Book review: Taiwan’s democracy challenged: the Chen Shui-bian years edited by Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond and Kharis Templeman

In Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years, editors Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond and Kharis Templeman provide a reassessment of Taiwan’s political landscape between 2000 and 2008: the years in which Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s first non-Kuomintang president, was in office. This new systematic, impartial and evidence-based evaluation of Chen’s presidency is a must-read for students and scholars researching contemporary Taiwanese politics, finds M. Bob Kao

Book review: the myth of the litigious society: why we don’t sue by David M. Engel

In The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don’t Sue, David M. Engel challenges the assumption that the USA is a compensation culture, instead showing that victims of injuries usually do not seek meaningful redress. Although the book’s central claim would be strengthened by evidence from more recent studies than those presented in the text, M. Bob Kao finds this a convincing argument in favour of shifting a hitherto dominant narrative to the potential benefit of victims of injury who may otherwise forego their claims

Book review: the ashgate research companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism edited by David Paternotte and Manon Tremblay

Edited by David Paternotte and Manon Tremblay, The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism provides 22 chapters that seek to give a comprehensive overview of the claims, strategies and mobilisations of lesbian and gay activism across a number of different countries. Although this is a solid introductory volume that offers important and insightful perspectives on the field, M. Bob Kao nonetheless finds that the scope of the project is hindered by its largely Western focus

Book review: who is worthy of protection? Gender-based asylum and US immigration politics by Meghana Nayak

In Who is Worthy of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and US Immigration Politics, Meghana Nayak examines gender-based asylum in the United States, focusing on the narratives through which certain asylees are framed as being more ‘worthy’ than others. While M. Bob Kao welcomes Nayak’s recommendations regarding how feminist scholars can productively intervene in the asylum process, he nonetheless questions whether all of these arguments can be equally put into practice by lawyers navigating the challenges and constraints of the legal system in their daily working lives

Intact Parathyroid Hormone: Performance and Clinical Utility of an Automated Assay Based on High-Performance Immunoaffinity Chromatography and Chemiluminescence Detection

The performance and clinical utility of an automated assay of intact parathyroid hormone (parathyrin, PTH) are evaluated. The method is based on the extraction of PTH from plasma by an HPLC column containing immobilized anti-(44-68 PTH) antibodies. The PTH retained is detected with a postcolumn reactor and use of anti-(1--34 PTH) chemiluminescent-labeled antibodies. The total cycle time of the assay is 6.5 mm per injection after a 1-h incubation.The lower limit of detection for PTH in a 66-pL plasma sample was 0.5 pmol/L based on peak heights and 0.2 pmol/L based on peak areas. Mean analytical recovery for PTH added to plasma was 97%. The withinday precisions (CVs) for 4.2 and 30 pmol/L PTH plasma samples were 9.2% and 5.6% and the day-to-day precisions were 10.3% and 5.7%, respectively. No significant interferences from 1-34,44-68, or 53-84 PTH fragments were noted, even at highly increased concentrations of fragments. The correlation of results with those of a manual assay of intact PTH was 0.97, and the results showed good agreement with disease state for patients with hypo- or hyperparathyroidism. The specificity of the assay for primary hyperparathyroldism was \u3e95%. We discuss the advantages (speed and quality control) of this approach over current immunoassays and the potential use of this method for detecting other analytes

Review of legal frameworks, standards and best practices in verification and assurance for infrastructure inspection robotics

