The Regulation of Animal Welfare in Food Production

This paper surveys the various ways in which we choose to regulate, or could choose to regulate, the treatment of animals in food production. “Regulation†is broadly defined to encompass any systematic initiatives, public or private, that aim to affect the treatment of farmed animals. After offering a brief survey of the husbandry practices common in modern agriculture, and presenting evidence that our current system is too dependant on free-market principles, this paper goes on to consider several methods of regulating this sector: the regulation of advertising, the regulation of product labeling, the enactment of general welfare standards, and specific-practice legislation. For each of these categories, both current and potential regulatory initiatives are considered, and some analysis of the costs and benefits of each alternative approach is offered. I conclude that an absence of consumer deception regarding the treatment of the animals used to produce their food products should provide a baseline standard for regulation, although possibilities for regulation moving significantly beyond this baseline are considered

PC Security in a Networked World

Over the last decade, the personal computer has been transformed from an isolated word processor and number cruncher into a communications device. The emergence of the Web, the expansion of broadband connectivity, and new versions of the Windows operating system have made it possible to share information and files around the world with the click of a mouse. So, the good news is that it is now easier than ever to connect to any other host on the Internet to share information or to set up your own Internet based information services. However, this is also the bad news because it is potentially very easy for others to find and connect to your machine to set up servers there as well. Our school became painfully aware of this when we received a cheerful note from the campus computer security office informing us that there were rogue servers operating in our area that would be dropped from the network if the problem was not resolved. This paper grew out of the need to understand and deal with those attacks; it is not intended to be a review of all aspects of PC security and their Windows or network solutions, but instead hopes to increase awareness of external threats to the networked PC and to provide suggestions for detecting and deterring them. Many libraries have personnel dedicated to identifying and solving these problems, but in smaller libraries and information centers much of this responsibility falls to individuals who are not necessarily network or computer security experts. This article is directed to those non-experts operating in the Windows environment who confront these issues on a daily basis

Biomedical Informatics Applications for Precision Management of Neurodegenerative Diseases

Modern medicine is in the midst of a revolution driven by “big data,” rapidly advancing computing power, and broader integration of technology into healthcare. Highly detailed and individualized profiles of both health and disease states are now possible, including biomarkers, genomic profiles, cognitive and behavioral phenotypes, high-frequency assessments, and medical imaging. Although these data are incredibly complex, they can potentially be used to understand multi-determinant causal relationships, elucidate modifiable factors, and ultimately customize treatments based on individual parameters. Especially for neurodegenerative diseases, where an effective therapeutic agent has yet to be discovered, there remains a critical need for an interdisciplinary perspective on data and information management due to the number of unanswered questions. Biomedical informatics is a multidisciplinary field that falls at the intersection of information technology, computer and data science, engineering, and healthcare that will be instrumental for uncovering novel insights into neurodegenerative disease research, including both causal relationships and therapeutic targets and maximizing the utility of both clinical and research data. The present study aims to provide a brief overview of biomedical informatics and how clinical data applications such as clinical decision support tools can be developed to derive new knowledge from the wealth of available data to advance clinical care and scientific research of neurodegenerative diseases in the era of precision medicine

Collateral Estoppel in Pennsylvania

This comment reviews and evaluates the difficult subject of collateral estoppel in Pennsylvania. Its purpose is not to attempt to answer all questions arising in this intricate area of the law. The article seeks only to catalogue important Pennsylvania cases, comparing them to the trend in other jurisdictions, while pointing out apparent inconsistencies. Much of the difficulty in understanding when a prior adjudicatio

Supersonic boundary-layer transition on the LaRC F-106 and the DFRF F-15 aircraft. Part 1: Transition measurements and stability analysis

For the case of the F-15 flight tests, boundary layer transition was observed up to Mach numbers of 1.2. For very limited and specific flight conditions, laminar flow existed back to about 20 percent chord on the surface clean up glove. Hot film instrumentation was effective for locating the region of transition. For the F-106 flight tests, transition on the wing or vertical tail generally occurred very near the attachment line. Transition was believed to be caused by either attachment line contamination or strong cross flow development due to the high sweep angles of the test articles. The compressibility analysis showed that cross flow N-factors were in the range of 5 to 12 at transition

Spacelab 3 flight experiment No. 3AFT23: Autogenic-feedback training as a preventive method for space adaptation syndrome

Space adaptation syndrome is a motion sickness-like disorder which affects up to 50 percent of all people exposed to microgravity in space. This experiment tested a physiological conditioning procedure (Autogenic-Feedback Training, AFT) as an alternative to pharmacological management. Four astronauts participated as subjects in this experiment. Crewmembers A and B served as treatment subjects. Both received preflight training for control of heart rate, respiration rate, peripheral blood volume, and skin conductance. Crewmembers C and D served as controls (i.e., did not receive training). Crewmember A showed reliable control of his own physiological responses, and a significant increase in motion sickness tolerance after training. Crewmember B, however, demonstrated much less control and only a moderate increase in motion sickness tolerance was observed after training. The inflight symptom reports and physiological data recordings revealed that Crewmember A did not experience any severe symptom episodes during the mission, while Crewmember B reported one severe symptom episode. Both control group subjects, C and D (who took antimotion sickness medication), reported multiple symptom episodes on mission day 0. Both inflight data and crew reports indicate that AFT may be an effective countermeasure. Additional data must be obtained inflight (a total of eight treatment and eight control subjects) before final evaluation of this treatment can be made

Autogenic-feedback training: A preventive method for space adaptation syndrome

The progress made to date on the reduction of data for Spacelab 3 Shuttle experiment, No. 3AFT23 is reported. Four astronauts participated as subjects in this experiment. Crewmen A and B served as treatment subjects (i.e., received preflight training for control of their own motion sickness symptoms) and Crewmen C and D served as control (i.e., did not receive training). A preliminary evaluation of Autogenic Feedback Training (AFT) was made from visual inspections of graphs that were generated from the preflight and inflight and inflight physiological data which included: (1) Baseline rotating chair tests for all crewmen; (2) Posttraining rotating chair tests of treatment groups subjects; (3) Preflight data from Joint Integrated Simulations for all crewmen; and (4) Flight data for all crewmen during mission days 0 through 4, and mission day 6 for treatment subjects only. A summary of the findings suggested by these data is outlined