Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc rationalizing rather than predecisional reasoning, and can be subject to poor framing and question construction. Ultimately, it seems a worthy goal to maximize jurors’ decision making while insulating such decisions from external influences. Requiring reasons of jurors may well change how jurors make decisions, but without empirical research, we cannot know if these changes are for the better. Requiring reasons of jurors may not be the panacea we desire, but it seems clear that it will undermine the independence of jurors and juries

Reasoned Verdicts: Oversold?

Jurors are lay fact-finders, untrained in the complexities of law and legal rules, and yet reasoned verdicts require that their reasons conform precisely to the law. This difficulty is the impetus for additional interaction with the court, as jurors must often call on legal assistance when drafting their verdicts. This necessity undermines the independence and power of jurors and opens the door for external pressures and biases to encroach on jurors’ decisions. When judges overturn jury verdicts that they consider insufficiently reasoned, judges substitute their judgments for those of the jurors. In addition, reasoned verdicts may lead to post hoc rationalizing rather than predecisional reasoning, and can be subject to poor framing and question construction. Ultimately, it seems a worthy goal to maximize jurors’ decision making while insulating such decisions from external influences. Requiring reasons of jurors may well change how jurors make decisions, but without empirical research, we cannot know if these changes are for the better. Requiring reasons of jurors may not be the panacea we desire, but it seems clear that it will undermine the independence of jurors and juries

HS Hya about to turn off its eclipses

Aims: We aim to perform the first long-term analysis of the system HS Hya. Methods: We performed an analysis of the long-term evolution of the light curves of the detached eclipsing system HS Hya. Collecting all available photometric data since its discovery, the light curves were analyzed with a special focus on the evolution of system's inclination. Results: We find that the system undergoes a rapid change of inclination. Since its discovery until today the system's inclination changed by more than 15 deg. The shape of the light curve changes, and now the eclipses are almost undetectable. The third distant component of the system is causing the precession of the close orbit, and the nodal period is about 631 yr. Conclusions: New precise observations are desperately needed, preferably this year, because the amplitude of variations is decreasing rapidly every year. We know only 10 such systems on the whole sky at present.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, published in 2012A&A...542L..23

GK Boo and AE For: Two low-mass eclipsing binaries with dwarf companions

A study of late-type low-mass eclipsing binaries provides us with important information about the most common stars in the Universe. We obtain the first light curves and perform period analyses of two neglected eclipsing binaries GK Boo and AE For to reveal their basic physical properties. We performed both a period analysis of the times of the minima and a BVR light curve analysis. Many new times of minima for both the systems were derived and collected from the data obtained by automatic and robotic telescopes. This allowed us to study the long-term period changes in these systems for the first time. From the light curve analysis, we derived the first rough estimates of the physical properties of these systems. We find that the analyzed systems are somewhat similar to each other. Both contain low-mass components of similar types, both are close to the Sun, both have short orbital period, and both contain another low-mass companions on longer orbits of a few years. In the case of GK Boo, both components are probably of K3 spectral type, while the distant companion is probably a late M star. The light curve of GK Boo is asymmetric, which probably causes the shift in the secondary minima in the O-C diagram. System AE For comprises two K7 stars, and the third body is a possible brown dwarf with a minimal mass of only about 47 Jupiter Mass. We succeed in completing period and light curve analyses of both systems, although a more detailed spectroscopic analysis is needed to confirm the physical parameters of the components to a higher accuracy.Comment: 8 pages, 11 tables, 6 figures, published in 2012A&A...537A.109

Self-Screening Hawking Atmosphere in the Presence of a Bulk Viscosity

The recent theory of 't Hooft [ Nucl. Phys. Suppl. {\bf 68}, 174 (1998)] models the black hole as a system endowed with an envelope of matter that obeys an equation of state in the form $p=(\gamma -1)\rho$, and acts as a source in Einstein's equations. The present paper generalizes the 't Hooft theory so as to take into account a bulk viscosity $\zeta$ in the fluid. It is shown that even a slight positive value of $\zeta$ will suffice to yield complete agreement with the Hawking formula for the entropy of the black hole, if the value of the constant $\gamma$ takes a value that is slightly less than 4/3. The value $\gamma=4/3$ corresponds to a radiation fluid.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, no figures, minor extensions of the discussion. To appear in PR

Detection of avascular necrosis on routine diffusion-weighted whole body MRI in patients with multiple myeloma.

OBJECTIVE:Current therapies for multiple myeloma, which include corticosteroids, increase risk of avascular necrosis. The aim of this study was to assess incidental detection of femoral head avascular necrosis on routine whole body MRI including diffusion weighted MRI. METHODS:All whole body MRI studies, performed on patients with known multiple myeloma between 1 January 2010 to 1 May 2017 were assessed for features of avascular necrosis. RESULTS:650 whole body MR scans were analysed. 15 patients (6.6%) had typical MR features of avascular necrosis: 2/15 (13.3%) had femoral head collapse, 4/15 (26.7%) had bilateral avascular necrosis and 9/15 (60%) were asymptomatic. CONCLUSION:This is the first report of avascular necrosis detected on routine whole body MRI in patients with multiple myeloma. Targeted review of femoral heads in multiple myeloma patients undergoing whole body MR is recommended, including in patients without symptoms. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE:Whole body MR which includes diffusion-weighted MRI is extremely sensitive for evaluation of bone marrow. Although whole body MRI is primarily used for evaluation of multiple myeloma disease burden, it also presents an unique opportunity to evaluate the femoral heads for signs of avascular necrosis which can predate symptoms

Toward a better understanding of fish‐based contribution to ocean carbon flux

Fishes are the dominant vertebrates in the ocean, yet we know little of their contribution to carbon export flux at regional to global scales. We synthesize the existing information on fish‐based carbon flux in coastal and pelagic waters, identify gaps and challenges in measuring this flux and approaches to address them, and recommend research priorities. Based on our synthesis of passive (fecal pellet sinking) and active (migratory) flux of fishes, we estimated that fishes contribute an average (± standard deviation) of about 16.1% (± 13%) to total carbon flux out of the euphotic zone. Using the mean value of model‐generated global carbon flux estimates, this equates to an annual flux of 1.5 ± 1.2 Pg C yr−1. High variability in estimations of the fish‐based contribution to total carbon flux among previous field studies and reported here highlight significant methodological variations and observational gaps in our present knowledge. Community‐adopted methodological standards, improved and more frequent measurements of biomass and passive and active fluxes of fishes, and stronger linkages between observations and models will decrease uncertainty, increase our confidence in the estimation of fish‐based carbon flux, and enable identification of controlling factors to account for spatial and temporal variability. Better constraints on this key component of the biological pump will provide a baseline for understanding how ongoing climate change and harvest will affect the role fishes play in carbon flux

On the Cosmology of Massive Vector Fields with SO(3) Global Symmetry

A relevant reference ([14]) has been added.Comment: 19 pages, plain tex, DF/IST-3/92 and DFFCUL 03-5/199

Generalized Assisted Inflation

We obtain a new class of exact cosmological solutions for multi-scalar fields with exponential potentials. We generalize the assisted inflation solutions previously obtained, and demonstrate how they are modified when there exist cross-couplings between the fields, such as occur in supergravity inspired cosmological models.Comment: 5 page