. These changes in tissue lipid content and utilisation are thought to compromise tissue insulin signalling and induce insulin resistance. Myocardial insulin resistance not only influences myocardial metabolism and mechanical function in the normoxic heart but also compromises myocardial tolerance to ischaemia/reperfusion and post-ischaemic outcomes. Once insulin sensitive organs become insulin resistant, their substrate metabolism is altered and in the case of the heart, cardiac mechanical function is compromised which could potentially contribute to heart failure. Insulin resistance also decreases myocardial tolerance to ischaemia and reperfusion by compromising myocardial metabolism during ischaemic/reperfusion. Recently emerged evidence also suggests that insulin resistance reduces myocardial tolerance to ischaemia and reperfusion by altering the functionality of the intrinsic pro-survival Reperfusion Injury Salvage Kinase (RISK) pathways that protect against ischaemia/reperfusion injury. The authors and others have demonstrated strong links between reduced expression and activation (phosphorylation) of components of the RISK pathway and increased myocardial susceptibility to ischaemia/reperfusion injury. Lifestyle changes are known to improve insulin sensitivity while several pharmacological interventions using metabolic modulators and insulin sensitizer are currently being investigated and have shown promise in the treatment of animals and patients with myocardial insulin resistance. This review will identify and highlight some of the proposed causes of insulin resistance with particular reference to the role of dyslipidaemia, inflammation and the rennin-angiotensin system in the aetiology of this condition. We will also explore the possible effects of high dietary fructose consumption on circulating lipids and inflammation and the implications of these changes on skeletal and cardiac muscle insulin sensitivity. We will briefly reflect on the adverse effects of myocardial insulin resistance on myocardial metabolism and mechanical function and assess the effects of insulin resistance on myocardial tolerance to ischaemia and reperfusion. The proposed cellular causes of this decreased myocardial tolerance to ischaemia will be identified and current lifestyle and pharmacological interventions utilised to alleviate these adverse effects of insulin resistance will be reviewed. Keywords: Insulin resistance, Dyslipidaemia, Lipotoxicity, Adipocytokines, Renin-angiotensin system, Myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion.Griffith Health, School of Medical ScienceFull Tex

Distinct year-to-year particle flux variations off Cape Blanc during 1988-1991: Relation to δ 18O-deduced sea-surface temperatures and trade winds

Particle fluxes measured from 1988 to 1991 adjacent to a coastal upwelling site off Cape Blanc showed significant interannual variability of fluxes and sea-surface temperatures (SST) deduced from stable oxygen isotope analysis of the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber and, partly, of the pteropod Limacina inflata. For the duration of the study period, a decrease in the seasonality of SST\u27s was observed, as well as a significant decrease in the average annual SST from 24.4° to 20.8°C. This cooling trend was mainly the effect of a drastic decrease in the summer to fall SST (from 27.2° to 21.8°C). In comparison, the winter-spring SST decreased only slightly from 20.3° in 1988 to 19.8°C in 1991. Concomitantly, we measured decreasing annual total, carbonate, biogenic opal and lithogenic fluxes and, in contrast, increasing marine organic carbon fluxes. During 1991, when cold SST\u27s prevailed and the trade winds were rather high throughout, annual biogenic and lithogenic fluxes (except organic carbon) were lower by approximately a factor of two compared to the other years. Colder SST\u27s, generally corresponding to stronger trade winds and upwelling intensity, did not result in increased biogenic opal and lithogenic matter sedimentation; but higher marine organic carbon fluxes were recorded. Decreasing summer-fall SST from 1988 to 1991 coincided with decreased carbonate sedimentation maxima which generally occurred during the warm summer season. In the summer of 1989, when SST\u27s were the highest of the four-year sampling period and upwelling was less intense due to weak spring-summer trades, a large sedimentation pulse of pteropod shells was observed. Our data set does not yet provide conclusive evidence that the observed year-to-year flux and SST variations represent larger-scale, periodically occurring climatic variations in the eastern Atlantic but it offers insight into the prevailing large variability in biochemical cycles and processes in the eastern Atlantic

