Advanced supersonic propulsion study, phase 3

The variable stream control engine is determined to be the most promising propulsion system concept for advanced supersonic cruise aircraft. This concept uses variable geometry components and a unique throttle schedule for independent control of two flow streams to provide low jet noise at takeoff and high performance at both subsonic and supersonic cruise. The advanced technology offers a 25% improvement in airplane range and an 8 decibel reduction in takeoff noise, relative to first generation supersonic turbojet engines

Nepotistic patterns of violent psychopathy: evidence for adaptation?

Psychopaths routinely disregard social norms by engaging in selfish, antisocial, often violent behavior. Commonly characterized as mentally disordered, recent evidence suggests that psychopaths are executing a well-functioning, if unscrupulous strategy that historically increased reproductive success at the expense of others. Natural selection ought to have favored strategies that spared close kin from harm, however, because actions affecting the fitness of genetic relatives contribute to an individual’s inclusive fitness. Conversely, there is evidence that mental disorders can disrupt psychological mechanisms designed to protect relatives. Thus, mental disorder and adaptation accounts of psychopathy generate opposing hypotheses: psychopathy should be associated with an increase in the victimization of kin in the former account but not in the latter. Contrary to the mental disorder hypothesis, we show here in a sample of 289 violent offenders that variation in psychopathy predicts a decrease in the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders; that is, psychopathy predicts an increased likelihood of harming non-relatives. Because nepotistic inhibition in violence may be caused by dispersal or kin discrimination, we examined the effects of psychopathy on (1) the dispersal of offenders and their kin and (2) sexual assault frequency (as a window on kin discrimination). Although psychopathy was negatively associated with coresidence with kin and positively associated with the commission of sexual assault, it remained negatively associated with the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders after removing cases of offenders who had coresided with kin and cases of sexual assault from the analyses. These results stand in contrast to models positing psychopathy as a pathology, and provide support for the hypothesis that psychopathy reflects an evolutionary strategy largely favoring the exploitation of non-relatives

Social Media and Well-being: A Methodological Perspective

Due to the methodological challenges inherent in studying social media use (SMU), as well as the methodological choices that have shaped research into the effects of SMU on well-being, clear conclusions regarding relationships between SMU and well-being remain elusive. We provide a review of five methodological developments poised to provide increased understanding in this domain: (1) increased use of longitudinal and experimental designs; (2) the adoption of behavioural (rather than self-report) measures of SMU; (3) focusing on more nuanced aspects of SMU; (4) embracing effect heterogeneity; and (5) the use of formal modelling and machine learning. We focus on how these advances stand to bring us closer to understanding relations between SMU and well-being, as well as the challenges associated with these developments

Nonlinear modeling of venous leg ulcer healing rates

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The purpose of this manuscript was to determine whether the change in wound surface area over time could be described through nonlinear mathematics.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied 3,588 serial wound tracings of 338 venous leg ulcers (VLUs) that had been followed during a controlled, prospective, randomized trial of two topical wound treatments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A majority (72%) of VLUs exhibited surface area reduction via an exponential decay model, particularly during the early stages of healing. These results were consistent with the mechanics of wound contraction and epithelial cell proliferation, supported by the higher frequency at which exponential surface area reduction associated with full wound closure (35% of wounds that fit the exponential model healed vs. 21% of wounds that did not fit the exponential model completely healed during the study period, p = 0.018). Goodness-of-fit statistics suggested that much of the individual variation in healing could be described as nonlinear variation from the exponential model.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We believe that parameter estimates from a mathematical model may provide a more accurate quantification of wound healing rates, and that similar models may someday reach routine use in comparing the efficacy of various treatments in routine practice and in product registration trials.</p

The Muslim problematic: Muslims, state schools and security

Muslims are folk-devils that mark the ubiquitous moral panic. For some, the idea of the Muslim problematic signifies a long and worrying trend of creeping ‘Islamification’ of state schools. For others, the discourse of the Muslim problematic reflects the ongoing racial patholigisation of Britain’s minoritised communities. One thing is for certain, the current debate marks a significant moment in the nature and function of the neoliberal state as it reframes race relation policy in Britain in the light of the security agenda. The Trojan Horse affair, surrounding claims of infiltration of radical Islam in state-run schools, marks a significant moment in the embedding of the security agenda in Britain’s inner city schools through the medium of the Prevent agenda. It argues that one of the best ways of understanding the security agenda is by locating it within a broader sociological and historical context of the functioning of the racial state

Near-infrared camera for the Clementine mission

The Clementine mission provided the first ever complete, systematic surface mapping of the moon from the ultra-violet to the near-infrared regions. More than 1.7 million images of the moon, earth and space were returned from this mission. The near-infrared (NIR) multi-spectral camera, one of two workhorse lunar mapping cameras (the other being the UV/visible camera), provided {approximately}200 in spatial resolution at 400 km periselene, and a 39 km across-track swath. This 1.9 kg infrared camera using a 256 x 256 InSb FPA viewed reflected solar illumination from the lunar surface and lunar horizon in the 1 to 3 {micro}m wavelength region, extending lunar imagery and mineralogy studies into the near infrared. A description of this light-weight, low power NIR camera along with a summary of lessons learned is presented. Design goals and preliminary on-orbit performance estimates are addressed in terms of meeting the mission`s primary objective for flight qualifying the sensors for future Department of Defense flights

Doctors under the microscope: the birth of medical audit

In 1989 a UK government White Paper introduced medical audit as a comprehensive and statutory system of assessment and improvement in quality of care in hospitals. A considerable body of research has described the evolution of medical audit in terms of a struggle between doctors and National Health Service managers over control of quality assurance. In this paper we examine the emergence of medical audit from 1910 to the early 1950s, with a particular focus on the pioneering work of the American surgeons Codman, MacEachern and Ponton. It is contended that medical professionals initially created medical audit in order to articulate a suitable methodology for assessing individual and organisational performance. Rather than a means of protecting the medical profession from public scrutiny, medical auditing was conceived and operationalised as a managerial tool for fostering the active engagement of senior hospital managers and discharging public accountability. These early debates reveal how accounting was implicated in the development of a system for monitoring and improving the work of medical professionals, advancing the quality of hospital care, and was advocated in ways, which included rather than excluded managers

The Wor1-like Protein Fgp1 Regulates Pathogenicity, Toxin Synthesis and Reproduction in the Phytopathogenic Fungus Fusarium graminearum

WOR1 is a gene for a conserved fungal regulatory protein controlling the dimorphic switch and pathogenicity determents in Candida albicans and its ortholog in the plant pathogen Fusarium oxysporum, called SGE1, is required for pathogenicity and expression of key plant effector proteins. F. graminearum, an important pathogen of cereals, is not known to employ switching and no effector proteins from F. graminearum have been found to date that are required for infection. In this study, the potential role of the WOR1-like gene in pathogenesis was tested in this toxigenic fungus. Deletion of the WOR1 ortholog (called FGP1) in F. graminearum results in greatly reduced pathogenicity and loss of trichothecene toxin accumulation in infected wheat plants and in vitro. The loss of toxin accumulation alone may be sufficient to explain the loss of pathogenicity to wheat. Under toxin-inducing conditions, expression of genes for trichothecene biosynthesis and many other genes are not detected or detected at lower levels in Δfgp1 strains. FGP1 is also involved in the developmental processes of conidium formation and sexual reproduction and modulates a morphological change that accompanies mycotoxin production in vitro. The Wor1-like proteins in Fusarium species have highly conserved N-terminal regions and remarkably divergent C-termini. Interchanging the N- and C- terminal portions of proteins from F. oxysporum and F. graminearum resulted in partial to complete loss of function. Wor1-like proteins are conserved but have evolved to regulate pathogenicity in a range of fungi, likely by adaptations to the C-terminal portion of the protein

The Ross Sea Dipole-temperature, snow accumulation and sea ice variability in the Ross Sea region, Antarctica, over the past 2700 years

High-resolution, well-dated climate archives provide an opportunity to investigate the dynamic interactions of climate patterns relevant for future projections. Here, we present data from a new, annually dated ice core record from the eastern Ross Sea, named the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) ice core. Comparison of this record with climate reanalysis data for the 1979-2012 interval shows that RICE reliably captures temperature and snow precipitation variability in the region. Trends over the past 2700 years in RICE are shown to be distinct from those in West Antarctica and the western Ross Sea captured by other ice cores. For most of this interval, the eastern Ross Sea was warming (or showing isotopic enrichment for other reasons), with increased snow accumulation and perhaps decreased sea ice concentration. However, West Antarctica cooled and the western Ross Sea showed no significant isotope temperature trend. This pattern here is referred to as the Ross Sea Dipole. Notably, during the Little Ice Age, West Antarctica and the western Ross Sea experienced colder than average temperatures, while the eastern Ross Sea underwent a period of warming or increased isotopic enrichment. From the 17th century onwards, this dipole relationship changed. All three regions show current warming, with snow accumulation declining in West Antarctica and the eastern Ross Sea but increasing in the western Ross Sea. We interpret this pattern as reflecting an increase in sea ice in the eastern Ross Sea with perhaps the establishment of a modern Roosevelt Island polynya as a local moisture source for RICE

Neurotrophic actions of dopamine on the development of a serotonergic feeding circuit in Drosophila melanogaster

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In the fruit fly, <it>Drosophila melanogaster</it>, serotonin functions both as a neurotransmitter to regulate larval feeding, and in the development of the stomatogastric feeding circuit. There is an inverse relationship between neuronal serotonin levels during late embryogenesis and the complexity of the serotonergic fibers projecting from the larval brain to the foregut, which correlate with perturbations in feeding, the functional output of the circuit. Dopamine does not modulate larval feeding, and dopaminergic fibers do not innervate the larval foregut. Since dopamine can function in central nervous system development, separate from its role as a neurotransmitter, the role of neuronal dopamine was assessed on the development, and mature function, of the 5-HT larval feeding circuit.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both decreased and increased neuronal dopamine levels in late embryogenesis during development of this circuit result in depressed levels of larval feeding. Perturbations in neuronal dopamine during this developmental period also result in greater branch complexity of the serotonergic fibers innervating the gut, as well as increased size and number of the serotonin-containing vesicles along the neurite length. This neurotrophic action for dopamine is modulated by the D₂dopamine receptor expressed during late embryogenesis in central 5-HT neurons. Animals carrying transgenic RNAi constructs to knock down both dopamine and serotonin synthesis in the central nervous system display normal feeding and fiber architecture. However, disparate levels of neuronal dopamine and serotonin during development of the circuit result in abnormal gut fiber architecture and feeding behavior.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results suggest that dopamine can exert a direct trophic influence on the development of a specific neural circuit, and that dopamine and serotonin may interact with each other to generate the neural architecture necessary for normal function of the circuit.</p