The Unsubstantiated Claims of Turkat’s Harmful Effects of Child-Custody Evaluations on Children

We welcome the opportunity to respond to Dr. Turkat’s article, Harmful Effects of Child-Custody Evaluations on Children. We believe that there are many flaws and unsubstantiated claims made by Dr. Turkat, and we challenge his primary thesis that child-custody evaluations are, by definition, harmful. Dr. Turkat sets the tone in his first paragraph with his sweeping statements that “child-custody evaluations [have] no scientific validity” and “there is still no scientific evidence whatsoever that a child-custody evaluation results in beneficial outcomes for the children involved.” His article includes too many generalized, unsupported charges to allow it to pass without challenge. We hope that our comments will contribute to more informed discussion clarifying misunderstandings about the role and value of custody evaluations and how they should properly be introduced into court proceedings

The Unsubstantiated Claims of Turkat’s Harmful Effects of Child-Custody Evaluations on Children

We welcome the opportunity to respond to Dr. Turkat’s article, Harmful Effects of Child-Custody Evaluations on Children. We believe that there are many flaws and unsubstantiated claims made by Dr. Turkat, and we challenge his primary thesis that child-custody evaluations are, by definition, harmful. Dr. Turkat sets the tone in his first paragraph with his sweeping statements that “child-custody evaluations [have] no scientific validity” and “there is still no scientific evidence whatsoever that a child-custody evaluation results in beneficial outcomes for the children involved.” His article includes too many generalized, unsupported charges to allow it to pass without challenge. We hope that our comments will contribute to more informed discussion clarifying misunderstandings about the role and value of custody evaluations and how they should properly be introduced into court proceedings

High Force Unimanual Handgrip Contractions Increase Ipsilateral Sensorimotor Activation and Functional Connectivity

Imaging and brain stimulation studies seem to correct the classical understanding of how brain networks, rather than contralateral focal areas, control the generation of unimanual voluntary force. However, the scaling and hemispheric-specificity of network activation remain less understood. Using fMRI, we examined the effects of parametrically increasing right-handgrip force on activation and functional connectivity among the sensorimotor network bilaterally with 25%, 50%, and 75% maximal voluntary contractions (MVC). High force (75% MVC) unimanual handgrip contractions resulted in greater ipsilateral motor activation and functional connectivity with the contralateral hemisphere compared to a low force 25% MVC condition. The ipsilateral motor cortex activation and network strength correlated with relative handgrip force (% MVC). Increases in unimanual handgrip force resulted in greater ipsilateral sensorimotor activation and greater functional connectivity between hemispheres within the sensorimotor network. (C) 2020 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Gamma-Ray Bursts and Magnetars as Possible Sources of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: Correlation of Cosmic Ray Event Positions with IRAS Galaxies

We use the two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test to study the correlation between the 60 cosmic ray events above 4x10^19 eV from the AGASA experiment and the positions of infrared luminous galaxies from the IRAS PSCz catalog. These galaxies are expected to be hosts to gamma ray bursts (GRB) and magnetars, both of which are associated with core collapse supernovae and have been proposed as possible acceleration sites for ultra high energy cosmic rays. We find consistency between the models and the AGASA events to have been drawn from the same underlying distribution of positions on the sky with KS probabilities ~50%. Application of the same test to the 11 highest AGASA events above 10^20 eV, however, yields a KS probability of < 0.5%, rejecting the models at >99.5% significance level. Taken at face value, these highest energy results suggest that the existing cosmic ray events above 10^20 eV do not owe their origin to long burst GRBs, rapidly rotating magnetars, or any other events associated with core collapse supernovae. The larger data set expected from the AUGER experiment will test whether this conclusion is real or is a statistical fluke that we estimate to be at the 2 sigma level.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Final Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Opinion: Why Protect Nature? Rethinking Values and the Environment

A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches

Planet Occurrence within 0.25 AU of Solar-type Stars from Kepler

We report the distribution of planets as a function of planet radius (R_p), orbital period (P), and stellar effective temperature (Teff) for P < 50 day orbits around GK stars. These results are based on the 1,235 planets (formally "planet candidates") from the Kepler mission that include a nearly complete set of detected planets as small as 2 Earth radii (Re). For each of the 156,000 target stars we assess the detectability of planets as a function of R_p and P. We also correct for the geometric probability of transit, R*/a. We consider first stars within the "solar subset" having Teff = 4100-6100 K, logg = 4.0-4.9, and Kepler magnitude Kp < 15 mag. We include only those stars having noise low enough to permit detection of planets down to 2 Re. We count planets in small domains of R_p and P and divide by the included target stars to calculate planet occurrence in each domain. Occurrence of planets varies by more than three orders of magnitude and increases substantially down to the smallest radius (2 Re) and out to the longest orbital period (50 days, ~0.25 AU) in our study. For P < 50 days, the radius distribution is given by a power law, df/dlogR= k R^\alpha. This rapid increase in planet occurrence with decreasing planet size agrees with core-accretion, but disagrees with population synthesis models. We fit occurrence as a function of P to a power law model with an exponential cutoff below a critical period P_0. For smaller planets, P_0 has larger values, suggesting that the "parking distance" for migrating planets moves outward with decreasing planet size. We also measured planet occurrence over Teff = 3600-7100 K, spanning M0 to F2 dwarfs. The occurrence of 2-4 Re planets in the Kepler field increases with decreasing Teff, making these small planets seven times more abundant around cool stars than the hottest stars in our sample. [abridged]Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 22 pages, 10 figure

In the dedicated pursuit of dedicated capital: restoring an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism

Tony Blair’s landslide electoral victory on May 1 (New Labour Day?) presents the party in power with a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, opportunity to revitalise and modernise Britain’s ailing and antiquated manufacturing economy.* If it is to do so, it must remain true to its long-standing (indeed, historic) commitment to restore an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism. In this paper we argue that this in turn requires that the party reject the very neo-liberal orthodoxies which it offered to the electorate as evidence of its competence, moderation and ‘modernisation’, which is has internalised, and which it apparently now views as circumscribing the parameters of the politically and economically possible

Characteristics of Kepler Planetary Candidates Based on the First Data Set: The Majority are Found to be Neptune-Size and Smaller

In the spring of 2009, the Kepler Mission commenced high-precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to determine the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets, conduct a guest observer program, and obtain asteroseismic data on a wide variety of stars. On 15 June 2010 the Kepler Mission released data from the first quarter of observations. At the time of this publication, 706 stars from this first data set have exoplanet candidates with sizes from as small as that of the Earth to larger than that of Jupiter. Here we give the identity and characteristics of 306 released stars with planetary candidates. Data for the remaining 400 stars with planetary candidates will be released in February 2011. Over half the candidates on the released list have radii less than half that of Jupiter. The released stars include five possible multi-planet systems. One of these has two Neptune-size (2.3 and 2.5 Earth-radius) candidates with near-resonant periods.Comment: Paper to accompany Kepler's June 15, 2010 data release; submitted to Astrophysical Journal Figures 1,2,& 3 revised. Improved labeling on all figures. Slight changes to planet frequencies in result