In plain view : the body as site of detection and inscription in serial killer narratives ; ein Essay

At the beginning of every story of murder there is always a body. If the murderer is a serial killer, there is, of course, more than one. More importantly, the bodies left by the serial killer are not likely to be intact and whole. What he leaves behind and what we, the audience, will get to see is the body in pieces, dismembered, scattered. A series of snapshots, partial views, and close-ups, inflicting cold sharp shocks, is all we may glimpse: the head of Benjamin Raspail floating in a jar of formaldehyde in The Silence of the Lambs, a finger removed by the serial killer from his landlord’s hand in Kalifornia, a ziploc bag of fingers recovered from a flooded drainpipe in When The Bough Breaks, a surgically severed hand used to leave misleading fingerprints on a wall at a crime scene in Seven

Neural Dedifferentiation in Relation to Risk for Alzheimer\u27s Disease

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that as an individual\u27s age increases, the task-related spatial extent of neural activation increases. This decrease in neural specificity, or dedifferentiation, is often demonstrated by older adults during challenging cognitive tasks. Cognitively intact individuals at-risk for Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), as deemed by having an apolipoprotein-E ε4 allele or a family history of AD, demonstrate increased fMRI activation as compared to individuals at lower risk. Using a low effort, high accuracy event-related semantic memory task involving the presentation of famous and non-famous names, we examined spatial neural specificity through a measure of dedifferentiation using fMRI. In particular, the goal was to look at degree of dedifferentiation between older healthy subjects with or without risk factors for AD. Our results indicated that while there was not a significant difference between the two groups on the total amount of neural dedifferentiation, there was a significant interaction between stimulus type and risk group. Individuals at-risk for AD displayed greater dedifferentiation for non-famous names yet greater differentiation (i.e., less dedifferentiation) for famous names as compared to the low-risk group. These findings may reflect disturbances in memory formation for individuals at-risk for AD

A general existence result for isothermal two-phase flows with phase transition

Liquid-vapor flows with phase transitions have a wide range of applications. Isothermal two-phase flows described by a single set of isothermal Euler equations, where the mass transfer is modeled by a kinetic relation, have been investigated analytically in (Quarterly of applied Mathematics, vol.\ LXXI 3 (2013), pp.\ 509-540.). This work was restricted to liquid water and its vapor modeled by linear equations of state. The focus of the present work lies on the generalization of the primary results to arbitrary substances, arbitrary equations of state and thus a more general kinetic relation. We prove existence and uniqueness results for Riemann problems. In particular, nucleation and evaporation are discussed

The imposed gift of Versailles: the fiscal effects of restricting the size of Germany’s armed forces, 1924–1929

Weimar’s politicians used to attribute the continuous budget crises after the currency stabilization of 1923–4 to the burden put on the German economy by the Treaty of Versailles, in particular the reparation payments. This argument, which is still popular, neglects the fact that the restriction of the German military to 115,000 men relieved the German central budget considerably. In a counterfactual analysis we assess the savings in additional military costs and compare them to the reparation payments. Depending on the character of the foreign policy pursued by an unrestricted Germany, we find that the net effect of the Treaty’s stipulations on the German central budgets was either much lower than hitherto thought or even positive. This finding gives support to the argument that Germany suffered from home-made political failure even in the relatively stable period from 1924 to 1929.Treaty of Versailles, reparations, military budget, Dawes plan, Weimar Germany, peace dividend

Performance of Polarization-based Stereoscopy Screens

The screen is a key part of stereoscopic display systems using polarization to separate the different channels for each eye. The system crosstalk, characterizing the imperfection of the screen in terms of preserving the polarization of the incoming signal, and the scattering rate, characterizing the ability of the screen to deliver the incoming light to the viewers, determine the image quality of the system. Both values will depend on the viewing angle. In this work we measure the performance of three silver screens and three rear-projection screens. Additionally, we measure the surface texture of the screens using white-light interferometry. While part of our optical results can be explained by the surface roughness, more work is needed to understand the optical properties of the screens from a microscopic model.Comment: almost identical to journal version, but better image qualit

Understanding and exploiting fungal PKS-NRPS biosynthesis in Pyricularia and Magnaporthe species

