Evaluation of the NAS-ILAB Matrix for Monitoring International Labor Standards: Project Report

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) engaged the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to recommend a method to monitor and evaluate labor conditions in a given country. The method focuses on 5 labor standards: freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced or compulsory labor, child labor, discrimination, and acceptable conditions of work

Laser-heated rocket studies

CW laser heated rocket propulsion was investigated in both the flowing core and stationary core configurations. The laser radiation considered was 10.6 micrometers, and the working gas was unseeded hydrogen. The areas investigated included initiation of a hydrogen plasma capable of absorbing laser radiation, the radiation emission properties of hot, ionized hydrogen, the flow of hot hydrogen while absorbing and radiating, the heat losses from the gas and the rocket performance. The stationary core configuration was investigated qualitatively and semi-quantitatively. It was found that the flowing core rockets can have specific impulses between 1,500 and 3,300 sec. They are small devices, whose heating zone is only a millimeter to a few centimeters long, and millimeters to centimeters in radius, for laser power levels varying from 10 to 5,000 kW, and pressure levels of 3 to 10 atm. Heat protection of the walls is a vital necessity, though the fraction of laser power lost to the walls can be as low as 10% for larger powers, making the rockets thermally efficient

The Suffield Fault, Stark County, Ohio

Author Institution: Department of Geology, The College of WoosterA ground-derived total intensity magnetic map of the Suffield fault, a western extension of the Transylvania fault zone, suggests a fault with a southwest dip of 80° or greater. Displacement history is uncertain, but may involve significant right-lateral wrenching at the time of early fault development. Subsequent movements may include normal faulting. Although principal fault movement is Permo- Pennsylvanian, displacement at the level of the Precambrian surface, inferred from the magnetic map, suggests significant Cambro-Ordovician faulting. Subsurface distribution patterns of Silurian to Mississippian units define minor syndepositional fault movements during accumulation of the Silurian Salina salts and again during deposition of the Mississippian Berea sands

Synthetic lethal screening in the mammalian central nervous system identifies Gpx6 as a modulator of Huntington’s disease

Huntington’s disease, the most common inherited neurodegenerative disease, is characterized by a dramatic loss of deep-layer cortical and striatal neurons, as well as morbidity in midlife. Human genetic studies led to the identification of the causative gene, huntingtin. Recent genomic advances have also led to the identification of hundreds of potential interacting partners for huntingtin protein and many hypotheses as to the molecular mechanisms whereby mutant huntingtin leads to cellular dysfunction and death. However, the multitude of possible interacting partners and cellular pathways affected by mutant huntingtin has complicated efforts to understand the etiology of this disease, and to date no curative therapeutic exists. To address the general problem of identifying the disease-phenotype contributing genes from a large number of correlative studies, here we develop a synthetic lethal screening methodology for the mammalian central nervous system, called SLIC, for synthetic lethal in the central nervous system. Applying SLIC to the study of Huntington’s disease, we identify the age-regulated glutathione peroxidase 6 (Gpx6) gene as a modulator of mutant huntingtin toxicity and show that overexpression of Gpx6 can dramatically alleviate both behavioral and molecular phenotypes associated with a mouse model of Huntington’s disease. SLIC can, in principle, be used in the study of any neurodegenerative disease for which a mouse model exists, promising to reveal modulators of neurodegenerative disease in an unbiased fashion, akin to screens in simpler model organisms.National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U.S.) (Award R01NS085880)William N. and Bernice E. Bumpus Foundation (Early Career Investigator Innovation Award)JPB FoundationEuropean Molecular Biology Organization (Long-term Fellowship

New electron source concept for single-shot sub-100 fs electron diffraction in the 100 keV range

We present a method for producing sub-100 fs electron bunches that are suitable for single-shot ultrafast electron diffraction experiments in the 100 keV energy range. A combination of analytical results and state-of-the-art numerical simulations show that it is possible to create 100 keV, 0.1 pC, 20 fs electron bunches with a spotsize smaller than 500 micron and a transverse coherence length of 3 nm, using established technologies in a table-top set-up. The system operates in the space-charge dominated regime to produce energy-correlated bunches that are recompressed by established radio-frequency techniques. With this approach we overcome the Coulomb expansion of the bunch, providing an entirely new ultrafast electron diffraction source concept

Delivering a “Dose of Hope”: A Faith-Based Program to Increase Older African Americans’ Participation in Clinical Trials

Background: Underrepresentation of older-age racial and ethnic minorities in clinical research is a significant barrier to health in the United States, as it impedes medical research advancement of effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. Objective: The objective of the study was to develop and test the feasibility of a community-developed faith-based intervention and evaluate its potential to increase the number of older African Americans in clinical research. Methods: Using a cluster-randomized design, we worked with six matched churches to enroll at least 210 persons. We provided those in the intervention group churches with three educational sessions on the role of clinical trials in addressing health disparity topics, and those in the comparison group completed surveys at the same timepoints. All persons enrolled in the study received ongoing information via newsletters and direct outreach on an array of clinical studies seeking participants. We evaluated the short-, mid-, and longer-term effects of the interventional program on clinical trial-related outcomes (ie, screening and enrollment)

Dallas with balls: televized sport, soap opera and male and female pleasures

Two of the most popular of television genres, soap opera and sports coverage have been very much differentiated along gender lines in terms of their audiences. Soap opera has been regarded very much as a 'gynocentric' genre with a large female viewing audience while the audiences for television sport have been predominantly male. Gender differentiation between the genres has had implications for the popular image of each. Soap opera has been perceived as inferior; as mere fantasy and escapism for women while television sports has been perceived as a legitimate, even edifying experience for men. In this article the authors challenge the view that soap opera and television sport are radically different and argue that they are, in fact, very similar in a number of significant ways. They suggest that both genres invoke similar structures of feeling and sensibility in their respective audiences and that television sport is a 'male soap opera'. They consider the ways in which the viewing context of each genre is related to domestic life and leisure, the ways in which the textual structure and conventions of each genre invoke emotional identification, and finally, the ways in which both genres re-affirm gender identities