“If it is a tear let it be a tear, not a laceration”: Form J88 as evidence in prosecution of violence against women in South Africa

The availability of the J88 form in court is believed to convey the precise clinical description of the woman’s injuries as it is seen as prima facie evidence. This article reports how the J88 form is used in prosecution of violence against women (VAW). A four-phased sensory ethnographic design that used courtscapes, participants’ observation, document analysis and conversations with prosecutors and court personnel to generate data was employed. In this paper the focus will be on findings from conversations and reviews of relevant documents. The findings indicate that, regardless of J88 being legally endorsed as prima facie and standalone evidence, some trials of VAW cases continue without it. Most importantly, J88 forms presented for evidence are usually ‘silent’ as they don’t have any impact on prosecution of VAW. In some VAW cases, the J88 forms are viewed as recall for a victim’s condition. We recommend a synergistic approach that is transdisciplinary in nature in documentation of J88 forms. Such documentation will advance the legal and health practices.Keywords: South Africa, medico-legal document, prosecution of VAW, prima facie

Rho-independent transcription terminators inhibit RNase P processing of the secG leuU and metT tRNA polycistronic transcripts in Escherichia coli

The widely accepted model for the processing of tRNAs in Escherichia coli involves essential initial cleavages by RNase E within polycistronic transcripts to generate pre-tRNAs that subsequently become substrates for RNase P. However, recently we identified two polycistronic tRNA transcripts whose endonucleolytic processing was solely dependent on RNase P. Here we show that the processing of the secG leuU and metT leuW glnU glnW metU glnV glnX polycistronic transcripts takes place through a different type of maturation pathway. Specifically, RNase P separates the tRNA units within each operon following the endonucleolytic removal of the distal Rho-independent transcription terminator, primarily by RNase E. Failure to remove the Rho-independent transcription terminator inhibits RNase P processing of both transcripts leading to a decrease in mature tRNA levels and dramatically increased levels of full-length transcripts in an RNase E deletion strain. Furthermore, we show for the first time that RNase G also removes the Rho-independent transcription terminator associated with the secG leuU operon. Our data also demonstrate that the Rne-1 protein retains significant activity on tRNA substrates at the non-permissive temperature. Taken together it is clear that there are multiple pathways involved in the maturation of tRNAs in E. coli

Bellman equations for optimal feedback control of qubit states

Using results from quantum filtering theory and methods from classical control theory, we derive an optimal control strategy for an open two-level system (a qubit in interaction with the electromagnetic field) controlled by a laser. The aim is to optimally choose the laser's amplitude and phase in order to drive the system into a desired state. The Bellman equations are obtained for the case of diffusive and counting measurements for vacuum field states. A full exact solution of the optimal control problem is given for a system with simpler, linear, dynamics. These linear dynamics can be obtained physically by considering a two-level atom in a strongly driven, heavily damped, optical cavity.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, replaced the simpler model in section

A reduced complexity numerical method for optimal gate synthesis

Although quantum computers have the potential to efficiently solve certain problems considered difficult by known classical approaches, the design of a quantum circuit remains computationally difficult. It is known that the optimal gate design problem is equivalent to the solution of an associated optimal control problem, the solution to which is also computationally intensive. Hence, in this article, we introduce the application of a class of numerical methods (termed the max-plus curse of dimensionality free techniques) that determine the optimal control thereby synthesizing the desired unitary gate. The application of this technique to quantum systems has a growth in complexity that depends on the cardinality of the control set approximation rather than the much larger growth with respect to spatial dimensions in approaches based on gridding of the space, used in previous literature. This technique is demonstrated by obtaining an approximate solution for the gate synthesis on $SU(4)$- a problem that is computationally intractable by grid based approaches.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

The impact of the state of the troposphere on the response to stratospheric heating in a simplified GCM

Previous studies have made use of simplified general circulation models (sGCMs) to investigate the atmospheric response to various forcings. In particular, several studies have investigated the tropospheric response to changes in stratospheric temperature. This is potentially relevant for many climate forcings. Here the impact of changing the tropospheric climatology on the modeled response to perturbations in stratospheric temperature is investigated by the introduction of topography into the model and altering the tropospheric jet structure. The results highlight the need for very long integrations so as to determine accurately the magnitude of response. It is found that introducing topography into the model and thus removing the zonally symmetric nature of the model’s boundary conditions reduces the magnitude of response to stratospheric heating. However, this reduction is of comparable size to the variability in the magnitude of response between different ensemble members of the same 5000-day experiment. Investigations into the impact of varying tropospheric jet structure reveal a trend with lower-latitude/narrower jets having a much larger magnitude response to stratospheric heating than higher-latitude/wider jets. The jet structures that respond more strongly to stratospheric heating also exhibit longer time scale variability in their control run simulations, consistent with the idea that a feedback between the eddies and the mean flow is both responsible for the persistence of the control run variability and important in producing the tropospheric response to stratospheric temperature perturbations