Illinois birds, Corvidae

Bibliography: p. 37-42

Is It Acceptable for Juveniles to be Tried as Adults?

The adult court system has increasingly become a court for violent juveniles over time. Despite all the age restraints and changes in the law, the criminal court has still charged juveniles as young as 11 years old. This practice is unconstitutional and immoral. The constitution gives all American citizens the right to due process of law and the right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or happiness in the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Trying juveniles as adults violates all three of these proposed amendments. This practice also creates issues due to the lack of attention to juvenile competency. A brain does not have a fully developed frontal lobe until approximately age 21, leaving juveniles with a brain incapable of making decisions and analyzing situations as adults can do. When juveniles are being tried for their violent crimes, the criminal court needs to take the lack of brain development into account. Not only are they incapable of thought-provoking decision-making, but also, they are unable to understand the due process of law and rights they are deserved. A juvenile does not understand their rights in criminal court as adults understand them. Lastly, juveniles are vulnerable and impressionable and deserve rehabilitation tailored to their needs. The adult prison system is not suitable for juveniles, no matter their crime. To best serve the juveniles, changes need to be made to both the juvenile justice system and juvenile rehabilitation system. Once the juvenile rehabilitation program has been remodeled and more programs have been set in place, there will no longer be a need for juveniles to be tried as adults in criminal court. Keeping juveniles in the juvenile justice system will deter more juvenile offenders, reduce juvenile re-offending, and remove juveniles from criminal court

The New Diagnostic Team

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in the recently issued report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care outlined eight major recommendations to improve the quality and safety of diagnosis. The #1 recommendation was to improve teamwork in the diagnostic process. This is a major departure from the classical approach, where the physician is solely responsible for diagnosis. In the new, patient-centric vision, the core team encompasses the patient, the physician and the associated nursing staff, with each playing an active role in the process. The expanded diagnostic team includes pathologists, radiologists, allied health professionals, medical librarians, and others. We review the roles that each of these team members will need to assume, and suggest first steps that each new team member can take to achieve this new dynami

Counting unstained, confluent cells by modified bright-field microscopy

We present a very simple procedure yielding high-contrast images of adherent, confluent cells such as human neuroblastoma (SH-EP) cells by ordinary bright-field microscopy. Cells are illuminated through a color filter and a pinhole aperture placed between the condenser and the cell culture surface. Refraction by each cell body generates a sharp, bright spot when the image is defocused. The technique allows robust, automatic cell counting from a single bright-field image in a wide range of focal positions using free, readily available image-analysis tools. Contrast may be enhanced by swelling cell bodies with a brief incubation in PBS. The procedure was benchmarked against manual and automated counting of fluorescently labeled cell nuclei. Counts from day-old and freshly seeded plates were compared in a range of densities, from sparse to densely overgrown. On average, bright-field images produced the same counts as fluorescence images, with less than 5% error. This method will allow routine cell counting using a plain bright-field microscope without cell-line modification or cell staining

Counting unstained, confluent cells by modified bright-field microscopy

We present a very simple procedure yielding high-contrast images of adherent, confluent cells such as human neuroblastoma (SH-EP) cells by ordinary bright-field microscopy. Cells are illuminated through a color filter and a pinhole aperture placed between the condenser and the cell culture surface. Refraction by each cell body generates a sharp, bright spot when the image is defocused. The technique allows robust, automatic cell counting from a single bright-field image in a wide range of focal positions using free, readily available image-analysis tools. Contrast may be enhanced by swelling cell bodies with a brief incubation in PBS. The procedure was benchmarked against manual and automated counting of fluorescently labeled cell nuclei. Counts from day-old and freshly seeded plates were compared in a range of densities, from sparse to densely overgrown. On average, bright-field images produced the same counts as fluorescence images, with less than 5% error. This method will allow routine cell counting using a plain bright-field microscope without cell-line modification or cell staining

Integrating Watershed Management Across the Urban–Rural Interface: Opportunities for Extension Watershed Programs

Urban–rural partnerships are increasingly viewed as a critical component of efforts to improve water quality at the watershed scale. We present an opportunity for such partnerships, using an off-site best management practice (BMP) program developed between the City of Wichita and agricultural producers in the Little Arkansas River Watershed of south-central Kansas as an example. We highlight the critical role of Extension specialists in developing this and similar programs, the success of which hinges on targeted BMP implementation and relationships with agricultural producers

Response of Feedlot Lambs to Chlortetracycline and Sulfamethazine

The objective of this experiment was to test the effects of chlortetracycline and sulfamethazine alone and in combination on feedlot performance and incidence of diseases of lambs weaned at an early age, shipped and finished in drylot with a high-concentrate ration

Improving the analysis of near-infrared spectroscopy data with multivariate classification of hemodynamic patterns: a theoretical formulation and validation

Objective. The statistical analysis of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data based on the general linear model (GLM) is often made difficult by serial correlations, high inter-subject variability of the hemodynamic response, and the presence of motion artifacts. In this work we propose to extract information on the pattern of hemodynamic activations without using any a priori model for the data, by classifying the channels as 'active' or 'not active' with a multivariate classifier based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Approach. This work is developed in two steps. First we compared the performance of the two analyses, using a synthetic approach in which simulated hemodynamic activations were combined with either simulated or real resting-state fNIRS data. This procedure allowed for exact quantification of the classification accuracies of GLM and LDA. In the case of real resting-state data, the correlations between classification accuracy and demographic characteristics were investigated by means of a Linear Mixed Model. In the second step, to further characterize the reliability of the newly proposed analysis method, we conducted an experiment in which participants had to perform a simple motor task and data were analyzed with the LDA-based classifier as well as with the standard GLM analysis. Main results. The results of the simulation study show that the LDA-based method achieves higher classification accuracies than the GLM analysis, and that the LDA results are more uniform across different subjects and, in contrast to the accuracies achieved by the GLM analysis, have no significant correlations with any of the demographic characteristics. Findings from the real-data experiment are consistent with the results of the real-plus-simulation study, in that the GLM-analysis results show greater inter-subject variability than do the corresponding LDA results. Significance. The results obtained suggest that the outcome of GLM analysis is highly vulnerable to violations of theoretical assumptions, and that therefore a data-driven approach such as that provided by the proposed LDA-based method is to be favored.EC/H2020/641858/EU/Understanding and predicting developmental language abilities and disorders in multilingual Europe/PREDICTABL