Examining Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes among Indigent Defendants in San Francisco

We reviewed 10,753 complete case records, consisting of cases between 2011 and 2014, from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office. These data were stored in the Public Defender's GIDEON case management system, which draws from data maintained by the San Francisco County Superior Court's larger case management system database. Unlike previous studies that rely solely on arrest and conviction data, these records cover the entire pretrial process, providing a richer portrait of the experiences of defendants in the criminal justice system. These data can help policymakers and stakeholders understand whether racial disparities exist in the outcomes of San Francisco criminal cases, including cases resolved by plea bargains , and how bargaining affects disparities in other areas of the criminal justice system, such as corrections. Where disparities were seen, we sought to understand them and to evaluate what changes could be made to ensure that similarly situate d individuals receive equal and race - neutral treatment in the criminal justice system. Such information could assist the Public Defender, the San Francisco District Attorney, the San Francisco Police Department, and other criminal justice stakeholders to ensure equitable treatment of all San Franciscans

Knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative care : a qualitative systematic review

Objectives: To review current understanding of the knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative settings. Data sources: Seven electronic databases were searched for the period January 1994–November 2006: Medline, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Embase, Ovid, Zetoc and Pubmed using a meta-search engine (Metalib®). Key journals and reference lists of selected papers were hand searched. Review methods: Included studies were peer-reviewed journal articles presenting original research. Given a variety of approaches to palliative care research, a validated systematic review methodology for assessing disparate evidence was used in order to assign scores to different aspects of each study (introduction and aims, method and data, sampling, data analysis, ethics and bias, findings/results, transferability/generalizability, implications and usefulness). Analysis was assisted by abstraction of key details of study into a table. Results: Thirty-four studies were included from eight different countries. The evidence was strongest in relation to pain management, where inadequacies in caregiver knowledge and the importance of education were emphasized. The significance of effective communication and information sharing between patient, caregiver and service provider was also emphasized. The evidence for other caregiver knowledge and information needs, for example in relation to welfare and social support was weaker. There was limited literature on non-cancer conditions and the care-giving information needs of black and minority ethnic populations. Overall, the evidence base was predominantly descriptive and dominated by small-scale studies, limiting generalizability. Conclusions: As palliative care shifts into patients’ homes, a more rigorously researched evidence base devoted to understanding caregivers knowledge and information needs is required. Research design needs to move beyond the current focus on dyads to incorporate the complex, three-way interactions between patients, service providers and caregivers in end-of-life care setting

RNA-seq reveals the pan-transcriptomic impact of attenuating the gliotoxin self-protection mechanism in Aspergillus fumigatus.

BACKGROUND: Aspergillus fumigatus produces a number of secondary metabolites, one of which, gliotoxin, has been shown to exhibit anti-fungal activity. Thus, A. fumigatus must be able to protect itself against gliotoxin. Indeed one of the genes in the gliotoxin biosynthetic gene cluster in A. fumigatus, gliT, is required for self-protection against the toxin- however the global self-protection mechanism deployed is unclear. RNA-seq was employed to identify genes differentially regulated upon exposure to gliotoxin in A. fumigatus wild-type and A. fumigatus ∆gliT, a strain that is hypersensitive to gliotoxin. RESULTS: Deletion of A. fumigatus gliT resulted in altered expression of 208 genes (log2 fold change of 1.5) when compared to A. fumigatus wild-type, of which 175 genes were up-regulated and 33 genes were down-regulated. Expression of 164 genes was differentially regulated (log2 fold change of 1.5) in A. fumigatus wild-type when exposed to gliotoxin, consisting of 101 genes with up-regulated expression and 63 genes with down-regulated expression. Interestingly, a much larger number of genes, 1700, were found to be differentially regulated (log2 fold change of 1.5) in A. fumigatus ∆gliT when challenged with gliotoxin. These consisted of 508 genes with up-regulated expression, and 1192 genes with down-regulated expression. Functional Catalogue (FunCat) classification of differentially regulated genes revealed an enrichment of genes involved in both primary metabolic functions and secondary metabolism. Specifically, genes involved in gliotoxin biosynthesis, helvolic acid biosynthesis, siderophore-iron transport genes and also nitrogen metabolism genes and ribosome biogenesis genes underwent altered expression. It was confirmed that gliotoxin biosynthesis is induced upon exposure to exogenous gliotoxin, production of unrelated secondary metabolites is attenuated in A. fumigatus ∆gliT, while quantitative proteomic analysis confirmed disrupted translation in A. fumigatus ∆gliT challenged with exogenous gliotoxin. CONCLUSIONS: This study presents the first global investigation of the transcriptional response to exogenous gliotoxin in A. fumigatus wild-type and the hyper-sensitive strain, ∆gliT. Our data highlight the global and extensive affects of exogenous gliotoxin on a sensitive strain devoid of a self-protection mechanism and infer that GliT functionality is required for the optimal biosynthesis of selected secondary metabolites in A. fumigatus

