A Renewable Future: Jerry Brown\u27s Environmental Agenda

The Environmental Law Section was honored to welcome Cliff Rechtschaffen and Ken Alex, two prominent Senior Advisors to Governor Jerry Brown, as its featured speakers for the first plenary session at the 2011 Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite® last October. Messrs. Rechtschaffen and Alex led a lively discussion of energy and environmental issues in the Brown administration, which touched on topics ranging from the Governor\u27s agenda for addressing climate change to the Office of Planning and Research\u27s approaches to CEQA to the administration\u27s vision for a California with 50 million people, among others. They have adapted the following article from their presentation at Yosemite

Commentary on Szmukler: Mental Illness, Dangerousness, and Involuntary Civil Commitment

Prof. Cohen and I answer six questions: (1) Why do we lock people up? (2) How can involuntary civil commitment be reconciled with people's constitutional right to liberty? (3) Why don't we treat homicide as a public health threat? (4) What is the difference between legal and medical approaches to mental illness? (5) Why is mental illness required for involuntary commitment? (6) Where are we in our efforts to understand the causes of mental illness

Exploring Economic Development Strategies for Canadian Indigenous Communities Post-Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted the Indigenous Canadian economy. Indigenous enterprises exist in every industry, from small proprietorships to major organizations employing thousands of people. The research concerning the effects of such peculiarities on Indigenous corporations is sparse. This research aimed to examine how the pandemic affected development companies by comparing pre-epidemic forecasts to the trajectory of Indigenous-owned firms after two years of the pandemic and analyzing its singularities. The study was conducted by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) and supported by mixed methods techniques such as surveys, interviews, and non-participatory observations obtained from ten distinct Canadian Indigenous Economic Development Corporations, revealing a reality in which Indigenous businesses confront significant challenges in terms of access to public finance, human resources, community well-being, company diversification, and innovation. The result compared pre-pandemic forecasts and analyses that found Indigenous enterprises failing to recover and move ahead on company diversification and innovations, public finance, human resources, and sustainable development

Choking under pressure in front of a supportive audience : evidence from professional biathlon

Performing in front of a supportive audience increases motivation. However, it also creates psychological pressure, which may impair performance, especially in precision tasks. In this paper, we exploit a unique setting in which professionals compete in a real-life contest with large monetary rewards in order to assess how they perform in front of a supportive audience. Using the task of shooting in the sprint competitions of professional biathlon events over a period of 16 years, we find that for both genders, biathletes from the top quartile of the ability distribution miss significantly more shots when competing in their home country compared to competing abroad. Our results are in line with the hypothesis that high expectations to perform well in front of a friendly audience prompt individuals to choke when performing skill-based tasks.publishedVersio

Sense about science - making sense of crime

Booklet 'Making Sense of Crime' published by registered charity 'Sense About Science'There’s always heated debate about crime in the media and a lot of political argument about how we should respond to it. But these arguments rarely provide insight into what actually causes crime, what lies behind trends over time and in different places, and how best to go about reducing it. Values inform how a society decides to deal with crime. We may decide that rehabilitation is a better principle than punishment, and this will influence how we decide what is most effective. However, we also expect these choices to be disciplined by sound evidence, because if crime policy ignores what works and what doesn’t, there are likely to be bad social consequences. And with over £10bn spent annually on tackling crime through the police, prisons, probation and courts, unless we look at evidence we can’t see how effective any of it is. Crime policy usually has twin aims – to prevent crime, and to seek justice by punishing those who commit offences. Research shows there’s only a loose link, if any, between the way offenders are punished and the number of offences committed. There is no reliable evidence for example, that capital punishment reduces serious crimes as its supporters claim. Yet politicians and commentators regularly claim that more punishments are a way to cut crime. Academic, government and community organisations have all said crime policies need to be based more on evidence, but much of the evidence available at the moment is poor or unclear. Debates about crime rarely reflect how strong the evidence behind opposing policies is, and even when politicians honestly believe they’re following the evidence, they tend to select evidence that supports their political views. This guide looks at some of the key things we do know and why it has been so difficult to make sense of crime policy. An important point throughout is that policymakers sometimes have to make decisions when things are not clear-cut. They have a better chance of making effective policies if they admit to this uncertainty – and conduct robust research to find out more. In the following pages we have shared insights from experts in violent crime, policing, crime science, psychology and the media’s influence on the crime debate. They don’t have all the answers, but we hope they leave you better-placed to hold policymakers and commentators to account and promote a more useful discussion about crime

The State of Health Insurance in California: Findings From the 2009 California Health Interview Survey

Analyzes sources of coverage and uninsurance rates by county, effects of declines in income and employer-sponsored insurance, disparities, access to and affordability of care, role of public insurance, and projected impact of federal healthcare reform

Prospectus, March 19, 2014

LESS ALCOHOL-RELATED ISSUES SEEN DURING UNOFFICIAL 2014, College Costs Rising More Rapidly for Poorer Students, Analysis Shows, Student Government Candidate Statements, Resources for Undecided Majors at Parkland, Study Skills Part Two: Finishing the Semester Strong, 20th-Century Travel Technology in an Advanced Tech. World, Philanthropic Revolution for Charity-Givers, Cobra Baseball Hits the South, 88.7 WPCD Pick of the Weekhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2014/1008/thumbnail.jp

Enabling commercial-scale perfusion manufacturing using single-use bioreactors and tangential flow filtration

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract