Decompositions of some twisted Foulkes characters

We decompose the twisted Foulkes characters $\phi^{(2^n)}_\nu$, or equivalently the plethysm $s_\nu \circ s_{(2)}$, in the cases where $\nu$ has either two rows or two columns, or is a hook partition

Is Less Better? Greater Efficiency With Fewer Resources Expended

Summarizes an analysis of Medicare spending to assess the relative efficiency of healthcare providers in managing patients with severe chronic illnesses in California. Highlights the need to redesign the payment system to improve healthcare efficiency

Fearless: Casey Butrico and Melanie Emerson

Casey Butrico (‘16) and Melanie Emerson (‘16) recently started a discussion group called Students for Reproductive Justice. This group is dedicated to the belief that women should control all aspects of their reproduction, including education about and access to safe birth control. They also aim to focus on gynecological care, pre-natal care, and abortion as human rights. These two fearless first-years have made a mission to educate and raise awareness about local and national issues that relate to women’s reproductive autonomy and the legal restrictions threatening it. [excerpt

Brief Consultation to Families of Treatment Refusers with Symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Does It Impact Family Accommodation and Quality of Life?

Family members are often directly and significantly impacted by the restrictive demands of OCD, a frequently disabling disorder. Family accommodation behaviors (i.e., doing things for or because of the OCD sufferer that a person would not normally do) are associated with dysfunction, including poorer treatment responses in OCD sufferers and greater distress in family members. Although evidence suggests family-based intervention can reduce symptoms in OCD sufferers who participate in treatment, there is a lack of research documenting the impact of interventions designed for the families of OCD treatment refusers (TR). Brief Family Consultation (BFC) was developed by our clinical team to help families refocus their efforts on the things that they can realistically control and change (e.g., participation in compulsions). In this crossover study, twenty families related to an individual who exhibited OCD symptoms but had refused treatment were assigned to five phone sessions of either BFC or a psychoeducation condition. Compared to this credible, attention-placebo control group (Brief Educational Support; BES), BFC (but not BES) resulted in reductions in family accommodation behavior, yet neither BFC nor BES resulted in improved quality of life for family members of treatment refusers. BFC is one of the first interventions to be evaluated for its ability to help families when their loved ones with obsessive compulsive symptoms refuse treatment. This pilot study provides new insights for clinicians and researchers to better address the needs of these neglected families

Salary and the Gender Salary Gap in the Academic Profession

The academic profession is an occupation in which pay has fallen dramatically, resulting in the setting up of a Committee of Inquiry to examine both pay relativities and mechanisms for pay determination. This paper considers salary determination and the gender salary gap in the academic labour market drawing upon a particularly detailed data set of 900 academics from five traditional Scottish Universities. Results reveal an aggregate gender salary differential for academic staff of 15%. Most of this differential can, however, be explained by our model. Evidence suggests a limited opportunity for female academics to combine career and family, despite the flexibility of an academic job and emphasises the importance of mobility to the male career. Publication record, but not teaching ability, is found to be an important determinant of salary. The dominant contribution of rank to both the determination of female academic salaries and the gender salary gap suggests vastly differential opportunities for promotion faced by men and women

Digital Three-Dimensional Atlas of Quail Development Using High-Resolution MRI

We present an archetypal set of three-dimensional digital atlases of the quail embryo based on microscopic magnetic resonance imaging (µMRI). The atlases are composed of three modules: (1) images of fixed ex ovo quail, ranging in age from embryonic day 5 to 10 (e05 to e10); (2) a coarsely delineated anatomical atlas of the µMRI data; and (3) an organ system–based hierarchical graph linked to the anatomical delineations. The atlas is designed to be accessed using SHIVA, a free Java application. The atlas is extensible and can contain other types of information including anatomical, physiological, and functional descriptors. It can also be linked to online resources and references. This digital atlas provides a framework to place various data types, such as gene expression and cell migration data, within the normal three-dimensional anatomy of the developing quail embryo. This provides a method for the analysis and examination of the spatial relationships among the different types of information within the context of the entire embryo

Optimized gating and reference ranges of reticulated platelets in dogs for the Sysmex XT-2000iV

Background: Canine reticulated platelets (r-PLTs) i.e., juvenile PLTs reflecting thrombopoiesis can be measured automatically with the hematology analyzer Sysmex XT-2000iV using manual gating options. However, the impact of interferences on r-PLT measurements performed with the gates published previously (Pankraz et al., Vet Clin Path 38:30–38, 2009; Gelain et al., High fluorescent platelets fraction in macrothrombocytopenic Norfolk terrier, 2010) is largely unknown. The aim was to compare different published gates for measurement of r-PLTs with the Sysmex XT-2000iV with an own, optimized gate (“Oellers-gate”) and to establish reference intervals (RIs) in>120 dogs. Data of 362 measurements of diseased and healthy dogs were analyzed retrospectively. Several gates were applied and RIs for r-PLTs and platelet indices were established for pet dogs and a group of 153 healthy Beagles kept under defined housing conditions. Intra-assay precision (CV) was also assessed. Results: In 30/362 samples, interferences consistent with small erythrocytes/reticulocytes were seen in the previously published gates but not in the “Oellers-gate”. Good correlation was found between the different gates (rs: 0.88–1.00). RIs for the “Pankraz-gate”, the “Gelain-gate”, and the “Oellers-gate” were 0.0–1.2, 0.2–3.7 and 0.2–3.9 % respectively. CVs were ranging between 22 and 41 %. Conclusions: Optimization of previously published gates minimized interferences of small erythrocytes with r-PLT measurements