On The Discriminative Control Of Concurrent Responses: The Relations Among Response Frequency, Latency, And Topography In Auditory Generalization 1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96671/1/jeab.1962.5-487.pd

REDD+ on the rocks? Conflict over forest and politics of justice in Vietnam

In Vietnam, villagers involved in a REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) pilot protect areas with rocks which have barely a tree on them. The apparent paradox indicates how actual practices differ from general ideas about REDD+ due to ongoing conflict over forest, and how contestations over the meaning of justice are a core element in negotiations over REDD+. We explore these politics of justice by examining how the actors involved in the REDD+ pilot negotiate the particular subjects, dimensions, and authority of justice considered relevant, and show how politics of justice are implicit to practical decisions in project implementation. Contestations over the meaning of justice are an important element in the practices and processes constituting REDD+ at global, national and local levels, challenging uniform definitions of forest justice and how forests ought to be managed

The cis/trans interconversion of the calcium regulating hormone calcitonin is catalyzed by cyclophilin

AbstractThe cytosolic peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase cyclophilin from pig kidney can accelerate catalytically the cis/trans isomerization of prolyl peptide bonds. One- and two-dimensional 1H NMR spectroscopy was used to prove that the polypeptide hormone calcitonin is a substrate for cyclophilin. Isomerization of only one of the two prolyl peptide bonds is catalyzed significantly. The efficiency of catalysis was calculated by lineshape analysis and NOESY spectroscopy. Cyclosporin A completely blocks the effect of the enzyme on the conformational dynamics of the polypeptide

Safeguarding people living in vulnerable conditions in the COVID-19 era through universal health coverage and social protection

The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. The pandemic not only induced a public health crisis, but has led to severe economic, social, and educational crises. Across economies and societies, the distributional consequences of the pandemic have been uneven. Among groups living in vulnerable conditions, the pandemic substantially magnified the inequality gaps, with possible negative implications for these individuals' long-term physical, socioeconomic, and mental wellbeing. This Viewpoint proposes priority, programmatic, and policy recommendations that governments, resource partners, and relevant stakeholders should consider in formulating medium-term to long-term strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19, addressing the virus's impacts, and decreasing health inequalities. The world is at a never more crucial moment, requiring collaboration and cooperation from all sectors to mitigate the inequality gaps and improve people's health and wellbeing with universal health coverage and social protection, in addition to implementation of the health in all policies approach

Early social distancing policies in Europe, changes in mobility & COVID-19 case trajectories: insights from Spring 2020

Background Social distancing have been widely used to mitigate community spread of SARS-CoV-2. We sought to quantify the impact of COVID-19 social distancing policies across 27 European counties in spring 2020 on population mobility and the subsequent trajectory of disease. Methods We obtained data on national social distancing policies from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and aggregated and anonymized mobility data from Google. We used a pre-post comparison and two linear mixed-effects models to first assess the relationship between implementation of national policies and observed changes in mobility, and then to assess the relationship between changes in mobility and rates of COVID-19 infections in subsequent weeks. Results Compared to a pre-COVID baseline, Spain saw the largest decrease in aggregate population mobility (~70%), as measured by the time spent away from residence, while Sweden saw the smallest decrease (~20%). The largest declines in mobility were associated with mandatory stay-at-home orders, followed by mandatory workplace closures, school closures, and non-mandatory workplace closures. While mandatory shelter-in-place orders were associated with 16.7% less mobility (95% CI: -23.7% to -9.7%), non-mandatory orders were only associated with an 8.4% decrease (95% CI: -14.9% to -1.8%). Large-gathering bans were associated with the smallest change in mobility compared with other policy types. Changes in mobility were in turn associated with changes in COVID-19 case growth. For example, a 10% decrease in time spent away from places of residence was associated with 11.8% (95% CI: 3.8%, 19.1%) fewer new COVID-19 cases. Discussion This comprehensive evaluation across Europe suggests that mandatory stay-at-home orders and workplace closures had the largest impacts on population mobility and subsequent COVID-19 cases at the onset of the pandemic. With a better understanding of policies’ relative performance, countries can more effectively invest in, and target, early nonpharmacological interventions

Response vs. Perception

Three experiments were conducted in which college students read, and then attempted to match, a series of written descriptive passages with the referent photographs on which they were based; the photographs sho wed the face of an actor, representing a variety of emotional expressions. In Experiment I, subjects provided with a series of context passages depicting a narrow range of emotions (neither pleasant nor unpleasant) chose “matches” having more extreme pleasantness values than did subjects provided with context passages depicting a wide range of descriptions on the pleasantness dimension when responding to test descriptions embedded within the context series. In Experiments II and III, contrast effects were obtained; subjects who had read mostly unpleasant context passages chose more pleasant referents in response to neutral test descriptions than did those who had read mostly pleasant descriptions. The results of all three experiments suggested that these effects were mediated in large part by a response bias, the tendency to use each response alternative with roughly equal frequency. In Experiments II and III, there was suggestive evidence for the possibility that a more central (or perceptual) mechanism may also have contributed to the observed results.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45367/1/11031_2004_Article_BF00992590.pd

Justice Through a Multispecies Lens

The bushfires in Australia during the Summer of 2019–2020, in the midst of which we were writing this exchange, violently heightened the urgency of the task of rethinking justice through a multispecies lens for all of the authors in this exchange, and no doubt many of its readers. As I finish this introduction, still in the middle of the Australian summer, more than 10 million hectares (100,000 km2 or 24.7 million acres) of bushland have been burned and over a billion individual animals killed. This says nothing of the others who will die because their habitat and the relationships on which they depend no longer exist. People all around the world are mourning these deaths and the destruction of unique ecosystems. As humans on this planet, and specifically as political theorists facing the prospect that such devastating events will only become more frequent, the question before us is whether we can rethink what it means to be in ethical relationships with beings other than humans and what justice requires, in ways that mark these deaths as absolute wrongs that obligate us to act, and not simply as unfortunate tragedies that leave us bereft

From silence to primary definer: The rise of the Intelligence lobby in the public sphere

Until the end of the Cold War the UK intelligence services were not officially acknowledged, and their personnel were banned from entering the public sphere. From 1989 the UK government began to put the intelligence services on a legal footing and to release the identity of the heads of the intelligence agencies. Since then, public engagement by the intelligence agencies has gathered pace. What this article hypothesises is that there is now, in the UK, an effective intelligence lobby of former insiders who engage in the public sphere – using on the record briefings – to counter criticism of the intelligence community and to promote a narrative and vision of what UK intelligence should do, how it is supported and how oversight is conducted. Content analysis and framing models of non-broadcast coverage of intelligence debates, focusing on the 36 months after the Snowden revelations, confirm an active and rolling lobby of current and former intelligence officials. The paper concludes that the extent of the lobby’s interventions in the public sphere is a matter for debate and possible concern