477 research outputs found
Practitioner perspectives on dealing with victimhood and offending in UK ‘county lines’ drug supply investigations
This paper examines the investigative challenges associated with the ‘County Lines’ drug supply phenomenon from the perspective of police practitioners. Two areas are identified and explored: the presence and role of autonomy, coercion, and exploitation, and the legal and procedural issues. The police response appears confounded by non-specific legislation, unintended implications of the statutory defence, problems with the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), safeguarding deficiencies, incomplete statutory guardianship, and limited recognition of neurodevelopment and neurodivergence among those involved. The research is relevant to law and public policy and will be of interest to investigators and criminal justice system professionals
Steroid receptor coactivator 2 is required for female fertility and mammary morphogenesis: insights from the mouse, relevance to the human
Although the importance of the progesterone receptor (PR) to female reproductive and mammary gland biology is firmly established, the coregulators selectively co-opted by PR in these systems have not been clearly delineated. A selective gene-knockout approach applied to the mouse, which abrogates gene function only in cell types that express PR, recently disclosed steroid receptor coactivator 2 (SRC-2, also known as TIF-2 or GRIP-1) to be an indispensable coregulator for uterine and mammary gland responses that require progesterone. Uterine cells positive for PR (but devoid of SRC-2) were found to be incapable of facilitating embryo implantation, a necessary first step toward the establishment of the materno-fetal interface. Importantly, such an implantation defect is not exhibited by knockouts for SRC-1 or SRC-3, underscoring the unique coregulator importance of SRC-2 in peri-implantation biology. Moreover, despite normal levels of PR, SRC-1 and SRC-3, progesterone-dependent branching morphogenesis and alveologenesis fails to occur in the murine mammary gland in the absence of SRC-2, thereby establishing a critical coregulator role for SRC-2 in signaling cascades that mediate progesterone-induced mammary epithelial proliferation. Finally, the recent detection of SRC-2 in the human endometrium and breast suggests that this coregulator may represent a new clinical target for the future management of female reproductive health and/or breast cancer
The AzTEC mm-Wavelength Camera
AzTEC is a mm-wavelength bolometric camera utilizing 144 silicon nitride
micromesh detectors. Herein we describe the AzTEC instrument architecture and
its use as an astronomical instrument. We report on several performance metrics
measured during a three month observing campaign at the James Clerk Maxwell
Telescope, and conclude with our plans for AzTEC as a facility instrument on
the Large Millimeter Telescope.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Monthly Notice
Using Social Media to Promote STEM Education: Matching College Students with Role Models
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields have become
increasingly central to U.S. economic competitiveness and growth. The shortage
in the STEM workforce has brought promoting STEM education upfront. The rapid
growth of social media usage provides a unique opportunity to predict users'
real-life identities and interests from online texts and photos. In this paper,
we propose an innovative approach by leveraging social media to promote STEM
education: matching Twitter college student users with diverse LinkedIn STEM
professionals using a ranking algorithm based on the similarities of their
demographics and interests. We share the belief that increasing STEM presence
in the form of introducing career role models who share similar interests and
demographics will inspire students to develop interests in STEM related fields
and emulate their models. Our evaluation on 2,000 real college students
demonstrated the accuracy of our ranking algorithm. We also design a novel
implementation that recommends matched role models to the students.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted by ECML/PKDD 2016, Industrial Trac
Paracrine-Rescued Lobulogenesis in Chimeric Outgrowths Comprising Progesterone-Receptor-Null Mammary Epithelium and Redirected Wild-Type Testicular Cells
We have previously shown that non-mammary and tumorigenic cells can respond to the signals of the mammary niche and alter their cell fate to that of mammary epithelial progenitor cells. Here we tested the hypothesis that paracrine signals from mammary epithelial cells expressing progesterone receptor (PR) are dispensable for redirection of testicular cells, and that re-directed wild-type testicular-derived mammary cells can rescue lobulogenesis of PR-null mammary epithelium by paracrine signaling during pregnancy. We injected PR-null epithelial cells mixed with testicular cells from wild-type adult male mice into cleared fat-pads of recipient mice. The testicular cells were redirected in vivo to mammary epithelial cell fate during regeneration of the mammary epithelium, and persisted in second-generation outgrowths. In the process, the redirected testicular cells rescued the developmentally deficient PR-null cells, signaling them through the paracrine factor RANKL to produce alveolar secretory structures during pregnancy. This is the first demonstration that paracrine signaling required for alveolar development is not required for cellular reprogramming in the mammary gland, and that reprogrammed testicular cells can provide paracrine signals to the surrounding mammary epithelium
LLiST - a new star tracker camera for tip-tilt correction at IOTA
The tip-tilt correction system at the Infrared Optical Telescope Array (IOTA)
has been upgraded with a new star tracker camera. The camera features a
backside-illuminated CCD chip offering doubled overall quantum efficiency and a
four times higher system gain compared to the previous system. Tests carried
out to characterize the new system showed a higher system gain with a lower
read-out noise electron level. Shorter read-out cycle times now allow to
compensate tip-tilt fluctuations so that their error imposed on visibility
measurements becomes comparable to, and even smaller than, that of higher-order
aberrations.Comment: To be published in "New Frontiers in Stellar Interferometry", W. A.
Traub, ed., SPIE Proceedings Series, Vol. 5491, paper [5491-126]; 10 pages, 6
figures, 1 table; Latex spie class, uses packages graphicx and url; bib style
spiebib; keywords: interferometry, tip-tilt correctio
Teratogenicity of Ochratoxin A and the Degradation Product, Ochratoxin α, in the Zebrafish (Danio rerio) Embryo Model of Vertebrate Development
Ochratoxins, and particularly ochratoxin A (OTA), are toxic fungal-derived contaminants of food and other agricultural products. Growing evidence supports the degradation of OTA by chemical, enzymatic and/or microbial means as a potential approach to remove this mycotoxin from food products. In particular, hydrolysis of OTA to ochratoxin α (OTα) and phenylalanine is the presumptive product of degradation in most cases. In the current study, we employed the zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo, as a model of vertebrate development to evaluate, the teratogenicity of OTA and OTα. These studies show that OTA is potently active in the zebrafish embryo toxicity assay (ZETA), and that toxicity is both concentration- and time-dependent with discernible and quantifiable developmental toxicity observed at nanomolar concentrations. On the other hand, OTα had no significant effect on embryo development at all concentrations tested supporting a decreased toxicity of this degradation product. Taken together, these results suggest that ZETA is a useful, and highly sensitive, tool for evaluating OTA toxicity, as well as its degradation products, toward development of effective detoxification strategies. Specifically, the results obtained with ZETA, in the present study, further demonstrate the toxicity of OTA, and support its degradation via hydrolysis to OTα as an effective means of detoxification
YREC: The Yale Rotating Stellar Evolution Code
The stellar evolution code YREC is outlined with emphasis on its applications
to helio- and asteroseismology. The procedure for calculating calibrated solar
and stellar models is described. Other features of the code such as a non-local
treatment of convective core overshoot, and the implementation of a
parametrized description of turbulence in stellar models, are considered in
some detail. The code has been extensively used for other astrophysical
applications, some of which are briefly mentioned at the end of the paper.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, ApSS accepte
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