Why Can\u27t We Be Friends?: Why California Needs A Lifestyle Discrimination Statute to Protect Employees From Employment Actions Based on Their Off-Duty Behavior

This note explores the employment implications that social networking has on private employees and discusses the need for a lifestyle discrimination statute in California. The note begins with an overview of the increasing use of social networking, both within the employment context as well as within society as a whole. The note then analyzes current privacy protections under federal and California law and contrasts those protections with lifestyle discrimination statutes adopted in Colorado and New York. Ultimately, the note concludes that California should adopt a statute that would provide protection to employees who are terminated for off-duty, off-site behaviors which do not impact a legitimate business interest

Transport properties of 2D graphene containing structural defects

We propose an extensive report on the simulation of electronic transport in 2D graphene in presence of structural defects. Amongst the large variety of such defects in sp$^2$ carbon-based materials, we focus on the Stone-Wales defect and on two divacancy-type reconstructed defects. First, based on ab initio calculations, a tight-binding model is derived to describe the electronic structure of these defects. Then, semiclassical transport properties including the elastic mean free paths, mobilities and conductivities are computed using an order-N real-space Kubo-Greenwood method. A plateau of minimum conductivity ($\sigma^{min}_{sc}= 4e^2/\pi h$) is progressively observed as the density of defects increases. This saturation of the decay of conductivity to $\sigma^{min}_{sc}$ is associated with defect-dependent resonant energies. Finally, localization phenomena are captured beyond the semiclassical regime. An Anderson transition is predicted with localization lengths of the order of tens of nanometers for defect densities around 1%.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Isolation and properties of a native subunit of lamprey thyroglobulin.

Abstract The thyroglobulin-like iodoproteins from lamprey thyroid tissue were prepared by repeated salting out between 1.4 and 1.8 m ammonium sulfate. Velocity ultracentrifugation showed only two boundaries, the sedimentation coefficients of which were about 5 S and 12 S. Sucrose gradient centrifugation of the same preparation, pulse-labeled with both 125I and 131I (7 days and 1 hour, respectively before killing), indicated the presence of a third component (17 S) which had a very rapid turnover and corresponds to native thyroglobulin of higher vertebrates. The 12 S component was obtained in ultracentrifugally homogeneous form with a sedimentation constant (s020,w) and molecular weight of 11.7 and 331,000, respectively. The iodine content was 0.003%. Lamprey 12 S thyroid protein, the first subunit of thyroglobulin which has been isolated in a pure form, is a native, stable protein with a molecular size corresponding to one-half that of the parent molecule, thyroglobulin

Infant and Child Deaths: Parent Concerns about Subsequent Pregnancies

Purpose—examine parents\u27 concerns about subsequent pregnancies after experiencing an infant or child death (newborn to 18 years). Data Sources—39 semi-structured parent (White, Black, Hispanic) interviews 7 and 13 months post infant/child death conducted in English and/or Spanish, audio-recorded, transcribed and content analyzed. Mothers\u27 mean age was 31.8 years, fathers\u27 was 39 years; 11 parents were White, 16 Black, 12 Hispanic. Conclusions—Themes common at 7 and 13 months: wanting more children; fear, anxiety, scared; praying to God/God\u27s will; thinking about/keeping the infant\u27s/child\u27s memory and at 7 months importance of becoming pregnant for family members; and at 13 months happy about a new baby. Parents who lost a child in NICU commented more than those who lost a child in PICU. Black and Hispanic parents commented more on praying to God and subsequent pregnancies being God\u27s will than White parents. Implications for Practice—Loss of an infant/child is a significant stressor on parents with documented negative physical and mental health outcomes. Assessing parents\u27 subsequent pregnancy plans, recognizing the legitimacy of their fears about another pregnancy, discussing a plan should they encounter problems and carefully monitoring the health of all parents who lost an infant/child is an essential practitioner role

Two-Dimensional Graphene with Structural Defects: Elastic Mean Free Path, Minimum Conductivity, and Anderson Transition

