EXPANDING HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES: SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING POLICY

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, almost 300,000 hate crimes occurred in 2012 in the United States. An astonishing 90% of these crimes were violent. Even more shocking are the 60% of hate crimes that are not reported to law enforcement (Wilson, 2014). In response to these dismal reporting statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) has adopted a policy (the “Policy”) and Congress introduced the “See Something, Say Something Act” (the “Act”), an amendment to the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Policy and the Actencourage ordinary citizens to suspect and report someone based on perceived demeanor and/or overall appearance without the usual requirement of articulable suspicion (Terry, 1968). Due to the discriminatory nature of both the Policy and the Act, the proposed measures would be subject to strict scrutiny if challenged in court. Challenges to the Act would most likely revolve around civil rights violations. More importantly, basic human rights as outlined in the articles of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) are at issue.In practice, encouraging U.S. citizens to report each other without articulable suspicion opens the door for bias, prejudice, and intolerance. Even without these limitations, the Act may not achieve its ultimate goal of increasing reporting as only four percent of the 40% of hate crimes reported actually result in an arrest (Wilson, 2014). Increasing reporting of hate crimes, at best, may improve arrest rates into double digits

EXPANDING HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES: SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING POLICY

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, almost 300,000 hate crimes occurred in 2012 in the United States. An astonishing 90% of these crimes were violent. Even more shocking are the 60% of hate crimes that are not reported to law enforcement (Wilson, 2014). In response to these dismal reporting statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) has adopted a policy (the “Policy”) and Congress introduced the “See Something, Say Something Act” (the “Act”), an amendment to the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Policy and the Actencourage ordinary citizens to suspect and report someone based on perceived demeanor and/or overall appearance without the usual requirement of articulable suspicion (Terry, 1968). Due to the discriminatory nature of both the Policy and the Act, the proposed measures would be subject to strict scrutiny if challenged in court. Challenges to the Act would most likely revolve around civil rights violations. More importantly, basic human rights as outlined in the articles of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) are at issue.In practice, encouraging U.S. citizens to report each other without articulable suspicion opens the door for bias, prejudice, and intolerance. Even without these limitations, the Act may not achieve its ultimate goal of increasing reporting as only four percent of the 40% of hate crimes reported actually result in an arrest (Wilson, 2014). Increasing reporting of hate crimes, at best, may improve arrest rates into double digits

Phase shifts of synchronized oscillators and the systolic/diastolic blood pressure relation

We study the phase-synchronization properties of systolic and diastolic arterial pressure in healthy subjects. We find that delays in the oscillatory components of the time series depend on the frequency bands that are considered, in particular we find a change of sign in the phase shift going from the Very Low Frequency band to the High Frequency band. This behavior should reflect a collective behavior of a system of nonlinear interacting elementary oscillators. We prove that some models describing such systems, e.g. the Winfree and the Kuramoto models offer a clue to this phenomenon. For these theoretical models there is a linear relationship between phase shifts and the difference of natural frequencies of oscillators and a change of sign in the phase shift naturally emerges.Comment: 8 figures, 9 page

DEMO divertor cassette and plasma facing unit in vessel loss-of-coolant accident

As part of the pre-conceptual design activities for the European DEMOnstration plant, a carefully selected set of safety analyses have been performed to assess plant integrated performance and the capability to achieve expected targets while keeping it in a safe operation domain. The DEMO divertor is the in-vessel component in charge of exhausting the major part of the plasma ions' thermal power in a region far from the plasma core to control plasma pollution. The divertor system accomplishes this goal by means of assemblies of cassette and target plasma facing units modules, respectively cooled with two independentheat-transfer systems. A deterministic assessment of a divertor in-vessel Loss-of-Coolant Accident is here considered. Both Design Basis Accident case simulating the rupture of an in-vessel pipe for the divertor cassette cooling loop, and a Design Extension Conditions accident case considering the additional rupture of an independent divertor target cooling loop are assessed. The plant response to such accidents is investigated, a comparison of the transient evolution in the two cases is provided, and design robustness with respect to safety objectives is discussed

