POLICE BRUTALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Police brutality is exemplified by using excessive or unjustifiable force by law enfoand federal governments have been against brutality for a long time and have taken action against it. This study examined the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers. The relationship between historical events and present-day societal issues is undeniable. To shed light on the tense dynamic between black males and law enforcement officials in the United States, it\u27s important to examine how the black population has been treated in the past. Throughout history, people of African descent have often been viewed as hostile and aggressive, which has contributed to a lack of respect from members of other racial groups and perpetuated the notion that they threaten the established social order. Frequently, law enforcement officers are sent to regions where they are unfamiliar with the cultural practices and functional characteristics of the ethnic community in question. Law enforcement officers may likely respond negatively to African-Americans due to their system\u27s inherent biases. Lastly, the evidence establishes a link between the continuation of police brutality and negative health effects.rcement agents. Even though there has never been a suitable description for usage worldwide, the phenomenon has been observed throughout the whole history of law enforcement. From early American slave patrols to the police forces of the twenty-first century, history is filled with instances of law enforcement officials perpetrating individual or collective acts of violence. These incidents disproportionately affect individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, communities of color, and immigrant communities. People, the media, and local

Examining the substrate specificity of factor XIIIa towards peptide substrate modelsaC fibrin domains.

In the blood coagulation cascade, Factor XIII (FXIII) is a zymogen that is activated by thrombin (IIa) and Ca2+. Activated FXIII (FXIIIa) functions as a transglutaminase in the final steps of the clotting cascade by forming covalent crosslinks between fibrin monomers at reactive glutamine residues. This forms a stable clot structure, secure from proteolytic degradation. To monitor FXIIIa substrate sequence specificity, the glutamine-containing peptide models S. aureus Fnb A (100-114), α2AP(Q4P) (1-15) and K9 (1-10) were introduced to the enzyme in the presence of 15NH4Cl. Using MALDI-TOF MS and 15N HSQC NMR experiments, it was seen that α2AP(Q4P) (1-15) and K9 (1-10) were viable FXIIIa substrates, having isotopic nitrogen incorporated in their side chain amide groups. However, S. aureus Fnb A (100-114) was not able to undergo this catalytic reaction because of an interfering side reaction with the labeled nitrogen. The substrate specificity appears to be the result of chemical environment provided by the residues immediately surrounding the reactive glutamine, with a focus on the hybridization of the side chain carbons. The αC(233-425) domain of fibrin monomers was also analyzed as an intact FXIIIa substrate protein. The reactive Q328 residue of the protein was seen to undergo enzymatic transglutamination linearly with time using MALDI-TOF MS. 2D 15N HSQC experiments displayed that Q328 was not the only reactive glutamine in the protein but rather one of two or three reactive glutamines

Restoration, Presence And Computer Use: How Computer Displays Incorporating Restorative Environments Effect Users\u27 Sense Of Restoration And Presence

Recent technological advances provide opportunities for computer users to replace desktop pictures with dynamic, audio-visual recordings. Such advances provide researchers with opportunities to better understand how specific video content may effect users\u27 sense of restoration and presence. As described within Attention Restoration Theory, those perceiving restorative environments, which are found primarily within nature-based environments, experience a sense of restoration. Yet, prior research has largely focused on singular, and to an extent, non-interactive displays of restorative environments. The current research further investigated the restorative potential of environments having incorporated interactive, computer-based displays, with animated audio-visual environments. Participants were assigned to either restorative or non- restorative conditions and completed a computer-based, interactive, word task for 10 minutes. The centrally-located task was surrounded by video which presented either a restorative video for participants within the restorative condition, or a non-restorative video for those within the non-restorative condition. Participants then completed the perceived restoration scale (PRS) and a modified version of the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) to measure the resulting sense of restoration and presence respectively. Results suggest that, as predicted, those who had completed a word-based task presented as part of a restorative user interface reported greater levels of both restoration and presence compared to those who had completed the same word task within the non- restorative condition

Do Police Union Contracts Hinder Accountability: A Quantitative Approach

Winner of Penn Carey Law\u27s 2022 Wiley C. Rutledge Memorial Fund Award for the best research project on the relation of law enforcement and individual liberty

Government Performance, Identity, and Support for Further Devolution in Europe

Over the past three decades, Europe has witnessed a growing trend of devolution, or the transfer of power from states to their regions. Much of the previous scholarship has examined the causes of initial devolution, and found that the creation of regional institutions is linked to unique regional identities. This thesis examines whether these identities still matters to voters when making decisions about further devolution. Working from the premise that voters can assess the material utility of devolution after regional governments have been established, and that voters will weigh considerations of material utility more strongly than assessments of expressive utility (identity), this thesis tests whether voters\u27 policy and affective satisfaction with regional government displaces identity as the determining factor of support for further devolution. This study uses polling data from two European case studies, Wales and Catalonia, and finds that while satisfaction does displace identity in both cases, the nature and meaning of identity affects its role in voters decision-making

Russia\u27s Empress-Navigator: Transforming Modes of Monarchy during the Reign of Anna Ivanovna, 1730-40.

