Children of Today, Leaders of Tomorrow: The Overlooked Generation of Jihad

This paper proposes that the United States has a moral obligation to care for the children whose lives are affected by terrorism and to ensure that they do not grow up aligned with the radical ideology of Islamic Fundamentalism. This paper examines the American sentiment towards Islam, what hinders her, despite all her resources and provisions, from investing in the future of these children and providing them with foreign aid. It suggests that as America falls further from her Christian traditions, she becomes less equipped to fulfill these moral obligations. Examined are personal accounts of both child-survivors and child-soldiers, accounts of humanitarian efforts to provide aid and education to this generation, and accounts of converted Christians who grew up under radical Islam. An analysis of Sharia law and the objectives of jihad reveal that the fulfillment of global jihad depends on the recruitment and exploitation of child-jihadists; accordingly, as global jihad expands, more children will become its victims. This paper concludes that the West, led by the United States, should take the necessary measures to see to the needs of the children affected by terrorism. They should do so not only because they have the moral duty and appropriate means, but such preventive action will halt the spread of jihad to their homeland

Sensitivity to the KARMEN Timing Anomaly at MiniBooNE

We present sensitivities for the MiniBooNE experiment to a rare exotic pion decay producing a massive particle, Q^0. This type of decay represents one possible explanation for the timing anomaly reported by the KARMEN collaboration. MiniBooNE will be able to explore an area of the KARMEN signal that has not yet been investigated

Validity of the "Drift without pronation" sign in conversion disorder.

BACKGROUND: Conversion disorder (CD) is a psychiatric disorder, yet the diagnosis cannot be established without the expertise of a neurologist, as distinguishing a functional from an organic symptom relies on careful bedside examination. Joseph Babinski considered the absence of pronator drift as a 'positive sign' for hysterical paresis but the validity of this sign has never been evaluated. The aim of this study was to examine the sensitivity and specificity of the "drift without pronation" sign. METHODS: Twenty-six patients with unilateral functional upper limb paresis diagnosed with CD (DSM-IV) and a control group of 28 patients with an organic neurological condition were consecutively included. The arm stabilisation test was performed with arms stretched out in full supination, fingers adducted, eyes closed for 10 seconds. A positive "drift without pronation" sign was defined by the presence of a downward drift without pronation. RESULTS: All CD subjects (100%) displayed a positive sign when only 7.1% of organic subjects did (Fisher's p < 0.001). The sign yielded a sensitivity of 100% (95% CI:84%-100%) and a specificity of 93% (95% CI:76%-98%). CONCLUSION: The observation of a "drift without pronation" sign is specific for Conversion Disorder and can be of help in making a quick distinction between organic and functional paresis at the bedside

The value of 'positive' clinical signs for weakness, sensory and gait disorders in conversion disorder: a systematic and narrative review.

Experts in the field of conversion disorder have suggested for the upcoming DSM-V edition to put less weight on the associated psychological factors and to emphasise the role of clinical findings. Indeed, a critical step in reaching a diagnosis of conversion disorder is careful bedside neurological examination, aimed at excluding organic signs and identifying 'positive' signs suggestive of a functional disorder. These positive signs are well known to all trained neurologists but their validity is still not established. The aim of this study is to provide current evidence regarding their sensitivity and specificity. We conducted a systematic search on motor, sensory and gait functional signs in Embase, Medline, PsycINfo from 1965 to June 2012. Studies in English, German or French reporting objective data on more than 10 participants in a controlled design were included in a systematic review. Other relevant signs are discussed in a narrative review. Eleven controlled studies (out of 147 eligible articles) describing 14 signs (7 motor, 5 sensory, 2 gait) reported low sensitivity of 8-100% but high specificity of 92-100%. Studies were evidence class III, only two had a blinded design and none reported on inter-rater reliability of the signs. Clinical signs for functional neurological symptoms are numerous but only 14 have been validated; overall they have low sensitivity but high specificity and their use should thus be recommended, especially with the introduction of the new DSM-V criteria

Analysis of the mechanical behaviour of a 11.5 T Nb3Sn LHC dipole magnet according to the ring collar concept

According to the CERN-LHC (Large Hadron Collider) reference design, 10-tesla twin-aperture NbTi dipoles will be built with split collars that enclose both apertures. As part of the development program towards an experimental 11.5-tesla Nb3Sn LHC dipole magnet, the mechanical implications of an alternative collar concept have been studied with a finite element analysis. In this concept ring shaped collars are shrunk on each finished single aperture coil, thus providing the necessary room-temperature prestress. This system results in a major improvement of the stress distribution in the collars. It is noted that introduction of friction at the sliding planes can cause reopening of the gap between the yoke halves during excitation. This depends strongly on the value of the friction coefficient

The nuclear structure of 24Na and some remarks on the nuclear structure of 25Mg

The experimental data on the 23Na(d, p)24Na reaction at Ed = 7.8 MeV reported in a previous paper 1) (referred to as I) are used for a tentative interpretation of the even parity levels of 24Na at low excitation. Comparison with the interpretation of the nuclear structure of 25Mg leads to assignment of rotational bands in 24Na (table 5 and fig. 6). The spectroscopic data of the (d, p) reaction on 23Na and 24Mg and the position of the intrinsic states of the rotational bands in 24Na and 25Mg yield a reasonable fit to the unified model for [beta] [approximate] 0.2 at [kappa] = 0.08, to be contrasted with a value of [beta] [approximate] 0.4 to 0.5 at [kappa] = 0.08 deduced from the magnetic moment, the total energy of the nucleus in the Nilsson model and the quadrupole moments of nuclei in this region. The rotation-particle coupling distorts the rotational structure of 24Na and 25Mg considerably. The unified model alone and this model including a residual central two-body interaction between the two odd nucleons predict a ground state spin 1+ instead of 4+ for 24Na. Taking into account a two-body spin-orbit force and a tensor force may yield a correct prediction of the ground state spin.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32148/1/0000202.pd

Tight Bounds for MIS in Multichannel Radio Networks

Daum et al. [PODC'13] presented an algorithm that computes a maximal independent set (MIS) within $O(\log^2 n/F+\log n \mathrm{polyloglog} n)$ rounds in an $n$-node multichannel radio network with $F$ communication channels. The paper uses a multichannel variant of the standard graph-based radio network model without collision detection and it assumes that the network graph is a polynomially bounded independence graph (BIG), a natural combinatorial generalization of well-known geographic families. The upper bound of that paper is known to be optimal up to a polyloglog factor. In this paper, we adapt algorithm and analysis to improve the result in two ways. Mainly, we get rid of the polyloglog factor in the runtime and we thus obtain an asymptotically optimal multichannel radio network MIS algorithm. In addition, our new analysis allows to generalize the class of graphs from those with polynomially bounded local independence to graphs where the local independence is bounded by an arbitrary function of the neighborhood radius.Comment: 37 pages, to be published in DISC 201

Development of an experimental 10 T Nb3Sn dipole magnet for the CERN LHC

An experimental 1-m long twill aperture dipole magnet developed using a high-current Nb3Sn conductor in order to attain a magnetic field well beyond 10 T at 4.2 K is described. The emphasis in this Nb3Sn project is on the highest possible field within the known Large Hadron Collider (LHC) twin-aperture configuration. A design target of 11.5 T was chosen