The fungus Pyricularia oryzae is a major pathogen of rice (Oryzae sativa) that causes substantial loss of yields every year. Remarkably, certain rice strains carrying the Pi33 gene are resistant to strains of P. oryzae encoding a PKS-NRPS called the avirulence conferring enzyme1 (ACE1). By heterologous expression studies in Aspergillus oryzae, more insights into the early biosynthetic steps of this ACE1 metabolite were obtained. O-Methyl-L-tyrosine 71 was identified as the preferred substrate for the adenylation domain of the ACE1 NRPS, indicating that the OME1 gene (O-methyltransferase) belongs to the ACE1 cluster. However, even after all biosynthetic genes of the ACE1 cluster were co-expressed; the produced compound was 88 - a shunt intermediate. In-vitro enzyme assays confirmed that reduction of the aldehyde 90 to the alcohol 88 is catalysed by a native A. oryzae enzyme at an early biosynthetic step; thus stalling the biosynthesis. Ectopic expression of BC1 (transcription factor from the ACE1 BGC) in P. oryzae did not lead to the production of ACE1-related compounds. However, the compound hinnulin A 105 was formed, which belongs to the class of DHN-melanins. A putative partial BGC potentially involved in the biosynthesis of 105 was validated by RT-PCR and a possible biosynthetic pathway was proposed. Another cytochalasan BGC was previously demonstrated to be responsible for the production of pyrichalasin H 50 in Magnaporthe grisea and now revealed to be homologous to the ACE1 BGC. Thus, the 50 BGC was used as model system to elucidate the function of two potential key enzymes in cytochalasan biosynthesis: an αβ-hydrolase (HYD) and a putative Diels-Alderase (pDA). Targeted gene deletion experiments in M. grisea revealed that the HYD PyiE is involved in early steps during the biosynthesis of 50, but its exact role remained elusive. The pDA PyiF was shown to be involved in the intramolecular [4+2] cycloaddition forming 72. Complementation studies with ORF3 from the ACE1 BGC indicated a similar catalytic function of both enzymes. By recombinant gene expression studies in E. coli soluble ORFZ (HYD) and ORF3 (pDA) protein was obtained. In-vitro assays are underway to gain further insights into their biosynthetic role

Still a Long Way to Go: Integrating Antiracist, Anti-oppressive Education in Nursing

Systemic racism is evident in the racialized health outcomes of Indigenous patients in Canada and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (2015) call to action number 24 urges nursing schools to provide antiracism training. Are nursing programs and faculty prepared for inclusion of antiracism education? White nurses are complicit participants in systemic racism, yet our current educational focus on culture cannot adequately address the ongoing racism. Since racism is a systemic problem, solutions must involve policy change. Despite availability of a body of antiracist, anti-oppressive literature developed and used in professions such as teaching, nurses are not currently being equipped to practice identifying and naming oppression so that our own complicity can be dismantled and so that we can teach antiracism to nursing students. Therefore, this research project sought to support nursing faculty by partnering with a community antiracism organization to pilot a workshop introducing antiracist, anti-oppressive education. A small group of white nursing faculty participated in a focus group interview reflecting on the workshop. The transcript data was analyzed using the methodology of poststructural discourse analysis grounded in critical race theory and critical whiteness studies. The analysis seeks to answer the research question: How do white nursing faculty construct themselves, Others, and antiracist education? The findings demonstrated that the participants constructed racial Others and themselves in particular ways consistent with the broader patterns of whiteness in antiracism literature. Participants also demonstrated particular understandings of antiracism education and pointed toward further support they need. The implications of these findings are considered at the level of white faculty members so as to prepare for broader antiracism policies and initiatives within nursing programs

Predicting Cognitive Decline in Older Adults Through Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis

Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with cognitive and structural decline beyond what is seen in normal, healthy aging. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that prior to the onset of measureable cognitive impairment, individuals at-risk for AD demonstrate different patterns of neural activation than individuals at lower risk. Thus, differences in task-activated fMRI may be beneficial in predicting cognitive decline at a pre-symptomatic stage. The present study utilizes multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of baseline fMRI task-related activation to predict cognitive decline, with the hypothesis that famous and non-famous name task activation will discriminate older adults who go on to experience cognitive decline from those who do not. Ninety-nine cognitively intact older adults underwent neuropsychological testing and a semantic memory fMRI task (famous name discrimination). After follow-up neuropsychological testing 18-months later, participants were grouped as Stable (n = 65) or Declining (n = 34) based on \u3e 1.0 SD decline in performance on cognitive measures. MVPA classification accuracy was 90% for stimulus type (famous and non-famous names), thereby supporting the general approach. Mean MVPA classification accuracy for famous and non-famous names was 83% for both the Stable and Declining groups. Finally, MVPA produced greater than chance classification accuracy of participant groups for both famous name activation (56%) and non-famous name activation (55%) as determined via binomial distribution. The results of the current study suggest that MVPA possesses potential in predicting cognitive decline in older adults