The importance of understanding the behavioural phenotypes of genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability

Behavioural phenotype research is of benefit to a large number of children with genetic syndromes and associated developmental delay. This article presents an overview of this research area and demonstrates how understanding pathways between gene disorders and behaviour can inform our understanding of the difficulties individuals with genetic syndromes and developmental delay experience, including self-injurious behaviour, social exploitation, social anxiety, social skills deficits, sensory differences, temper outbursts and repetitive behaviours. In addition, physical health difficulties and their interaction with behaviour are considered. The article demonstrates the complexity involved in assessing a child with a rare genetic syndrome.

Why Are Some Subsidiaries of Multinationals the Source of Novel Practices while Others Are Not? National, Corporate and Functional Influences

It has frequently been argued that multinational companies are moving towards network forms whereby subsidiaries share different practices with the rest of the company. This paper presents large-scale empirical evidence concerning the extent to which subsidiaries input novel practices into the rest of the multinational. We investigate this in the field of human resources through analysis of a unique international data set in four host countries - Canada, Ireland, Spain and the UK - and address the question of how we can explain variation between subsidiaries in terms of whether they initiate the diffusion of practices to other subsidiaries. The data support the argument that multiple, rather than single, factor explanations are required to more effectively understand the factors promoting or retarding the diffusion of human resource practices within multinational companies. It emerges that national, corporate and functional contexts all matter. More specifically, actors at subsidiary level who seek to initiate diffusion appear to be differentially placed according to their national context, their place within corporate structures and the extent to which the human resource function is internationally networked.

An Evaluation of Vaneless Diffuser Modelling Methods as a Means of Improving the Off-Design Performance Prediction of Centrifugal Compressors

An evaluation of existing 1-D vaneless diffuser design tools in the context of improving the off-design performance prediction of automotive turbocharger centrifugal compressors is described. A combination of extensive gas stand test data and single passage CFD simulations have been employed in order to permit evaluation of the different methods, allowing conclusions about the relative benefits and deficiencies of each of the different approaches to be determined. The vaneless diffuser itself has been isolated from the incumbent limitations in the accuracy of 1-D impeller modelling tools through development of a method to fully specify impeller exit conditions (in terms of mean quantities) using only standard test stand data with additional interstage static pressure measurements at the entrance to the diffuser. This method allowed a direct comparison between the test data and 1-D methods through sharing common inputs, thus achieving the aim of diffuser isolation.

Crucial to the accuracy of determining the performance of each of the vaneless diffuser configurations was the ability to quantify the presence and extent of the spanwise aerodynamic blockage present at the diffuser inlet section. A method to evaluate this critical parameter using CFD data is described herein, along with a correlation for blockage related to a new diffuser inlet flow parameter ⚡, equal to the quotient of the local flow coefficient and impeller tip speed Mach number. The resulting correlation permitted the variation of blockage with operating condition to be captured.

A magnetic cycle of τ Bootis? The coronal and chromospheric view

τ Bootis is a late F-type main sequence star orbited by a Hot Jupiter. During the last years spectropolarimetric observations led to the hypothesis that this star may host a global magnetic field that switches its polarity once per year, indicating a very short activity cycle of only one year duration. In our ongoing observational campaign, we have collected several X-ray observations with XMM-Newton and optical spectra with TRES/FLWO in Arizona to characterize τ Boo's corona and chromosphere over the course of the supposed one-year cycle. Contrary to the spectropolarimetric reconstructions, our observations do not show indications for a short activity cycle.

The Dark Side of Nudging: The Ethics, Political Economy, and Law of Libertarian Paternalism

Libertarian paternalism, as advanced by Cass Sunstein, is seriously flawed, but not primarily for the reasons that most commentators suggest. Libertarian paternalism and its attendant regulatory implications are too libertarian, not too paternalistic, and as a result are in considerable tension with ‘thick’ conceptions of human dignity. We make four arguments. The first is that there is no justification for a presumption in favor of nudging as a default regulatory strategy, as Sunstein asserts. It is ordinarily less effective than mandates; such mandates rarely offend personal autonomy; and the central reliance on cognitive failures in the nudging program is more likely to offend human dignity than the mandates it seeks to replace. Secondly, we argue that nudging as a regulatory strategy fits both overtly and covertly, often insidiously, into a more general libertarian program of political economy. Thirdly, while we are on the whole more concerned to reject the libertarian than the paternalistic elements of this philosophy, Sunstein’s work, both in Why Nudge?, and earlier, fails to appreciate how nudging may be manipulative if not designed with more care than he acknowledges. Lastly, because of these characteristics, nudging might even be subject to legal challenges that would give us the worst of all possible regulatory worlds: a weak regulatory intervention that is liable to be challenged in the courts by well-resourced interest groups. In such a scenario, and contrary to the ‘common sense’ ethos contended for in Why Nudge?, nudges might not even clear the excessively low bar of doing something rather than nothing. Those seeking to pursue progressive politics, under law, should reject nudging in favor of regulation that is more congruent with principles of legality, more transparent, more effective, more democratic, and allows us more fully to act as moral agents. Such a system may have a place for (some) nudging, but not one that departs significantly from how labeling, warnings and the like already function, and nothing that compares with Sunstein’s apparent ambitions for his new movement.