Caperton\u27s Next Generation: Beyond the Bank

The article looks at a panel discussion on judicial responsibility and the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s decision in \u27Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.\u27 discussed by several law professionals including Jed Shugerman, Debra Lyn Bassett and Dmitry Bam at a 2014 symposium held in the New York University

High Frequency Quantum Admittance and Noise Measurement with an On-chip Resonant Circuit

By coupling a quantum detector, a superconductor-insulator-superconductor junction, to a Josephson junction \textit{via} a resonant circuit we probe the high frequency properties, namely the ac complex admittance and the current fluctuations of the Josephson junction at the resonant frequencies. The admittance components show frequency dependent singularities related to the superconducting density of state while the noise exhibits a strong frequency dependence, consistent with theoretical predictions. The circuit also allows to probe separately the emission and absorption noise in the quantum regime of the superconducting resonant circuit at equilibrium. At low temperature the resonant circuit exhibits only absorption noise related to zero point fluctuations, whereas at higher temperature emission noise is also present.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figure

Phytoplankton composition in the coastal Magnetic Island lagoon, Western Pacific Ocean (Australia)

1 - Coastal lagoons have traditionally been considered as transitional systems between continental and marine domains. The phytoplankton plays a key role in these aquatic environments, forming the base of the food web and having a substantial function in nutrient dynamics and in the carbon biogeochemical cycle.2 - Due to their short life cycle, planktonic algae respond quickly to environmental changes and they are thus a valuable indicator of water quality. It is essential to investigate the development of phytoplankton populations to understand the biological functioning and to detect changes in aquatic systems.3 - Phytoplankton studies in the Australian estuaries and lagoons are relatively scarce. This study has provided a broad perspective and preliminary information on taxonomic structure of phytoplankton guilds for the Magnetic Island Lagoon (Queensland, Australia). This work may provide valuable information of interest to later ecological studies.4 - In the whole sampling a total of 143 taxa were identified. In terms of species richness, diatoms (Bacillariophyceae, Coscinodiscophyceae, Fragilariophyceae) and dinoflagellates (Dinophyceae) were the most important groups. In taxonomic terms, diatoms were the major contributor to the phytoplankton composition (~ 70%) whereas Dinophyceae were moderately abundant (~23%). Diatoms are a very important component in estuarine and shallow coastal wetlands and they are increasingly being utilized as indicators of environmental change

Value of DNA mixture-to-mixture comparisons within an operational context.

Since 1995, national forensic DNA databases have used a maximum number of contributors, and a minimum number of loci to reduce the risk of providing false leads. DNA profiles of biological traces that do not meet these criteria cannot be loaded into these databases. In 2023, about 10 % of more than 15,000 trace DNA profiles analyzed in western Switzerland were not compared at the national level, even though they were considered to be interpretable, mainly because they contained the DNA from more than two persons. In this situation, police services can request local comparisons with DNA profiles of known persons and/or with other traces, but this occurs in only a small proportion of cases, so that DNA mixtures are rarely used to help detect potential series. The development of probabilistic genotyping software and its associated tools have made possible the efficient performance of this type of comparison, which is based on likelihood ratios (LR) rather than on the number of shared alleles. To highlight potential common contributors for investigation and intelligence purposes, the present study used the mixture-to-mixture tool of the software STRmix v2.7 to compare 235 DNA profiles that cannot be searched the Swiss DNA database. These DNA profiles originated from traces collected by six different police services in 2021 and 2022. Traces were selected by the police based on information that indicated that they were from potential series. Associations between profiles were compared with expected investigative associations to define the value of this approach. Among the 27,495 pairwise comparisons of DNA profiles, 88 pairs (0.3 %) showed at least one potential common contributor when using a LR threshold of 1000. Of these 88 pairs, 60 (68.2 %) were qualified by the police services as "expected" (60/88), 22 (25.0 %) as "possible", and six (6.8 %) as "unexpected". Although it is important to consider the limits of this approach (e.g., adventitious or missed associations, cost/benefit evaluation, integration of DNA mixture comparison in the process), these findings indicate that non CODIS loadable DNA mixtures could provide police agencies with information concerning potential series at both the local and national level

