VAV’s Got Rhythm

Biological rhythms with periods of less than a day are physiologically important but poorly understood. In this issue of Cell, Norman, Maricq, and colleagues (Norman et al., 2005) show that VAV-1, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rho-family GTPases, is necessary for three rhythmic behaviors in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: feeding, defecation, and ovulation

A basic and applied investigation into the effect of the rate of reinforcer delivery

There is some evidence from basic research with animals that increasing the rate of delivering a reinforcer serves to increase response rates. There have been very few applied studies which have investigated rate of delivering a reinforcer independent of other variables, especially with non-discrete or durational target behaviours. Reinforcement remains a central feature of training or intervention programmes with severely developmentally delayed clients. Yet the parameters of a reinforcer and the parameters of the reinforcement process have not been fully investigated. The purpose of the current research was to investigate the effects of delivering a functionally positive reinforcer at a high and very high rate on discrete and durational target behaviours with two severely developmentally delayed adults. The present research consisted of two single subject ABACAC within subject reversal design experiments. Trainers presented the onset of the different reinforcer delivery rate conditions in a multiple baseline across two tasks. Results in the first three conditions of Experiment 1 demonstrated that when initially delivered at an increased rate, verbal praise rate was a functionally positive reinforcer of accurate production rate and time spent in production When the rate of delivering praise was further increased, this increase was initially associated with a further increase, but a later decrease in target behaviours. All target (production) behaviours became more variable with Client employee 1 and the function of the positive reinforcer did not remain stable when delivered at its highest rate. A correlational analysis of some of the data in the very frequent praise conditions did not support a positive proportional relationship between delivery rate of the reinforcer and either of the target behaviours. Results during the first three conditions of Experiment 2 also demonstrated that an increased rate of verbal praise was a functionally positive reinforcer of accurate production rate and time in production. When the rate of verbal praise was further increased, this increased rate was associated with maintaining, but not further increasing accurate production rates. Further increasing the rate of verbal praise was associated with decreases in time spent in production. Only one of the target behaviours became more variable with Client employee 2 when praise was delivered at a very frequent rate. A correlational analysis of some of the data in the very frequent praise conditions offered partial support for a positive proportional relationship between rate of delivering the reinforcer and the target behaviours. Although reinforcer delivery rate was associated with different specific effects across the two Client employees, the reinforcing function of verbal praise did not remain stable when delivered at different rates across both individuals. It was concluded that it cannot reliably be predicted that a reinforcer delivered at one rate will continue to reinforce at a higher rate across all behaviours. This result is discussed in light of previous related research and the parameters of the reinforcement process. The specific effects obtained across the two Client employees are discussed with reference to contributing experimental factors and possible functional accounts of the effects. Suggestions for future research are made

Parallel Courts

Even as American attention is focused on Iraq’s struggles to rebuild its political and legal systems in the face of violent sectarian divisions, another fractured society – Kosovo – has just begun negotiations to resolve the question of its political independence. The persistent ethnic divisions that have obstructed Kosovo’s efforts to establish multi-ethnic “rule of law” offer lessons in transitional justice for Iraq and other states. In Kosovo today, two parallel judicial systems each claim absolute and exclusive jurisdiction over the province. One system is sponsored by the United Nations administration in Kosovo and is mostly, although not exclusively, staffed by Kosovar Albanians. The other system, run primarily by Kosovar Serbians, is essentially a set of courts-in-exile, the remnants of the previous judicial system that existed before the Serbian government was forced out of Kosovo by NATO bombing in 1999. The parallel courts present a transitional justice issue that is as crucial to rebuilding Kosovo’s post-conflict society as convening a truth commission or conducting criminal trials. On one level, the existence of the parallel courts is a manifestation of the ongoing political dispute over sovereignty. For the residents of Kosovo, the lack of any recognition of judgments between these systems has also created legal chaos in their everyday lives. Conflicting judgments have been issued in civil cases, and criminal defendants are subject to prosecution and punishment in both systems. The palpable injustices that result from these conflicting judgments and repeated trials are undermining confidence in the ongoing process of legal and political transition. This article undertakes an assessment of Kosovo’s parallel systems and of the existing legal models for recognition and enforcement of judgments, with the aim of proposing an appropriate framework for Kosovo to recognize the Serbian parallel judgments. In my survey of the relevant national and international models, I find that each strives to strike a balance between two competing values: (1) certainty in the finality and consistency of legal judgments and (2) ensuring those judgments’ essential fairness. Using these two values as a guide, I assess whether and how the existing models might be adapted to Kosovo’s context, concluding that the proper balance between legal certainty and fairness will permit categorical recognition of most parallel civil judgments, but will require case by case, discretionary review of criminal judgments. Finally, from this analysis, I develop a set of factors for other transitioning states to consider when faced with judgments from ethnic and religious legal institutions or other parallel courts