Poly-epsilon-lysine hydrogels with dynamic crosslinking facilitates cell proliferation

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a three-dimensional network within which fundamental cell processes such as cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation occur driven by its inherent biological and structural cues. Hydrogels have been used as biomaterials as they possess many of the ECM characteristics that control cellular processes. However, the permanent crosslinking often found in hydrogels fails to recapitulate the dynamic nature of the natural ECM. This not only hinders natural cellular migration but must also limit cellular expansion and growth. Moreover, there is an increased interest in the use of new biopolymers to create biomimetic materials that can be used for biomedical applications. Here we report on the natural polymer poly-ε-lysine in forming dynamic hydrogels via reversible imine bond formation, with cell attachment promoted by arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) incorporation. Together, the mechanical properties and cell behavior of the dynamic hydrogels with low poly-ε-lysine quantities indicated good cell viability and high metabolic activity

Thunderstorm occurrence at ten sites across Great Britain over 1884–1993

The UK Met Office's Daily Weather Reports (DWR) contain extensive logs of UK thunderstorm activity. To date, only a very small fraction of these data have been digitized as part of the MIDAS dataset, and exclusively after 1950. Using the recently‐scanned UK Met Office Monthly Weather Reports (MWR), which are based on a subset of the observations that form the DWR, we here provide digitized data and a summary of thunderdays from 10 long‐running British stations over the period 1884–1993. The data are presented ‘as is’, with no attempt to provide any corrections or calibration. For 4 of the 10 stations, thunderday observations were discontinued at various times between 1949 and 1964, and it is necessary to switch to a neighbouring station in order to continue the series. Approximately half the series exhibit sharp drops in thunderdays at various points between 1960 and 1990, although none are coincident with known station changes. Comparison with nearby MIDAS stations suggests the low thunderdays are the result of changes in observing practice, rather than genuine changes in thunderstorm occurrence. These potential data issues limit interpretation of the long‐term trends. However, it can nevertheless be concluded that none of the stations show the expected increase in thunderdays as a result of the rise in surface temperature over the 20th century. In order to provide more quantitative determination of the long‐term trends in thunderstorm occurrence, we advocate further digitization efforts to recover the data from the numerous stations in the MWRs, and subsequent analysis of the common signals across neighbouring stations

Fingerprinting and tracing the sources of soils and sediments: Earth and ocean science, geoarchaeological, forensic, and human health applications

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Fingerprinting and tracing the sources of soils and sediments: Earth and ocean science, geoarchaeological, forensic, and human health applications journaltitle: Earth-Science Reviews articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.08.012 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Predicting runoff risks by digital soil mapping

Digital soil mapping (DSM) permits continuous mapping soil types and properties through raster formats considering variation within soil class, in contrast to the traditional mapping that only considers spatial variation of soils at the boundaries of delineated polygons. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of SoLIM (Soil Land Inference Model) for two sets of environmental variables on digital mapping of saturated hydraulic conductivity and solum depth (A + B horizons) and to apply the best model on runoff risk evaluation. The study was done in the Posses watershed, MG, Brazil, and SoLIM was applied for the following sets of co-variables: 1) terrain attributes (AT): slope, plan curvature, elevation and topographic wetness index. 2) Geomorphons and terrain attributes (GEOM): slope, plan curvature, elevation and topographic wetness index combined with geomorphons. The most precise methodology was applied to predict runoff areas risk through the Wetness Index based on contribution area, solum depth, and saturated hydraulic conductivity. GEOM was the best set of co-variables for both properties, so this was the DSM model used to predict the runoff risk. The runoff risk showed that the critical months are from November to March. The new way to classify the landscape to use on DSM was demonstrated to be an efficient tool with which to model process that occurs on watersheds and can be used to forecast the runoff risk40113CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO - CNPQCOORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIOR - CAPESFUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE MINAS GERAIS - FAPEMIG471522/2012-0; 201987/2012-0; 305010/2013-1Sem informaçãoCAG-APQ-01423-11; CAG-PPM-00422-1

Malocclusion characteristics amongst individuals with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review and meta‑analysis

publishedVersio

A Separation Logic for Fictional Sequential Consistency

To improve performance, modern multiprocessors and pro- gramming languages typically implement relaxed memory models that do not require all processors/threads to observe memory operations in the same order. To relieve programmers from having to reason directly about these relaxed behaviors, languages often provide efficient synchro- nization primitives and concurrent data structures with stronger high- level guarantees about memory reorderings. For instance, locks usually ensure that when a thread acquires a lock, it can observe all memory operations of the releasing thread, prior to the release. When used cor- rectly, these synchronization primitives and data structures allow clients to recover a fiction of a sequentially consistent memory model. In this paper we propose a new proof system, iCAP-TSO, that captures this fiction formally, for a language with a TSO memory model. The logic supports reasoning about libraries that directly exploit the relaxed memory model to achieve maximum efficiency. When these libraries pro- vide sufficient guarantees, the logic hides the underlying complexity and admits standard separation logic rules for reasoning about their more high-level clients