The Lottery of Birth: Giving all Children an Equal Chance to Survive

Based on inaugural analysis of disaggregated data from 87 low and middle income countries around the world, this report reveals that in more than three quarters of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates are actually worsening, resulting in some groups of children making far slower progress than their better-off peers. In 78 percent of the countries covered in the report, at least one social or economic group has fallen behind and is therefore making slower progress in reducing child mortality, and in 16 percent of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates have increased across all social and economic groups. Save the Children's analysis suggests that, without a true step change in action, the lottery of birth will continue into the future, slowing progress towards the ultimate goal of ending preventable child deaths for generations to come. However, tackling this inequality is possible. Almost a fifth of the countries in the report, including Rwanda, Malawi, Mexico, and Bangladesh, have successfully combined rapid and inclusive reductions in child mortality, achieving faster progress than most countries, while at the same time ensuring that no groups of children are left behind.The agency calls for the international community to commit to ending preventable child deaths by 2030.The new development framework, which will replace the MDGs, will be agreed upon at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. This framework must set out ambitious child and maternal survival targets and commit to working towards universal health coverage

Flat Directions in Three-Generation Free-Fermionic String Models

In quasi-realistic string models that contain an anomalous U(1) the non-zero Fayet-Iliopoulos term triggers the shifting of the original vacuum to a new one along some flat direction, so that SUSY is preserved but the gauge group is partially broken. The phenomenological study of these models thus requires as a first step the mapping of the space of flat directions. We investigate F- and D-flat directions in several three-generation SU(3)_C x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y free-fermionic string models and discuss the typical scenarios that generically arise. When they exist, we systematically construct the flat directions that preserve hypercharge, only break Abelian group factors, and can be proven to remain F-flat to all orders in the non-renormalizable superpotential.Comment: 59 page

Spain and the populist radical right: Will Vox become a permanent feature of the Spanish party system?

Vox won the third largest share of the vote in Spain’s general election in November. But is the success of the party a temporary phenomenon or a sign that populist radical right parties are destined to become a permanent feature of the Spanish party system? Lisa Zanotti and José Rama write that while political resentment and the Catalan independence issue created fertile ground for Vox, the party may find its future growth limited by the resilience of the left-right political cleavage in Spanish politics

Cord Compression by Extramedullary Hematopoiesis in Polycythemia Vera

A 73-year-old male with polycythemia vera and a history of prostate cancer presents to an outside hospital complaining of back pain of two months duration. He denied fevers, chills, night sweats, weight loss, lower extremity weakness and decreased sensation. Other than chronic constipation and urinary hesitancy, his review of systems was unremarkable. A spinal x-ray revealed a T12 vertebral fracture and the patient was transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for further management

Dimensional Changes of Upper Airway after Rapid Maxillary Expansion: A Prospective Cone-beam Computed Tomography Study

Introduction: The aim of this prospective study was to use cone-beam computed tomography to assess the dimensional changes of the upper airway in orthodontic patients with maxillary constriction treated by rapid maxillary expansion. Methods: Fourteen orthodontic patients (mean age, 12.9 years; range, 9.7-16 years) were recruited. The patients with posterior crossbite and constricted maxilla were treated with rapid maxillary expansion as the initial part of their comprehensive orthodontic treatments. Before and after rapid maxillary expansion conebeam computed tomography scans were taken to measure the retropalatal and retroglossal airway changes in terms of volume, and sagittal and cross-sectional areas. The transverse expansions by rapid maxillary expansion were assessed between the midlingual alveolar bone plates at the maxillary first molar and first premolar levels. The measurements of the before and after rapid maxillary expansion scans were compared by using paired t tests with the Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons. Results: After rapid maxillary expansion, significant and equal amounts of 4.8 mm of expansion were observed at the first molar (P 5 0.0000) and the first premolar (P 5 0.0000) levels. The width increase at the first premolar level (20.0%) was significantly greater than that at the first molar level (15.0%) (P 5 0.035). As the primary outcome variable, the cross-sectional airway measured from the posterior nasal spine to basion level was the only parameter showing a significant increase of 99.4 mm2 (59.6%) after rapid maxillary expansion (P 5 0.0004). Conclusions: These results confirm the findings of previous studies of the effect of rapid maxillary expansion on the maxilla. Additionally, we found that only the cross-sectional area of the upper airway at the posterior nasal spine to basion level significantly gains a moderate increase after rapid maxillary expansion

Santa Rosa Visioning Plan

These non-binding design guidelines suggest how new construction in the historic core can best contribute to the distinctive character of that area. Largely developed before the rise of the automobile, the organization of historic buildings here creates compact walkable areas. Around the courthouse, for instance, business blocks built up to the sidewalk\u27s edge define the square and nearby streets as pedestrian-friendly outdoor rooms.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/dpac_projects/1020/thumbnail.jp

Editorial: Adaptation and phenotypic plasticity to climate change.

