A new species of Phyllophaga Harris from the island of Navassa in the Caribbean (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae)

The small Caribbean island of Navassa (U.S. possession) is unoccupied by humans, but recent surveys have detected a surprising number of endemic (precinctive) invertebrates. A new species of May beetle, Phyllophaga navassa, is here described and compared to the Hispaniolan Phyllophaga fauna

Interest rates and inflation

Monetary policy ; Interest rates ; Inflation (Finance)

The cosmology dependence of weak lensing cluster counts

We present the main results of a numerical study of weak lensing cluster counting. We examine the scaling with cosmology of the projected-density-peak mass function. Our main conclusion is that the projected-peak and the three-dimensional mass functions scale with cosmology in an astonishingly close way. This means that, despite being derived from a two-dimensional field, the weak lensing cluster abundance can be used to constrain cosmology in the same way as the three-dimensional mass function probed by other types of surveys.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJL. Figure 1 modified, unchanged conclusion

Exploiting opportunities for leadership development of surgeons within the operating theatre

AbstractIt is increasingly recognised that leadership skills are a key requirement in being successful in surgery, regardless of speciality and at all levels of experience and seniority. Where the emphasis was previously on technical ability, knowledge and diagnostic acumen, we now know that non-technical skills such as communication and leadership contribute significantly to patient safety, experience and outcomes, and should be valued.The operating theatre is a unique micro-environment which is often busier, noisier, more stressful and more physically demanding than the clinic or ward setting. As a result surgeons and their trainers, who are striving to develop leadership skills require an in-depth awareness of the challenges in this environment and the opportunities that arise from them to develop leadership effectively. This article outlines why leadership learning is so beneficial in the operating theatre, both for the team and the patient as well as what elements of daily routine activity such as the WHO checklist use, list-planning and audit can be exploited to transform the average busy operating theatre into a rich, learning environment for future leaders in surgery

Leveraging Local Knowledge to Envision Educational Policy and Management Outside the Plunder of Neoliberal Technorationality [Editorial]

Using the supply chain bottleneck of the post-covid19 pandemic as a lens, editors of this special issue demonstrate problematic aspects of neoliberal technorationality when applied to educational policy and management. They offer humanism as a counterweight to the problematics of neoliberalism in education and illustrate how local knowledge in spaces of learning are always present, provide visions of different futures and offer potential for transformation outside seemingly totalizing neoliberal discourses

Brief mindfulness training enhances cognitive control in socioemotional contexts: Behavioral and neural evidence.

In social contexts, the dynamic nature of others' emotions places unique demands on attention and emotion regulation. Mindfulness, characterized by heightened and receptive moment-to-moment attending, may be well-suited to meet these demands. In particular, mindfulness may support more effective cognitive control in social situations via efficient deployment of top-down attention. To test this, a randomized controlled study examined effects of mindfulness training (MT) on behavioral and neural (event-related potentials [ERPs]) responses during an emotional go/no-go task that tested cognitive control in the context of emotional facial expressions that tend to elicit approach or avoidance behavior. Participants (N = 66) were randomly assigned to four brief (20 min) MT sessions or to structurally equivalent book learning control sessions. Relative to the control group, MT led to improved discrimination of facial expressions, as indexed by d-prime, as well as more efficient cognitive control, as indexed by response time and accuracy, and particularly for those evidencing poorer discrimination and cognitive control at baseline. MT also produced better conflict monitoring of behavioral goal-prepotent response tendencies, as indexed by larger No-Go N200 ERP amplitudes, and particularly so for those with smaller No-Go amplitude at baseline. Overall, findings are consistent with MT's potential to enhance deployment of early top-down attention to better meet the unique cognitive and emotional demands of socioemotional contexts, particularly for those with greater opportunity for change. Findings also suggest that early top-down attention deployment could be a cognitive mechanism correspondent to the present-oriented attention commonly used to explain regulatory benefits of mindfulness more broadly

Mobile test fixture system for use in a thermal vacuum facility

A turnkey thermal vacuum facility is discussed. A system is described that integrates five major subsystems including the transporters, multiplexers, a thermal shrouded test fixture, a thermal isolation system and an internal utility distribution system into a mobile test fixture system. This concept allows the spacecraft to be mounted outside of the chamber. Instrumentation and checkout of the spacecraft and its instrumentation is accomplished at this station. The spacecraft, which is still mated to the test fixture, is then moved into the chamber using an air transporter system

The Josephson Effect in Single Spin Superconductors

The Josephson Effect provides a primary signature of single spin superconductivity (SSS), the as yet unobserved superconducting state which was proposed recently as a low temperature phase of half-metallic antiferromagnets. These materials are insulating in the spin-down channel but are metallic in the spin-up channel. The SSS state is characterized by a unique form of p-wave pairing within a single spin channel. We develop the theory of a rich variety of Josephson effects that arise due to the form of the SSS order parameter. Tunneling is allowed at a SSS-SSS' junction but of course depends on the relative orientation of their order parameters. No current flows between an SSS and an s-wave BCS system due to their orthogonal symmetries, which potentially can be used to distinguish SSS from other superconducting states. Single spin superconductors also offer a means to probe other materials, where tunneling is a litmus test for any form of ``triplet'' order parameter.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 2 PostScript figures included, to appear in J. Phys. and Chem. of Solid