A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminilization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV

Each year in the United States, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, queer, questioning and gender non-conforming (LGBT) people and people living with HIV come in contact with the criminal justice system and fall victim to similar miscarriages of justice.According to a recent national study, a startling 73% of all LGBT people and PLWH surveyed have had face-to-face contact with police during the past five years.1 Five percent of these respondents also report having spent time in jail or prison, a rate that is markedly higher than the nearly 3% of the U.S. adult population whoare under some form of correctional supervision (jail, prison, probation, or parole) at any point in time.In fact, LGBT people and PLWH, especially Native and LGBT people and PLWH of color, aresignificantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system, from policing, to adjudication,to incarceration. Yet their experiences are often overlooked, and little headway has been madein dismantling the cycles of criminalization that perpetuate poor life outcomes and push already vulnerable populations to the margins of society.The disproportionate rate of LGBT people and PLWH in the criminal system can best be understoodin the larger context of widespread and continuing discrimination in employment, education, socialservices, health care, and responses to violence

Dilation Angle and Liquefaction Potential

Most of our understandin9 of the liquefaction phenomenon has come from laboratory tests. It would be desirable to express liquefaction resistance in terms of a parameter which can be measured both in the laboratory and in the field. It is proposed that the dilation angle or expansion rate of the sand is such a parameter. It is readily measured in the laboratory from drained simple shear or triaxial tests and in the field from self boring pressuremeter tests. Based on laboratory tests on Ottawa sand a chart is presented for estimating the liquefaction resistance of saturated sands in terms of dilation angle in addition to the usual parameters relative density and blow count. When the chart was used in conjunction with pressuremeter tests, a conservative estimate of liquefaction resistance of a hydraulic fill dam was obtained

Bilingual language lateralization: A meta-analytic tale of two hemispheres

Two meta-analyses of 66 behavioral studies examined variables influencing functional cerebral lateralization of each language of brain-intact bilingual adults. Functional lateralization was found to be primarily influenced by age of onset of bilingualism: bilinguals who acquired both languages by 6 years of age showed bilateral hemispheric involvement for both languages, whereas those who acquired their second language after age 6 showed left hemisphere dominance for both languages. Moreover, among late bilinguals, left hemisphere involvement was found to be greater for those less proficient in their second language, those whose second language was English, and for studies involving dichotic listening paradigms; early bilinguals instead showed bilateral involvement in every condition. Implications of the observed differences in lateralization between early and late bilinguals are explored for existing theories of bilingualism and for neurocognitive models of brain functional organization of language

A Direct Demonstration of Closed-State Inactivation of K+ Channels at Low pH

Lowering external pH reduces peak current and enhances current decay in Kv and Shaker-IR channels. Using voltage-clamp fluorimetry we directly determined the fate of Shaker-IR channels at low pH by measuring fluorescence emission from tetramethylrhodamine-5-maleimide attached to substituted cysteine residues in the voltage sensor domain (M356C to R362C) or S5-P linker (S424C). One aspect of the distal S3-S4 linker α-helix (A359C and R362C) reported a pH-induced acceleration of the slow phase of fluorescence quenching that represents P/C-type inactivation, but neither site reported a change in the total charge movement at low pH. Shaker S424C fluorescence demonstrated slow unquenching that also reflects channel inactivation and this too was accelerated at low pH. In addition, however, acidic pH caused a reversible loss of the fluorescence signal (pKa = 5.1) that paralleled the reduction of peak current amplitude (pKa = 5.2). Protons decreased single channel open probability, suggesting that the loss of fluorescence at low pH reflects a decreased channel availability that is responsible for the reduced macroscopic conductance. Inhibition of inactivation in Shaker S424C (by raising external K+ or the mutation T449V) prevented fluorescence loss at low pH, and the fluorescence report from closed Shaker ILT S424C channels implied that protons stabilized a W434F-like inactivated state. Furthermore, acidic pH changed the fluorescence amplitude (pKa = 5.9) in channels held continuously at −80 mV. This suggests that low pH stabilizes closed-inactivated states. Thus, fluorescence experiments suggest the major mechanism of pH-induced peak current reduction is inactivation of channels from closed states from which they can activate, but not open; this occurs in addition to acceleration of P/C-type inactivation from the open state

