Tool for Transformation: Cooperative Inquiry as a Process for Healing from Internalized Oppression

This paper documents how cooperative inquiry can be a transformative tool for groups – in this case, a diverse group of Jewish women – to make meaning from their experience of internalized oppression and to create healing strategies

From Combined Arms to Combined Intelligence: Philosophy, Doctrine and Operations

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2010.537870‘Combined arms’ operations have been a central tenet of military planning for nearly a century. They call for the integration of land, air and sea forces to achieve battlefield synergies. This philosophy has equal application to intelligence. The article advances the combined arms concept as a way to foster synergies across the intelligence disciplines – geospatial, signals, measures and signals, human, and most recently open source intelligence. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of each discipline in forming an analytical foundation for such a ‘combined intelligence’ and calls for developing theory to integrate the intelligence disciplines. The authors suggest that combined intelligence would confer several benefits, including more effective collection efforts and stronger countermeasures against adversary denial and deception. The article closes by calling for development of concepts and doctrine to put combined intelligence into practice

COS-Weak: Probing the CGM using analogs of weak Mg II absorbers at z < 0.3

We present a sample of 34 weak metal line absorbers at $z< 0.3$ complied via the simultaneous detections ($3\sigma$) of the SiII$\lambda1260$ and CII$\lambda1334$ absorption lines, with $W_{r}$(SiII)$<0.2$ \AA\ and $W_{r}$(CII)$<0.3$ \AA, in archival HST/COS spectra. Our sample increases the number of known low-$z$ "weak absorbers" by a factor of $>5$. The column densities of HI and low-ionization metal lines obtained from Voigt profile fitting are used to build simple photoionization models using CLOUDY. The inferred densities and total hydrogen column densities are in the ranges of $-3.3 < \log n_{\rm H}/{\rm cm^{-3}} < -2.4$ and $16.0 < \log N_{\rm H}/{\rm cm^{-2}}<20.3$, respectively. The line of sight thicknesses of the absorbers have a wide range of $\sim$1 pc$-$50 kpc with a median value of $\sim$500 pc. The high-ionization OVI absorption, detected in 12/18 cases, always stems from a different gas-phase. Most importantly, 85% (50%) of these absorbers show a metallicity of $\rm [Si/H] > -1.0$ (0.0). The fraction of systems showing high metallicity (i.e., $\rm [Si/H]>-1.0$) in our sample is significantly higher than the HI-selected sample (Wotta et al. 2016) and the galaxy-selected sample (Prochaska et al. 2017) of absorbers probing the circum-galactic medium (CGM) at similar redshift. A search for galaxies has revealed a significant galaxy-overdensity around these weak absorbers compared to random places with a median impact parameter of 166 kpc to the nearest galaxy. Moreover, we find the presence of multiple galaxies in $\sim80$% of the cases, suggesting group environments. The observed $d\mathcal{N}/dz$ of $0.8\pm0.2$ indicates that such metal-enriched, compact, dense structures are ubiquitous in the halos of low-$z$ galaxies that are in groups. We suggest that these are transient structures that are related to outflows and/or stripping of metal-rich gas from galaxies.Comment: Published (2018MNRAS.476.4965M) after minor revision. Appendix A is newly added

Symptomatic Cerebral Vasospasm after Surgical Ligation of Unruptured Aneurysms

Background Cerebral artery vasospasm accounts for the majority of delayed neurological deficits in ruptured aneurysm patients. We report two cases and review the literature of patients who developed symptomatic vasospasm after treatment for unruptured cerebral artery aneurysms with clip ligation. Pre- and post-operative imaging and studies revealed absence of subarachnoid or focal hemorrhage. Case Description In a series of 104 consecutive cerebral artery aneurysm patients that underwent uncomplicated ligation without intra-operative rupture, two patients developed delayed neurologic deficits due to severe cerebral vasospasm. Both patients had no stigmata of rupture and were treated electively. Post-operative transcranial dopplers and angiography facilitated the early recognition of vasospasm. Permanent neurologic injury was prevented with the use of hypertensive, hemodilution and hyperdynamic (HHH) therapy along with endovascular treatment, intra-arterial papaverine and angioplasty. Conclusion After uncomplicated treatment of unruptured intracranial aneurysms, the cerebral vasculature may proceed to severe vasospasm by an unrecognized mechanism. This can be reversed with institution of HHH and endovascular therapy

Didactic Software for Autistic Children

In this paper we describe the aims and requirements of a project devoted to designing and developing Open Source didactic Software (SW) for children in the autism disorder spectrum, conforming to the Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) learning technique. In this context, participatory design with therapists and child?s parents is necessary to ensure a usable product that responds to these children?s special needs and respects education principles and constraints of the ABA methodology

Pharmacokinetic modeling of cortisol binding to dietary fiber in the gastrointestinal tract

Abstract only availableCortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone produced in the adrenal cortex during stressful situations. The purpose of this project was to determine whether cortisol binds to dietary fiber and to design a pharmacokinetic model to predict whether or not fiber has a significant binding capacity in the human gastrointestinal tract. Studies have shown that estrogen binds to dietary fiber. Coumesterol, a cholesterol derived steroid structurally similar to estrogen, is also thought to bind to dietary fiber. The fluorescence of coumestrol bound to oat, wheat and psyllium fiber was analyzed in order to determine the binding capacities of each. This indicates that steroids have different binding capacities important in the pharmacokinetic model. This model would provide useful information capable of predicting physiological changes due to changes in dietary habits as well as medicines such as antibiotics that may alter steroid secretion. If steroids do have a recycling route and dietary fiber has a significant binding capacity in the human body then an increase in dietary fiber may result in a decrease in cortisol.NSF-REU Program in Biosystems Modeling and Analysi