The procedure and practice of witness testimony in English ecclesiastical courts, c.1193–1300

The project CLCLCL has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 740611)In the twelfth century, the English church courts made considerable use of compurgation and of sworn members of the community to aid in the resolution of disputes, but by the end of the thirteenth century, academic canon law depended almost entirely on witness testimony. Romano-canonical proceduralists established rules for examining witnesses, rejecting testimonies and resolving conflicts. However, these academic ideals were not always possible or even desirable in practice. Although Roman procedure required witnesses to be eyewitnesses, English ecclesiastical practice allowed witnesses to testify to public knowledge. Furthermore, individuals who were not qualified to testify did so regardless, and their testimonies were not excluded even following exceptions. This is not to say that standard procedure was not followed; more often than not, it was. However, these differences between theory and practice indicate that practitioners (and perhaps judges) in the English ecclesiastical courts were experimenting with ways to use witness testimony beyond the confines of the academic law.Postprin

Real Time Evaluation of Tissue Optical Properties during Thermal Ablation of \u3cem\u3eex vivo\u3c/em\u3e Liver Tissues

Complete ablation of liver tumors is vital for minimizing the risk of local tumor recurrence. Accurately identifying the hallmarks of tissue necrosis during thermal ablative therapies may significantly increase the efficacy of ablation, while minimizing unnecessary damage to the surrounding normal tissues or critical structures. Light propagation in biological tissues is sensitive to the tissue microstructure and chromophore concentrations. In our previous studies, we found that the wavelength (λ) averaged liver tissue absorption coefficient μa and reduced scattering coefficient μs’ change significantly upon heating which may be used for assessment of tissue damage during thermal ablation of solid tumors. Here, we seek to demonstrate the use of an integrated fiber-optic probe for continuous monitoring of the local tissue temperature (T), μa(λ) and μs’(λ) during thermal ablation of ex vivo porcine livers. The wavelength-averaged (435–630 nm) tissue absorption and scattering (μa and μs’) increased rapidly at 45 °C and plateaued at 67 °C. The mean μa and μs’ for liver tissue at 37 °C (n = 10) were 8.5 ± 3.7 and 2.8 ± 1.1 cm−1, respectively. The relative changes in μa and μs’ at 37, 55, and 65 °C were significantly different (p \u3c .02) from each other. A relationship between the relative changes in μa and μs’ and the degree of tissue damage estimated using the temperature-based Arrhenius model for porcine liver tissues was established and studied

Regulation of human PAX6 expression by miR-7

The paired box gene 6 (PAX6) is a powerful mediator of eye and brain organogenesis whose spatiotemporal expression is exquisitely controlled by multiple mechanisms, including post-transcriptional regulation by microRNAs (miRNAs). In the present study, we use bioinformatic predictions to identify three candidate microRNA-7 (miR-7) target sites in the human PAX6 3′ untranslated region (3′-UTR) and demonstrate that two of them are functionally active in a human cell line. Furthermore, transient transfection of cells with synthetic miR-7 inhibits PAX6 protein expression but does not alter levels of PAX6 mRNA, suggesting that miR-7 induces translational repression of PAX6. Finally, a comparison of PAX6 3′-UTRs across species reveals that one of the functional miR-7 target sites is conserved, whereas the second functional target site is found only in primates. Thus, the interaction between PAX6 and miR-7 appears to be highly conserved; however, the precise number of sites through which this interaction occurs may have expanded throughout evolution

Integrating Self-Determination and Job Demands-Resources Theory in Predicting Mental Health Provider Burnout

Limited progress has been made in reducing burnout in mental health professionals. Accordingly, we identified factors that might protect against burnout and could be productive focal areas for future interventions. Guided by self-determination theory, we examined whether supervisor autonomy support, self-efficacy, and staff cohesion predict provider burnout. 358 staff from 13 agencies completed surveys. Higher levels of supervisor autonomy support, self-efficacy, and staff cohesion were predictive of lower burnout, even after accounting for job demands. Although administrators may be limited in their ability to reduce job demands, our findings suggest that increasing core job resources may be a viable alternative

Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading

Contextual predictability influences both the probability and duration of eye fixations on words when reading Latinate alphabetic scripts like English and German. However, it is unknown whether word predictability influences eye movements in reading similarly for Semitic languages like Arabic, which are alphabetic languages with very different visual and linguistic characteristics. Such knowledge is nevertheless important for establishing the generality of mechanisms of eye-movement control across different alphabetic writing systems. Accordingly, we investigated word predictability effects in Arabic in two eye-movement experiments. Both produced shorter fixation times for words with high compared to low predictability, consistent with previous findings. Predictability did not influence skipping probabilities for (four- to eight-letter) words of varying length and morphological complexity (Experiment 1). However, it did for short (three- to four-letter) words with simpler structures (Experiment 2). We suggest that word-skipping is reduced, and affected less by contextual predictability, in Arabic compared to Latinate alphabetic reading, because of specific orthographic and morphological characteristics of the Arabic script

Designing MPAs for food security in open-access fisheries

Food security remains a principal challenge in the developing tropics where communities rely heavily on marine-based protein. While some improvements in fisheries management have been made in these regions, a large fraction of coastal fisheries remain unmanaged, mismanaged, or use only crude input controls. These quasi-open-access conditions often lead to severe overfishing, depleted stocks, and compromised food security. A possible fishery management approach in these institution-poor settings is to implement fully protected marine protected areas (MPAs). Although the primary push for MPAs has been to solve the conservation problems that arise from mismanagement, MPAs can also benefit fisheries beyond their borders. The literature has not completely characterized how to design MPAs under diverse ecological and economic conditions when food security is the objective. We integrated four key biological and economic variables (i.e., fish population growth rate, fish mobility, fish price, and fishing cost) as well as an important aspect of reserve design (MPA size) into a general model and determined their combined influence on food security when MPAs are implemented in an open-access setting. We explicitly modeled open-access conditions that account for the behavioral response of fishers to the MPA; this approach is distinct from much of the literature that focuses on assumptions of “scorched earth” (i.e., severe over-fishing), optimized management, or an arbitrarily defined fishing mortality outside the MPA’s boundaries. We found that the MPA size that optimizes catch depends strongly on economic variables. Large MPAs optimize catch for species heavily harvested for their high value and/or low harvesting cost, while small MPAs or no closure are best for species lightly harvested for their low value and high harvesting cost. Contrary to previous theoretical expectations, both high and low mobility species are expected to experience conservation benefits from protection, although, as shown previously, greater conservation benefits are expected for low mobility species. Food security benefits from MPAs can be obtained from species of any mobility. Results deliver both qualitative insights and quantitative guidance for designing MPAs for food security in open-access fisheries

Patient Selection and Volume in the Era Surrounding Implementation of Medicare Conditions of Participation for Transplant Programs

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110882/1/hesr12188.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110882/2/hesr12188-sup-0001-AuthorMatrix.pd