Habermas, Human Agency, and Human Genetic Enhancement: The Grown, the Made, and Responsibility for Actions

Recent developments in genomic science hold out the tantalizing prospect of soon being able to treat and prevent a wide variety of medical conditions through gene therapy. In time, it may be possible to use similar techniques not simply to combat disease but also to enhance, or improve on, normal human functioning

Computing the Skewness of the Phylogenetic Mean Pairwise Distance in Linear Time

The phylogenetic Mean Pairwise Distance (MPD) is one of the most popular measures for computing the phylogenetic distance between a given group of species. More specifically, for a phylogenetic tree T and for a set of species R represented by a subset of the leaf nodes of T, the MPD of R is equal to the average cost of all possible simple paths in T that connect pairs of nodes in R. Among other phylogenetic measures, the MPD is used as a tool for deciding if the species of a given group R are closely related. To do this, it is important to compute not only the value of the MPD for this group but also the expectation, the variance, and the skewness of this metric. Although efficient algorithms have been developed for computing the expectation and the variance the MPD, there has been no approach so far for computing the skewness of this measure. In the present work we describe how to compute the skewness of the MPD on a tree T optimally, in Theta(n) time; here n is the size of the tree T. So far this is the first result that leads to an exact, let alone efficient, computation of the skewness for any popular phylogenetic distance measure. Moreover, we show how we can compute in Theta(n) time several interesting quantities in T that can be possibly used as building blocks for computing efficiently the skewness of other phylogenetic measures.Comment: Peer-reviewed and presented as part of the 13th Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI2013

Religious Schooling, Secular Schooling, and Household Income Inequality in Israel

The important role of education in the process of economic development is well known. Less known is the effect of education on inequality. This is an important issue, since economic policies that promote growth often lead to higher income inequality. A policy that promotes growth and at the same time reduces inequality would be preferred. The question is whether promoting education is such a policy. In this paper, the determinants of income inequality in Israel are analyzed using regression-based inequality decomposition techniques, focusing on the role of years of schooling and type of education. In particular, we differentiate between general schooling and ultra-orthodox schooling, following the common belief that ultra-orthodox schooling is not as valuable as general schooling for labor market outcomes. Indeed, we find that years of general schooling of the household head have a positive effect on per-capita household income, while the effect of years of ultra-orthodox schooling is negative. Years of general schooling are positively correlated with income, while years of ultra-orthodox schooling are negatively correlated with income. This implies that a policy that closes the schooling gaps in the secular sector is equalizing, while a policy that closes the schooling gaps in the ultra-orthodox sector is disequalizing. In addition, a uniform percentage increase in years of general schooling reduces per-capita income inequality, while a similar increase in ultra-orthodox years of schooling increases inequality. These results are robust to the type of regression used (OLS versus Gini regression), the use of equivalence scales, and do not change qualitatively even when we allow all regression coefficients to be different in the ultra-orthodox subsample. We conclude that policies directed at general schooling can potentially promote development and reduce inequality at the same time. However, when policy makers consider public funding of ultra-orthodox schools, they should take into account the adverse effects of this type of schooling on income inequality. In particular, we suggest that such funding will be conditioned on aligning the curriculum with the requirements of modern labor markets

Compounding Stress: The Timing and Duration Effects of Homelessness on Children's Health

New research from Children's HealthWatch illustrates there is no safe level of homelessness. The timing (pre-natal, post-natal) and duration of homelessness (more or less than six months) compounds the risk of harmful child health outcomes. The younger and longer a child experiences homelessness, the greater the cumulative toll of negative health outcomes, which can have lifelong effects on the child, the family, and the community.Researchers from Children's HealthWatch collected data from over 20,000 caregivers of low-income children under the age of four with public or no health insurance. These caregivers were interviewed in urban pediatric clinics and emergency departments in five U.S. cities from 2009 through 2014. Interview data were analyzed to assess children's health and development and to compare outcomes for children who experienced homelessness at some point in their lives with children who were never homeless