Cluster randomised trials in the medical literature: two bibliometric surveys

Background: Several reviews of published cluster randomised trials have reported that about half did not take clustering into account in the analysis, which was thus incorrect and potentially misleading. In this paper I ask whether cluster randomised trials are increasing in both number and quality of reporting. Methods: Computer search for papers on cluster randomised trials since 1980, hand search of trial reports published in selected volumes of the British Medical Journal over 20 years. Results: There has been a large increase in the numbers of methodological papers and of trial reports using the term 'cluster random' in recent years, with about equal numbers of each type of paper. The British Medical Journal contained more such reports than any other journal. In this journal there was a corresponding increase over time in the number of trials where subjects were randomised in clusters. In 2003 all reports showed awareness of the need to allow for clustering in the analysis. In 1993 and before clustering was ignored in most such trials. Conclusion: Cluster trials are becoming more frequent and reporting is of higher quality. Perhaps statistician pressure works

Reconstructing Late Holocene North Atlantic atmospheric circulation changes using functional paleoclimate networks

Obtaining reliable reconstructions of long-term atmospheric circulation changes in the North Atlantic region presents a persistent challenge to contemporary paleoclimate research, which has been addressed by a multitude of recent studies. In order to contribute a novel methodological aspect to this active field, we apply here evolving functional network analysis, a recently developed tool for studying temporal changes of the spatial co-variability structure of the Earth's climate system, to a set of Late Holocene paleoclimate proxy records covering the last two millennia. The emerging patterns obtained by our analysis are related to long-term changes in the dominant mode of atmospheric circulation in the region, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). By comparing the time-dependent inter-regional linkage structures of the obtained functional paleoclimate network representations to a recent multi-centennial NAO reconstruction, we identify co-variability between southern Greenland, Svalbard, and Fennoscandia as being indicative of a positive NAO phase, while connections from Greenland and Fennoscandia to central Europe are more pronounced during negative NAO phases. By drawing upon this correspondence, we use some key parameters of the evolving network structure to obtain a qualitative reconstruction of the NAO long-term variability over the entire Common Era (last 2000 years) using a linear regression model trained upon the existing shorter reconstruction

Topological properties and fractal analysis of recurrence network constructed from fractional Brownian motions

Many studies have shown that we can gain additional information on time series by investigating their accompanying complex networks. In this work, we investigate the fundamental topological and fractal properties of recurrence networks constructed from fractional Brownian motions (FBMs). First, our results indicate that the constructed recurrence networks have exponential degree distributions; the relationship between $H$ and $$can be represented by a cubic polynomial function. We next focus on the motif rank distribution of recurrence networks, so that we can better understand networks at the local structure level. We find the interesting superfamily phenomenon, i.e. the recurrence networks with the same motif rank pattern being grouped into two superfamilies. Last, we numerically analyze the fractal and multifractal properties of recurrence networks. We find that the average fractal dimension$$ of recurrence networks decreases with the Hurst index $H$ of the associated FBMs, and their dependence approximately satisfies the linear formula $\approx 2 - H$. Moreover, our numerical results of multifractal analysis show that the multifractality exists in these recurrence networks, and the multifractality of these networks becomes stronger at first and then weaker when the Hurst index of the associated time series becomes larger from 0.4 to 0.95. In particular, the recurrence network with the Hurst index $H=0.5$ possess the strongest multifractality. In addition, the dependence relationships of the average information dimension $$and the average correlation dimension$$ on the Hurst index $H$ can also be fitted well with linear functions. Our results strongly suggest that the recurrence network inherits the basic characteristic and the fractal nature of the associated FBM series.Comment: 25 pages, 1 table, 15 figures. accepted by Phys. Rev.

Description of nuclear octupole and quadrupole deformation close to the axial symmetry and phase transitions in the octupole mode

The dynamics of nuclear collective motion is investigated in the case of reflection-asymmetric shapes. The model is based on a new parameterization of the octupole and quadrupole degrees of freedom, valid for nuclei close to the axial symmetry. Amplitudes of oscillation in other degrees of freedom different from the axial ones are assumed to be small, but not frozen to zero. The case of nuclei which already possess a permanent quadrupole deformation is discussed in some more detail and a simple solution is obtained at the critical point of the phase transition between harmonic octupole oscillation and a permanent asymmetric shape. The results are compared with experimental data of the Thorium isotopic chain. The isotope Th-226 is found to be close to the critical point.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, 8 tables; 3 new references added, misprints correcte