4 páginas, 4 figuras.-- PACS numbers: 73.23. b, 72.15.Rn, 73.43.Qt.-- et al.Quantum transport properties of disordered graphene with structural defects (Stone-Wales and divacancies) are investigated using a realistic π-π* tight-binding model elaborated from ab initio calculations. Mean free paths and semiclassical conductivities are then computed as a function of the nature and density of defects (using an order-N real-space Kubo-Greenwood method). By increasing the defect density, the decay of the semiclassical conductivities is predicted to saturate to a minimum value of 4e2/πh over a large range (plateau) of carrier density (>0.5×1014  cm-2). Additionally, strong contributions of quantum interferences suggest that the Anderson localization regime could be experimentally measurable for a defect density as low as 1%.J.-C. C. and A. L. acknowledge financial support from the FNRS of Belgium. Parts of this work are connected to the Belgian Program on Interuniversity Attraction Poles (PAI6), to the NanoHymo ARC, to the ETSF e-I3 project (Grant No. 211956), and to the NANOSIM-GRAPHENE Project No. ANR-09-NANO-016-01.Peer reviewe

The ‘caged torch procession’: Celebrities, protesters and the 2008 Olympic torch relay in London, Paris and San Francisco

Along with the opening and closing ceremonies, one of the major non-sports events associated with the modern Olympic Games is the torch relay. Although initiated in 1936, the relay has been subject to relatively little academic scrutiny. The events of April 2008 however will have cast a long shadow on the practice. This essay focuses primarily on one week (6–13 April) in the press coverage of the 2008 torch relay as the flame made its way from London to Paris in Europe and then to San Francisco in the USA. It discusses the interpretations offered in the mediated coverage about the relay, the Olympic movement, the host city and the locations where the relay was taking place, and critically analyses the role of agencies, both for and against the Olympics, that framed the ensuing debate

Identifying the Achilles heel of multi-host pathogens : the concept of keystone 'host' species illustrated by Mycobacterium ulcerans transmission

Pathogens that use multiple host species are an increasing public health issue due to their complex transmission, which makes them difficult to mitigate. Here, we explore the possibility of using networks of ecological interactions among potential host species to identify the particular disease-source species to target to break down transmission of such pathogens. We fit a mathematical model on prevalence data of Mycobacterium ulcerans in western Africa and we show that removing the most abundant taxa for this category of pathogen is not an optimal strategy to decrease the transmission of the mycobacterium within aquatic ecosystems. On the contrary, we reveal that the removal of some taxa, especially Oligochaeta worms, can clearly reduce rates of pathogen transmission, and these should be considered as keystone organisms for its transmission because they lead to a substantial reduction in pathogen prevalence regardless of the network topology. Besides their potential application for the understanding of M. ulcerans ecology, we discuss how networks of species interactions can modulate transmission of multi-host pathogens

Parametrization of semi-dynamical quantum reflection algebra

We construct sets of structure matrices for the semi-dynamical reflection algebra, solving the Yang-Baxter type consistency equations extended by the action of an automorphism of the auxiliary space. These solutions are parametrized by dynamical conjugation matrices, Drinfel'd twist representations and quantum non-dynamical $R$-matrices. They yield factorized forms for the monodromy matrices.Comment: LaTeX, 24 pages. Misprints corrected, comments added in Conclusion on construction of Hamiltonian

Interdisciplinarity and infectious diseases : an Ebola case study

International audienceHigh-profile epidemics such as Ebola, avian influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) repeatedly thrust infectious diseases into the limelight. Because the emergence of dis-eases involves so many factors, the need for interdisciplinary approaches to studying emerging infections, particularly those originating from animals (i.e., zoonoses), is frequently discussed. However, effective integration across disciplines is challenging in practice. Ecological ideas, for example, are rarely considered in biomedical research, while insights from biomedicine are often neglected in ecological studies of infectious diseases. One practical reason for this is that researchers in these fields focus on vastly different scales of biological organization, which are difficult to bridge both intellectually and methodologically. Nevertheless, integration across biological scales is increasingly needed for solving the complex problems zoonotic diseases pose to human and animal well-being. Motivated by current events, we use Ebola virusas a case study to highlight fundamental questions about zoonoses that can be addressed by integrating insights and approaches across scales