Spectroscopic characterisation of the stellar content of ultra diffuse galaxies

Understanding the peculiar properties of Ultra Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) via spectroscopic analysis is a challenging task requiring very deep observations and exquisite data reduction. In this work we perform one of the most complete characterisations of the stellar component of UDGs to date using deep optical spectroscopic data from OSIRIS at GTC. We measure radial and rotation velocities, star formation histories (SFH) and mean population parameters, such as ages and metallicities, for a sample of five UDG candidates in the Coma cluster. From the radial velocities, we confirm the Coma membership of these galaxies. We find that their rotation properties, if detected at all, are compatible with dwarf-like galaxies. The SFHs of the UDG are dominated by old (~ 7 Gyr), metal-poor ([M/H] ~ -1.1) and alpha-enhanced ([Mg/Fe] ~ 0.4) populations followed by a smooth or episodic decline which halted ~ 2 Gyr ago, possibly a sign of cluster-induced quenching. We find no obvious correlation between individual SFH shapes and any UDG morphological properties. The recovered stellar properties for UDGs are similar to those found for DDO44, a local UDG analogue resolved into stars. We conclude that the UDGs in our sample are extended dwarfs whose properties are likely the outcome of both internal processes, such as bursty SFHs and/or high-spin haloes, as well as environmental effects within the Coma cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Pharmacological Treatment of Bipolar Depression: A Review of Observational Studies

The persistence of depressive morbidity is frequent in bipolar disorder, and the pharmacological management of this symptomatology often lacks effectiveness. This systematic review aimed to summarize the results of the naturalistic observational studies on the pharmacological treatment of bipolar depression published through April 2022. The certainty of evidence was evaluated according to the GRADE approach. In sum, 16 studies on anticonvulsants, 20 on atypical antipsychotics, 2 on lithium, 28 on antidepressants, and 9 on other compounds were found. Lamotrigine, quetiapine, aripiprazole, and ketamine were the most investigated compounds. Overall, the results support the recommendations regarding the effectiveness of lamotrigine and quetiapine. In contrast to the current recommendations, aripiprazole was shown to be effective and generally well tolerated. Additionally, SSRIs were shown to be effective, but, since they were associated with a possibly higher switch risk, they should be used as an adjunctive therapy to mood stabilizers. Lithium was only studied in two trials but was shown to be effective, although the serum concentrations levels were not associated with clinical response. Finally, ketamine showed divergent response rates with a low certainty of evidence and, so far, unclear long-term effects. Heterogeneity in diagnosis, sample sizes, study designs, reporting of bias, and side effects limited the possibility of a head-to-head comparison

Automatic Cyclic Alternating Pattern (CAP) analysis: Local and multi-trace approaches

The Cyclic Alternating Pattern (CAP) is composed of cycles of two different electroencephalographic features: an activation A-phase followed by a B-phase representing the background activity. CAP is considered a physiological marker of sleep instability. Despite its informative nature, the clinical applications remain limited as CAP analysis is a time-consuming activity. In order to overcome this limit, several automatic detection methods were recently developed. In this paper, two new dimensions were investigated in the attempt to optimize novel, efficient and automatic detection algorithms: 1) many electroencephalographic leads were compared to identify the best local performance, and 2) the global contribution of the concurrent detection across several derivations to CAP identification. The developed algorithms were tested on 41 polysomnographic recordings from normal (n = 8) and pathological (n = 33) subjects. In comparison with the visual CAP analysis as the gold standard, the performance of each algorithm was evaluated. Locally, the detection on the F4-C4 derivation showed the best performance in comparison with all other leads, providing practical suggestions of electrode montage when a lean and minimally invasive approach is preferable. A further improvement in the detection was achieved by a multi-trace method, the Global Analysis—Common Events, to be applied when several recording derivations are available. Moreover, CAP time and CAP rate obtained with these algorithms positively correlated with the ones identified by the scorer. These preliminary findings support efficient automated ways for the evaluation of the sleep instability, generalizable to both normal and pathological subjects affected by different sleep disorders