The eighteenth century was a markedly volatile period in the history of Russia, seeing its development and international emergence as a European-styled empire. In narratives of this time of change, historians tend to view the century in two parts: the reign of Peter I (r. 1682-1725), who purportedly spurned Russia into modernization, and Catherine II (r. 1762-96), the German princess-turned-empress who presided over the culmination of Russia’s transformation. Yet, dismissal of nearly forty years of Russia’s history does a severe disservice to the sovereigns and governments that molded and crafted the process of change. Specifically, Empress Anna Ivanovna (r. 1730-40) remains one of the most overlooked and underappreciated sovereigns of the interim between the “Greats”. Understanding Russia’s change in the eighteenth century is to understand the decade-long tenure of the Empress Anna and the ways she mediated the space between past and future. My paper that Anna successfully navigated a course between competing images of Russia: the aristocratic and Orthodox-dominated domain of the old Muscovite tsars and the vibrant, Westernized empire that Peter the Great envisioned. She accomplished this by providing substance for the reforms of Peter the Great, namely by creating revenue to cover the costs of his projects and completing his transformation of St. Petersburg, the Window to the West. Further, she created new institutions of government to cultivate Russian autocracy and reaffirmed the status of the sovereign as autocrat, centering the court around the sovereign and using her personal lovers, or “favorites,” as an extension of her executive arm. The culture she shaped created the circumstances that enabled the successful reigns of the women who followed her to the throne, Elizabeth and Catherine II. Anna’s reign in Russia provides a concrete example not of starting or ending a change, but rather what it means to refine and craft the process of change. Through the example of Anna, historians can learn much about the role of continuity from the past in building a new future; change is rarely a climax and always a process. Peter I’s clear break with the past led to the retraction of his reforms by his successors, yet Anna found a way to move Russia forward while preserving elements of its past. Thus, my paper argues that Anna became Russia’s Empress-Navigator, striking a chord between the Tsarist past and the Imperial future that enabled Russia’s development into a world power

Shape-preserving and unidirectional frequency conversion using four-wave mixing Bragg scattering

In this work, we investigate the properties of four-wave mixing Bragg scattering in a configuration that employs orthogonally polarized pumps in a birefringent waveguide. This configuration enables a large signal conversion bandwidth, and allows strongly unidirectional frequency conversion as undesired Bragg-scattering processes are suppressed by waveguide birefringence. Moreover, we show that this form of four-wave mixing Bragg scattering preserves the (arbitrary) signal pulse shape, even when driven by pulsed pumps.Comment: 11 pages + refs, 5 figure

Field Performance of an Annual Medic Tolerant of Sulfonylurea Herbicide Residues

Sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides such as triasulfuron, chlorsulfuron and metsulfuron-methyl are used extensively in the cereal-livestock zones of temperate Australia. They are regarded by farmers as effective, cheap and safe-to-apply herbicides with useful levels of residual activity in the year of application. However these residues can persist into following years, particularly in areas with alkaline soils and low rainfall, where their breakdown by microbial action and chemical hydrolysis is significantly reduced. Regenerating pasture legumes typically used in Australian ley farming systems are highly intolerant of even very low residues of SU herbicides (e.g. \u3c 1ppb; Heap, 2000) resulting in severe stunting, reduced dry matter production, lower seed yields, poor persistence and decreased N fixation. In this study we compare the field performance of an artificially induced mutant cultivar (FEH-1) of annual strand medic (Medicago littoralis) with putative tolerance to sulfonylurea herbicide residues (Heap, 2000) with the cultivar Herald, its intolerant strand medic parent

CIRCE Version 1.0: Beam Spectra for Linear Collider Physics

I describe parameterizations of realistic $e^\pm$- and $\gamma$-beam spectra at future linear $e^+e^-$-colliders. Emphasis is put on simplicity and reproducibility of the parameterizations, supporting reproducible physics simulations. The parameterizations are implemented in a library of distribution functions and event generators.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX (using amsmath.sty), PostScript figures included, paper saving version formatted for A4 available from ftp://crunch.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.de/pub/preprints/IKDA-96-13.ps.g

Global oceanic emission of ammonia: constraints from seawater and atmospheric observations

Current global inventories of ammonia emissions identify the ocean as the largest natural source. This source depends on seawater pH, temperature, and the concentration of total seawater ammonia (NHx(sw)), which reflects a balance between remineralization of organic matter, uptake by plankton, and nitrification. Here we compare [NHx(sw)] from two global ocean biogeochemical models (BEC and COBALT) against extensive ocean observations. Simulated [NHx(sw)] are generally biased high. Improved simulation can be achieved in COBALT by increasing the plankton affinity for NHx within observed ranges. The resulting global ocean emissions is 2.5 TgN a−1, much lower than current literature values (7–23 TgN a−1), including the widely used Global Emissions InitiAtive (GEIA) inventory (8 TgN a−1). Such a weak ocean source implies that continental sources contribute more than half of atmospheric NHx over most of the ocean in the Northern Hemisphere. Ammonia emitted from oceanic sources is insufficient to neutralize sulfate aerosol acidity, consistent with observations. There is evidence over the Equatorial Pacific for a missing source of atmospheric ammonia that could be due to photolysis of marine organic nitrogen at the ocean surface or in the atmosphere. Accommodating this possible missing source yields a global ocean emission of ammonia in the range 2–5 TgN a−1, comparable in magnitude to other natural sources from open fires and soils