Logarithmic roughening in a growth process with edge evaporation

Roughening transitions are often characterized by unusual scaling properties. As an example we investigate the roughening transition in a solid-on-solid growth process with edge evaporation [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 2746 (1996)], where the interface is known to roughen logarithmically with time. Performing high-precision simulations we find appropriate scaling forms for various quantities. Moreover we present a simple approximation explaining why the interface roughens logarithmically.Comment: revtex, 6 pages, 7 eps figure

Giving Up the Ghost: Alaska Bar Ethics Opinion 93-1 and Undisclosed Attorney Assistance Revisited

Twenty years ago, the Alaska Bar Association adopted Ethics Opinion No. 93-1 which permitted attorneys to ghostwrite pleadings and provide other undisclosed services to pro se litigants. The goal of this ethical guidance was to enable attorneys to assist low-income individuals who could not otherwise afford representation. Ethics Opinion No. 93-1 construed ghostwriting broadly as an attorney\u27s undisclosed assistance to a pro se client whether by providing legal advice or drafting pleadings or other documents. This Note argues that, despite the moral allure of its theoretical justifications, ghostwriting is unnecessary, provides little demonstrable benefit to pro se litigants, and potentially conceals the unethical practice of law. Ghostwriting may also confuse the interactions between judges and pro se litigants in a way that works against the pro se party\u27s interests. Specifically, this Note argues that ghostwriting may cause judges to misapprehend pro se litigants\u27 legal understanding and to withdraw prematurely the solicitude those judges are otherwise required to give. Therefore, the Alaska Bar Association should revise its guidance on ghostwriting to require attorneys providing unbundled services to append their Alaska Bar Number on their submissions. This requirement would discourage abuses, enable judges effectively to manage pro se litigants, and still permit experimentation in the unbundled legal market

Machismo Syndrome: A Residential Correlate of Its Expression in a Mexican Peasant Community

The Michaelson Goldschmidt hypothesis states that in peasant societies wherein male dominance is an ideal, matrilocal residence tends to encourage the expression of the machismo syndrome of behaviors. Recent ethnographic research in a Mexican peasant community supports the hypothesis by the finding that interpersonal violence (one measure of machismo) during a fiesta was perpetrated in every extreme instance by men who were residing matrilocally. The hypothesis thus effectively predicts, in this case, matrilocality as the variable most closely associated with the violent dimension of machismo

Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work

Though many people consider Portland, Oregon, a model of 21st-century urban planning, the region's integrated land-use and transportation plans have greatly reduced the area's livability. To halt urban sprawl and reduce people's dependence on the automobile, Portland's plans use an urban-growth boundary to greatly increase the area's population density, spend most of the region's transportation funds on various rail transit projects, and promote construction of scores of high-density, mixed-use developments. When judged by the results rather than the intentions, the costs of Portland's planning far outweigh the benefits. Planners made housing unaffordable to force more people to live in multifamily housing or in homes on tiny lots. They allowed congestion to increase to near-gridlock levels to force more people to ride the region's expensive rail transit lines. They diverted billions of dollars of taxes from schools, fire, public health, and other essential services to subsidize the construction of transit and high-density housing projects. Those high costs have not produced the utopia planners promised. Far from curbing sprawl, high housing prices led tens of thousands of families to move to Vancouver, Washington, and other cities outside the region's authority. Far from reducing driving, rail transit has actually reduced the share of travel using transit from what it was in 1980. And developers have found that so-called transit-oriented developments only work when they include plenty of parking. Portland-area residents have expressed their opposition to these plans by voting against light rail and density and voting for a property-rights measure that allows landowners to claim either compensation or waivers for land-use rules passed since they purchased their property. Opposition turned to anger when a 2004 scandal revealed that an insider network known as the "light-rail mafia" had manipulated the planning process to direct rail construction contracts and urban-renewal subsidies to themselves. These problems are all the predictable result of a process that gives a few people enormous power over an entire urban area. Portland should dismantle its planning programs, and other cities that want to maintain their livability would do well to study Portland as an example of how not to plan

Of mice and men: Sparse statistical modeling in cardiovascular genomics

In high-throughput genomics, large-scale designed experiments are becoming common, and analysis approaches based on highly multivariate regression and anova concepts are key tools. Shrinkage models of one form or another can provide comprehensive approaches to the problems of simultaneous inference that involve implicit multiple comparisons over the many, many parameters representing effects of design factors and covariates. We use such approaches here in a study of cardiovascular genomics. The primary experimental context concerns a carefully designed, and rich, gene expression study focused on gene-environment interactions, with the goals of identifying genes implicated in connection with disease states and known risk factors, and in generating expression signatures as proxies for such risk factors. A coupled exploratory analysis investigates cross-species extrapolation of gene expression signatures--how these mouse-model signatures translate to humans. The latter involves exploration of sparse latent factor analysis of human observational data and of how it relates to projected risk signatures derived in the animal models. The study also highlights a range of applied statistical and genomic data analysis issues, including model specification, computational questions and model-based correction of experimental artifacts in DNA microarray data.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS110 in the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The case of Heinrich Wilhelm Poll (1877-1939): A German-Jewish geneticist, eugenicist, twin researcher, and victim of the Nazis

This paper uses a reconstruction of the life and career of Heinrich Poll as a window into developments and professional relationships in the biological sciences in Germany in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Poll's intellectual work involved an early transition from morphometric physical anthropology to comparative evolutionary studies, and also found expression in twin research - a field in which he was an acknowledged early pioneer. His advocacy of eugenics led to participation in state-sponsored committees convened to advise on social policy, one of which debated sterilisation and made recommendations that led eventually to the establishment of the notorious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. However, his status as a prominent geneticist and, in particular, as a eugenicist had an ironic and ultimately tragic dimension. Heinrich Poll was of Jewish birth, and this resulted in his career being destroyed by an application of the population policies he had helped put in place