Where do we go From Here? Reconsidering Crowd Management and Control in the Wake of the George Floyd Era of Protests.

This research evaluated police response to protests and considered crowd management and control in the wake of the George Floyd era of protests. The research reviewed the history of crowd management and control and evaluated new methods to increase police legitimacy. It proposed the adoption of the Elaborated Social Identity Model of crowd control and provided agencies with additional recommendations that may increase ethical decision-making. It proposed that forming multi-jurisdictional mobile field force teams for crowd management and control will increase the professionalism of the police and help ensure the rights and safety of those participating in First Amendment activities. The research provided constructive considerations for establishing a team and examples of real-world functioning multi-jurisdictional teams in Minnesota. The research acknowledged and evaluated the stress protests place on officers who respond to crowd events and the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder. It suggested that police could use cognitive behavioral therapy to prevent and treat officer stress and post-traumatic stress disorder of officers assigned to crowd management and control teams. Further, it recommended changes to police protocol during protests and additional training to reduce officer stress

The BCL-2 family member BOK promotes KRAS-driven lung cancer progression in a p53-dependent manner.

A variety of cancer entities are driven by KRAS mutations, which remain difficult to target clinically. Survival pathways, such as resistance to cell death, may represent a promising treatment approach in KRAS mutated cancers. Based on the frequently observed genomic deletions of BCL-2-related ovarian killer (BOK) in cancer patients, we explored the function of BOK in a mutant KrasG12D-driven murine model of lung cancer. Using KrasG12D/+ Bok-/- mice, we observed an overall tumor-promoting function of BOK in vivo. Specifically, loss of BOK reduced proliferation both in cell lines in vitro as well as in KrasG12D-driven tumor lesions in vivo. During tumor development in vivo, loss of BOK resulted in a lower tumor burden, with fewer, smaller, and less advanced tumors. Using KrasG12D/+ Tp53Δ/Δ Bok-/- mice, we identified that this phenotype was entirely dependent on the presence of functional p53. Furthermore, analysis of a human dataset of untreated early-stage lung tumors did not identify any common deletion of the BOK locus, independently of the TP53 status or the histopathological classification. Taken together our data indicate that BOK supports tumor progression in Kras-driven lung cancer

OpenFermion: The Electronic Structure Package for Quantum Computers

Quantum simulation of chemistry and materials is predicted to be an important application for both near-term and fault-tolerant quantum devices. However, at present, developing and studying algorithms for these problems can be difficult due to the prohibitive amount of domain knowledge required in both the area of chemistry and quantum algorithms. To help bridge this gap and open the field to more researchers, we have developed the OpenFermion software package (www.openfermion.org). OpenFermion is an open-source software library written largely in Python under an Apache 2.0 license, aimed at enabling the simulation of fermionic models and quantum chemistry problems on quantum hardware. Beginning with an interface to common electronic structure packages, it simplifies the translation between a molecular specification and a quantum circuit for solving or studying the electronic structure problem on a quantum computer, minimizing the amount of domain expertise required to enter the field. The package is designed to be extensible and robust, maintaining high software standards in documentation and testing. This release paper outlines the key motivations behind design choices in OpenFermion and discusses some basic OpenFermion functionality which we believe will aid the community in the development of better quantum algorithms and tools for this exciting area of research.Comment: 22 page

Quantifying Inactive Lithium in Lithium Metal Batteries

Inactive lithium (Li) formation is the immediate cause of capacity loss and catastrophic failure of Li metal batteries. However, the chemical component and the atomic level structure of inactive Li have rarely been studied due to the lack of effective diagnosis tools to accurately differentiate and quantify Li+ in solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) components and the electrically isolated unreacted metallic Li0, which together comprise the inactive Li. Here, by introducing a new analytical method, Titration Gas Chromatography (TGC), we can accurately quantify the contribution from metallic Li0 to the total amount of inactive Li. We uncover that the Li0, rather than the electrochemically formed SEI, dominates the inactive Li and capacity loss. Using cryogenic electron microscopies to further study the microstructure and nanostructure of inactive Li, we find that the Li0 is surrounded by insulating SEI, losing the electronic conductive pathway to the bulk electrode. Coupling the measurements of the Li0 global content to observations of its local atomic structure, we reveal the formation mechanism of inactive Li in different types of electrolytes, and identify the true underlying cause of low Coulombic efficiency in Li metal deposition and stripping. We ultimately propose strategies to enable the highly efficient Li deposition and stripping to enable Li metal anode for next generation high energy batteries

MKID Exoplanet Camera for Subaru SCExAO

We present the MKID Exoplanet Camera (MEC), a z through J band (800–1400 nm) integral field spectrograph located behind The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) at the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea that utilizes Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) as the enabling technology for high contrast imaging. MEC is the first permanently deployed near-infrared MKID instrument and is designed to operate both as an IFU, and as a focal plane wavefront sensor in a multi-kHz feedback loop with SCExAO. The read noise free, fast time domain information attainable by MKIDs allows for the direct probing of fast speckle fluctuations that currently limit the performance of most high contrast imaging systems on the ground and will help MEC achieve its ultimate goal of reaching contrasts of 10⁻⁷ at 2 λ/D. Here we outline the instrument details of MEC including the hardware, firmware, and data reduction and analysis pipeline. We then discuss MEC's current on-sky performance and end with future upgrades and plans

The MKID Exoplanet Camera for Subaru SCExAO

We present the MKID Exoplanet Camera (MEC), a z through J band (800 - 1400 nm) integral field spectrograph located behind The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) at the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea that utilizes Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) as the enabling technology for high contrast imaging. MEC is the first permanently deployed near-infrared MKID instrument and is designed to operate both as an IFU, and as a focal plane wavefront sensor in a multi-kHz feedback loop with SCExAO. The read noise free, fast time domain information attainable by MKIDs allows for the direct probing of fast speckle fluctuations that currently limit the performance of most high contrast imaging systems on the ground and will help MEC achieve its ultimate goal of reaching contrasts of $10^{-7}$ at 2$\lambda / D$. Here we outline the instrument details of MEC including the hardware, firmware, and data reduction and analysis pipeline. We then discuss MEC's current on-sky performance and end with future upgrades and plans.Comment: To be published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacifi

Egocentric Social Network Structure, Health, and Pro-Social Behaviors in a National Panel Study of Americans

Using a population-based, panel survey, we study how egocentric social networks change over time, and the relationship between egocentric network properties and health and pro-social behaviors. We find that the number of prosocial activities is strongly positively associated with having more friends, or an increase in degree, with approximately 0.04 more prosocial behaviors expected for every friend added. Moreover, having more friends is associated with an improvement in health, while being healthy and prosocial is associated with closer relationships. Specifically, a unit increase in health is associated with an expected 0.45 percentage-point increase in average closeness, while adding a prosocial activity is associated with a 0.46 percentage-point increase in the closeness of one’s relationships. Furthermore, a tradeoff between degree and closeness of social contacts was observed. As the number of close social contacts increases by one, the estimated average closeness of each individual contact decreases by approximately three percentage-points. The increased awareness of the importance of spillover effects in health and health care makes the ascertainment of egocentric social networks a valuable complement to investigations of the relationship between socioeconomic factors and health