On generation of metric perturbations during preheating

We consider the generation of the scalar mode of the metric perturbations during preheating stage in a two field model with the potential $V(\phi, \chi)= {m^{2}\phi^{2}\over 2}+{g^{2}\phi^{2}\chi^{2}\over 2}$. We discuss two possible sources of such perturbations: a) due to the coupling between the perturbation of the matter field $\delta \chi$ and the background part of the matter field $\chi_{0}(t)$, b) due to non-linear fluctuations in a condensate of ``particles'' of the field $\chi$. Both types of the metric perturbations are assumed to be small, and estimated using the linear theory of the metric perturbations. We estimate analytically the upper limit of the amplitude of the metric perturbations for all scales in the limit of so-called broad resonance, and show that the large scale metric perturbations are very small, and taking them into account does not influence the standard picture of the production of the metric perturbations in inflationary scenario.Comment: This version is to be published in PRD, new references added and typos correcte

A simplified protocol for the detection of blood, saliva, and semen from a single biological trace using immunochromatographic tests.

The detection of body fluids (e.g., blood, saliva or semen) provides information that is important both for the investigation and for the choice of the analytical protocols. Because of their sensitivity, specificity, as well as their simplicity of use, immunochromatographic tests are widely applied. These tests target different body fluids and generally require specific buffer solutions. If one needs to investigate whether the material is of a specific nature (e.g., blood), this is fine. However, if the material can also contain other material (e.g., saliva or semen) then the use of different tests can be problematic. Indeed, if the different tests require different buffers, it will not be possible to perform all tests on the exact same specimen.In this study, we assess the use of the RSID™-universal buffer to perform three immunochromatographic tests (HEXAGON OBTI, RSID-saliva, and PSA Semiquant) as well as spermatozoa detection. We use the same eluate for the detection of all three body fluids. The proposed protocol provides similar results to those obtained when each test is conducted independently. Furthermore, it does not affect the quality of the DNA profiles. The main advantage of this protocol is that the results of the presumptive test(s) and of the DNA analyses are representative of the exact same specimen

Reduced Semen Quality And Risk Behaviour Amongst Men Consulting A Referral STD Clinic

A CAJM article on the reduced semen quality among Zimbabwean men who consult referral STD clinics.Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and infertility are public health challenges that continue to represent a high demand and costly adult medical care conditions in most developing countries. Few studies address strategies for prevention of infertility secondary to STDs through behavioural change and early and prompt STD treatment. A prospective cohort design was used to study the effects of urogenital infection on semen quality in consenting consecutive subjects that presented with chronic or recurrent sexually transmitted diseases. Health seeking behavioural correlates and socio-economic variables were compared between index subjects at a genito-urinary referral clinic and those that presented with non-STD conditions at a referral polyclinic

Development and evaluation of double locus sequence typing for molecular epidemiological investigations of Clostridium difficile.

Despite the development of novel typing methods based on whole genome sequencing, most laboratories still rely on classical molecular methods for outbreak investigation or surveillance. Reference methods for Clostridium difficile include ribotyping and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, which are band-comparing methods often difficult to establish and which require reference strain collections. Here, we present the double locus sequence typing (DLST) scheme as a tool to analyse C. difficile isolates. Using a collection of clinical C. difficile isolates recovered during a 1-year period, we evaluated the performance of DLST and compared the results to multilocus sequence typing (MLST), a sequence-based method that has been used to study the structure of bacterial populations and highlight major clones. DLST had a higher discriminatory power compared to MLST (Simpson's index of diversity of 0.979 versus 0.965) and successfully identified all isolates of the study (100 % typeability). Previous studies showed that the discriminatory power of ribotyping was comparable to that of MLST; thus, DLST might be more discriminatory than ribotyping. DLST is easy to establish and provides several advantages, including absence of DNA extraction [polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is performed on colonies], no specific instrumentation, low cost and unambiguous definition of types. Moreover, the implementation of a DLST typing scheme on an Internet database, such as that previously done for Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ( http://www.dlst.org ), will allow users to easily obtain the DLST type by submitting directly sequencing files and will avoid problems associated with multiple databases