Applying the False Claims Act to Chemical and Physical Restraint Cases: Is the Government Going Too Far?

On August 6, 2002, Jeanne W. Price, a 79-year-old Alzheimer’s patient at the Central Montgomery Medical Center (CMMC), died while in a restraining device called a Posey vest. The CMMC staff used the restraint to keep Ms. Price from wandering the halls of the medical center by confining her in bed.1 When the patient later attempted to get out of bed, she slipped off the side, causing the vest to tighten around her chest. She soon died of asphyxiation. An attorney for the family stated that the patient may have been left unattended for up to an hour

Counting function for a sphere of anisotropic quartz

We calculate the leading Weyl term of the counting function for a mono-crystalline quartz sphere. In contrast to other studies of counting functions, the anisotropy of quartz is a crucial element in our investigation. Hence, we do not obtain a simple analytical form, but we carry out a numerical evaluation. To this end we employ the Radon transform representation of the Green's function. We compare our result to a previously measured unique data set of several tens of thousands of resonances.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

Patterns and causes of variability in the cover, biomass, and total abundance of Ulva spp. in Elkhorn Slough, California

I studied the variability in Ulva spp. in Elkhorn Slough, CA temporally and spatially. I measured changes in cover and biomass and combined them to determined changes in total abundance seasonally (every three months) from July 2003 to July 2004. Over this time period I found a significant seasonal difference in Ulva cover and a significant seasonal difference in Ulva biomass. There was also a significant interaction between season and section. Total abundance followed the same pattern of change as cover, suggesting Ulva mat cover was a better indicator of total abundance in Elkhorn Slough. To determine if seasonal changes were occurring at sub-seasonal time scales, the seasonal experiment was repeated at a smaller spatial scale from June 2004 to August 2004 with bi-weekly samples of cover and biomass. I found that seasonal variation in cover was significantly greater than sub-seasonal variation; however, seasonal and sub-seasonal biomass measurements were not significantly different. These results indicated that changes in cover were more gradual over time and biomass was highly variable at both time scales. I also investigated tides as a possible factor regulating Ulva mats in Elkhorn Slough. I found a localized phenomenon where increased Ulva mat movement was related to increased tidal range. Although the second sampling location did not show this same relationship, I hypothesize that tidal range plays an important role in the regulation of Ulva mats in Elkhorn Slough

The Journal of Jean Laffite: Its History and Controversy

Whether defined as original order or the history of ownership, provenance is one of the guiding lights of the archival profession, the key that guarantees the validity of documents in the archives. Archival material is rarely questioned, and authorship is seldom a topic of intense discussion. One assumes that the signer of the letter penned it except when secretaries were known to have been employed. Perhaps as a profession, however, archivists are too trusting and rely too often on provenance as a guiding light

A portable MBE system for in situ X-Ray investigations at synchrotron beamlines

A portable synchrotron MBE system is designed and applied for in situ investigations. The growth chamber is equipped with all the standard MBE components such as effusion cells with shutters, main shutter, cooling shroud, manipulator, RHEED setup and pressure gauges. The characteristic feature of the system is the beryllium windows which are used for in situ x-ray measurements. An UHV sample transfer case allows in-vacuo transfer of samples prepared elsewhere. We describe the system design and demonstrate it's performance by investigating the annealing process of buried InGaAs self organized quantum dots

Infants’ vocalizations at 6 months predict their productive vocabulary at one year

Long before their first words, children communicate by using speech-like vocalizations. These protophones might be indicative of infants' later language development. We here examined infants' (n = 56) early vocalizations at 6 months (vocal reactivity scale of the IBQ-R) as a predictor of their expressive and receptive language at 12 months (German version of the CDI). Regression analyses revealed vocalizations to significantly predict expressive, but not receptive language. Our findings in German-learning 6-month-olds extend previous predictive evidence of early vocalizations reported for older infants. Together these findings are informative in light of early assessments monitoring typical and atypical language development

Computational systems biology methods for functional classification of membrane proteins and modeling of quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Due to the function of membrane proteins and the effort required for experimental annotations, bioinformatical approaches to functionally classify uncharacterized sequences are desirable. For this, the similarity between sequences of different membrane proteins was statistically analyzed based on several amino acid compositions. To discriminate between functional classes, a ranking method was developed. We showed that including further information in the amino acid composition and filtering into different sequence regions improved the classification quality. Subsets based on function achieved sensitivities of about 80%, whereas those of random subsets are in the range of 30--35%. The pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces many virulence factors that are regulated by Quorum sensing. The number of infecting strains with antibiotic resistance is growing. Thus, new strategies focus on Quorum sensing inhibitors that target the regulatory pathways of virulence factors. Pseudomonas aeruginosa contains three Quorum sensing systems that were simulated with an extended multi--level logical formalism to study the influence of Quorum sensing inhibitors on the autoinducer and virulence factor formation. A topology analysis suggested that the proteins PqsR and PqsE act as receptors. Both are required together with an autoinducer to form pyocyanin. Enzyme inhibitors were more useful to block the autoinducer formation, whereas PqsR antagonists inhibited the pyocyanin biosynthesis stronger.Aufgrund der Funktionen von Membranproteinen und dem Aufwand experimenteller Charakterisierungen sind bioinformatische Ansätze zur Klassifizierung unbekannter Sequenzen sinnvoll. Daher wurde deren Ähnlichkeit basierend auf verschiedenen Aminosäurenkompositionen bestimmt und statistisch analysiert. Eine Ranking--Methode wurde zur Einteilung in funktionelle Klassen entwickelt. Wir konnten zeigen, dass die Vorhersagegenauigkeit durch Hinzunahme weiterer Informationen und durch Unterscheidung verschiedener Sequenzregionen verbessert werden kann. Proteingruppen mit derselben Funktion erzielten Sensitivitäten von etwa 80%, während zufällig zusammengestellte Gruppen nur 30--35% erreichten. Der Krankheitserreger Pseudomonas aeruginosa produziert viele durch Quorum Sensing regulierte Virulenzfaktoren. Wegen der wachsenden Anzahl Antibiotika--resistenter Stämme greifen neue antibakterielle Strategien gezielt diese Regulationsmechanismen an. Die drei Quorum Sensing--Systeme von Pseudomonas aeruginosa wurden mit einem erweiterten logischen Formalismus modelliert um den Einfluss von Quorum Sensing--Inhibitoren auf die Bildung von Autoinducern und Virulenzfaktoren zu untersuchen. Eine Topologie--Analyse zeigte, dass die Proteine PqsR und PqsE anscheinend als Rezeptoren zusammen mit einem Autoinducer Pyocyanin regulieren. Enzym--Hemmstoffe waren besser geeignet, die Bildung von Autoinducern zu blockieren, während PqsR--Antagonisten die Pyocyanin--Biosynthese besser hemmten

Periodic orbit analysis of an elastodynamic resonator using shape deformation

We report the first definitive experimental observation of periodic orbits (POs) in the spectral properties of an elastodynamic system. The Fourier transform of the density of flexural modes show peaks that correspond to stable and unstable POs of a clover shaped quartz plate. We change the shape of the plate and find that the peaks corresponding to the POs that hit only the unperturbed sides are unchanged proving the correspondence. However, an exact match to the length of the main POs could be made only after a small rescaling of the experimental results. Statistical analysis of the level dynamics also shows the effect of the stable POs.Comment: submitted to Europhysics Letter