Beyond Rights: Legal Process and Ethnic Conflicts

Unresolved ethnic conflicts threaten the stability and the very existence of multi-ethnic states. Ethnically divided states have struggled to build structural safeguards against such disputes into their political and legal systems, but these safeguards have not been able to prevent all conflict. Accordingly, multi-ethnic states facing persistent ethnic conflicts need to develop effective dispute resolution systems for resolving those conflicts. This presents an important question: what kinds of processes and institutions might enable ethnic groups to resolve their conflicts with each other and the state? This Article explores that question, reviewing the interdisciplinary literature on ethnic conflicts, the legal literature on legal process and conflict resolution, and a case study of ethnic conflicts and conflict resolution in Ethiopia. At crucial moments in the development of an ethnic conflict, legal processes such as mediation, arbitration or constitutional interpretation might play a role in resolving the dispute. But ethnic conflict resolution institutions and processes must be carefully designed to take account of the variety, complexity and dynamics of ethnic conflicts, and to address the substantial number of ethnic groups and interests that diverge from the minority rights legal model. Ultimately, the Ethopian example calls on us to consider whether and how legal processes might be able to ameliorate the threat posed by ethnic conflict

Elite consensus and political polarization: cases from Central Europe

"The concept of 'elite consensus' is pivotal to the work of John Higley and his associates, but like many key political concepts its meaning is not precise. Consensus implies broad agreement, but just how much agreement, over what matters, among whom (i.e., who are the relevant elites), and how enduring remain to be specified. Higley et al. recognize these problems, placing their emphasis on procedural rather than substantive agreement and granting that individual cases may lie somewhere on the borderline between elite consensus and disunity. In this essay I explore the consensus issue by examining several cases from East Central Europe and that of Germany in the aftermath of the fall of Communism. Higley and Burton see especially in the Polish and Hungarian 'roundtables' instances of near-contemporary 'elite settlements.' But in both cases observers have recently pointed to a degree of political polarization whose intensity seems to call into question the actual achievement of elite consensus and indeed of 'democratic consolidation.' I assess these apparently conflicting perspectives by examining the divergent views of the new political institutions and of the legitimacy of one another held by rival elites in Poland and Hungary and compare the cases of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany." (author's abstract

A geometric basis for the standard-model gauge group

A geometric approach to the standard model in terms of the Clifford algebra Cl_7 is advanced. A key feature of the model is its use of an algebraic spinor for one generation of leptons and quarks. Spinor transformations separate into left-sided ("exterior") and right-sided ("interior") types. By definition, Poincare transformations are exterior ones. We consider all rotations in the seven-dimensional space that (1) conserve the spacetime components of the particle and antiparticle currents and (2) do not couple the right-chiral neutrino. These rotations comprise additional exterior transformations that commute with the Poincare group and form the group SU(2)_L, interior ones that constitute SU(3)_C, and a unique group of coupled double-sided rotations with U(1)_Y symmetry. The spinor mediates a physical coupling of Poincare and isotopic symmetries within the restrictions of the Coleman--Mandula theorem. The four extra spacelike dimensions in the model form a basis for the Higgs isodoublet field, whose symmetry requires the chirality of SU(2). The charge assignments of both the fundamental fermions and the Higgs boson are produced exactly.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX requires iopart. Accepted for publication in J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 9 Mar 2001. Typos correcte

Sending the Bureaucracy to War

Administrative law has been transformed after 9/11, much to its detriment. Since then, the government has mobilized almost every part of the civil bureaucracy to fight terrorism, including agencies that have no obvious expertise in that task. The vast majority of these bureaucratic initiatives suffer from predictable, persistent, and probably intractable problems - problems that contemporary legal scholars tend to ignore, even though they are central to the work of the writers who created and framed the discipline of administrative law. We analyze these problems through a survey of four administrative initiatives that exemplify the project of sending bureaucrats to war. The initiatives - two involving terrorism financing, one involving driver licensing, and one involving the adjudication of asylum claims - grow out of the two statutes perhaps most associated with the war on terrorism, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the REAL ID Act of 2005. In each of our case studies, the civil administrative schemes used to fight terrorism suffer from the incongruity of fitting civil rules into an anti-civil project, the difficulties of delegating wide discretion without adequate supervision, and the problem of using inexpert civil regulators to serve complex law enforcement ends. We conclude that anti-terrorism should rarely be the principal justification for a new administrative initiative, but offer some recommendations as to when it might make sense to re-purpose civil officials as anti-terrorism fighters

Actidione resistance: a forward mutation technique and its application for mosaic analysis

Actidione resistance: a forward mutation technique and its application for mosaic analysi

Notes on the use of microconidiating strains in mutation experiments

Notes on the use of micrconidiating strains in mutation experiment

Estimation of the frequency of multinucleate conidia in microconidiating strains

Frequency of multinucleate conidia in microconidiating strain