The Policy Requirements of Gene-Environment Research

Dr. Paul Wise began with a brief overview of policy formation, specifically that related to child development. He then delved into the changing taxonomy of disease and its implications for policy. He concluded by stressing the need for frameworks for collective action to reframe policy in terms of gene-environment interactions.

To watch Dr. Wise’s presentation, please see the Panel 4 "Google Video posting.":http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1375553372274016362&hl=en Panel 4 also features presentations by Dr. Richard Sharp of the Cleveland Clinic on "Disease Advocacy and Contested Environments" and by Professor Sara Shostak of Brandeis University on "Sealing Complexity: Genetics, Social Structure and Policy Environments."

To view more of the Capturing Complexity Symposium, please see the Panel 5 "Google Video posting,":http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2359679706574224441&hl=en featuring Drs. Marc Feldman and Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University and Sir Michael Rutter of the Institute of Psychiatry, London. Dr. Feldman explored the lack of consideration of environmental influences in recent genome-wide association studies. Dr. Ehrlich also stressed the importance of the environment, and Sir Rutter concluded by responding to evocative topics brought up earlier in the Symposium such as personalized insurance policies, causation models and translational research.

To view the final deliberative discussion, involving all panelists and moderated by Professor Hank Greely, JD, please see the Panel 6 "Google Video posting.":http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7026328789822465424&hl=e

Top-Quark Mass and Bottom-Quark Decay

The possibility of a long B-meson lifetime is explored, in which case the weak mixing angles θ_2 and θ_3 are quite small. This allows the derivation of a lower bound on the top-quark mass as a function of the B-meson lifetime, by comparison of the short-distance prediction for the CP-nonconservation parameter ε with its experimental value. The bound is significant for τ_B>4×10^(-13) s

Cotton Mathers\u27s Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition

ABSTRACT Although Cotton Mather, as the official chronicler of the 1692 Salem witch trials, is infamously associated with those events, and excerpts from his apologia on Salem, Wonders of the Invisible World, are widely anthologized today, no annotated critical edition of the entire work has appeared in print since the nineteenth century. This present edition of Wonders seeks to remedy this lacuna in modern scholarship. In Wonders, Mather applies both his views on witchcraft and on millennialism to events at Salem. This edition to Mather\u27s Wonders presents this seventeenth-century text beside an integrated theory of the initial causes of the Salem witch panic. The juxtaposition of the probable natural causes of Salem\u27s bewitchment with Mather\u27s implausible explanations exposes the disingenuousness of his writing about Salem. My theory of what happened at Salem includes the probability that a group of conspirators led by the Rev. Samuel Parris deliberately orchestrated the witchcraft and that a plant, the thorn apple, used in Algonquian initiation rites, caused the initial symptoms of bewitchment (39-189). Furthermore, key spectral evidence used at the Salem witch trials and recorded by Mather in Wonders appears to have been generated by intense nightmares, commonly thought at the time to be witch visitations, resulting from what is today termed sleep paralysis (215-310). This dissertation provides a detailed look at some of the testimony given in the Salem court records and in Wonders of the Invisible World as it relates to the interpretation in folklore of the phenomenology of nightmares associated with sleep paralysis. The third chapter of this dissertation focuses extensively on Mather\u27s text as a disingenuous response to the Salem witch trials (320-456). The final section of chapter three posits a Scythian or Eurasian connection between Swedish and Salem witchcraft. Similarities in shamanic practices among respective indigenous populations of Lapland, Eurasia, Asia, and New England, caused the devil\u27s involvement in both the visible and invisible worlds to appear more than theoretical to writers like Jose Acosta, Johannes Scheffer, Nicholas Fuller, Joseph Mede, Anthony Horneck, and Cotton Mather, inducing Mather to include a lengthy abstract of the Swedish account in Wonders (404-449)

The Ursinus Weekly, February 20, 1939

Y\u27s revive bowery for Friday party • Forum to present contrasting views • Language professors recovering from grippe • Hendricks and Baugh receive degrees at college 70th birthday celebration • Jitterbug pair to star in black and white hop • Fine arts-fine living is conference theme; delegates to attend March Pocono conclave • Sibbald announces schedule of plays and play tryouts • German professor to visit Ursinus this week • Scholars\u27 costumes bring pomp and color of medieval life to modern academic procession • Poling talks in vespers; Temple students coming • Phi Psi exhibits water-colors • Papal situation discussed • Tuberculosis films shown • Susceptible males safe; Lorelei dance a has been • Bears drop pair of two-point thrillers in league • Girls upset Bryn Mawr, Rosemont; Harshaw high • Large crowd sees A century in baseball on Tuesday • Hearey leads brain-busters as LaSalle wins on radio • Bear cubs lose weeks games to F. and M., Muhlenberg fives • Wrestlers lose to G-burg, 33-3 • Grippe puts Thompson in bed • Hopkins, college orchestra syncopate at Temple formal • Newman Club to elect • Women debate with Temple, Immaculata, Lebanon Valley • Men hold three home, three away debates during week • Insane Spain in terse versehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1861/thumbnail.jp