Original Members Research Articles

Pioneer in Pediatric Pathology: William A (Bill) Newton Jr (1923-).

William A (Bill) Newton Jr practiced pediatric pathology and hematology/oncology at Children's Hospital of Columbus, Ohio, for over 40 years starting in 1952. Newton was an original member of the Pediatric Pathology Club, which preceded the Society for Pediatric Pathology, and was its president from 1968 to 1969. He published important independent observations in pediatric pathology, helped establish systematic cooperative pediatric tumor pathology review by experts, became an acclaimed expert on the diagnosis of rhabdomyosarcoma, was a critical contributor to many pediatric oncology clinical trials, made important early contributions to tumor banking in pediatrics, and trained numerous pediatric pathology and pediatric oncology fellows. Finally, he concluded his career as a humanitarian, leading important volunteer work aimed at improving pediatric cancer care in China. This most interesting pediatric pathologist was simultaneously a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army. Bill Newton's life and career, which is reviewed in detail here, should be of immense interest and an inspiration to the Pediatric & Developmental Pathology readership.

Cyclic performance of reinforced legs in retrofitted transmission towers

In Australia, thousands of aging steel transmission towers need upgrading in order to meet the demands of additional communication devices being placed on them and the increased wind loads according to newly revised design standards. One effective retrofitting approach to increase their load capacity is to attach a reinforcing member to the original leg member through a bolted cruciform connector. This paper addresses the structural behaviour of retrofitted tower leg members under dynamic loading conditions that replicate the in-service conditions due to wind loading on real towers. A series of experimental tests and FEM modelling were conducted. The experimental results and numerical models show that the bolt pretension continuously decreases with the increasing loading cycles and magnitudes, which further reduces the bolt-slip load in cruciform connectors. The bolt-slip phenomenon changes the load-sharing rate between original members and reinforcing members in retrofitted legs. The dynamic loading procedure reduces the structural stiffness of retrofitted leg members due to the surface smoothing and bolt pretension loss. A further parametric study shows an obvious reduction in load-carrying capacity of retrofitted leg segments under long term dynamic loading periods. In addition, retrofitted segments with splice connectors in original members are more sensitive to loading cycle numbers.

Correction: Resurrecting a subgenus to genus: molecular phylogeny of Euphyllia and Fimbriaphyllia (order Scleractinia; family Euphylliidae; clade V).

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4074.].

Benign Neglect or Malign Select?: Entry Cost to GATS/WTO

WTO was established in 1995 and as many as 36 new members joined WTO until December 2017. Thus it would be interesting to see if new members have committed higher or lower levels of market opening compared to the original members. In this regard, a sophisticated scoring scheme is needed to quantify market opening commitments. After proper econometric model is established for the original members, same model can be applied to the new members for comparison. It was found that new members committed a much higher level of commitment than the original members. In addition, it was also found that transition economies committed higher levels than the non-transition economies. More interesting finding is that among the new members, the larger the economies or the larger the trading volume are, the closer was the level of commitment to the predicted level. Then the question is whether this difference was due to benign neglect by the new members or due to malign select by the original members.

Benign Neglect or Malign Select?: Entry Cost to GATS/WTO

WTO was established in 1995 and as many as 36 new members joined WTO until December 2017. Thus it would be interesting to see if new members have committed higher or lower levels of market opening compared to the original members. In this regard, a sophisticated scoring scheme is needed to quantify market opening commitments. After proper econometric model is established for the original members, same model can be applied to the new members for comparison. It was found that new members committed a much higher level of commitment than the original members. In addition, it was also found that transition economies committed higher levels than the non-transition economies. More interesting finding is that among the new members, the larger the economies or the larger the trading volume are, the closer was the level of commitment to the predicted level. Then the question is whether this difference was due to benign neglect by the new members or due to malign select by the original members.

Who benefits from euro depreciation in the euro zone?

In this paper, we try to assess the short-run and long-run effects of changes in the value of the euro on the trade balance of 12 original members of the euro zone to identify those who benefit from euro depreciation. After estimating a linear and a nonlinear trade balance model for each country, the results favor the nonlinear adjustment of the real euro and nonlinear models. We find that while seven members will benefit from a euro depreciation, Germany is the only country that will also benefit from a euro appreciation, perhaps due to an inelastic world demand for German goods. The results also support asymmetric effects of euro appreciation and euro depreciation in most countries in the zone, in the short run as well as in the long run.

No Country for Poor People

Since the creation of the European Union, anti-immigration rhetoric has traditionally been directed at non-European citizens. However, in recent decades hostility towards migrants has been extended to the rejection of EU citizens, to whom the European treaties ostensibly guarantee freedom of movement. In particular, the migration of the largest European ethnic minority, the Roma, within the EU has been accompanied by inflamed media reports and populist discourse laden with explicitly racist sentiments. Whereas the dynamics of Romani migration in the original Member States has received substantial political and academic attention, the movement of Roma people across newer Member States continues to be overlooked. An intrinsic assumption that Romani migration is a solely westward phenomenon has led to a failure to examine the role of Central and Eastern European states in generating exclusionary policies. Despite urgent calls from human rights activists about the intensifying violation of the legal rights of Romani migrants the situation has yet to be acknowledged or scrutinized by international organizations and academics. To shed analytical light on this under-researched area, the article presents an analysis of the impact of Polish immigration regime on Romani migrants and long-time residents from Romania. Drawing on data from official documents, activist reports, and semi-structured interviews the article traces the neoliberalization of Polish migration regime: one that mobilizes aggressive attitudes and behaviors towards the poorest and most marginalized European citizens. In turn, it argues that the deterrent tactics employed against migrants by the Polish State has its roots in the increasingly restrictive EU immigration policies and economic determinism of the Freedom of Movement and Residency Directive.

Walsh Hadamard kernel‐based texture feature for multimodal MRI brain tumour segmentation

AbstractThe automated brain tumor segmentation methods are challenging due to the diverse nature of tumors. Recently, the graph based Spectral Clustering (SC) method is utilized for brain tumor segmentation to create high‐quality clusters. In this article, a new superpixel based SC using the Walsh Hadamard texture feature for multimodal brain tumor segmentation from Magnetic Resonance Image is proposed. The selected kernels of Walsh Hadamard Transform (WHT) are projected on equal size blocks of the image for texture feature extraction. The texture feature strength of each block is considered as superpixels, and these superpixels become nodes in the graph of SC. Finally, the original members of superpixels are recovered to represent Complete Tumor (CT), Tumor Core (TC), and Enhancing Tumor (ET) tissues. The observational results are brought out on BRATS 2015 data sets and evaluated using the Dice Score (DS), Hausdorff Distance, and Volumetric Difference metrics. The proposed method has produced competitive results with a DS of 0.83 for CT, 0.75 for TC, and 0.73 for ET, respectively, for high‐grade images. In case of low‐grade images, the proposed method achieves DS of 0.78 for CT, 0.68 for TC, and 0.60 for ET, respectively. The proposed method produces results better than other existing clustering methods.

Haba Kumiko Division and Integration in Europe-Nationalism and the Dividing Line of the Enlarged EU, Inclusion or Exclusion, Chuokoron-shinsha, 2016, 390pp.

The unifying theme of this book is the nature of separation and integration of the EU and its new members from Eastern Europe. Although they rejoined Europe after the conclusion of the Cold War, they still found a barrier between them and the original members of the EU. Professor Haba calls the barrier a dividing line. It is usually used among nations and peoples, but what Haba calls the “dividing line” ultimately means separating “us” from “you”. It contains both physical and psychological divisions. The return of Eastern Europe to Europe produced a new dividing line and new problems in the EU. Following the principles of human rights, liberty and diversity, the EU has positively received immigrants and created an excellent system allowing the free movements of individuals within the EU. Yet, native workers of the host countries often lose their jobs because new immigrants will work for lower wages. Some of these often hate newcomers and run to xenophobia and nationalism. On the other hand, some second-or third generation members of immigrant families are disillusioned with discrimination in the host countries. The influence of exclusion becomes stronger and the voice of inclusion weakens. The EU seems to be falling in disruption. Haba stresses the importance of the attitude of inclusion and coexistence, diversity and tolerance. The question is, however, how do people possibly attain and maintain that frame of mind? Haba shows the contact zone theory of cultural anthropology as a possibility. This theory was discussed at the International Conference on Minority Races or Groups held at Aszód in Hungary, on 25-27 of August 2004. Haba attended the conference and discovered the theory. Contact Zone is the term applied to social places and spaces where diverse cultures and races meet and attempt to coexist and cooperate with each other. This concept also applies to frontiers, those border areas once considered to be conflict zone. Frontiers are, in fact, where the coexistence of peoples of different races and religions occurs, according to the cultural anthropologists at the conference. Haba stresses that the contact zone theory is not the theory of sollen, but based on the historical sein in the long term. People of different races and religions have continued to coexist, cooperate and harmonize with each other at the frontiers. Haba inspires us to learn about and to study this kind of “historical facts of daily lives”. I appreciate those words and I highly value this book.

Rho signaling research: history, current status and future directions.

