The Constitutional Failure of the Strickland Standard in Capital Cases under the Eighth Amendment

Criminal defendants are guaranteed the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment, but the Supreme Court\u27s decision in Strickland has given appellate courts overly broad discretion to determine exactly what constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. Murphy reviews the right to counsel and discusses the crucial role of counsel in capital cases throughout the trial and appellate processes

Recommendations for Conservation Easement Reform

Virginia has a well-established easement program which offers landowners a state income tax credit in return for donating land rights such as development and subdivision rights. Currently, there are inefficiencies with easements which could be lessened with reform (Owley 2011, Rissman 2011). This paper proposes that Virginia establish statewide conservation priorities and switches from a flat rate credit for easement donations to a tiered system which provides greater incentives for easements on land with high conservation value (McLaughlin and Pidot 2013). Additionally, this paper proposes that Virginia require adaptive language in easement terms and standardizes monitoring procedures. Poster session prepared for Environmental Studies Senior Seminar

Embracing Localization Inaccuracy: A Case Study

In recent years, indoor localization has become a hot research topic with some sophisticated solutions reaching accuracy on the order of ten centimeters. While certain classes of applications can justify the corresponding costs that come with these solutions, a wealth of applications have requirements that can be met at much lower cost by accepting lower accuracy. This paper explores one specific application for monitoring patients in a nursing home, showing that sufficient accuracy can be achieved with a carefully designed deployment of low-cost wireless sensor network nodes in combination with a simple RSSI-based localization technique. Notably our solution uses a single radio sample per period, a number that is much lower than similar approaches. This greatly eases the power burden of the nodes, resulting in a significant lifetime increase. This paper evaluates a concrete deployment from summer 2012 composed of fixed anchor motes throughout one floor of a nursing home and mobile units carried by patients. We show how two localization algorithms perform and demonstrate a clear improvement by following a set of simple guidelines to tune the anchor node placement. We show both quantitatively and qualitatively that the results meet the functional and non-functional system requirements

Interpersonal violence, drug use, and adult attachment

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references: leaves 23-26.Although numerous studies have investigated the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), little research has examined the effects of violent and non-violent trauma on individuals with sub-clinical levels of PTSD. Texas A&M undergraduates (N = 396) completed a PTSD self-report scale, the Adult Attachment Questionnaire, the World Assumptions Scale, the Lifetime Involvement in Violent Events Survey, and a substance abuse questionnaire. Subjects were also asked if they had experienced a trauma, and if not, what was the worst thing that had ever happened to them. Sexual trauma was the best predictor of PTSD symptoms, insecure attachment in romantic relationships and friendships, marijuana use, and frequency and amount of alcohol use. Gender effects indicated that women reported higher levels of PTSD symptoms, avoidance, and ambivalence, whereas men reported high levels of marijuana and alcohol us

A Rapid Development of Dependable Applications in Ad Hoc Mobility

Advances in wireless communication and network computing technologies make possible new kinds of applications involving transient interactions among physical components that move across a wide range of spaces, from the confines of a room to the airspace across an ocean, and require no fixed networking infrastructure to communicate with one another. Such components may come together to form ad hoc networks for the purpose of exchanging information or in order to engage in cooperative task-oriented behaviors. Ad hoc networks are assembled, reshaped and taken apart as components move in and out of communication range; all interactions are transient; computations become highly decoupled and rely on weak forms of data consistency; disconnections are frequent and unpredictable; and component behavior is sensitive to changes in location, context, quality of service, or administrative domain. Our objective is to develop an environment that will facilitate rapid development of dependable mobile applications executing over ad hoc networks. Our primary focus will be the development of coordination constructs that support transient interactions among components, specifically through the design of global virtual data structures. Operations and their effects on these data structures must be defined with respect to the current connectivity context. We intend to use formal modeling techniques to define these constructs and their operating constraints as well as providing the specification for implementing these structure. Part of this specification will involve the development of algorithms for the ad hoc environment such as leader election, termination detection, and transactions

Invisible Inequalities of Austerity: Everyday Life, Mothers and Health in Stockton-on-Tees

Austerity in the UK has been ongoing since 2010 and is contributing to widening health, economic, gender and social inequalities. There has been little contemporary qualitative research into the gendered inequalities of austerity in the context of health inequalities. This thesis presents findings from research with mothers in Stockton-on-Tees, a borough in the North East of England with wide health inequalities. The research focuses on the interplay between the macro and micro consequences of austerity for mothers – the impact of welfare retrenchment, public sector cuts and local labour market conditions, and how these effect everyday life in the context of unpaid care work and mothers experiences of depletion through social reproduction. This is contextualised through the lens of feminist political economy as an essential framework for diagnosing the symptoms of austerity and proposing productive alternatives. Qualitative longitudinal interviewing and ethnographic research are used to draw out the perspectives of respondents in relation to austerity and everyday life. The ‘intersectionality’ of inequality is emphasised – how gender interacts with age, class, place, ethnicity and disability to produce complex effects on health and wellbeing. Findings indicate that austerity is making Stockton-on-Tees a more uneven place - once-strong ties to communities are perceived to be deteriorating, and the socio-spatial distribution of inequality increasing. Mothers expressed a need for more space and time to care without the pressures of welfare reform and the associated risks. ‘Invisible inequalities’ are depleting the mental wellbeing of many mothers. This research provides a contribution to the growing body of evidence indicating that austerity is damaging to social equality, widening the health gap, contributing to worsening mental health, and intensifying intersecting inequalities for women. It is unique in its application of the concept of intersectionality to health inequalities in the context of austerity, and the novel contribution of a feminist political economy approach to the study of health and austerity

Developing Critical Social Justice Literacy in an Online Seminar

The purpose of this article is to report on an effort to cultivate a critical social justice perspective and critical social justice praxis among educators enrolled in an online graduate program. Although the entire program was organized around themes of equity, collaboration, and leadership, this study focused on educators’ perspectives of the purposes, pedagogy, and outcomes of one course, Critical Pedagogy. Fourteen of the 19 students enrolled in the online course participated in one of six online focus groups following the conclusion of the course. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, the researchers identified the different ways in which students responded to the course, what they learned, and how they enacted their learning as well as the features of the course that the students believed contributed to their learning and practice. The study provides insight into features of online pedagogy that appear to facilitate transformative learning. It further provides insight into the kinds of content and assignments that may promote critical social justice praxis among educators