"Swiss-Cheese" Inhomogeneous Cosmology & the Dark Energy Problem

We study an exact swiss-cheese model of the Universe, where inhomogeneous LTB patches are embedded in a flat FLRW background, in order to see how observations of distant sources are affected. We find negligible integrated effect, suppressed by (L/R_{H})^3 (where L is the size of one patch, and R_{H} is the Hubble radius), both perturbatively and non-perturbatively. We disentangle this effect from the Doppler term (which is much larger and has been used recently \cite{BMN} to try to fit the SN curve without dark energy) by making contact with cosmological perturbation theory.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figure

LTB solutions in Newtonian gauge: from strong to weak fields

Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) solutions are used frequently to describe the collapse or expansion of spherically symmetric inhomogeneous mass distributions in the Universe. These exact solutions are obtained in the synchronous gauge where nonlinear dynamics (with respect to the FLRW background) induce large deviations from the FLRW metric. In this paper we show explicitly that this is a gauge artefact (for realistic sub-horizon inhomogeneities). We write down the nonlinear gauge transformation from synchronous to Newtonian gauge for a general LTB solution using the fact that the peculiar velocities are small. In the latter gauge we recover the solution in the form of a weakly perturbed FLRW metric that is assumed in standard cosmology. Furthermore we show how to obtain the LTB solutions directly in Newtonian gauge and illustrate how the Newtonian approximation remains valid in the nonlinear regime where cosmological perturbation theory breaks down. Finally we discuss the implications of our results for the backreaction scenario.Comment: 17 page

An inhomogeneous universe with thick shells and without cosmological constant

We build an exact inhomogeneous universe composed of a central flat Friedmann zone up to a small redshift $z_1$, a thick shell made of anisotropic matter, an hyperbolic Friedmann metric up to the scale where dimming galaxies are observed ($z\simeq 1.7$) that can be matched to a hyperbolic Lema\^{i}tre-Tolman-Bondi spacetime to best fit the WMAP data at early epochs. We construct a general framework which permits us to consider a non-uniform clock rate for the universe. As a result, both for a uniform time and a uniform Hubble flow, the deceleration parameter extrapolated by the central observer is always positive. Nevertheless, by taking a non-uniform Hubble flow, it is possible to obtain a negative central deceleration parameter, that, with certain parameter choices, can be made the one observed currently. Finally, it is conjectured a possible physical mechanism to justify a non-uniform time flow.Comment: Version published in Class. Quantum gra

Utility of the FebriDx point-of-care assay in supporting a triage algorithm for medical admissions with possible COVID-19: an observational cohort study

Objective: To evaluate a triage algorithm used to identify and isolate patients with suspected COVID-19 among medical patients needing admission to hospital using simple clinical criteria and the FebriDx assay. Design:: Retrospective observational cohort. Setting Large acute National Health Service hospital in London, UK. Participants: All medical admissions from the emergency department between 10 August 2020 and 4 November 2020 with a valid SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR result. Interventions: Medical admissions were triaged as likely, possible or unlikely COVID-19 based on clinical criteria. Patients triaged as possible COVID-19 underwent FebriDx lateral flow assay on capillary blood, and those positive for myxovirus resistance protein A (a host response protein) were managed as likely COVID-19. Primary outcome measures: Diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity, specificity and predictive values) of the algorithm and the FebriDx assay using SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR from nasopharyngeal swabs as the reference standard. Results: 4.0% (136) of 3443 medical admissions had RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19. Prevalence of COVID-19 was 46% (80/175) in those triaged as likely, 4.1% (50/1225) in possible and 0.3% (6/2033) in unlikely COVID-19. Using a SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR reference standard, clinical triage had sensitivity of 96% (95% CI 91% to 98%) and specificity of 61.5% (95% CI 59.8% to 63.1%), while the triage algorithm including FebriDx had sensitivity of 93% (95% CI 87% to 96%) and specificity of 86.4% (95% CI 85.2% to 87.5%). While 2033 patients were deemed not to require isolation using clinical criteria alone, the addition of FebriDx to clinical triage allowed a further 826 patients to be released from isolation, reducing the need for isolation rooms by 9.5 per day, 95% CI 8.9 to 10.2. Ten patients missed by the algorithm had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19. Conclusions: A triage algorithm including the FebriDx assay had good sensitivity and was useful to ‘rule-out’ COVID-19 among medical admissions to hospital