Cherish Lives? Progress and compromise in sexuality education textbooks produced in contemporary China

This article examines a set of sexuality education textbooks used in a selection of primary schools in Beijing. These textbooks, under the overall name of 珍爱生命 (Cherish Lives), embody a comprehensive sexuality education approach with content designed on the basis of the UNESCO International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, we explore these books from three angles: the challenge of engaging with children as sexual subjects, given adult hegemony around sex; confusion about efforts to break the presentation of gender as a binary; and the contradiction between reproducing the myth of universal heterosexuality and attempting to present an education sensitive to LGBT issues. We show that while these textbooks demonstrate progress in sexuality education, they also manifest compromise. Despite this compromise, the books have recently been withdrawn and it is unclear whether their publication heralds a new, high quality approach to primary school sexuality education or not

Impact of the Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program on Livestock Population and Production in the Southern Marshes of Iraq

The USAID Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program (IMRP) promoted the application of two promising initiatives tested from 2004 to 2006: (1) the introduction of alfalfa and maize fodder to feed and improve the nutrition of buffalo and (2) the creation of a veterinary service to increase livestock production and health. The livestock sector in the marshlands has seen dramatic improvement since IMRP ended in 2006. These changes are across the board in the absolute number of livestock (from 66,700 heads in 2006 to 111,525 heads in 2017) and in their increasing diversity (buffalo were 74.33% of all livestock in 2006 but decreased to 70.33% in 2017). Buffalo, specifically, had greater birth weight (40 kg in 2006 and 45.6 kg in 2017), greater daily growth rates (0.3 kg in 2006 and 1-1.25 kg in 2017), higher daily milk yields (8.81 kg/day in 2006 and 9.69 kg/day in 2017), and longer lactation periods (150 days in 2006 and 238 days in 2017). There have been accompanying advances in the closely related meat and dairy markets. Live weight and market prices for buffalo and cattle have increased three- to four-fold. Rising daily milk yields also sparked the creation of cottage industries to produce dairy products using higher fat buffalo milk. These changes all point to an increasingly healthy and dynamic livestock sector in the marshlands. However, other anticipated changes in the marshlands did not meet expectations. In 2006, IMRP predicted a strong shift away from the historical dominance of buffalo ownership to a more diversified pattern of ownership that included the relatively newly introduced cattle and a rapid increase in sheep holdings, making the latter the dominate animal. Instead, buffaloes have continued to be the vastly most numerous animals owned in the marshlands. In 2017, they ranged from 65 to 75% of all livestock holdings. Greater access to reflooded marshes by buffalo herders and increased financial earnings realized from meat and dairy production may help to explain the continued reliance on buffalo ownership. IMRP's introduction of a veterinary service dedicated to working in the marshlands villages was far less successful but highly regarded by Marsh Arabs, being the first time that the services were offered in the marshes

How Congress Can Help Raise Vaccine Rates

2019 saw an unusually high number of measles cases, and other preventable disease outbreaks, at least in part linked to vaccines refusal. States are considering legislative responses. This Essay examines what role the federal government can fill in increasing vaccines rates. The Essay suggests that the federal government has an important role to fill in funding research, coordination, and local efforts. It also suggests that a federal school vaccine mandate is likely not the solution: first, such mandates can run into plausible constitutional challenges, and second, there are policy arguments against it. The policy contentions include the unfairness of imposing a mandate before solving access problems throughout the country, the risk of a federal mandate that is weaker or stronger than the state requirement, and the risk that a conditional mandate will lead to states losing funding needed to prevent outbreak, ending with the ironic result of more outbreaks as a result of such a law

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Healthcare Employer-Mandated Vaccinations

Battles around workplace vaccination policies often focus on the annual influenza vaccine, but many healthcare employers impose requirements for additional vaccines because of the increased likelihood that employees in this sector will interact with populations at increased risk of acquiring or experiencing harmful sequelae of vaccine-preventable diseases. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states recommend healthcare employees receive numerous vaccines, including measles, mumps, and rubella (“MMR”); tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (“Tdap”). However, recent outbreaks of once-eliminated diseases that are now resurgent and the rising antivaccination movement raise questions about how far employers can go to mandate vaccinations. While healthcare institutions are increasingly mandating that employees receive vaccinations, employee objections to vaccines, including litigation, have increased in recent years. Employer policies must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. Although the ADA permits mandatory vaccine policies under certain circumstances, employers must consider reasonable accommodations, which are changes to the job or work environment that permit the employee with a disability to perform the essential functions of the job, within certain limits. This article analyzes two recent cases which suggest how employers seeking to protect their workforce and the patients they serve by requiring vaccines can work within the framework of the ADA to implement these policies