An Approach to Designing Clusters for Large Data Processing

Cloud computing is increasingly being adopted due to its cost savings and abilities to scale. As data continues to grow rapidly, an increasing amount of institutions are adopting non standard SQL clusters to address the storage and processing demands of large data. However, evaluating and modelling non SQL clusters presents many challenges. In order to address some of these challenges, this thesis proposes a methodology for designing and modelling large scale processing configurations that respond to the end user requirements. Firstly, goals are established for the big data cluster. In this thesis, we use performance and cost as our goals. Secondly, the data is transformed from relational data schema to an appropriate HBase schema. In the third step, we iteratively deploy different clusters. We then model the clusters and evaluate different topologies (size of instances, number of instances, number of clusters, etc.). We use HBase as the large data processing cluster and we evaluate our methodology on traffic data from a large city and on a distributed community cloud infrastructure

Making the Match: Finding Funding for After School Education and Safety Programs

Outlines strategies for California school and community leaders to secure cash and in-kind resources -- including public- and private-sector funding -- for ASES programs

Brief communication: Hair density and body mass in mammals and the evolution of human hairlessness

Humans are unusual among mammals in appearing hairless. Several hypotheses propose explanations for this phenotype, but few data are available to test these hypotheses. To elucidate the evolutionary history of human “hairlessness,” a comparative approach is needed. One previous study on primate hair density concluded that great apes have systematically less dense hair than smaller primates. While there is a negative correlation between body size and hair density, it remains unclear whether great apes have less dense hair than is expected for their body size. To revisit the scaling relationship between hair density and body size in mammals, I compiled data from the literature on 23 primates and 29 nonprimate mammals and conducted Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares regressions. Among anthropoids, there is a significant negative correlation between hair density and body mass. Chimpanzees display the largest residuals, exhibiting less dense hair than is expected for their body size. There is a negative correlation between hair density and body mass among the broader mammalian sample, although the functional significance of this scaling relationship remains to be tested. Results indicate that all primates, and chimpanzees in particular, are relatively hairless compared to other mammals. This suggests that there may have been selective pressures acting on the ancestor of humans and chimpanzees that led to an initial reduction in hair density. To further understand the evolution of human hairlessness, a systematic study of hair density and physiology in a wide range of species is necessary. Am J Phys Anthropol 152:145–150, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99654/1/ajpa22333.pd

Evidence for short cooling time in the Io plasma torus

We present empirical evidence for a radiative cooling time for the Io plasma torus that is about a factor of ten less than presently accepted values. We show that brightness fluctuations of the torus in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) at one ansa are uncorrelated with the brightness at the other ansa displaced in time by five hours, either later or earlier. Because the time for a volume of plasma to move from one ansa to the other is only five hours, the cooling time must be less than this transport time in order to wipe out memory of the temperatures between ansae. Most (∼80–85%) of the EUV emission comes from a narrow (presumably ribbon‐like) feature within the torus. The short cooling time we observe is compatible with theoretical estimates if the electron density in the ribbon is ∼10^4/cm^3. The cooling time for the rest of the torus (which radiates the remaining 15–20% of the power) is presumably consistent with the previously derived 20‐hour values. A nearly‐continuous heating in both longitude and time is needed to maintain the EUV visibility of the torus ribbon—a requirement not satisfied by presently available theories

Other-Than-Honorable Military Administrative Discharges: Time for Confrontation

This Comment examines the military\u27s current procedure for discharging service-members and imposing undesirable, other-than-honorable service, characterizations on their service records. The author suggests that due to the potential for erroneous imposition of damaging other-than-honorable service characterizations, the process of handling such discharges should be made procedurally more careful. The author further suggests that either additional due process rights be grafted onto the current administrative discharge system, or that the other-than-honorable discharge process be placed in the hands of the military court-martial system