Interference With Privacy - In What Forms Might It Be Actionable in Virginia?

Much has been written about the right of privacy since the 1890 law review article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis which first proposed that such a right be recognized. In the ensuing years the tort of invasion of privacy, which is, in reality, an amalgam of four separate torts, has been widely accepted. In spite of the burgeoning recognition of various rights assembled under the rubric of right to privacy, the Supreme Court of Virginia has never decided whether private citizens are entitled to protection of their personal privacy against invasions by other private citizens. It is the intent of this article to discuss the status of the common law tort of invasion of privacy in Virginia and to consider whether the tort, if it exists in any embryonic stage, would or should be legitimatized. Because of the proliferation of articles and cases discussing various facets of the right of privacy, this article is of limited scope. It makes no attempt to discuss in detail whether particular factual situations should or should not fall within the purview of such a right, to catalogue, review or discuss the right of privacy as developed in other jurisdictions, or to deal with constitutional limitations on governments which grant or ensure a limited right of privacy. Neither does the article discuss the first amendment ramifications necessarily raised by certain branches of the tort of invasion of privacy involving publication of private facts, unauthorized appropriation of one\u27s name or likeness or portrayal of an individual in a false light

Weightless: Lossy Weight Encoding For Deep Neural Network Compression

The large memory requirements of deep neural networks limit their deployment and adoption on many devices. Model compression methods effectively reduce the memory requirements of these models, usually through applying transformations such as weight pruning or quantization. In this paper, we present a novel scheme for lossy weight encoding which complements conventional compression techniques. The encoding is based on the Bloomier filter, a probabilistic data structure that can save space at the cost of introducing random errors. Leveraging the ability of neural networks to tolerate these imperfections and by re-training around the errors, the proposed technique, Weightless, can compress DNN weights by up to 496x with the same model accuracy. This results in up to a 1.51x improvement over the state-of-the-art

The effect of the NMDA noncompetitive antagonist ketamine on serial learning in rats

Past research has demonstrated that Nmethyl- D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists disrupt the acquisition of a variety of spatial and non-spatial tasks. In the present investigation, the effects of the NMDA antagonist, ketamine, were examined in a task with minimal spatial demands. Twenty-six male Long-Evans rats, approximately 5 months of age at the beginning of training, served as the subjects. Before training began, all rats were reduced to 85% of their free feeding weight and maintained with this 15% reduction throughout training. After injections of ketamine or saline, rats were trained to respond in a runway to a nonmonotonic serial pattern consisting of 14-, 0-, 3-, or 7-pellets, respectively. Saline rats were capable of tracking the rewarded and non-rewarded elements of the series while the ketamine rats were markedly impaired. Specifically, analysis of the running times revealed a significant drug group x elements interaction, F(3, 36) = 3.01, p \u3c .05. Examination of the interaction with Tukey a revealed that the saline rats ran significantly faster to the three rewarded elements of the series than the 0-pellet element (p s \u3c .05). Conversely, ketamine-treated rats had similar running times to all elements of the series (ps \u3e .05). The results are discussed in terms of NMDA-receptor involvement in the task acquisition

A simple squeezer for removal of interstitial water from ocean sediments

A simple and inexpensive squeezer employed in the removal of interstitial water from ocean sediments has been designed. Squeezing is carried out with nitrogen at pressures of 500 to 1000 lb/in2 (35 to 70 kg/cm2). The apparatus is lined with teflon, thus insuring complete freedom from metallic contamination

ASK FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: PART I. BACKGROUND AND THEORY

We report the results of a British Library Research and Development Department funded design study for an interactive information retrieval system which will determine structural representations of the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs, and attempt to resolve the anomalies through a variety of retrieval strategies performed on a database of documents represented in compatible structural formats. Part I discusses the background to the project and the theory underlying it, Part II (next issue) presents our methods, results and conclusions. Basic premises of the project were: that information needs are not in principle precisely specifiable; that it is possible to elicit problem statements from information system users from which representations of the ASK underlying the need can be derived; that there are classes of ASKs; and, that all elements of information retrieval systems ought to be based on the user\u27s ASK. We have developed a relatively freeform interview technique for eliciting problem statements, and a statistical word co-occurrence analysis for deriving network representations of the problem statements and abstracts. Structural characteristics of the representations have been used to determine classes of ASKs, and both ASK and information structures have been evaluated by, respectively, users and authors. Some results are: that interviewing appears to be a satisfactory technique for eliciting problem statements from which ASKs can be determined; that the statistical analysis produces structures which are generally appropriate both for documents and problem statements; that ASKs thus represented can be usefully classified according to their structural characteristics; and, that of thirty-five subjects, only two had ASKs for which traditional \u27best match\u27 retrieval would be intuitively appropriate. The results of the design study indicate that at least some of our premises are reasonable, and that an ASK-based information retrieval system is at least feasible

ASK FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: PART II. RESULTS OF A DESIGN STUDY

In \u27ASK for Information Retrieval: Part P1, we discussed the theory and background to a design study for an information retrieval (IR) system based on the attempt to represent the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs. In Part 11, we report the methods and results of the design study, and our conclusions

In vitro osteoclast formation and resorption of silicon-substituted hydroxyapatite ceramics.

Materials that participate in bone remodeling at the implant/tissue interface represent a modern tissue engineering approach with the aim of balancing implant resorption and nascent tissue formation. Silicon-substituted hydroxyapatite (SiHA) ceramics are capable of stimulating new bone formation, but little is known about their interaction with osteoclasts (OC). The effects of soluble silicate and SiHA on OCs were investigated in this study. Soluble silicate below 500 μM did not stimulate cell metabolism at 4 days or alter resorption area at 7 days on calcium phosphate discs. On sintered ceramics, OC numbers were similar on HA, Si0.3 HA (0.5 wt % Si) and Si0.5 HA (1.2 wt % Si) after 21 days in vitro, but actin ring sealing zone morphology on SiHA resembled that commonly found on bone or on carbonate-substituted hydroxyapatite (CHA). Smaller and thicker actin rings on SiHA as compared to HA were probably the result of altered surface chemistry and solubility differences. The more stable sealing zones and increased lattice solubility likely contributed to increased individual pit volumes observed on Si0.5 HA. The delayed formation of OCs on Si0.5 HA (lower numbers at day 14) excludes earlier differentiation as a possible mechanism of increased individual OC pit volumes at later times (day 21). Materials characterization of Si containing biomaterials remains paramount as the Si type and amounts can subsequently impact downstream OC behaviour in a complex manner.Funded by - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (RJF). Grant Number: DGE-1042796 - Cambridge International Scholarship from the Cambridge Overseas Trusts (RJF) - National Institute for Health Research (RAB)This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jbm.a.3547

Socially cued developmental plasticity affects condition-dependent trait expression

Condition-dependent sexually selected traits are thought to indicate an individual's quality or breeding value for fitness. Variation in developmental environments, however, introduces much complexity to resource allocation, and therefore, to phenotypic expression. The extent to which environment-specific developmental tactics interact with resource allocation and impinge on the relationship between condition and adult phenotype remains largely untested. Here, we used the black field cricket (Teleogryllus commodus), a species known to modify allocation tactics in response to both nutrition and social environments, to examine whether socially cued plasticity affects condition-dependent trait expression. We reared juvenile males in a 2 by 2 factorial experiment, crossing 2 social environments with 2 diets, and examined allocation toward life-history, morphological traits and costly sexual signaling (i.e., calling) in adulthood. Although diet significantly affected phenotypes during the second-last juvenile stadium, shifts in development rate in response to both the nutrient and social environment during the last juvenile stadium obscured the effects of condition on male phenotypes. Our results suggest that sexually selected signals may be poor indicators of individual quality due to interactions among sources of environmental variance. We suggest that the correlation between trait expression and condition is more complex under natural environments than most literature in this area assume

The Outgrowth of Micrometastases Is Enabled by the Formation of Filopodium-like Protrusions

Disseminated cancer cells that have extravasated into the tissue parenchyma must interact productively with its extracellular matrix components to survive, proliferate, and form macroscopic metastases. The biochemical and cell biologic mechanisms enabling this interaction remain poorly understood. We find that the formation of elongated integrin β1-containing adhesion plaques by cancer cells that have extravasated into the lung parenchyma enables the proliferation of these cells via activation of focal adhesion kinase. These plaques originate in and appear only after the formation of filopodium-like protrusions (FLP) that harbor integrin β1 along their shafts. The cytoskeleton-regulating proteins Rif and mDia2 contribute critically to the formation of these protrusions and thereby enable the proliferation of extravasated cancer cells. Hence, the formation of FLPs represents a critical rate-limiting step for the subsequent development of macroscopic metastases. SIGNIFICANCE: Although the mechanisms of metastatic dissemination have begun to be uncovered, those involved in the establishment of extravasated cancer cells in foreign tissue microenvironments remained largely obscure. We have studied the behavior of recently extravasated cancer cells in the lungs and identified a series of cell biologic processes involving the formation of filopodium-like protrusions and the subsequent development of elongated, mature adhesion plaques, which contribute critically to the rapid proliferation of the micrometastatic cells and thus are prerequisites to the eventual lung colonization by these cells.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant P01-CA080111