Design of interpolative sigma-delta modulators via semi-indefinite programming

This correspondence considers the optimized design of interpolative sigma delta modulators (SDMs). The first optimization problem is to determine the denominator coefficients. The objective of the optimization problem is to minimize the passband energy of the denominator of the loop filter transfer function (excluding the dc poles) subject to the continuous constraint of this function defined in the frequency domain. The second optimization problem is to determine the numerator coefficients in which the cost function is to minimize the stopband ripple energy of the loop filter subject to the stability condition of the noise transfer function (NTF) and signal transfer function (STF). These two optimization problems are actually quadratic semi-infinite programming (SIP) problems. By employing the dual-parameterization method, global optimal solutions that satisfy the corresponding continuous constraints are guaranteed if the filter length is long enough. The advantages of this formulation are the guarantee of the stability of the transfer functions, applicability to design of rational infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filters without imposing specific filter structures, and the avoidance of iterative design of numerator and denominator coefficients. Our simulation results show that this design yields a significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and have a larger stability range, compared with the existing designs

Variable DNA methylation of transposable elements: The case study of mouse Early Transposons

Phenotypic variation stems from both genetic and epigenetic differences between individuals. In order to elucidate how phenotypes are determined, it is necessary to understand the forces that generate variation in genome sequence as well as its epigenetic state. In both contexts, transposable elements (TEs) may play an important role. It is well established that TE activity is a major generator of genetic variation, but recent research also suggests that TEs contribute to epigenetic variation. Stochastic epigenetic silencing of some TE insertions in mice has been shown to cause phenotypic variability between individuals. However, the prevalence of this phenomenon has never been evaluated. Here, we use 18 insertions of a mouse Endogenous Retrovirus (ERV) family, the Early Transposons (ETns), to detect insertion-dependent determinants of DNA methylation levels and variability between both cells and individuals. We show that the structure and age of insertions influence methylation levels and variability, resulting in a subgroup of loci that displays unexpectedly high variability in methylation and suggesting stochastic events during methylation establishment. Despite variation in methylation according to the age and structure of each locus, homologous CpG sites show similar tendencies in methylation levels across loci, emphasizing the role of the insertion's sequence in methylation determination. Our results show that differences in methylation of ETns between individuals is not a sporadic phenomenon and support the hypothesis that ERVs contribute to phenotypic variability through their stochastic silencing

Relativistic electronic dressing in laser-assisted ionization of atomic hydrogen by electron impact

Within the framework of the coplanar binary geometry where it is justified to use plane wave solutions for the study of the $(e,2e)$ reaction and in the presence of a circularly polarized laser field, we introduce as a first step the DVRPWBA1 (Dirac-Volkov Plane Wave Born Approximation1) where we take into account only the relativistic dressing of the incident and scattered electrons. Then, we introduce the DVRPWBA2 (Dirac-Volkov Plane Wave Born Approximation2) where we take totally into account the relativistic dressing of the incident, scattered and ejected electrons. We then compare the corresponding triple differential cross sections for laser-assisted ionization of atomic hydrogen by electron impact both for the non relativistic and the relativistic regime.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, 7 figure

Hard-Sphere Fluids in Contact with Curved Substrates

The properties of a hard-sphere fluid in contact with hard spherical and cylindrical walls are studied. Rosenfeld's density functional theory (DFT) is applied to determine the density profile and surface tension $\gamma$ for wide ranges of radii of the curved walls and densities of the hard-sphere fluid. Particular attention is paid to investigate the curvature dependence and the possible existence of a contribution to $\gamma$ that is proportional to the logarithm of the radius of curvature. Moreover, by treating the curved wall as a second component at infinite dilution we provide an analytical expression for the surface tension of a hard-sphere fluid close to arbitrary hard convex walls. The agreement between the analytical expression and DFT is good. Our results show no signs for the existence of a logarithmic term in the curvature dependence of $\gamma$.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure