In Morocco, Illegitimate Children Struggle for Rights

In Morocco, Illegitimate Children Struggle for Rights 153 illegitimate children are born in Morocco every day. These children, born to unwed mothers, are among the lowest ranks of society. They live without an education, healthcare or the possibility of official employment. Legally, illegitimate children have no rights. They cannot have their identities recognized without a mother registering them with a marriage license as proof of a legal sexual relationship. The Penal Code punishes any couple with relations out of wedlock and parents who do not register their children with the state risk imprisonment. This story describes and documents the daily struggle of life without identity in Morocco, focusing on two specific cases. We introduce Khadija, a young homeless mother of four, and Aziza Kanzi, a 39-year-old with five unregistered children living in a slum just outside the capital city of Rabat. The story is accompanied by a photo essay of Kanzi and her children in their home

Preventing obesity and cardiovascular disease in at-risk youth

The literature review that was conducted focuses on exploring the most effective way to prevent development of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) as a late effect of childhood obesity or risk thereof. Our research focused on the 8-10 year old at-risk and obese pediatric populations and whether the use of interactive educational interventions in the community setting can be of use to reduce CVD development and improve overall health status. Our findings determined that interactive educational interventions early in childhood can improve health outcomes for these populations and prevent subsequent development of CVD. We minimized the inclusion of all research whose evidence was categorized as a level I. Limitations to our review included focusing on the pediatric population between the ages of 8 and 10 years at risk for or already diagnosed as obese, rather than on the entirety of the population. A second limitation involves research in that it should be conducted to determine how results vary between children who modify both diet and exercise routines as compared to those who only modify one

Controlled tuning of whispering gallery modes of GaN/InGaN microdisk cavities

Controlled tuning of the whispering gallery modes of GaN/InGaN {\mu}-disk cavities is demonstrated. The whispering gallery mode (WGM) tuning is achieved at room temperature by immersing the {\mu}-disks in water and irradiating with ultraviolet (UV) laser. The tuning rate can be controlled by varying the laser excitation power, with a nanometer precision accessible at low excitation power (~ several {\mu}W). The selective oxidation mechanism is proposed to explain the results and supported by theoretical analysis. The tuning of WGMs in GaN/InGaN {\mu}-disk cavities may have important implication in cavity quantum electrodynamics and the development of efficient light emitting devices

Effects of Partnerships between Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities and Service Dogs

Background: With increasing frequency, service dogs are being placed with children with developmental disabilities (DDs). Occupational therapists and other professionals have advocated for the therapeutic use of service dog partnerships to facilitate greater independence and quality of life. There are no studies that examine service dog intervention with adolescents. Method: This study focused on the effects of partnerships between service dogs and three participant dyads, each including an adolescent with DDs and a parent. A single-subject, alternating treatment design was used to compare the effects of two conditions (service dog present or not present). The effects were examined for adolescents’ anxiety behaviors during transitions and during grocery store shopping, for social interactions during grocery store shopping, and for parents’ reported levels of stress. Results: Findings were that service dog partnerships reduced the presence of anxiety behaviors during transitions for one of the three adolescents; reduced the presence of anxiety behaviors during grocery store visits for two of the three adolescents; increased social interactions for all three of the participant dyads; and had no meaningful impact on self-reported parental stress level. Conclusion: For adolescents with DDs, professionals may want to consider service dog partnerships to decrease anxiety behaviors and increase social interactions in the community

A full free spectral range tuning of p-i-n doped Gallium Nitride microdisk cavity

Effective, permanent tuning of the whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of p-i-n doped GaN microdisk cavity with embedded InGaN quantum dots over one free spectral range is successfully demonstrated by irradiating the microdisks with a ultraviolet laser (380nm) in DI water. For incident laser powers between 150 and 960 nW, the tuning rate varies linearly. Etching of the top surface of the cavity is proposed as the driving force for the observed shift in WGMs, and is supported by experiments. The tuning for GaN/InGaN microdisk cavities is an important step for deterministically realizing novel nanophotonic devices for studying cavity quantum electrodynamics

Distinctive signature of indium gallium nitride quantum dot lasing in microdisk cavities.

