Reinstating Employer Accountability by Protecting All Forms of Whistleblowing: ERISA Section 510

In the United States, employers who have little formal accountability largely manage health and retirement benefits of the working class. Employers face an enormous amount of responsibility to properly manage and protect the health and retirement benefits of their employees and their families. These organizational entities, however, are not subject to similar institutional safeguards as major public pension funds. Thus, Congress enacted the Employment Retirement Income Securities Act to charge employers with fiduciary duties of care over such plans. However, the remedies for those who breach their duty by mishandling funds or arbitrarily dispensing and denying benefits are quite limited. The federal statute that governs preempts all state remedies and all common law tort actions for bad faith. Thus, disappointed policyholders and beneficiaries are limited only to the remedy of ERISA Section 502. ERISA Section 502 establishes an exclusive civil cause of action, but the federal court’s remedy is also quite narrow. Congress’s inclusion of Section 510’s whistleblowing, anti-retaliation provision acts as an additional safeguard to counter employers’ significant lack of transparency and accountability by encouraging employees and pension beneficiaries to bring to light any allegations of fiduciary breach. Given the limited public oversight of ERISA plans, a more expansive interpretation of ERISA Section 510’s whistleblowing provision is particularly important in order to allow it to be an effective, safeguarding mechanism. Despite this, the federal circuits have split in Section 510’s application to internal, unsolicited complaints

Famine in Malawi: Causes and Consequences

human development, climate change

Time-Efficient Hybrid Approach for Facial Expression Recognition

Facial expression recognition is an emerging research area for improving human and computer interaction. This research plays a significant role in the field of social communication, commercial enterprise, law enforcement, and other computer interactions. In this paper, we propose a time-efficient hybrid design for facial expression recognition, combining image pre-processing steps and different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) structures providing better accuracy and greatly improved training time. We are predicting seven basic emotions of human faces: sadness, happiness, disgust, anger, fear, surprise and neutral. The model performs well regarding challenging facial expression recognition where the emotion expressed could be one of several due to their quite similar facial characteristics such as anger, disgust, and sadness. The experiment to test the model was conducted across multiple databases and different facial orientations, and to the best of our knowledge, the model provided an accuracy of about 89.58% for KDEF dataset, 100% accuracy for JAFFE dataset and 71.975% accuracy for combined (KDEF + JAFFE + SFEW) dataset across these different scenarios. Performance evaluation was done by cross-validation techniques to avoid bias towards a specific set of images from a database

Reliability of Mobile Agents for Reliable Service Discovery Protocol in MANET

Recently mobile agents are used to discover services in mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) where agents travel through the network, collecting and sometimes spreading the dynamically changing service information. But it is important to investigate how reliable the agents are for this application as the dependability issues(reliability and availability) of MANET are highly affected by its dynamic nature.The complexity of underlying MANET makes it hard to obtain the route reliability of the mobile agent systems (MAS); instead we estimate it using Monte Carlo simulation. Thus an algorithm for estimating the task route reliability of MAS (deployed for discovering services) is proposed, that takes into account the effect of node mobility in MANET. That mobility pattern of the nodes affects the MAS performance is also shown by considering different mobility models. Multipath propagation effect of radio signal is considered to decide link existence. Transient link errors are also considered. Finally we propose a metric to calculate the reliability of service discovery protocol and see how MAS performance affects the protocol reliability. The experimental results show the robustness of the proposed algorithm. Here the optimum value of network bandwidth (needed to support the agents) is calculated for our application. However the reliability of MAS is highly dependent on link failure probability

Smart SUDS:recognising the multiple-benefit potential of sustainable surface water management systems

How can we make sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) smart? SUDS help us to manage surface water runoff from urban environments but they are capable of delivering much more. This paper looks beyond the water quantity and quality improvement functions of SUDS and investigates the multiple benefits that can be gained by implementing smart SUDS solutions. This work provides a new perspective, using methodologies not normally associated with SUDS research, to determine multiple benefits. The outputs of the work can potentially assist decision-makers, designer and planners in recognising the potential for multiple benefits that can be delivered by SUDS. The ecosystem services (ES) associated with a large redevelopment in Dundee, Scotland, UK, are identified and a public perception study together with public participatory geographical information system (PPGIS) methods was used to confirm the goods and benefits of the SUDS. The paper presents findings on the public perception of SUDS as they provide cultural benefits such as recreation, aesthetics and biodiversity. The results show that greenspace is important when choosing a location, and willingness to pay for greenspace is high in this area. This paper concludes that SUDS provide multi-functional benefits in relation to the ES, thereby justifying the cachet of being termed Smart SUDS

Current status and future directions of botulinum neurotoxins for targeting pain processing.

Current evidence suggests that botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) A1 and B1, given locally into peripheral tissues such as skin, muscles, and joints, alter nociceptive processing otherwise initiated by inflammation or nerve injury in animal models and humans. Recent data indicate that such locally delivered BoNTs exert not only local action on sensory afferent terminals but undergo transport to central afferent cell bodies (dorsal root ganglia) and spinal dorsal horn terminals, where they cleave SNAREs and block transmitter release. Increasing evidence supports the possibility of a trans-synaptic movement to alter postsynaptic function in neuronal and possibly non-neuronal (glial) cells. The vast majority of these studies have been conducted on BoNT/A1 and BoNT/B1, the only two pharmaceutically developed variants. However, now over 40 different subtypes of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) have been identified. By combining our existing and rapidly growing understanding of BoNT/A1 and /B1 in altering nociceptive processing with explorations of the specific characteristics of the various toxins from this family, we may be able to discover or design novel, effective, and long-lasting pain therapeutics. This review will focus on our current understanding of the molecular mechanisms whereby BoNTs alter pain processing, and future directions in the development of these agents as pain therapeutics

The Induction of EMT and Activation of Adipose Stem Cells in Correlation with the Secretion of LTBP-1 in Mammary Cells

This work is part of an ongoing study that investigates the upregulation of LTBP-1 in mammary epithelial cells as well as the differentiation of breast adipose stem cells (BASCs) in the presence of TGF-β1. Through immunofluorescence imaging, LTBP-1 is shown to co-localize with fibronectin fibrils in adipose stem cells. Previous work from our lab has shown that blocking fibronectin fibril formation can inhibit Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition. Thus, targeting of fibronectin assembly could be a potent new therapeutic in cancer treatment. In the current work, we focus on the pharmacodynamics of a FN assembly inhibitor derived from the protein Adhesin F1 (refered to as FUD). FN Fibril area was quantified in samples with different FUD dosages to determine the optimal concentration. The optimal dosage for this inhibitor was obtained for both mammary epithelial cells and breast adipose stem cells through image processing. Additionally, toxicity studies were performed using MTT assays. Results suggest that in both the mammary epithelial cells and the breast adipose stem cells, there is a range of dosing for which FN fibril formation is blocked but toxicity is low

Information extraction from dynamic web sources

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

The Intercultural Ancients: A Mock Exhibit Exploring the Cross-Cultural Influences in the Representation of Women in Ancient South Asian and Ancient Mediterranean Art

This project is a mock-exhibit which explores the existence the crosscultural diffusion between the early people of the Mediterranean (from the Balkan Peninsula to the Syrian coast) and South Asia (from Afghanistan to Bhutan). The components of the project are an exhibition catalog and 3D exhibition design. Although there is substantial evidence of ancient contacts between the Aegean (Balkan Peninsula, Crete, Cyclades) and the Near East (Syria, South Turkey, Eastern Iraq, Western Iran) and South Asia and the Near East, there is little scholarship in the evidence-scarce topic of communication between the Aegean and South Asia. This exhibit broaches this subject by providing the visitor with examples of art from both areas which suggest a possibility for diffusion. The artworks for this exhibition are all female figurines due to their availability and popularity in both areas being considered. There are eleven female figurines, six Mediterranean and five South Asian, split into five periods, ranging from the Neolithic Era (Pre-4000 BCE) to the Classical/Kushan Periods (200 CE). By dividing the exhibit into five time periods, the trends of communication and resulting effect on the stylistic conventions in art are more easily discernable. The exhibit begins with the Neolithic Era because it encompasses some of the earliest figurines produced in the regions and ends in 200 CE when communication between the two regions can be archaeologically proven. The catalog supports the artworks in the exhibit with sections on the foreign contact of each region that could have supported stylistic diffusion the gender constructions which could have influenced the female image, historical summaries of each period, and analyses of how the figures could have been influenced by the other’s stylistic conventions. The exhibition design lays out visually how the topic would be presented to the public. It takes into account the atmosphere, pattern of movement, and accessibility to create an optimal experience for visitors of the exhibition. The subject was explored based on research on extant archaeological evidence, the more established stylistic diffusion of each region with the Near East, and visual analysis. Although definitive conclusions could not be made without undeniable archaeological evidence, the exhibit shows a gradual movement from each region through the Near East and into one another beginning as early as the Neolithic Era. There were two prevalent trends that become clear throughout the study of the works of art over the full period of time. Whether embraced or eschewed, there was consistently some foreign influence in every work of art. However, at the same time, these elements of foreign influence were mixed with indigenous artistic styles