Employment Protection and Gender Dysphoria: Legal Definitions of Unequal Treatment on the Basis of Sex and Disability

Transsexuality, also known as gender dysphoria syndrome, has only recently been recognized as a legitimate medical entity that may be treated by reassignment surgery and psychological therapy. This Article traces the development of this recognition by the medical profession and outlines the social and legal issues still facing transsexuals, focusing on employment discrimination. State and federal decisions based on sex discrimination statutes have proven unsatisfactory to protect transsexuals. The authors contend that sex discrimination statutes should be interpreted to protect transsexuals and suggest two alternative approaches, based on constitutional theories and statutes designed to protect handicapped individuals, that may better serve to secure employment rights for transsexuals

A review on feature-mapping methods for structural optimization

Acknowledgments We thank Dr. Lukas Pflug from the Department of Mathematics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany, for fruitful discussion and support. The initiative for this review goes back to critical yet constructive comments by Prof. Kurt Maute, from the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. We also thank Prof. Horea Ilies from the University of Connecticut, USA, for guidance and insight into some of the geometric aspects of this work. The first author acknowledges support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in the framework of the collaborative research center CRC 814 (subproject C2). The third author thanks the support of the US National Science Foundation, award CMMI-1634563.Peer reviewedPreprintPostprin

Comparability of Microarray Data between Amplified and Non Amplified RNA in Colorectal Carcinoma

Microarray analysis reaches increasing popularity during the investigation of prognostic gene clusters in oncology. The standardisation of technical procedures will be essential to compare various datasets produced by different research groups. In several projects the amount of available tissue is limited. In such cases the preamplification of RNA might be necessary prior to microarray hybridisation. To evaluate the comparability of microarray results generated either by amplified or non amplified RNA we isolated RNA from colorectal cancer samples (stage UICC IV) following tumour tissue enrichment by macroscopic manual dissection (CMD). One part of the RNA was directly labelled and hybridised to GeneChips (HG-U133A, Affymetrix), the other part of the RNA was amplified according to the ?Eberwine? protocol and was then hybridised to the microarrays. During unsupervised hierarchical clustering the samples were divided in groups regarding the RNA pre-treatment and 5.726 differentially expressed genes were identified. Using independent microarray data of 31 amplified vs. 24 non amplified RNA samples from colon carcinomas (stage UICC III) in a set of 50 predictive genes we validated the amplification bias. In conclusion microarray data resulting from different pre-processing regarding RNA pre-amplification can not be compared within one analysis

Mars Spacecraft Power System Development Final Report

Development of optimum Mariner spacecraft power system for application to future flyby and orbiter mission

Detecting Bioterror Attacks by Screening Blood Donors: A Best-Case Analysis

To assess whether screening blood donors could provide early warning of a bioterror attack, we combined stochastic models of blood donation and the workings of blood tests with an epidemic model to derive the probability distribution of the time to detect an attack under assumptions favorable to blood donor screening. Comparing the attack detection delay to the incubation times of the most feared bioterror agents shows that even under such optimistic conditions, victims of a bioterror attack would likely exhibit symptoms before the attack was detected through blood donor screening. For example, an attack infecting 100 persons with a noncontagious agent such as Bacillus anthracis would only have a 26% chance of being detected within 25 days; yet, at an assumed additional charge of $10 per test, donor screening would cost$139 million per year. Furthermore, even if screening tests were 99.99% specific, 1,390 false-positive results would occur each year. Therefore, screening blood donors for bioterror agents should not be used to detect a bioterror attack

Detecting Bioterror Attacks by Screening Blood Donors: A Best-Case Analysis

To assess whether screening blood donors could provide early warning of a bioterror attack, we combined stochastic models of blood donation and the workings of blood tests with an epidemic model to derive the probability distribution of the time to detect an attack under assumptions favorable to blood donor screening. Comparing the attack detection delay to the incubation times of the most feared bioterror agents shows that even under such optimistic conditions, victims of a bioterror attack would likely exhibit symptoms before the attack was detected through blood donor screening. For example, an attack infecting 100 persons with a noncontagious agent such as Bacillus anthracis would only have a 26% chance of being detected within 25 days; yet, at an assumed additional charge of $10 per test, donor screening would cost$139 million per year. Furthermore, even if screening tests were 99.99% specific, 1,390 false-positive results would occur each year. Therefore, screening blood donors for bioterror agents should not be used to detect a bioterror attack