Why we kill: understanding violence across cultures and disciplines

Infanticide, serial killings, war, terrorism, abortion, honour killings, euthanasia, suicide bombings and genocide; all involve taking of life. Put most simply, all involve killing one or more other people. Yet cultural context influences heavily how one perceives all of these, and indeed, some readers of this paragraph may already have thought: 'But surely that doesn't belong with those others, that's not really killing.' For such an evolved species, human beings can be violent far beyond the point of inhumanity. Why We Kill: Understanding violence across cultures and disciplines examines this violence in many of its manifestations, exploring how culture plays a role in people's understanding of violent action. From the first chapter, which tries to understand multiple forms of domestic homicide including infanticide, filicide, spousal homicide and honour killings, to the final chapter's bone-chilling account of the massacre at Murambi in Rwanda, this fascinating book makes compelling reading

Simple Congenital Hamartoma of the Retinal Pigment Epithelium

This is a Photo Essay and does not have an abstract

Evidence-Based Professional Development of Science Teachers in Two Countries

The focus of this collaborative research project of King?s College London, and the Weizmann Institute, Israel. project is on investigating the ways in which teachers can demonstrate accomplished teaching in a specific domain of science and on the teacher learning that is generated through continuing professional development programs (CPD) that lead towards such practice. The interest lies in what processes and inputs are required to help secondary school science teachers develop expertise in a specific aspect of science teaching. `It focuses on the design of the CPD programmes and examines the importance of an evidence-based approach through portfolioconstruction in which professional dialogue pathes the way for teacher learning. The set of papers highlight the need to set professional challenge while tailoring CPD to teachers? needs to create the environment in which teachers can advance and transform their practice. The cross-culture perspective added to the richness of the development and enabled the researchers to examine which aspects were fundamental to the design by considering similarities and differences between the domains

Cortical dynamics of disfluency in adults who stutter

Citation: Sengupta, R., Shah, S., Loucks, T. M. J., Pelczarski, K., Scott Yaruss, J., Gore, K., & Nasir, S. M. (2017). Cortical dynamics of disfluency in adults who stutter. Physiological Reports, 5(9). doi:10.14814/phy2.13194Stuttering is a disorder of speech production whose origins have been traced to the central nervous system. One of the factors that may underlie stuttering is aberrant neural miscommunication within the speech motor network. It is thus argued that disfluency (any interruption in the forward flow of speech) in adults who stutter (AWS) could be associated with anomalous cortical dynamics. Aberrant brain activity has been demonstrated in AWS in the absence of overt disfluency, but recording neural activity during disfluency is more challenging. The paradigm adopted here took an important step that involved overt reading of long and complex speech tokens under continuous EEG recording. Anomalies in cortical dynamics preceding disfluency were assessed by subtracting out neural activity for fluent utterances from their disfluent counterparts. Differences in EEG spectral power involving alpha, beta, and gamma bands, as well as anomalies in phase-coherence involving the gamma band, were observed prior to the production of the disfluent utterances. These findings provide novel evidence for compromised cortical dynamics that directly precede disfluency in AWS. © 2017 The Authors. Physiological Reports published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society

Healthier prisons: The role of a prison visitors' centre

Since the inception of the prison as a ‘setting’ for health promotion, there has been a focus on how the health of those men and women who spend ‘time inside’ can at least be maintained and if possible, enhanced, during their prison sentence. This paper presents findings from a mainly qualitative evaluation of a prison visitors' centre in the UK. It reports experiences of prisoners' families, prisoners, prison staff, the local community and the ways in which the visitors' centre has contributed positively to their health and well-being. In addition, key stakeholders were interviewed to ascertain the role this visitors' centre has in policy frameworks related to re-offending. The findings from this evaluation underscore how the visitors' centre improved the quality of visits, and contributed towards the maintenance of family ties through the help and support it provides for families and prisoners. The paper concludes by suggesting that visitors' centres are an essential part of a modern prison service helping to address the government's health inequalities agenda

Automatic tool path generation for finish machining

A system for automatic tool path generation was developed at Sandia National Laboratories for finish machining operations. The system consists of a commercially available 5-axis milling machine controlled by Sandia developed software. This system was used to remove overspray on cast turbine blades. A laser-based, structured-light sensor, mounted on a tool holder, is used to collect 3D data points around the surface of the turbine blade. Using the digitized model of the blade, a tool path is generated which will drive a 0.375 inch diameter CBN grinding pin around the tip of the blade. A fuzzified digital filter was developed to properly eliminate false sensor readings caused by burrs, holes and overspray. The digital filter was found to successfully generate the correct tool path for a blade with intentionally scanned holes and defects. The fuzzified filter improved the computation efficiency by a factor of 25. For application to general parts, an adaptive scanning algorithm was developed and presented with simulation results. A right pyramid and an ellipsoid were scanned successfully with the adaptive algorithm

Higher-level goals in the processing of human action events

The concept of a goal critically separates dynamic events involving humans from other events. Human behaviours are motivated by goals, which are known to the actor but typically inferred on the part of the observer. Goals can be hierarchical in nature, such that a collection of sub-goals (e.g., getting a mug, boiling water) can be nested under a higher-level goal (e.g., making tea), which can be further nested under an even higher-level goal (e.g., making breakfast). The diverse set of talks in this symposia all highlight the foundational role that goals play in action processing and representation. Eisenberg et al. detail how online prediction of others’ goals shapes observers’ sampling of information during action observation. Howard and Woodward provide evidence that children’s memory for non-human events can be facilitated by priming children with their own goal-directed actions. Loucks and Meltzoff highlight the importance of goal structure in children’s memory for complex action sequences. Finally, Cooper presents a computational model to explain the emergence of goal-directed action hierarchies

Making the most of data:An information selection and assessment framework to improve water systems operations

Advances in Environmental monitoring systems are making a wide range of data available at increasingly higher temporal and spatial resolution. This creates an opportunity to enhance real-time understanding of water systems conditions and to improve prediction of their future evolution, ultimately increasing our ability to make better decisions. Yet, many water systems are still operated using very simple information systems, typically based on simple statistical analysis and the operator’s experience. In this work, we propose a framework to automatically select the most valuable information to inform water systems operations supported by quantitative metrics to operationally and economically assess the value of this information. The Hoa Binh reservoir in Vietnam is used to demonstrate the proposed framework in a multiobjective context, accounting for hydropower production and flood control. First, we quantify the expected value of perfect information, meaning the potential space for improvement under the assumption of exact knowledge of the future system conditions. Second, we automatically select the most valuable information that could be actually used to improve the Hoa Binh operations. Finally, we assess the economic value of sample information on the basis of the resulting policy performance. Results show that our framework successfully select information to enhance the performance of the operating policies with respect to both the competing objectives, attaining a 40% improvement close to the target trade-off selected as potentially good compromise between hydropower production and flood control

Nanoscale regulation of L-type calcium channels differentiates between ischemic and dilated cardiomyopathies.

Background Subcellular localization and function of L-type calcium channels (LTCCs) play an important role in regulating contraction of cardiomyocytes. Understanding how this is affected by the disruption of transverse tubules during heart failure could lead to new insights into the disease. Methods Cardiomyocytes were isolated from healthy donor hearts, as well as from patients with cardiomyopathies and with left ventricular assist devices. Scanning ion conductance and confocal microscopy was used to study membrane structures in the cells. Super-resolution scanning patch-clamp was used to examine LTCC function in different microdomains. Computational modeling predicted the impact of these changes to arrhythmogenesis at the whole-heart level. Findings We showed that loss of structural organization in failing myocytes leads to re-distribution of functional LTCCs from the T-tubules to the sarcolemma. In ischemic cardiomyopathy, the increased LTCC open probability in the T-tubules depends on the phosphorylation by protein kinase A, whereas in dilated cardiomyopathy, the increased LTCC opening probability in the sarcolemma results from enhanced phosphorylation by calcium-calmodulin kinase II. LVAD implantation corrected LTCCs pathophysiological activity, although it did not improve their distribution. Using computational modeling in a 3D anatomically-realistic human ventricular model, we showed how LTCC location and activity can trigger heart rhythm disorders of different severity. Interpretation Our findings demonstrate that LTCC redistribution and function differentiate between disease aetiologies. The subcellular changes observed in specific microdomains could be the consequence of the action of distinct protein kinases. Funding This work was supported by NIH grant (ROI-HL 126802 to NT-JG) and British Heart Foundation (grant RG/17/13/33173 to JG, project grant PG/16/17/32069 to RAC). Funders had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, writing of the repor

Fermi Surface as the Driving Mechanism for Helical Antiferromagnetic Ordering in Gd-Y Alloys

The first direct experimental evidence for the Fermi surface (FS) driving the helical antiferromagnetic ordering in a gadolinium-yttrium alloy is reported. The presence of a FS sheet capable of nesting is revealed, and the nesting vector associated with the sheet is found to be in excellent agreement with the periodicity of the helical ordering.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure