The Dynamics of US Labor Force Attachment

No abstract.

The 1985 Chile earthquake: Structural characteristics and damage statistics for the building inventory in Vina del Mar

The Chile earthquake of 3 March 1985 resulted in an effective peak acceleration of 0.36g in the coastal city of Vina del Mar. The city had an inventory of over 400 reinforced concrete buildings ranging in height from 5 to 23 stories. The observed behavior of the buildings is interpreted in relation to the physical characteristics of the structural systems.National Science Foundation Grant ECE 86-0378

The network round the school: Additional, Team and Lead Ofsted Inspectors and the work they do in and with schools in the ‘self-improving schools system’

The paper reports the findings of a short series of interviews with Additional Inspectors. This arose out of a much wider project researching the developing schools ‘system’ or ‘landscape’ (Simkins et al, 2014) after nearly five years of the Coalition Government, due for publication late 2015 (forthcoming). Interviews in maintained schools and academies and local authorities had revealed a wide range of views of the background and competence of Ofsted Inspection Teams (echoed in, for example, the Times Educational Supplement, 2014). Further discussions with one of the current Ofsted Inspection Providers (until school inspections were taken ‘in house’ with effect from September 1st, 2015), and examination of the web-based lists of additional inspectors of the two others, revealed first some disagreement with this view but second the wide range of backgrounds from which current inspectors are drawn

Finding a Place for Tumor-specific T Cells in Targeted Cancer Therapy

A goal in cancer therapeutics is to develop targeted modalities that distinguish malignant from normal cells. T cells can discriminate diseased cells based on subtle alterations in peptides displayed in association with MHC molecules at the cell surface. Recent success using the adoptive transfer of tumor-specific T cells has fueled optimism that this approach may find a place as a targeted therapy for some human cancers

Persistent pain after caesarean section and its association with maternal anxiety and socioeconomic background

Background: Pain, both from the surgical site, and from other sources such as musculoskeletal backache, can persist after caesarean section. In this study of a predominantly socially deprived population we have sought to prospectively examine the association between antenatal maternal anxiety and socioeconomic background and the development of persistent pain of all sources after caesarean section. Methods: Demographic details and an anxiety questionnaire were completed by 205 women before elective caesarean section. On the first postoperative day, pain scores were recorded, and at four months patients were asked to complete a Brief Pain Inventory and an Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Score. Results: Of 205 parturients recruited, 186 records were complete at the hospital admission phase and 98 (52.7%) were complete at the four-month follow-up phase. At recruitment, 15.1% reported pain. At four months 41.8% (95% CI 32.1 to 51.6%) reported pain, of whom pain was a new finding in 35.7% (95% CI 26.2 to 45.2%). Antenatal anxiety was not a significant predictor of severity of new pain at four months (P=0.43 for state anxiety, P=0.52 for trait anxiety). However, four-month pain severity did correlate with social deprivation (P=0.011), postnatal depression (P<0.001) and pain at 24 h (P=0.018). Conclusion: Persistent pain from a variety of sources after caesarean section is common. Our findings do not support the use of antenatal anxiety scoring to predict persistent pain in this setting, but suggest that persistent pain is influenced by acute pain, postnatal depression and socioeconomic deprivation

Cooling requirements fueled the collapse of a desert bird community from climate change.

Climate change threatens global biodiversity by increasing extinction risk, yet few studies have uncovered a physiological basis of climate-driven species declines. Maintaining a stable body temperature is a fundamental requirement for homeothermic animals, and water is a vital resource that facilitates thermoregulation through evaporative cooling, especially in hot environments. Here, we explore the potential for thermoregulatory costs to underlie the community collapse of birds in the Mojave Desert over the past century in response to climate change. The probability of persistence was lowest for species occupying the warmest and driest sites, which imposed the greatest cooling costs. We developed a general model of heat flux to evaluate whether water requirements for evaporative cooling contributed to species' declines by simulating thermoregulatory costs in the Mojave Desert for 50 bird species representing the range of observed declines. Bird species' declines were positively associated with climate-driven increases in water requirements for evaporative cooling and exacerbated by large body size, especially for species with animal-based diets. Species exhibiting reductions in body size across their range saved up to 14% in cooling costs and experienced less decline than species without size reductions, suggesting total cooling costs as a mechanism underlying Bergmann's rule. Reductions in body size, however, are unlikely to offset the 50 to 78% increase in cooling costs threatening desert birds from future climate change. As climate change spreads warm, dry conditions across the planet, water requirements are increasingly likely to drive population declines, providing a physiological basis for climate-driven extinctions

Gait analysis in a <i>Mecp2</i> knockout mouse model of Rett syndrome reveals early-onset and progressive motor deficits

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a genetic disorder characterized by a range of features including cognitive impairment, gait abnormalities and a reduction in purposeful hand skills. Mice harbouring knockout mutations in the &lt;i&gt;Mecp2&lt;/i&gt; gene display many RTT-like characteristics and are central to efforts to find novel therapies for the disorder. As hand stereotypies and gait abnormalities constitute major diagnostic criteria in RTT, it is clear that motor and gait-related phenotypes will be of importance in assessing preclinical therapeutic outcomes. We therefore aimed to assess gait properties over the prodromal phase in a functional knockout mouse model of RTT. In male &lt;i&gt;Mecp2&lt;/i&gt; knockout mice, we observed alterations in stride, coordination and balance parameters at 4 weeks of age, before the onset of other overt phenotypic changes as revealed by observational scoring. These data suggest that gait measures may be used as a robust and early marker of &lt;i&gt;Mecp2&lt;/i&gt;-dysfunction in future preclinical therapeutic studies

On the Theory of the Virial Development of the Equation of State of Monoatomic Gases

The problem of the condensation of a gas is intimately related to the asymptotic behavior of the virial coefficients, Bm, as m→∞. The problem of the evaluation of the virial coefficients may be divided into two distinctly different ones. The first of these, which is purely combinatorial in nature and is independent of the intermolecular force law, is that of determining the number of a certain type of connected graphs of l points and k lines which are called ``stars.'' This problem is solved by means of generating functions, with the result that the total number of such stars is asymptotically equal to(12l(l−1)k),for almost all k. Arguments are also presented which indicate that the total number of topologically different stars is1l!(12l(l−1)k).With these results the combinatorial problem is essentially solved.The second problem is that of evaluating certain integrals of functions which depend on the intermolecular potential. This problem is not so near to a solution. For a purely repulsive force, asymptotic expressions are obtained for k=l, and k=l+1. The partial contributions to the virial coefficient in these two cases are:(−1)l⋅53(52π)12(2b)l−1(l−1)l5∕2,and(−1)l2⋅5324π3(2b)l−1,respectively. Results for some simple one‐dimensional rigid lines are also given.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69794/2/JCPSA6-21-11-2056-1.pd