Customizing Conception: A Survey of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and the Resulting Social, Ethical, and Legal Dilemmas

One in six American couples experience difficulties conceiving a child. With fertility rates at an all time low, the business of treating infertility is booming. However, due to the United States prohibition on government funding for embryonic research, the $4 billion industry of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has been incompletely monitored and largely removed from oversight. Additionally, due to the fervent abortion debate, in vitro fertilization (IVF) was introduced in the United States without a research phase and procedures have been forced to evolve in the private sector. Thus, the checks and balances on medical innovation that are generally imposed by the federal government for consumer protection are lacking. Decisions about when to go from the laboratory to the clinic are often left solely to the discretion of private physicians. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is just one of many such treatments offered by these clinics. This iBrief examines how, why, and to whom the reproductive procedure of PGD is offered. In addition, it evaluates the prospective effects to society that arise when PGD is used for sex selection and for nontherapeutic or enhancement purposes. Finally, it explores whether and how to regulate PGD in the United States by investigating approaches to policy making that have been adopted by the United Kingdom

The Utopian

The paper was concerned with the future of the social housing complex in Poplar, East London called Robin Hood Gardens designed, conceived and built in the late 60's by Alison and Peter Smithson. The project and publication centred on the possible future for the building through a series of articles and conceptual visions created by us as the authors

Developing system models to help Great Britain's railways embrace innovative technologies with confidence

Railways are under pressure to become more efficient and cut their costs; innovation has a part to play in achieving these goals. The railway is, however, a complex and closely coupled system, making it difficult in the early stages of development, to be clear what the system-wide impact of innovation will be. The research covered in this paper stems from the idea that computer-based models of existing systems can help overcome this problem, by providing a baseline framework against which the impact of innovation can be identified. The paper describes development of a repeatable modelling methodology, which elicits\ud objective system data from Railway Group Standards and integrates it using CORE®, a powerful system modelling tool, to create system models. The ability of such models to help identify impacts is verified, using as an example the introduction of RailBAM (a new technology that acoustically monitors the health of rolling stock axle bearings) into the existing hot axle bearing detection system

Indonesia at home and abroad: economics, politics and security

Overview: This inaugural suite of papers for the National Security College Issue Brief Series is also a component of an NSC research grant investigating the prospects, challenges and opportunities associated with Indonesia’s ascent in the political-security, economic, and socio-cultural spheres. The chief investigators for this project are Dr Christopher Roberts, Dr Ahmad Habir, and Associate Professor Leonard Sebastian. These issue briefs represent a short precursor to a fi fteen chapter edited book, titled Indonesia’s Ascent: Power, Leadership and the Regional Order, to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in late 2014. The project also involved conferences and fi eldwork in both Canberra and Jakarta between 2012 and 2013

DEVELOPMENT OF ADSORBENTS FOR THE CAPTURE AND STORAGE OF HYDROGEN AND CARBON DIOXIDE BY MAGNETRON SPUTTERING

Concerns about climate change have rejuvenated global efforts in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Tactics include capture and sequestration of CO2 from point sources and the promotion of hydrogen (H2) as a “transport fuel”. Current H2 vehicles use high pressure H2 tanks which lack the convenience of their fossil fuel counterparts and present potential safety hazards. Development of adsorbent materials that reduce the energetic costs of H2 and CO2 capture, facilitating reversible storage under safer conditions, are hoped to increase the viability of these technologies for industrial application. This thesis is the first to utilise magnetron sputtering, a technique allowing fine control over nano-material synthesis, for the design of novel solid adsorbents and deposition of novel dopants for H2 storage and CO2 capture. Work includes an in-depth study of the influence of nitrogen as a sputter gas on the growth of carbonaceous films, and is the first to explore these films performance as H2 and CO2 adsorbents. Several conflicting nitrogen effects were identified, their influence on the films growth dependent upon the nitrogen fraction of the sputter gas. Performance of the deposited films as adsorbents was also dependent on the growth conditions. The H2 storage capacity at 77 K and 20 bar of an optimised adsorbent, synthesised by magnetron sputtering, was 4.7 wt.%, comparable in performance to alternatives from the literature. Further work provides the first evidence that cerium, deposited by magnetron sputtering, can function as an adsorbent catalyst and identified that sputtering is a worthwhile, yet slow process for adsorbent doping as it facilitates intimate binding between the adsorbent and the dopant. The novel synthesis of graphene by magnetron sputtering was also attempted. Whilst tests failed, results collected could provide guidance for more successful attempts in the future

Exposure modelling under change of measure

The credit risk of a portfolio is often managed via measures of counter-party exposure, such as potential future exposure (PFE) and expected exposure (EE), with these measures playing an important role in setting economic and regulatory capital levels. For the sake of risk measurement and risk management these exposure measures should be computed under the real-world probability measure. However, due to the similarity of these exposure calculations to those used in calculating credit valuation adjustments, some have begun to compute them under the risk-neutral measure instead. This is problematic, as the magnitudes of PFEs and EEs differ under different equivalent martingale measures and their associated numéraires. Working with the Hull-White (HW) model of the short rate, the effect of a change of measure on the PFE and EE profiles of vanilla interest rate swaps and European swaptions is shown under three common measures: the money-market account measure, the T-forward measure and the Linear Gaussian Markovian (LGM) measure. A modified Least Squares Monte Carlo (LSM) algorithm, which allows for substantial computational savings, is then introduced in order to approximate contract level exposures under each of the aforementioned probability measures. Finally, a change of measure is implemented within the modified LSM algorithm in order to approximate exposure profiles under the real-world measure. The modified LSM algorithm is particularly useful for computing exposure profiles of contracts without closed-form valuation formulae, which would otherwise take significantly longer to compute via a standard Monte Carlo approach