One of the main research areas in biology from the mid‐1980s through the 1990s was the elucidation of signaling pathways governing cell responses. These studies brought, among other molecules, the small GTPase Rho to the epicenter. Rho signaling research has since expanded to all areas of biology and medicine. Here, we describe how Rho emerged as a key molecule governing cell morphogenesis and movement, how it was linked to actin reorganization, and how the study of Rho signaling has expanded from cultured cells to whole biological systems. We then give an overview of the current research status of Rho signaling in development, brain, cardiovascular system, immunity and cancer, and discuss the future directions of Rho signaling research, with emphasis on one Rho effector, ROCK*. *The Rho GTPase family. Rho family GTPases have now expanded to contain 20 members. Amino acid sequences of 20 Rho GTPases found in human were aligned and the phylogenetic tree was generated by ClustalW2 software (EMBL‐EBI) based on NJ algorithm. The subfamilies of the Rho GTPases are highlighted by the circle and labeled on the right side. Rho cited in this review refers to the original members of Rho subfamily, RhoA, RhoB and RhoC, that are C3 substrates, and, unless specified, not to other members of the Rho subfamily such as Rac, Cdc42, and Rnd.

On the Heterogeneity in Family Earnings and Income Dynamics in the PSID

A large body of knowledge on income dynamics in the United States is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find two sets of households in the PSID that differ dramatically in the dynamics of their income. Households headed by the sons of original PSID members have a highly persistent income process, whereas households headed by males who marry daughters of the original PSID members have a much less persistent income process. Using a variety of methods for identification of the persistence of income shocks, we show that these differences, albeit surprising, are highly robust.

ITEMS FOR IMPROVING BOND- SLIP BEHAVIOR BETWEEN CFRP SHEETS / CEMENT BASE BONDING AGENT AND BONDING AGENT / CONCRETE INTERFACE

This paper concerned with the replacement of Epoxy with cement base matrixes as bonding agents for CFRP sheets. Many items were investigated to improve the bond strength and decrease slippage in strengthening system. More than 25 plain concrete prisms with low compressive strength (20 N/mm2) were used to act as the original weak concrete members. Two main groups of cement base bonding agents were investigated in this research (Portland cement and Grout matrix’s). Three main items were looked for. Item 1: mixture content; it was represented in (cement content, using silica fumes & using short metallic fibers). Item 2: CFRP sheet modification; represented in either: a) making holes in CFRP sheets -hence the cross section area of the CFRP sheets were kept the same as all other specimens- or b) impregnate the CFRP sheets in latex-base adhesive material just before using). Item 3: the strengthening technique; which was represented by both the bonding agent layer thickness & the Curing pressure; (it is a pressure done with a specific value just after applying the strengthening on the concrete prism along 24 hours). Single shear test (pull off test) was carried out to evaluate each parameter effect and the results showed that the cement-base matrixes were a very good alternative for epoxy as a bonding agent. Applying Curing pressure; almost double the bond strength and prevent the failure from occurrence in the surface interval between bonding agent / concrete interface, using latex and making holes in the CFRP sheet enhance the penetration of the bonding agent within CFRP sheet. Portland cement gives higher results than grout. Using silica fumes and even increasing the cement content; both have a negative effect on bond strength.

Black Lives Matter, Obama, and the Future of Black Mobilization

Melina Abdullah is a scholar-activist. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Southern California and chairs the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, in Los Angeles. A womanist1, she has written numerous articles about black feminism, race relations, and political coalition building. She is also an original member and one of the main organizers of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, the famous network created in 2013 to organize black people and non-black allies in the fight against state-sanctioned violence overwhelmingly targeting black individuals. We reached out to her in order to know more about her perspective on the Obama administration’s record in terms of racial equality and racial justice, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement both nationally and more specifically in Los Angeles, and the future of black mobilizations in the Trump era.

The Information Technology Agreement and the ‘Make-in-India’ Initiative

The World Trade Organization’s Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which was concluded at the Singapore Ministerial Conference in 1996, is considered to be one of the biggest tariff-cutting deals by virtue of eliminating all customs-related duties on the exportation of certain categories of information technology products to a country, which is a member to the Agreement. Over time, new innovations in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector mandated the consideration of expanding the list of products covered by this Agreement, which took place in the form of ITA-II negotiations. India, which was an original member of the ITA-I, however, decided to opt-out of the negotiations to expand the list of products covered by the Agreement, and reasoned its absence by stating that the zero-tariff regime created by the ITA-I debilitated its electronics-manufacturing sectors and on the contrary resulted in an over-reliance on imported electronic inputs. Accordingly, providing duty-free treatment to a further list of IT products could potentially be detrimental for the country’s economic growth. Consequently, it preferred to give priority to its national policy initiative, namely the ‘Make-in-India’ programme, which embarks upon fostering domestic production of, inter alia, the ICT sector. This article accordingly weighs the better alternative for India and analyses the prospects of initiatives like the current one to resuscitate the ailing domestic electronics-manufacturing sector, before it can benefit from the zero-tariff regime over the expanding list of products covered by the ITA-II. JEL: K33, M15

