INTERPRETATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF SCALE FOR THE PRATT-ARROW ABSOLUTE RISK AVERSION COEFFICIENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR GENERALIZED STOCHASTIC DOMINANCE: REPLY

Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty,

Fisco v. Department of Human Services: The Inequity of Equitable Defenses in Child Support Arrearage Cases

On August 8, 1995, using a federal law targeting the most egregious deadbeat fathers, FBI agents arrested Jeffrey Nichols for failing to pay approximately $580,000 in child support. Although the law is fairly new, the problem of child support enforcement has troubled this country for decades. In the early 1970s, child support enforcement was so inadequate that the federal government spent$7.6 billion annually on welfare to provide for single parents. The government has tried to remedy the problem, but seventy-five percent of custodial mothers in this country continue either to lack child support orders or to receive less than full payment under such orders. Although Maine has received national acclaim for its child support enforcement law, the issue continues to pose financial, *155moral, and legal problems for Maine\u27s legislators, courts, and parents. In Fisco v. Department of Human Services the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that in an action for child support arrearages, it was “unreasonable” for the defendant, Fisco, to rely on his former wife\u27s written discharge of his child support obligations. The court rejected his defense of laches, defined as negligence or omission to seasonably assert a right that results in prejudice to the defendant. Fisco\u27s reliance on the agreement did not demonstrate the requisite prejudice despite twelve years of apparent complacency on the part of his former wife. This Note contends that the Law Court\u27s decision in Fisco created a uniquely heightened standard of prejudice in laches defenses for application in child support arrearage cases. In cases where parties have engaged in private agreements or modifications, the court has inextricably linked prejudice with whether a defendant\u27s reliance on that agreement was reasonable. For any party who uses a laches defense in a child support arrearage case, and who attempts to show that the requisite prejudice is premised upon an unincorporated or private agreement, the court has created an essentially insurmountable evidentiary burden. The court\u27s analysis demonstrates its general unwillingness to grant laches or other equitable defenses in child support arrearage cases. Although this Author contends that Fisco was correctly decided, the court\u27s reasoning produced an unnecessarily esoteric definition of prejudice, and an undiscriminating concept of equity. The Law Court manipulated equitable principles in order to reject a defense to a child support claim. Instead, the Law Court should evaluate child support arrearage cases by focusing upon the duty of support owed to a child by the child\u27s non-custodial parent. This Author argues that focusing upon the child\u27s interest in, and basic legal right to parental financial support during his or her minority reveals the unconditional impropriety of entertaining laches and other equitable defenses in child support arrearage cases. Judicial decisions affecting child support should begin with the presumption that throughout their minority, children are owed a duty of support. Like the application of the “best interest of the child” standard, required in all cases pertaining to parental rights and responsibilities (custody), the Law Court should presume that child support is one of the essential factors in providing for the welfare of the children of divorce. As such, the enforcement of such orders is critical. The Law Court should decide affirmatively that equitable defenses in this context are neither available nor appropriate and should direct any inquiries toward upholding the interests of the unnamed party in every child support arrearage case -- the child

Stuttering Min oscillations within E. coli bacteria: A stochastic polymerization model

We have developed a 3D off-lattice stochastic polymerization model to study subcellular oscillation of Min proteins in the bacteria Escherichia coli, and used it to investigate the experimental phenomenon of Min oscillation stuttering. Stuttering was affected by the rate of immediate rebinding of MinE released from depolymerizing filament tips (processivity), protection of depolymerizing filament tips from MinD binding, and fragmentation of MinD filaments due to MinE. Each of processivity, protection, and fragmentation reduces stuttering, speeds oscillations, and reduces MinD filament lengths. Neither processivity or tip-protection were, on their own, sufficient to produce fast stutter-free oscillations. While filament fragmentation could, on its own, lead to fast oscillations with infrequent stuttering; high levels of fragmentation degraded oscillations. The infrequent stuttering observed in standard Min oscillations are consistent with short filaments of MinD, while we expect that mutants that exhibit higher stuttering frequencies will exhibit longer MinD filaments. Increased stuttering rate may be a useful diagnostic to find observable MinD polymerization in experimental conditions.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, missing unit for k_f inserte

Raman-scattering study of the phonon dispersion in twisted bi-layer graphene

Bi-layer graphene with a twist angle \theta\ between the layers generates a superlattice structure known as Moir\'{e} pattern. This superlattice provides a \theta-dependent q wavevector that activates phonons in the interior of the Brillouin zone. Here we show that this superlattice-induced Raman scattering can be used to probe the phonon dispersion in twisted bi-layer graphene (tBLG). The effect reported here is different from the broadly studied double-resonance in graphene-related materials in many aspects, and despite the absence of stacking order in tBLG, layer breathing vibrations (namely ZO' phonons) are observed.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, research articl

The effect of interactions between a bacterial strain isolated from drinking water and a pathogen surrogate on biofilms formation diverged under static vs flow conditions

AimsInteractions with water bacteria affect the incorporation of pathogens into biofilms and thus pathogen control in drinking water systems. This study was to examine the impact of static vs flow conditions on interactions between a pathogen and a water bacterium on pathogen biofilm formation under laboratory settings.Methods and ResultsA pathogen surrogate Escherichia coli and a drinking water isolate Stenotrophomonas maltophilia was selected for this study. Biofilm growth was examined under two distinct conditions, in flow cells with continuous medium supply vs in static microtitre plates with batch culture. E. coli biofilm was greatly stimulated (c. 2–1000 times faster) with the presence of S. maltophilia in flow cells, but surprisingly inhibited (c. 65–95% less biomass) in microtitre plates. These divergent effects were explained through various aspects including surface attachment, cellular growth, extracellular signals and autoaggregation.ConclusionsInteractions with the same water bacterium resulted in different effects on E. coli biofilm formation when culture conditions changed from static to flow.Significance and Impact of StudyThis study highlights the complexity of species interactions on biofilm formation and suggests that environmental conditions such as the flow regime can be taken into consideration for the management of microbial contamination in drinking water systems.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140002/1/jam13596.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140002/2/jam13596_am.pd

The role of dredge-up in double white dwarf mergers

We present the results of an investigation of the dredge-up and mixing during the merger of two white dwarfs with different chemical compositions by conducting hydrodynamic simulations of binary mergers for three representative mass ratios. In all the simulations, the total mass of the two white dwarfs is $\lesssim1.0~{\rm M_\odot}$. Mergers involving a CO and a He white dwarf have been suggested as a possible formation channel for R Coronae Borealis type stars, and we are interested in testing if such mergers lead to conditions and outcomes in agreement with observations. Even if the conditions during the merger and subsequent nucleosynthesis favor the production of $^{18}{\mathrm O}$, the merger must avoid dredging up large amounts of $^{16}{\mathrm O}$, or else it will be difficult to produce sufficient $^{18}{\mathrm O}$ to explain the oxygen ratio observed to be of order unity. We performed a total of 9 simulations using two different grid-based hydrodynamics codes using fixed and adaptive meshes, and one smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code. We find that in most of the simulations, $>10^{-2}~{\rm M_\odot}$ of $^{16}{\mathrm O}$ is indeed dredged up during the merger. However, in SPH simulations where the accretor is a hybrid He/CO white dwarf with a $\sim 0.1~{\rm M_\odot}$ layer of helium on top, we find that no $^{16}{\mathrm O}$ is being dredged up, while in the $q=0.8$ simulation $<10^{-4}~{\rm M_\odot}$ of $^{16}{\mathrm O}$ has been brought up, making a WD binary consisting of a hybrid CO/He WD and a companion He WD an excellent candidate for the progenitor of RCB stars.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Dynamic compartmentalization of bacteria: accurate division in E. coli

Positioning of the midcell division plane within the bacterium E. coli is controlled by the min system of proteins: MinC, MinD and MinE. These proteins coherently oscillate from end to end of the bacterium. We present a reaction--diffusion model describing the diffusion of min proteins along the bacterium and their transfer between the cytoplasmic membrane and cytoplasm. Our model spontaneously generates protein oscillations in good agreement with experiments. We explore the oscillation stability, frequency and wavelength as a function of protein concentration and bacterial length.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Latex2e, Revtex

Is This a Joke? Detecting Humor in Spanish Tweets

While humor has been historically studied from a psychological, cognitive and linguistic standpoint, its study from a computational perspective is an area yet to be explored in Computational Linguistics. There exist some previous works, but a characterization of humor that allows its automatic recognition and generation is far from being specified. In this work we build a crowdsourced corpus of labeled tweets, annotated according to its humor value, letting the annotators subjectively decide which are humorous. A humor classifier for Spanish tweets is assembled based on supervised learning, reaching a precision of 84% and a recall of 69%.Comment: Preprint version, without referra