Low-threshold lasers realized within compact, high-quality optical cavities enable a variety of nanophotonics applications. Gallium nitride materials containing indium gallium nitride (InGaN) quantum dots and quantum wells offer an outstanding platform to study light-matter interactions and realize practical devices such as efficient light-emitting diodes and nanolasers. Despite progress in the growth and characterization of InGaN quantum dots, their advantages as the gain medium in low-threshold lasers have not been clearly demonstrated. This work seeks to better understand the reasons for these limitations by focusing on the simpler, limited-mode microdisk cavities, and by carrying out comparisons of lasing dynamics in those cavities using varying gain media including InGaN quantum wells, fragmented quantum wells, and a combination of fragmented quantum wells with quantum dots. For each gain medium, we use the distinctive, high-quality (Q ∼ 5,500) modes of the cavities, and the change in the highest-intensity mode as a function of pump power to better understand the dominant radiative processes. The variations of threshold power and lasing wavelength as a function of gain medium help us identify the possible limitations to lower-threshold lasing with quantum dot active medium. In addition, we have identified a distinctive lasing signature for quantum dot materials, which consistently lase at wavelengths shorter than the peak of the room temperature gain emission. These findings not only provide better understanding of lasing in nitride-based quantum dot cavity systems but also shed insight into the more fundamental issues of light-matter coupling in such systems.This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final version is available from PNAS at http://www.pnas.org/content/111/39/14042.abstract

Low threshold, room-temperature microdisk lasers in the blue spectral range

InGaN-based active layers within microcavity resonators offer the potential of low threshold lasers in the blue spectral range. Here, we demonstrate optically pumped, room temperature lasing in high quality factor GaN microdisk cavities, containing InGaN quantum dots (QDs) with thresholds as low as $0.28 mJ/cm^2$. The demonstration of lasing action from GaN microdisk cavities with QDs in the active layer, provides a critical step for the nitrides in realizing low threshold photonic devices with efficient coupling between QDs and an optical cavity.Engineering and Applied Science

Bacteriophages: The Answer to Antibiotic Resistance?

Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, have numerous applications in the medical, agricultural, and research fields, especially as an alternative to antibiotics in the age of antibiotic resistance. Phages are able to lyse, or break apart, bacterial cells with fewer side effects, more specificity, and less likelihood of resistance than antibiotics. The acceptance of phages in medicine and agriculture around the world today is not universal, and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been slow to recognize phage therapy as a legitimate treatment. However, the successful use of phages in the past, as well as promising trial results in fields ranging from chronic disease treatment to food preservation, present opportunities for consideration of phage-based applications in the future. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the history, uses, and regulation of phage therapy

Noble gas constraints on air-sea gas exchange and bubble fluxes

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 114 (2009): C11020, doi:10.1029/2009JC005396.Air-sea gas exchange is an important part of the biogeochemical cycles of many climatically and biologically relevant gases including CO2, O2, dimethyl sulfide and CH4. Here we use a three year observational time series of five noble gases (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe) at the Bermuda Atlantic Time series Study (BATS) site in tandem with a one-dimensional upper ocean model to develop an improved parameterization for air-sea gas exchange that explicitly includes separate components for diffusive gas exchange and bubble processes. Based on seasonal timescale noble gas data, this parameterization, which has a 1σ uncertainty of ±14% for diffusive gas exchange and ±29% for bubble fluxes, is more tightly constrained than previous parameterizations. Although the magnitude of diffusive gas exchange is within errors of that of Wanninkhof (1992), a commonly used parameterization, we find that bubble-mediated exchange, which is not explicitly included by Wanninkhof (1992) or many other formulations, is significant even for soluble gases. If one uses observed saturation anomalies of Ar (a gas with similar characteristics to O2) and a parameterization of gas exchange to calculate gas exchange fluxes, then the calculated fluxes differ by ∼240% if the parameterization presented here is used compared to using the Wanninkhof (1992) parameterization. If instead one includes the gas exchange parameterization in a model, then the calculated fluxes differ by ∼35% between using this parameterization and that of Wanninkhof (1992). These differences suggest that the bubble component should be explicitly included in a range of marine biogeochemical calculations that incorporate air-sea gas fluxes.Funding from the National Science Foundation Chemical Oceanography program (OCE-0221247 and OCE-0623034)