Editorial

published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 01 Dec 201

Stigma in practice: barriers to health for fat women

In this paper, we explore barriers to health for fat people. By shifting the focus from what fat people do or do not do, neoliberal principles are replaced by a focus instead on structural and institutional policies, attitudes, and practices. This includes the impact of stigma on the health treatment and health-seeking behavior of fat people. For example, we consider the role that provider anti-fat attitudes and confirmation bias play in the failure to provide evidenced-based healthcare to fat patients. This is an autoethnographic paper, which provides the opportunity to read research from the perspective of fat scholars, framed by questions such as: can fat people have health? Is health itself a state of being, a set of behaviors, a commodity, a performance; perhaps the new social contract? As a co-written autoethnographic paper, one aspect of the evidence provided is the recorded experiences of the two fat authors. This includes writing from notes, journals, compiled and repeated experiences with medical professionals, family, and the community. Framed by feminist standpoint and supported by literature drawn from Fat Studies, Public Health, Obesity Research, and other interdisciplinary fields, this is a valuable opportunity to present an extended account of fat discrimination and the impact of the stigma fat people face through the medical profession and other sectors of the community, written by fat individuals. The paper concludes by considering the health pathways available to fat people. Special attention is paid to whether Bacon and Aphramor's Health at Every Size paradigm provides a path to health for fat individuals

Device Identification and Authentication with Radar and UWB Ranging

Devices such as tablets and smart displays can be automatically unlocked when a user carrying a compatible wearable device approaches. With user permission, the event of the user being in close proximity is detected, and the user is authenticated by communicating with the wearable device using ultra-wideband (UWB) radio. However, UWB ranging can suffer from front-back ambiguity such that the detection of the presence of a user that is behind the device can unlock the device, which can lead to security and/or privacy risk. This disclosure discloses a two-pronged approach to user identification, user authentication, and front-back disambiguation during automatic unlocking of a device using UWB radio. UWB radio is used to achieve handshaking and user-profile identification. Radar is used to provide front/back information. False positives are avoided by authenticating the user when a difference between the distances reported by radar and by UWB are within a threshold

Distributed and scalable XML document processing architecture for E-commerce systems

XML has became a very important emerging standard for E-commerce because of its flexibility and universality. Many software designers are actively developing new systems to handle information in XML formats. We propose a generic architecture for processing XML. We have designed an XML processing system using the latest technologies, such as XML, XSLT (XML Stylesheet Language Transformation), HTTP and Java servlets. Our design is very generic, flexible, scalable, extensible, and also suitable for distributed network environments. A main application of the architecture and the system is to support data exchange in E-commerce systems.published_or_final_versio

Effects of environmental enrichment on survivorship, growth, sex ratio and behaviour in laboratory maintained zebrafish Danio rerio

This is the author accepted manuscriptEnvironmental enrichment involves increasing the complexity of a fish's environment in order to improve welfare. Researchers are legally obliged to consider the welfare of laboratory animals and poor welfare may result in less robust data in experimental science. Laboratory zebrafish Danio rerio are usually kept in bare aquaria for ease of husbandry and, despite being a well-studied species, little is known about how laboratory housing affects their welfare. This study shows that environmental enrichment, in the form of the addition of gravel substratum and plants into the tank, affects survivorship, growth and behaviour in laboratory-maintained D. rerio. Larvae reared in enriched tanks had significantly higher survivorship compared with larvae reared in bare tanks. Effects of the tank conditions on growth were more variable. Females from enriched tanks had a higher body condition than females maintained in bare tanks, but intriguingly this was not the case for males, where the only difference was a more variable body condition in males maintained in bare tanks. Sex ratio in the rearing tanks did not differ between treatments. Resource monopolisation was higher for fish in enriched tanks than for those in bare tanks. Fish from enriched tanks displayed lower levels of behaviours associated with anxiety compared with fish from bare tanks when placed into a novel environment. Thus, this study demonstrates differences in welfare for D. rerio maintained under different environmental conditions with enhancements in welfare more commonly associated with tank enrichment.University of Exeter Aquatic Resources Centr

Network-analysis-guided synthesis of weisaconitine D and liljestrandinine.

General strategies for the chemical synthesis of organic compounds, especially of architecturally complex natural products, are not easily identified. Here we present a method to establish a strategy for such syntheses, which uses network analysis. This approach has led to the identification of a versatile synthetic intermediate that facilitated syntheses of the diterpenoid alkaloids weisaconitine D and liljestrandinine, and the core of gomandonine. We also developed a web-based graphing program that allows network analysis to be easily performed on molecules with complex frameworks. The diterpenoid alkaloids comprise some of the most architecturally complex and functional-group-dense secondary metabolites isolated. Consequently, they present a substantial challenge for chemical synthesis. The synthesis approach described here is a notable departure from other single-target-focused strategies adopted for the syntheses of related structures. Specifically, it affords not only the targeted natural products, but also intermediates and derivatives in the three families of diterpenoid alkaloids (C-18, C-19 and C-20), and so provides a unified synthetic strategy for these natural products. This work validates the utility of network analysis as a starting point for identifying strategies for the syntheses of architecturally complex secondary metabolites

Enhanced field emission properties from well-aligned zinc oxide nanoneedles grown on the Au/Ti/n-Si substrate

The authors investigated the field emission from vertically well-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoneedles grown on the Au/Ti/n-Si (100) substrate using metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The turn-on field of ZnO nanoneedles was about 0.85 V/mu m at the current density of 0.1 mu A/cm(2), and the emission current density of 1 mA/cm(2) was achieved at the applied electric field of 5.0 V/mu m. The low turn-on field of the ZnO nanoneedles was attributed to very sharp tip morphology, and the high emission current density was mainly caused by the formation of the stable Ohmic contact between the ZnO nanoneedles and Au film. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.open117999sciescopu

Antifungal susceptibility and phenotypic characterization of oral isolates of a black fungus from a nasopharyngeal carcinoma patient under radiotherapy

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The orientation-preserving diffeomorphism group of S^2 deforms to SO(3) smoothly

Smale proved that the orientation-preserving diffeomorphism group of S^2 has a continuous strong deformation retraction to SO(3). In this paper, we construct such a strong deformation retraction which is diffeologically smooth.Comment: 16 page