Keep Tinkering: The Optimist and the Death Penalty

When it comes to capital punishment, it may make sense to be a little bit defeatist. Like abortion, the death penalty is a topic about which you have to presume that you are never going to change anyone else’s mind. Whether the other person views it as a necessary part of the justice system or as a moral outrage, odds of changing the other person’s mind through reasoned discourse are slim

How to Eat the Elephant in the Legal Academy

Persistent discrimination is one of the elephants in the legal academy. We need to eliminate it, and we all know that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. So here goes: I’m Susan Rozelle, and I have begun to note all the ways in which United States law schools’ institutional culture presumes the Ideal Worker: white, male, middle-class, middle-aged, and married to a woman who manages his home and his family life for him. We blindly continue to follow a variety of existing structural systems that both create and reinforce challenges for the many members of our community who fail to meet this embedded stereotype

The Principled Executioner: Capital Juries’ Bias and the Benefits of True Bifurcation

Capital jurors are death-qualified, or asked to verify at voir dire that their views on the death penalty would not prevent them from serving impartially. Ironically, death qualification itself creates juries unfairly biased toward guilt and death. Empirical investigation has demonstrated this skewing effect for over fifty years, and with the release of the recent Capital Jury Project data, any doubts on this score surely have been laid to rest. Efforts to ameliorate death qualification\u27s prosecutorial bias have been hamstrung, however, by statutory unitary jury requirements like the one found in the Federal Death Penalty Act. Statutes like these, which require that the same jury that determined guilt also determine punishment, place defendants in a double-bind. Death-qualifying a unitary jury before the conviction stage asks jurors to presume the defendant is guilty before the trial has even begun. Waiting to death-qualify the unitary jury until after conviction, however, means jurors will be asked about their willingness to impose death after having heard all the gristly details of the crime, and not a scrap of evidence in mitigation. True bifurcation offers an escape from the double-bind, but the unitary jury requirement forbids it. This article considers the rationales for the unitary jury requirement, framed as objections to true bifurcation, and proves them to be illusory. As the only real barrier to the improved fairness true bifurcation offers is the statutory requirement itself, that requirement should be abandoned. Surely the principled executioner would agree

Chromosome passenger complexes control anaphase duration and spindle elongation via a kinesin-5 brake

Chromosome passenger complexes and bipolar kinesins act together to coordinate spindle elongation, spindle breakdown, and mitotic exit

What Does an Exemplary Middle School Mathematics Teacher Look Like? The Use of a Professional Development Rubric

A School University Research Network (SURN) committee composed of current mathematics teachers, central office math supervisors, building administrators, mathematicians, and mathematics educators researched numerous sources regarding best practices in mathematics instruction. The resulting professional development rubric synthesizes their findings and can serve a professional development role by providing teachers and administrators with a tool to develop clarity and consensus on best mathematics instructional practices, and how these practices are implemented in the classroom. It is also being used as a tool for cooperating teachers in their supervision of student teachers and as a reflective method for self-evaluation

Elemental bio-imaging of calcium phosphate crystal deposits in knee samples from arthritic patients

Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA ICP-MS) was employed to image deposits of calcium phosphate based crystals in knee cartilage and synovial fluid from arthritic patients. A reaction/collision cell containing hydrogen minimised plasma interferences on calcium and also improved the image quality without significant sensitivity reduction. Areas of high calcium and phosphorus intensities consistent with crystal deposits were observed for both the cartilage and synovial fluid samples. These areas were also characterised by high magnesium and strontium intensities. Distribution patterns of other elements such as copper and sulfur did not correlate with the crystal deposits. Filtered and non-filtered solutions of calcium phosphate crystals grown in synthetic synovial fluid were also imaged as further evidence of crystal deposits. The crystal deposits were detected in the unfiltered solution, and were absent from the filtered solutions. © 2009 The Royal Society of Chemistry

Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate and Arf6-regulated membrane traffic

ADP-ribosylation factor (Arf) 6 regulates the movement of membrane between the plasma membrane (PM) and a nonclathrin-derived endosomal compartment and activates phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinase (PIP 5-kinase), an enzyme that generates phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2). Here, we show that PIP2 visualized by expressing a fusion protein of the pleckstrin homology domain from PLCδ and green fluorescent protein (PH-GFP), colocalized with Arf6 at the PM and on tubular endosomal structures. Activation of Arf6 by expression of its exchange factor EFA6 stimulated protrusion formation, the uptake of PM into macropinosomes enriched in PIP2, and recycling of this membrane back to the PM. By contrast, expression of Arf6 Q67L, a GTP hydrolysis-resistant mutant, induced the formation of PIP2-positive actin-coated vacuoles that were unable to recycle membrane back to the PM. PM proteins, such as β1-integrin, plakoglobin, and major histocompatibility complex class I, that normally traffic through the Arf6 endosomal compartment became trapped in this vacuolar compartment. Overexpression of human PIP 5-kinase α mimicked the effects seen with Arf6 Q67L. These results demonstrate that PIP 5-kinase activity and PIP2 turnover controlled by activation and inactivation of Arf6 is critical for trafficking through the Arf6 PM-endosomal recycling pathway