Unreported Opinions of the Supreme Court of Michigan, 1836-1843

In July 1836 final jurisdiction of non-federal litigation passed from the Michigan Territorial Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of the State of Michigan. Then, substantially as now, the Constitution provided: The judicial power shall be vested in one supreme court, and such other courts as the legislature may from time to time establish. Mich. Const. 1835, Art. VI, §1. Those who are interested in the judicial history of Michigan prior to 1836 are fortunate in having access to much of such history contained in the six volumes entitled Transactions of the Supreme Court of Michigan, edited by Professor William Wirt Blume of the Michigan Law School faculty. Along with other interesting material, he has included therein and thus made available some seventy of the opinions of the Michigan Territorial Supreme Court. His present volume of Unreported Opinions of the Supreme Court of Michigan, 1836-1843 brings to light and for the first time makes accessible the Michigan Supreme Court decisions therein contained which were rendered during the indicated period of seven years.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1026/thumbnail.jp

Sharing the light of the sacred fire: A proposal for a paradigm shift in psychology

Abstract Psychology as a science and practice developed with a Eurocentric model that has basic assumptions about humanity and our place in the world. The model places great value on individualism and individual achievement, autonomy and personal liberties, self-achievement and personal rewards. However, the Eurocentric paradigm of individualism and autonomy in many ways is not effective to respond to global concerns that were not anticipated when psychology first developed. Local problems have become global concerns in which traditional Eurocentric assumptions about boundaries and self-interests no longer hold. Many of the issues that challenge psychological health today are too large, broad, or complex for individual or small group solutions. The world has changed in ways that is making the Eurocentric paradigm obsolete. In fact, one could argue that Western psychology is at some risk of becoming irrelevant. What is needed is a paradigm that is strikingly different than what Eurocentric psychology can currently offer that will effectively address new global trends and changes. Oddly, psychological scientists have largely ignored alternative worldviews and practices by Native people virtually in their academic backyards. Indigenous beliefs that are more collective and communal in orientation are more closely aligned with the global realities faced today. A proposed outline of what a new paradigm for psychological science and practice is presented in order to initiate a conversation about how Indigenous beliefs and values may be infused to promote healing to all of Mother Earth

Tuning the structural and dynamical properties of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate: Ripples and instability islands

It is now well established that the stability of aligned dipolar Bose gases can be tuned by varying the aspect ratio of the external harmonic confinement. This paper extends this idea and demonstrates that a Gaussian barrier along the strong confinement direction can be employed to tune both the structural properties and the dynamical stability of an oblate dipolar Bose gas aligned along the strong confinement direction. In particular, our theoretical mean-field analysis predicts the existence of instability islands immersed in otherwise stable regions of the phase diagram. Dynamical studies indicate that these instability islands, which can be probed experimentally with present-day technology, are associated with the going soft of a Bogoliubov--de Gennes excitation frequency with radial breathing mode character. Furthermore, we find dynamically stable ground state densities with ripple-like oscillations along the radial direction. These structured ground states exist in the vicinity of a dynamical radial roton-like instability.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figure

Effective renormalized multi-body interactions of harmonically confined ultracold neutral bosons

We calculate the renormalized effective 2-, 3-, and 4-body interactions for N neutral ultracold bosons in the ground state of an isotropic harmonic trap, assuming 2-body interactions modeled with the combination of a zero-range and energy-dependent pseudopotential. We work to third-order in the scattering length a defined at zero collision energy, which is necessary to obtain both the leading-order effective 4-body interaction and consistently include finite-range corrections for realistic 2-body interactions. The leading-order, effective 3- and 4-body interaction energies are U3 = -(0.85576...)(a/l)^2 + 2.7921(1)(a/l)^3 + O[(a/l)^4] and U4 = +(2.43317...)(a/l)^3 + O[(a\l)^4], where w and l are the harmonic oscillator frequency and length, respectively, and energies are in units of hbar*w. The one-standard deviation error 0.0001 for the third-order coefficient in U3 is due to numerical uncertainty in estimating a slowly converging sum; the other two coefficients are either analytically or numerically exact. The effective 3- and 4-body interactions can play an important role in the dynamics of tightly confined and strongly correlated systems. We also performed numerical simulations for a finite-range boson-boson potential, and it was comparison to the zero-range predictions which revealed that finite-range effects must be taken into account for a realistic third-order treatment. In particular, we show that the energy-dependent pseudopotential accurately captures, through third order, the finite-range physics, and in combination with the multi-body effective interactions gives excellent agreement with the numerical simulations, validating our theoretical analysis and predictions.Comment: Updated introduction, correction of a few typos and sign error

PHENIX and the Reaction Plane: Recent Results

During the past several years, experiments at RHIC have established that a dense partonic medium is produced in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV. Subsequently, a primary goal of analysis has been to understand and characterize the dynamics underlying this new form of matter. Among the many probes available, the measurements with respect to the reaction plane has proven to be crucial to our understanding of a wide range of topics, from the hydrodynamics of the initial expansion of the collision region to high-pt jet quenching phenomena. Few tools have the ability to shed light on such a wide variety of observables as the reacion plane. In this article, we discuss recent PHENIX measurements with respect to the reaction plane, and the implications for understanding the underlying physics of RHIC collisions.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, Submitted for proceedings to the Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics 2010, Ocho Rios, Jamaic

Feshbach Resonance Cooling of Trapped Atom Pairs

Spectroscopic studies of few-body systems at ultracold temperatures provide valuable information that often cannot be extracted in a hot environment. Considering a pair of atoms, we propose a cooling mechanism that makes use of a scattering Feshbach resonance. Application of a series of time-dependent magnetic field ramps results in the situation in which either zero, one, or two atoms remain trapped. If two atoms remain in the trap after the field ramps are completed, then they have been cooled. Application of the proposed cooling mechanism to optical traps or lattices is considered.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; v.2: major conceptual change

Reliability Matters: Reassociating Bagley Materality, Strickland Prejudice, and Cumulative Harmless Error

Most commonly invoked after conviction and direct appeal, when a defendant may claim that his lawyer was ineffective or that the government failed to disclose exculpatory information, the Brady doctrine, which governs the prosecutor’s duty to disclose favorable evidence to the defense, and the Strickland doctrine, which monitors defense counsel’s duty to represent the client effectively, have developed into the principal safeguards of fair trials, fundamental to the protection of defendants’ constitutional rights and arguably defendants’ strongest insurance of a reliable verdict. But the doctrines do not sufficiently protect these core values. The doctrines, despite their common due process heritage and symbiotic development, are generally divided when assessing prejudice. Even in cases where the defendant alleges both that the prosecution withheld evidence and that his counsel was incompetent, courts assess the impact of each party’s conduct on the verdict independently. Our objectives here are two-fold. Our more modest objective is to argue that courts should consider the impact of Brady violations and Strickland violations together when evaluating whether a guilty verdict or death sentence is reliable. Few courts and no commentators, however, have directly tackled this issue. Our second objective is more ambitious. If Strickland and Brady errors should be considered jointly when assessing prejudice, then why shouldn’t the impact of all errors that potentially affective the reliability of a verdict be taken into account? Part I begins by tracing the history of the Strickland and Brady doctrines. Beginning with Part II we address three problems that we see as dividing reliability determinations. We next consider the relationship between the Brady and Strickland doctrines, in Part III. Our call is for integrating Strickland prejudice and Bagley materiality. Part IV expands the argument for cumulation beyond ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial suppression. Our call here is for a rule of integration requiring courts to consider the unified impact on the verdict of all errors affecting reliability