The Monument and the Message: Pragmatism and Principle in Establishment Clause Ten Commandments Litigation

This Comment\u27s objective is not primarily to say why the Commandments are desirable to display, nor to frame a detailed legal case as to how they can be defended. The inquiry is limited to the interplay of theology and law in the historical argument for the Commandments- are public displays of the Commandments trapped between theological indifference on the one hand, or legal failure on the other? With the modest belief that the legal practitioners should take note of the theological implications of their arguments,8 and that the arguments should be informed by both the principle and the practical, we shall proceed: first, to examine the state of the court precedent; second, to consider the theological problems with the historical defense of the Commandments; and third, to suggest some routes which would avoid the theological problem

A Metaverse Maturity Model

Abstract The idea of the Metaverse as a next iteration of the internet gets increasing attention As the development is still in its infancy maturity assessments of the Metaverse in general and of its constituting virtual worlds could provide important input to guiding research and development as well as investments Based on a scientific definition of the Metaverse eight core attributes for its virtual worlds are extracted For each of these attributes five maturity levels are defined Thus a Metaverse maturity model with eight attributes and five maturity levels is propose

On the motion of an elastic solid inside of an incompressible viscous fluid

The motion of an elastic solid inside of an incompressible viscous fluid is ubiquitous in nature. Mathematically, such motion is described by a PDE system that couples the parabolic and hyperbolic phases, the latter inducing a loss of regularity which has left the basic question of existence open until now. In this paper, we prove the existence and uniqueness of such motions (locally in time), when the elastic solid is the linear Kirchhoff elastic material. The solution is found using a topological fixed-point theorem that requires the analysis of a linear problem consisting of the coupling between the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations set in Lagrangian variables and the linear equations of elastodynamics, for which we prove the existence of a unique weak solution. We then establish the regularity of the weak solution; this regularity is obtained in function spaces that scale in a hyperbolic fashion in both the fluid and solid phases. Our functional framework is optimal, and provides the a priori estimates necessary for us to employ our fixed-point procedure.Comment: 72 pages, to appear in Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysi

Duration judgements in patients with schizophrenia

Background. The ability to encode time cues underlies many cognitive processes. In the light of schizophrenic patients' compromised cognitive abilities in a variety of domains, it is noteworthy that there are numerous reports of these patients displaying impaired timing abilities. However, the timing intervals that patients have been evaluated on in prior studies vary considerably in magnitude (e.g. 1 s, 1 min, 1 h etc.). Method. In order to obviate differences in abilities in chronometric counting and place minimal demands on cognitive processing, we chose tasks that involve making judgements about brief durations of time (<1 s). Results. On a temporal generalization task, patients were less accurate than controls at recognizing a standard duration. The performance of patients was also significantly different from controls on a temporal bisection task, in which participants categorized durations as short or long. Although time estimation may be closely intertwined with working memory, patients' working memory as measured by the digit span task did not correlate significantly with their performance on the duration judgement tasks. Moreover, lowered intelligence scores could not completely account for the findings. Conclusions. We take these results to suggest that patients with schizophrenia are less accurate at estimating brief time periods. These deficits may reflect dysfunction of biopsychological timing processes

Challenges to estimating vaccine impact using hospitalization data.

Because the real-world impact of new vaccines cannot be known before they are implemented in national programs, post-implementation studies at the population level are critical. Studies based on analysis of hospitalization rates of vaccine-preventable outcomes are typically used for this purpose. However, estimates of vaccine impact based on hospitalization data are particularly prone to confounding, as hospitalization rates are tightly linked to changes in the quality, access and use of the healthcare system, which often occur simultaneously with introduction of new vaccines. Here we illustrate how changes in healthcare delivery coincident with vaccine introduction can influence estimates of vaccine impact, using as an example reductions in infant pneumonia hospitalizations after introduction of the 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) in Brazil. To this end, we explore the effect of changes in several metrics of quality and access to public healthcare on trends in hospitalization rates before (2008-09) and after (2011-12) PCV10 introduction in 2010. Changes in infant pneumonia hospitalization rates following vaccine introduction were significantly associated with concomitant changes in hospital capacity and the fraction of the population using public hospitals. Importantly, reduction of pneumonia hospitalization rates after PCV10 were also associated with the expansion of outpatient services in several Brazilian states, falling more sharply where primary care coverage and the number of health units offering basic and emergency care increased more. We show that adjustments for unrelated (non-vaccine) trends commonly employed by impact studies, such as use of single control outcomes, are not always sufficient for accurate impact assessment. We discuss several ways to identify and overcome such biases, including sensitivity analyses using different denominators to calculate hospitalizations rates and methods that track changes in the outpatient setting. Employing these practices can improve the accuracy of vaccine impact estimates, particularly in evolving healthcare settings typical of low- and middle-income countries

Impact of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines on Pneumonia Hospitalizations in High- and Low-Income Subpopulations in Brazil.

BackgroundPneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) are being used worldwide. A key question is whether the impact of PCVs on pneumonia is similar in low- and high-income populations. However, most low-income countries, where the burden of disease is greatest, lack reliable data that can be used to evaluate the impact. Data from middle-income countries that have both low- and high-income subpopulations can provide a proxy measure for the impact of the vaccine in low-income countries.MethodsWe evaluated the impact of PCV10 on hospitalizations for all-cause pneumonia in Brazil, a middle-income country with localities that span a broad range of human development index (HDI) levels. We used complementary time series and spatiotemporal methods (synthetic controls and hierarchical Bayesian spatial regression) to test whether the decline in pneumonia hospitalizations associated with vaccine introduction varied across the socioeconomic spectrum.ResultsWe found that the declines in all-cause pneumonia hospitalizations in children and young and middle-aged adults did not vary substantially across low and high HDI subpopulations. Moreover, the estimated declines seen in infants and young adults were associated with higher levels of uptake of the vaccine at a local level.ConclusionsThese results suggest that PCVs have an important impact on hospitalizations for all-cause pneumonia in both low- and high-income populations