The purpose of this deliverable is to provide a single point of reference on the safety, regulatory and liability issues for operating robots in the European Union. The deliverable describes a state of the art and the well-known normative frameworks for assuring safety on the one hand and examines the regulatory and legal liability issues related to operating robots on the other. We organised the report based on the required structure of the deliverable with taking into consideration the different robots technologies, as recognised at the European Union and international level. This deliverable is closely related to other deliverables which describe the current state of the arts and normative framework from a different point of view. This review report is intended as a guiding document to be used by all project partners. There is currently no single framework to regulate robotics technology in Europe. Different types of robots, depending on where they operate—which Member State and in the air, on land, or in the waters—may be subject to various existing laws or regulations on the international, European Union, Member State levels. The regulations include legal standards and industry guidelines on the robot technologies themselves and on the developers, manufacturers, suppliers, and operators that must be met before these new technologies can be legally and safely deployed. Specific types of robots are subject to different regulatory regimes, and depending on the type of the robot, the applicable regulations may be harmonised across Europe or differ in each Member State. Current liability regimes on the EU and Member State levels govern the situations in which the humans associated with the robots are civilly liable for the damage they cause to property or injuries to persons. The appropriate legal regime could be fault-based, strict liability, or product liability depending on the particular circumstances. While existing laws are sufficient to address liability issues given the current state of the technology, further scientific advances that lead to increasingly sophisticated robots may raise problems on how to appropriately assign responsibility

A Directed RNAi Screen Based on Larval Growth Arrest Reveals New Modifiers of C. elegans Insulin Signaling

Genes regulating Caenorhabditis elegans insulin/IGF signaling (IIS) have largely been identified on the basis of their involvement in dauer development or longevity. A third IIS phenotype is the first larval stage (L1) diapause, which is also influenced by asna-1, a regulator of DAF-28/insulin secretion. We reasoned that new regulators of IIS strength might be identified in screens based on the L1 diapause and the asna-1 phenotype. Eighty- six genes were selected for analysis by virtue of their predicted interaction with ASNA-1 and screened for asna-1-like larval arrest. ykt-6, mrps-2, mrps-10 and mrpl-43 were identified as genes which, when inactivated, caused larval arrest without any associated feeding defects. Several tests indicated that IIS strength was weaker and that insulin secretion was defective in these animals. This study highlights the role of the Golgi network and the mitochondria in insulin secretion and provides a new list of genes that modulate IIS in C. elegans

A tailored approach to horizon scanning for cancer medicines

BACKGROUND: Horizon scanning (HS) is the systematic identification of emerging therapies to inform policy and decision-makers. We developed an agile and tailored HS methodology that combined multi-criteria decision analysis weighting and Delphi rounds. As secondary objectives, we aimed to identify new medicines in melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer and colorectal cancer most likely to impact the Australian government's pharmaceutical budget by 2025 and to compare clinician and consumer priorities in cancer medicine reimbursement.METHOD: Three cancer-specific clinician panels (total n = 27) and a consumer panel (n = 7) were formed. Six prioritisation criteria were developed with consumer input. Criteria weightings were elicited using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Candidate medicines were identified and filtered from a primary database and validated against secondary and tertiary sources. Clinician panels participated in a three-round Delphi survey to identify and score the top five medicines in each cancer type.RESULTS: The AHP and Delphi process was completed in eight weeks. Prioritisation criteria focused on toxicity, quality of life (QoL), cost savings, strength of evidence, survival, and unmet need. In both curative and non-curative settings, consumers prioritised toxicity and QoL over survival gains, whereas clinicians prioritised survival. HS results project the ongoing prevalence of high-cost medicines. Since completion in October 2021, the HS has identified 70 % of relevant medicines submitted for Pharmaceutical Benefit Advisory Committee assessment and 60% of the medicines that received a positive recommendation.CONCLUSION: Tested in the Australian context, our method appears to be an efficient and flexible approach to HS that can be tailored to address specific disease types by using elicited weights to prioritise according to incremental value from both a consumer and clinical perspective.POLICY SUMMARY: Since HS is of global interest, our example provides a reproducible blueprint for adaptation to other healthcare settings that integrates consumer input and priorities.</p

Lack of associations of ten candidate coronary heart disease risk genetic variants and subclinical atherosclerosis in four U.S. populations: The Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study

A number of genetic variants have been discovered by recent genome-wide association studies for their associations with clinical coronary heart disease (CHD). However, it is unclear whether these variants are also associated with the development of CHD as measured by subclinical atherosclerosis phenotypes, ankle brachial index (ABI), carotid artery intima-media thickness (cIMT) and carotid plaque

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29