“Two Birds with One Stone”: Transmedia Serialisation in <em>Twin Peaks</em>

“Two Birds with One Stone”: Transmedia Serialisation in <em>Twin Peaks</em>

Business Cycle Synchronization and Vertical Trade Integration: A Case Study of the Eurozone and East Asia

Business cycle synchronization is one of the crucial conditions for a currency union to be successful. Frankel and Rose (1998) argued that increased trade after euro adoption would increase business cycle synchronization ex-ante. However, the fallout of the Eurozone forcefully demonstrated that their optimistic prediction did not turn out to be true. One thing Frankel and Rose (1998) did not examine is how different types of trade (inter vs. intra, vertical vs. horizontal, etc.) intensify/dampens business cycle synchronization. In this light, this paper empirically examines how different types of trade affect business cycle synchronization in what way. This study takes two major economic blocs that have been going under rapid economic integrations: The original Eurozone members and East Asia – integration of former mainly developing by European government initiative and the latter naturally forming by the global supply chain and associated product segmentation. Comparing these two very different economic blocs with very different factor endowment structures would give us a more convincing answer to how different types of trade can influence business cycle synchronization differently. Our key finding is that, on the contrary to Frankel and Rose (1998) , the impact of increased trade intensity on business cycle co-movement is ambiguous. The impact of trade on business cycle synchronization depends on types of trade. Intra-industry trade, especially vertical intra-industry trade which is rapidly growing in East Asia, has a strong positive effect on business cycle synchronization while inter-industry trade does not.

White Space and Dark Matter

To a packed audience in Clark Hall, Sheila Jasanoff, a distinguished scholar and former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), gave the plenary address for “Where has STS Traveled,” a commemorative gathering of the fortieth anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the 4S. Not only was this meeting located in the very same (renovated) room as the first gathering, but also many of the original members had traveled from far and wide to Cornell University to reminisce and reflect on the academic field they had established, as well as imagine the possibilities of the next forty years. In response to a question about the direction of STS, Professor Jasanoff suggested that the 4S had not turned its reflective gaze inward to examine the politics of its own society, nor had it spent much effort interrogating the society’s contribution to social policy or enduring social problems. As I heard Jasanoff speak about our collective need for reflection and reflexivity, I had to wonder whether, and to what extent, we were ready to reflect on the subject matter of race and racism in this mostly color-blind field of inquiry.

Has the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath changed the impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty in member states of the european monetary union?

AbstractWe study to what extent the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath have changed the impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty in the 12 original member states of the European Monetary Union (EMU). We adopt a time‐varying coefficient regression model with stochastic volatility effects, and extract two measures of inflation uncertainty from our data, namely, (1) The conditional volatility of inflation, (2) The conditional volatility of steady‐state inflation. (1)–(2) represent short‐run and steady‐state inflation uncertainty, respectively. The time‐varying impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty is analyzed using Markov‐switching regressions, where switching between the low and high inflation uncertainty regime is determined via an unobserved Markov process. Results suggest that the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath have changed the impact of inflation on (1) and (2) across the selected EMU member states. However, a uniform pattern cannot be detected. For some member states, we document a strong link, whereas for others, the impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty is relatively weaker.

The Superior Peer Improves Me: Evidence from Swimming Data

This study examined the peer effects of newcomer on the performance of existing members of teams, based on comparing the performances of swimming team members before and after the arrival of a newcomer. The identification strategy was similar to a natural experimental setting. This study found that the performance of an existing member of a team improves when a newcomer joins the team and that this effect is larger when the newcomer is a superior to the original team members.

Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart?

We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency. Income convergence stagnated in the early years of the common currency and has reversed in the wake of the global economic crisis. New euro area members, in contrast, have seen real income convergence. Business cycles became more synchronized, but the amplitude of those cycles diverged. Financial cycles showed a similar pattern: sychronizing more over time, but with divergent amplitudes. Income convergence requires reforms boosting productivity growth in lagging countries, while cyclical and financial convergence can be enhanced by measures to improve national and euro area fiscal policies, together with steps to deepen the single market.