State Sentencing Guidelines: Profiles and Continuum

Describes twenty-one state sentencing commissions; highlights key attributes of each state's sentencing guidelines and the composition of each commission; and compares guideline systems along a continuum from "more voluntary" to "more mandatory.

Assessing Consistency and Fairness in Sentencing: A Comparative Study in Three States

Summarizes a study of sentencing guidelines in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia comparing levels of predictability and judicial discretion under different guideline systems, effectiveness in limiting discriminatory disparities, and lessons learned

Making Continuous Improvement a Reality: Achieving High Performance in the Ottawa County, Michigan, Circuit and Probate Courts

Today, a well-functioning court is expected to resolve large volumes of work in a fair and orderly way within demanding time frames. The overall goal is quality administration in all phases of court operations, yet achieving this goal in practice means navigating the shoals of tight budgets, workplace politics, and the heavy press of daily business. Courts are under enormous stress these days, and as a result it should come as no surprise that too many courts are infected with pessimistic court leadership. Winston Churchill is often reported to have said, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”1 A high-performance court makes the effort to reject pessimism as it looks to improve its administrative practices, even in tough times. To seize the opportunity for continuous improvement and rally support throughout the court, though, takes coordinated planning and follow-through. The bottom line is that court leaders need to work together at organizational change. In two recent articles in Court Review, we emphasized the necessity of judicial involvement and commitment if administrative improvement is to take hold and thrive. One point was that developing shared, court-wide agreement among judges on how court personnel should work together requires accepting two primary responsibilities: the role each judge has in making decisions and the administrative role judges have in making the system work. Judges benefit from orderly and stable court administration because it helps enhance preparation of all parties, augments the understanding of outstanding issues, and clarifies future procedural events necessary to bring final resolution. However, in any courthouse, making effective administrative practices a reality is a team effort; it requires conscious effort to organize work processes in a way that clarifies and engages the joint contributions of judges and court staff.

The Northwest Tropical Atlantic Station (NTAS) : NTAS-4 mooring turnaround cruise report

The Northwest Tropical Atlantic Station (NTAS) was established to address the need for accurate air-sea flux estimates and upper ocean measurements in a region with strong sea surface temperature anomalies and the likelihood of significant local air–sea interaction on interannual to decadal timescales. The approach is to maintain a surface mooring outfitted for meteorological and oceanographic measurements at a site near 15°N, 51°W by successive mooring turnarounds. These observations will be used to investigate air–sea interaction processes related to climate variability. Deployment of the first (NTAS-1), second (NTAS-2) and third (NTAS-3) moorings were documented in previous reports (Plueddemann et al., 2001; 2002; 2003). This report documents recovery of the NTAS-3 mooring and deployment of the NTAS-4 mooring at the same site. Both moorings used 3-meter discus buoys as the surface element. These buoys were outfitted with two Air–Sea Interaction Meteorology (ASIMET) systems. Each system measures, records, and transmits via Argos satellite the surface meteorological variables necessary to compute air–sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum. The upper 150 m of the mooring line were outfitted with oceanographic sensors for the measurement of temperature and velocity. The mooring turnaround was done on the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, Cruise RB-04-01, by the Upper Ocean Processes Group of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The cruise took place between 12 and 25 February 2004. The NTAS-3 buoy was found adrift and recovered on 19 February at 14°53.7’N, 51°22.8’W. Deployment of the NTAS-4 mooring was on 21 February at approximately 14°44.4’N, 50°56.0’W in 5038 m of water. A 30-hour intercomparison period followed, after which dragging operations to recover the lower portion of the NTAS-3 mooring commenced. This report describes these operations, as well as other work done on the cruise and some of the pre-cruise buoy preparations.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant No. NA17RJ1223 and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR)

Budesonide Enhances Agonist-Induced Bronchodilation in Human Small Airways by Increasing cAMP Production in Airway Smooth Muscle

The non-genomic mechanisms by which glucocorticoids modulate β2 agonist-induced-bronchodilation remain elusive. Our studies aimed to elucidate mechanisms mediating the beneficial effects of glucocorticoids on agonist-induced bronchodilation. Utilizing human precision cut lung slices (hPCLS), we measured bronchodilation to formoterol, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), cholera toxin (CTX) or forskolin in the presence and absence of budesonide. Using cultured human airway smooth muscle (HASM), intracellular cAMP was measured in live cells following exposure to formoterol, PGE2, or forskolin in the presence or absence of budesonide. We showed that simultaneous budesonide administration amplified formoterol-induced bronchodilation and attenuated agonist-induced phosphorylation of myosin light chain, a necessary signaling event mediating force generation. In parallel studies, cAMP levels were augmented by simultaneous exposure of HASM cells to formoterol and budesonide. Budesonide, fluticasone and prednisone alone rapidly increased cAMP levels, but steroids alone had little effect on bronchodilation in hPCLS. Bronchodilation induced by PGE2, CTX or forskolin was also augmented by simultaneous exposure to budesonide in hPCLS. Furthermore, HASM cells expressed membrane-bound glucocorticoid receptors that failed to translocate with glucocorticoid stimulation, and that potentially mediated the rapid effects of steroids on β2 agonist-induced bronchodilation. Knockdown of glucocorticoid receptor α had little effect on budesonide-induced and steroid-dependent augmentation of formoterol-induced cAMP generation in HASM. Collectively, these studies suggest that glucocorticoids amplify cAMP-dependent bronchodilation by directly increasing cAMP levels. These studies identify a molecular mechanism by which the combination of glucocorticoids and β2 agonists may augment bronchodilation in diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease