The Exception that Swallowed the Rule: Fixing the Multiple-Victim Exception to Minnesota Statute Section 609.035

This article proposes that the Legislature should amend section 609.035 to address the problems with the court-created version of the multiple-victim exception. First, the Legislature should amend the statute to allow for the imposition of multiple sentences in cases involving crimes committed against multiple victims. Second, in keeping with Minnesota’s goal of maintaining a rational, proportional sentencing system, the Legislature should limit the district court to imposing no more than two sentences per behavioral incident. Third, the Legislature should codify Minnesota Supreme Court case law holding that the court can only impose a sentence for the most serious offense committed per victim, using comparison of the statutory maximum sentences and the offense’s severity-level rankings under the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines to determine which of several offenses is most serious. These charges will ensure that Minnesota’s sentencing system is applied consistently and even-handedly and that criminal defendants receive sentences commensurate with their culpability

The relational ethics of conflict and identity

The contemporary psychoanalytically inflected vocabulary of relational ethics centres on acknowledgement, witnessing and responsibility. It has become an important code for efforts to connect with otherness across fractures of hurt, oppression and suffering. One can see the deployment of this vocabulary to challenge patterns of exclusion and dehumanisation in zones of intense political conflict in many situations in which destructive hatred reigns. This paper traces some of the use of and disputes over this ‘acknowledgement-based’ relational ethics in the recent work of Jessica Benjamin and Judith Butler. The field of application is their response to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, given their position as Jews. The challenge of the acknowledgement agenda leads back to an issue of general concern – the degree to which relational ethics can prise open apparently closed and defensive psychosocial identities

Beyond recognition: the politics of encounter

The context for this paper is an attempt to think through the possibilities and challenges of nonviolent resistance, with the shadow of the Israel-Palestine conflict looming over it. Drawing on the work of Jessica Benjamin, I outline how a theory of recognition becomes one of acknowledgement through the inclusion of a notion of a witnessing ‘third’. This third is actively implicated in the injury caused by oppression and is called upon to do something about it. I go on to use Judith Butler’s account of the challenge of nonviolence to draw out some lessons on issues of vulnerability, cohabitation and justice. Finally, I return to the question of the kind of witnessing third that might make a difference

Writing Children’s Stories to Improve Engineering Student’s Communication with Non-Engineering Audiences

One of the biggest challenges for students in science and engineering is communicating technical information to a non-technical audience. Students may struggle because they are not adept writers, because they cannot divorce the ideas from the jargon, or because they simply don\u27t understand the material well enough to explain it to someone else. To attempt to address this issue, this study proposes the use of children’s stories to help students practice writing for a target, non-technical audience. To measure the efficacy of this method, junior level engineering students in an electronics course in Fall 2018 were asked to write children’s stories to explain the operation of specific electrical devices. The students wrote one story at the beginning of the semester and another at the end of the semester. Using a written communication rubric, the stories were assessed by non-engineers (a biologist, a business person, and a physical therapist) to determine if the stories effectively explain the content to a non-technical audience. Without showing the rubric to the students, qualitative feedback was given on the first stories. By receiving this feedback, average review scores for the second story increased by 28.3%, indicating that the second story better communicated the material to the audience. With promising results, this study will be expanded to other areas of science and engineering

Turning back

This response to Miri Rozmarin’s paper, Staying Alive, focuses on the question of what it might mean to create a response to matricide and patriarchal violence that is grounded in the particularities of cultural and personal history. Rozmarin’s rendering of a possible response to matricide through the mother-daughter genealogy is illustrated in her analysis of the Biblical myth of Lot’s wife. She claims that this story of destruction, punishment and incest reveals ‘an option of non-matricidal relations’ and she gives a compelling account of how this could be so. In my response, I suggest that there are alternative ‘against the grain’ readings that are grounded in the Jewish traditions and sensibilities in which such ‘mythic’ material is embedded and from which it draws its vitality. I offer an example of this, not to refute Rozmarin’s claims, but to suggest that something more nuanced and even loving can be found in the specificity of this cultured and gendered encounter, and that this better meets the conditions for ‘concrete’ ethical resistance that she seeks

Casitas: A Location-Dependent Ecological Trap for Juvenile Caribbean Spiny Lobsters, Panulirus argus

Casitas are artificial shelters used by fishers to aggregate Caribbean spiny lobsters (Panulirus argus) for ease of capture. However, casitas may function as an ecological trap for juvenile lobsters if they are attracted to casitas and their growth or mortality is poorer compared with natural shelters. We hypothesized that juvenile lobsters may be at particular risk if attracted to casitas because they are less able than larger individuals to defend themselves, and do not forage far from shelter. We compared the nutritional condition, relative mortality, and activity of lobsters of various sizes in casitas and natural shelters in adult and juvenile lobster-dominated habitats in the Florida Keys (United States). We found that the ecological effects of casitas are complex and location-dependent. Lobsters collected from casitas and natural shelters did not differ in nutritional condition. However, juvenile lobsters in casitas experienced higher rates of mortality than did individuals in natural shelters; the mortality of large lobsters did not differ between casitas and natural shelters. Thus, casitas only function as ecological traps when deployed in nursery habitats where juvenile lobsters are lured by conspecifics to casitas where their risk of predation is higher. These results highlight the importance of accounting for animal size and location-dependent effects when considering the consequences of habitat modification for fisheries enhancement

Comparative quasi-static mechanical characterization of fresh and stored porcine trachea specimens

Abstract: Tissues of the upper airways of critically ill patients are particularly vulnerable to mechanical damage associated with the use of ventilators. Ventilation is known to disrupt the structural integrity of respiratory tissues and their function. This damage contributes to the vulnerability of these tissues to infection. We are currently developing tissue models of damage and infection to the upper airways. As part of our studies, we have compared how tissue storage conditions affect mechanical properties of excised respiratory tissues using a quasi-static platform. Data presented here show considerable differences in mechanical responses of stored specimens compared to freshly excised specimens. These data indicate that implementation of storage and maintenance procedures that minimize rapid degradation of tissue structure are essential for retaining the material properties in our tissue trauma models

Age- and stress-associated C. elegans granulins impair lysosomal function and induce a compensatory HLH-30/TFEB transcriptional response.

The progressive failure of protein homeostasis is a hallmark of aging and a common feature in neurodegenerative disease. As the enzymes executing the final stages of autophagy, lysosomal proteases are key contributors to the maintenance of protein homeostasis with age. We previously reported that expression of granulin peptides, the cleavage products of the neurodegenerative disease protein progranulin, enhance the accumulation and toxicity of TAR DNA binding protein 43 (TDP-43) in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). In this study we show that C. elegans granulins are produced in an age- and stress-dependent manner. Granulins localize to the endolysosomal compartment where they impair lysosomal protease expression and activity. Consequently, protein homeostasis is disrupted, promoting the nuclear translocation of the lysosomal transcription factor HLH-30/TFEB, and prompting cells to activate a compensatory transcriptional program. The three C. elegans granulin peptides exhibited distinct but overlapping functional effects in our assays, which may be due to amino acid composition that results in distinct electrostatic and hydrophobicity profiles. Our results support a model in which granulin production modulates a critical transition between the normal, physiological regulation of protease activity and the impairment of lysosomal function that can occur with age and disease