Finalist essays from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security's First Annual Essay Competition, 2008

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) announces the winner and finalists of its first annual essay contest. CHDS launched the contest last year to provide people from around the country the opportunity to express their opinions on homeland security issues and to suggest new ideas. The winner and four finalists were selected from eighty contest submissions by a committee comprised of CHDS staff, faculty, and alumni. The variety of the essay topics submitted, as well as the backgrounds of the authors, highlights the vast scope of the impact that homeland security policies, programs, and challenges have on our communities and professions. This year’s contestants were asked to answer the question “What single aspect of Homeland Security has been most successful, and what single aspect will be most critical to Homeland Security success?”Naval Posgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Securit

Fundamental constants and tests of general relativity - Theoretical and cosmological considerations

The tests of the constancy of the fundamental constants are tests of the local position invariance and thus of the equivalence principle. We summarize the various constraints that have been obtained and then describe the connection between varying constants and extensions of general relativity. To finish, we discuss the link with cosmology, and more particularly with the acceleration of the Universe. We take the opportunity to summarize various possibilities to test general relativity (but also the Copernican principle) on cosmological scales.Comment: Proceedings of the workshop ``The nature of gravity, confronting theory and experiment in space'', ISSI, Bern, october 200

Putting ostracism into perspective: young children tell more mentalistic stories after exclusion, but not when anxious

Much is known about when children acquire an understanding of mental states, but few, if any, experiments identify social contexts in which children tend to use this capacity and dispositions that influence its usage. Social exclusion is a common situation that compels us to reconnect with new parties, which may crucially involve attending to those parties’ mental states. Across two studies, this line of inquiry was extended to typically developing preschoolers (Study 1) and young children with and without anxiety disorder (AD) (Study 2). Children played the virtual game of toss “Cyberball” ostensibly over the Internet with two peers who first played fair (inclusion), but eventually threw very few balls to the child (exclusion). Before and after Cyberball, children in both studies completed stories about peer-scenarios. For Study 1, 36 typically developing 5-year-olds were randomly assigned to regular exclusion (for no apparent reason) or accidental exclusion (due to an alleged computer malfunction). Compared to accidental exclusion, regular exclusion led children to portray story-characters more strongly as intentional agents (intentionality), with use of more mental state language (MSL), and more between-character affiliation in post-Cyberball stories. For Study 2, 20 clinically referred 4 to 8-year-olds with AD and 15 age- and gender-matched non-anxious controls completed stories before and after regular exclusion. While we replicated the post regular-exclusion increase of intentional and MSL portrayals of story-characters among non-anxious controls, anxious children exhibited a decline on both dimensions after regular exclusion. We conclude that exclusion typically induces young children to mentalize, enabling more effective reconnection with others. However, excessive anxiety may impair controlled mentalizing, which may, in turn, hamper effective reconnection with others after exclusion

Accurate and efficient reconstruction of deep phylogenies from structured RNAs

Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes are probably the most frequently used data source in phylogenetic reconstruction. Individual columns of rRNA alignments are not independent as a consequence of their highly conserved secondary structures. Unless explicitly taken into account, these correlation can distort the phylogenetic signal and/or lead to gross overestimates of tree stability. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches are of course amenable to using RNA-specific substitution models that treat conserved base pairs appropriately, but require accurate secondary structure models as input. So far, however, no accurate and easy-to-use tool has been available for computing structure-aware alignments and consensus structures that can deal with the large rRNAs. The RNAsalsa approach is designed to fill this gap. Capitalizing on the improved accuracy of pairwise consensus structures and informed by a priori knowledge of group-specific structural constraints, the tool provides both alignments and consensus structures that are of sufficient accuracy for routine phylogenetic analysis based on RNA-specific substitution models. The power of the approach is demonstrated using two rRNA data sets: a mitochondrial rRNA set of 26 Mammalia, and a collection of 28S nuclear rRNAs representative of the five major echinoderm groups

Mapping inequalities in school attendance:The relationship between dimensions of socioeconomic status and forms of school absence

In this article, we investigated whether and to what extent various dimensions of socioeconomic background (parental education, parental class, free school meal registration, housing status, and neighborhood deprivation) predict overall school absences and different reasons for absenteeism (truancy, sickness, family holidays and temporary exclusion) among 4,620 secondary school pupils in Scotland. Students were drawn from a sample of the Scottish Longitudinal Study comprising linked Census data and administrative school records. Using fractional logit models and logistic regressions, we found that all dimensions of socioeconomic background were uniquely linked to overall absences. Multiple measures of socioeconomic background were also associated with truancy, sickness-related absence, and temporary exclusion. Social housing and parental education had the most pervasive associations with school absences across all forms of absenteeism. Our findings highlight the need to consider the multidimensionality of socioeconomic background in policy and research decisions on school absenteeism. A more explicit focus on narrowing the socioeconomic gap in absenteeism is required to close the inequality gap in educational and post-school outcomes

A comparative genomics multitool for scientific discovery and conservation

A whole-genome alignment of 240 phylogenetically diverse species of eutherian mammal-including 131 previously uncharacterized species-from the Zoonomia Project provides data that support biological discovery, medical research and conservation. The Zoonomia Project is investigating the genomics of shared and specialized traits in eutherian mammals. Here we provide genome assemblies for 131 species, of which all but 9 are previously uncharacterized, and describe a whole-genome alignment of 240 species of considerable phylogenetic diversity, comprising representatives from more than 80% of mammalian families. We find that regions of reduced genetic diversity are more abundant in species at a high risk of extinction, discern signals of evolutionary selection at high resolution and provide insights from individual reference genomes. By prioritizing phylogenetic diversity and making data available quickly and without restriction, the Zoonomia Project aims to support biological discovery, medical research and the conservation of biodiversity.Peer reviewe

The practice of 'doing' evaluation: Lessons learned from nine complex intervention trials in action

Background: There is increasing recognition among trialists of the challenges in understanding how particular 'real-life' contexts influence the delivery and receipt of complex health interventions. Evaluations of interventions to change health worker and/or patient behaviours in health service settings exemplify these challenges. When interpreting evaluation data, deviation from intended intervention implementation is accounted for through process evaluations of fidelity, reach, and intensity. However, no such systematic approach has been proposed to account for the way evaluation activities may deviate in practice from assumptions made when data are interpreted.Methods: A collective case study was conducted to explore experiences of undertaking evaluation activities in the real-life contexts of nine complex intervention trials seeking to improve appropriate diagnosis and treatment of malaria in varied health service settings. Multiple sources of data were used, including in-depth interviews with investigators, participant-observation of studies, and rounds of discussion and reflection.Results and discussion: From our experiences of the realities of conducting these evaluations, we identified six key 'lessons learned' about ways to become aware of and manage aspects of the fabric of trials involving the interface of researchers, fieldworkers, participants and data collection tools that may affect the intended production of data and interpretation of findings. These lessons included: foster a shared understanding across the study team of how individual practices contribute to the study goals; promote and facilitate within-team communications for ongoing reflection on the progress of the evaluation; establish processes for ongoing collaboration and dialogue between sub-study teams; the importance of a field research coordinator bridging everyday project management with scientific oversight; collect and review reflective field notes on the progress of the evaluation to aid interpretation of outcomes; and these approaches should help the identification of and reflection on possible overlaps between the evaluation and intervention.Conclusion: The lessons we have drawn point to the principle of reflexivity that, we argue, needs to become part of standard practice in the conduct of evaluations of complex interventions to promote more meaningful interpretations of the effects of an intervention and to better inform future implementation and decision-making. © 2014 Reynolds et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

A Possible Violation of the Equivalence Principle by Neutrinos

We consider the effect of a long range, flavor changing tensor interaction of possible gravitational origin. Neutrino mixing experiments provide the most sensitive probe to date for such forces---testing the equivalence principle at levels below $10^{-20}$. Here we justify and generalize a formalism for describing such effects. The constraints from neutrino mixing experiments on gravitationally induced mixing are calculated. Our detailed analysis of the atmospheric neutrino data confirms a remarkable result: the atmospheric neutrino data implies the same size force as does the solar neutrino data. Additional tests of this suggestive result are discussed.Comment: 45 pages of text, 5 figures available upon request to [email protected]