Anthropogenic activities are driving rapid changes in aquatic environments. Numerous studies suggest that climatic shifts and anomalies will convey severe consequences for ecosystems worldwide, leading to disruptions in key processes within populations including larval development, individual growth, and reproductive success. This is further exacerbated by the negative impacts on between-species interactions, and changes to biodiversity and ecosystem services (Munday et al., 2013). Understanding the responses of organisms to environmental shifts is imperative to help predict their fate on a changing planet. Particularly, the capacity of individuals and populations to cope through phenotypic plasticity and adaptation is of critical interest, with advances in genomics and epigenomics techniques helping to unveil the underlying molecular mechanisms (Eirin-Lopez and Putnam, 2019). However, major knowledge gaps remain about the adaptive potential of marine organisms to respond to future ocean conditions. The aim of this Research Topic was to bring together novel research approaches that examine acclimation and adaptation processes in marine organisms, their role in population resilience, and implications for geographical distributions and range shifts under rapid climate change. Contributions to the topic span a broad range of taxa, and investigate a diverse array of response mechanisms such as thermal safety margins (Bennett et al.), thermotolerance via endosymbionts and gene expression (Naugle et al.), tolerance via changes in allele frequencies (Knöbel et al.), local adaptation and maternal effects (Richards et al.), transgenerational plasticity (TGP; Chang et al.), environment-dependent reproductive success (Wanzenböck et al.), and phenological shifts to long-term seasonal changes (Xia et al.). Furthermore, the importance of environmental variability (not only mean changes) at different time scales, the role of developmental or life history stage in phenotypic responses, as well as future challenges for plasticity research (both within and across generations) are outlined in Bautista and Crespel

Wannier-Bloch approach to localization in high harmonics generation in solids

Emission of high-order harmonics from solids provides a new avenue in attosecond science. On one hand, it allows to investigate fundamental processes of the non-linear response of electrons driven by a strong laser pulse in a periodic crystal lattice. On the other hand, it opens new paths toward efficient attosecond pulse generation, novel imaging of electronic wave functions, and enhancement of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) intensity. A key feature of HHG in a solid (as compared to the well-understood phenomena of HHG in an atomic gas) is the delocalization of the process, whereby an electron ionized from one site in the periodic lattice may recombine with any other. Here, we develop an analytic model, based on the localized Wannier wave functions in the valence band and delocalized Bloch functions in the conduction band. This Wannier-Bloch approach assesses the contributions of individual lattice sites to the HHG process, and hence addresses precisely the question of localization of harmonic emission in solids. We apply this model to investigate HHG in a ZnO crystal for two different orientations, corresponding to wider and narrower valence and conduction bands, respectively. Interestingly, for narrower bands, the HHG process shows significant localization, similar to harmonic generation in atoms. For all cases, the delocalized contributions to HHG emission are highest near the band-gap energy. Our results pave the way to controlling localized contributions to HHG in a solid crystal, with hard to overestimate implications for the emerging area of atto-nanoscience

The Effect of Traffic Safety Laws and Obesity Rates on Living Organ Donations

This paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors. Using panel data from 1988-2008, we find that a 1% decrease in the supply of cadaveric donors per 100,000 increases the supply of living donors per 100,000 by .7%. With respect to traffic safety laws, a national adoption of partial helmet laws is estimated to decrease cadaveric donors by 6%, but leads to a 4.2% increase in the number of living donors, or a net effect of 1.8% decrease in the supply of kidney donations. The recent rise in obesity rates is estimated to increase living donor rates by roughly 18%. Lastly, we find evidence that increases in disposable income per capita is associated with an increase in the number of non-biological living donors within a state, but is not found to have an effect on biological donor rates