Procedural Justice Post-9/11: The Effects of Procedurally Unfair Treatment of Detainees on Perceptions of Global Legitimacy

[Excerpt] “The Global War on Terror has been ideologically framed as a struggle between the principles of freedom and democracy on the one hand and tyranny and extremism on the other. Although this war has arguably led to a short-term disruption of terrorist threats such as al-Qaeda, it has also damaged America’s image both at home and abroad. Throughout the world, there is a growing consensus that America has “a lack of credibility as a fair and just world leader.” The perceived legitimacy of the United States in the War on Terror is critical because terrorism is not a conventional threat that can surrender or can be defeated in the traditional sense. Instead, this battle can only be won through legitimizing the rule of law and undermining the use of terror as a means of political influence. Although a variety of political, economic, and security policies have negatively impacted the perceived legitimacy of the United States, one of the most damaging has been the detention, treatment, and trial (or in many cases the lack thereof) of suspected terrorists. While many scholars have raised constitutional questions about the legality of U.S. detention procedures, this article offers a psychological perspective of legitimacy in the context of detention. I begin with a discussion of the psychology of terrorism. Next, I argue that the U.S. response to terrorism has been largely perceived as excessive, which has undermined global perceptions of U.S. legitimacy. I address this issue by drawing on a well-established body of social psychology research that proposes “a causal chain in which procedural fairness leads to perceived legitimacy, which leads to the acceptance of policies.” In other words, the fairness of the procedures through which individuals are detained and tried will significantly affect the perceived legitimacy of U.S. conduct in the War on Terror. In contrast to current detention policies, which have largely been implemented in an ad hoc manner, I suggest that procedural fairness can be increased through the establishment of a domestic terror court specifically designed to try detainees. Finally, I balance fairness with the competing values of effectiveness and efficiency to provide a framework through which U.S. legitimacy in the War on Terror can be enhanced.

Applying metabolomics to cardiometabolic intervention studies and trials: past experiences and a roadmap for the future

Metabolomics and lipidomics are emerging methods for detailed phenotyping of small molecules in samples. It is hoped that such data will: (i) enhance baseline prediction of patient response to pharmacotherapies (beneficial or adverse); (ii) reveal changes in metabolites shortly after initiation of therapy that may predict patient response, including adverse effects, before routine biomarkers are altered; and( iii) give new insights into mechanisms of drug action, particularly where the results of a trial of a new agent were unexpected, and thus help future drug development. In these ways, metabolomics could enhance research findings from intervention studies. This narrative review provides an overview of metabolomics and lipidomics in early clinical intervention studies for investigation of mechanisms of drug action and prediction of drug response (both desired and undesired). We highlight early examples from drug intervention studies associated with cardiometabolic disease. Despite the strengths of such studies, particularly the use of state-of-the-art technologies and advanced statistical methods, currently published studies in the metabolomics arena are largely underpowered and should be considered as hypothesis-generating. In order for metabolomics to meaningfully improve stratified medicine approaches to patient treatment, there is a need for higher quality studies, with better exploitation of biobanks from randomized clinical trials i.e. with large sample size, adjudicated outcomes, standardized procedures, validation cohorts, comparison witth routine biochemistry and both active and control/placebo arms. On the basis of this review, and based on our research experience using clinically established biomarkers, we propose steps to more speedily advance this area of research towards potential clinical impact

A Utility-Based Approach to Bandwidth Allocation and Link Scheduling in Wireless Networks

We study the problem of optimizing aggregate user utility in wireless ad-hoc networks under the constraints of wireless interference. We develop a market-oriented approach to bandwidth allocation with a tˆatonnement process and demonstrate its ability to effectively price bottleneck resource. One novelty is that we choose to price “interference goods” to capture the externality imposed by one application’s use of the network on other applications. In making progress we also propose a modification to the CSMA protocol that is robust enough to handle a non-schedulable bandwidth schedule. Experimental results on simulated network topologies show that the market-based approach has better scalability than alternate approximation methods and is much more efficient in terms of runtime.Engineering and Applied Science

Fitting and Interpreting Occupancy Models

We show that occupancy models are more difficult to fit than is generally appreciated because the estimating equations often have multiple solutions, including boundary estimates which produce fitted probabilities of zero or one. The estimates are unstable when the data are sparse, making them difficult to interpret, and, even in ideal situations, highly variable. As a consequence, making accurate inference is difficult. When abundance varies over sites (which is the general rule in ecology because we expect spatial variance in abundance) and detection depends on abundance, the standard analysis suffers bias (attenuation in detection, biased estimates of occupancy and potentially finding misleading relationships between occupancy and other covariates), asymmetric sampling distributions, and slow convergence of the sampling distributions to normality. The key result of this paper is that the biases are of similar magnitude to those obtained when we ignore non-detection entirely. The fact that abundance is subject to detection error and hence is not directly observable, means that we cannot tell when bias is present (or, equivalently, how large it is) and we cannot adjust for it. This implies that we cannot tell which fit is better: the fit from the occupancy model or the fit ignoring the possibility of detection error. Therefore trying to adjust occupancy models for non-detection can be as misleading as ignoring non-detection completely. Ignoring non-detection can actually be better than trying to adjust for it.Funding was received from the Australian Research Council to support this research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscrip

Ariel - Volume 5 Number 5

Editors Mark Dembert J. D. Kanofsky Entertainment Robert Breckenridge Joe Conti Gary Kaskey Photographer Scot Kastner Overseas Editor Mike Sinason Circulation Jay Amsterdam Humorist Jim McCann Staff Ken Jaffe Bob Sklaroff Janet Welsh Dave Jacoby Phil Nimoityn Frank Chervane

Body mass index and risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: two electronic health record prospective studies

Context: The relationship between rising body mass index (BMI) and prospective risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) / non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is virtually absent. Objective: Determine the extent of the association between BMI and risk of future NAFLD diagnosis, stratifying by sex and diabetes. Design: Two prospective studies using Humedica and THIN with 1.54 and 4.96 years of follow-up respectively. Setting: Electronic health record databases Participants: Patients with had a recorded BMI measurement between 15–60kg/m2, and smoking status, and one year of active status prior to baseline BMI. Patients with a diagnosis or history of chronic diseases were excluded. Interventions: None Main Outcome Measure: Recorded diagnosis of NAFLD/NASH during follow-up (Humedica ICD-9 code 571.8, and read codes for NAFLD and NASH in THIN). Results: Hazard ratios (HR) were calculated across BMI categories using BMI of 20–22.5kg/m2 as the reference category, adjusting for age, sex and smoking status. Risk of recorded NAFLD/NASH increased linearly with BMI and was approximately 5-fold higher in Humedica (HR=4.78, 95% CI 4.17–5.47) and 9-fold higher in THIN (HR=8.93, 7.11–11.23) at a BMI of 30–32.5 kg/m2 rising to around 10-fold higher in Humedica (HR=9.80, 8.49–11.32) and 14-fold higher in THIN (HR=14.32, 11.04–18.57) in the 37.5–40 kg/m2 BMI category. Risk of NAFLD/NASH was approximately 50% higher in men, and approximately double in those with diabetes. Conclusions: These data quantify the consistent and strong relationships between BMI and prospectively recorded diagnoses of NAFLD/NASH and emphasize the importance of weight reduction strategies for prevention and management of NAFLD

Acoustic Noise Prediction of the Amine Swingbed ISS ExPRESS Rack Payload

Acoustics plays a vital role in maintaining the health, safety, and comfort of crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In order to maintain this livable and workable environment, acoustic requirements have been established to ensure that ISS hardware and payload developers account for the acoustic emissions of their equipment and develop acoustic mitigations as necessary. These requirements are verified by an acoustic emissions test of the integrated hardware. The Amine Swingbed ExPRESS (Expedite the PRocessing of ExperimentS to Space) rack payload creates a unique challenge to the developers in that the payload hardware is transported to the ISS in phases, making an acoustic emissions test on the integrated flight hardware impossible. In addition, the payload incorporates a high back pressure fan and a diaphragm vacuum pump, which are recognized as significant and complex noise sources. In order to accurately predict the acoustic emissions of the integrated payload, the individual acoustic noise sources and paths are first characterized. These characterizations are conducted though a series of acoustic emissions tests on the individual payload components. Secondly, the individual acoustic noise sources and paths are incorporated into a virtual model of the integrated hardware. The virtual model is constructed with the use of hybrid method utilizing the Finite Element Acoustic (FEA) and Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) techniques, which predict the overall acoustic emissions. Finally, the acoustic model is validated though an acoustic characterization test performed on an acoustically similar mock-up of the flight unit. The results of the validated acoustic model are then used to assess the acoustic emissions of the flight unit and define further acoustic mitigation efforts

International Space Station Crew Quarters Ventilation and Acoustic Design Implementation

The International Space Station (ISS) United States Operational Segment has four permanent rack sized ISS Crew Quarters (CQs) providing a private crew member space. The CQs use Node 2 cabin air for ventilation/thermal cooling, as opposed to conditioned ducted air-from the ISS Common Cabin Air Assembly (CCAA) or the ISS fluid cooling loop. Consequently, CQ can only increase the air flow rate to reduce the temperature delta between the cabin and the CQ interior. However, increasing airflow causes increased acoustic noise so efficient airflow distribution is an important design parameter. The CQ utilized a two fan push-pull configuration to ensure fresh air at the crew member's head position and reduce acoustic exposure. The CQ ventilation ducts are conduits to the louder Node 2 cabin aisle way which required significant acoustic mitigation controls. The CQ interior needs to be below noise criteria curve 40 (NC-40). The design implementation of the CQ ventilation system and acoustic mitigation are very inter-related and require consideration of crew comfort balanced with use of interior habitable volume, accommodation of fan failures, and possible crew uses that impact ventilation and acoustic performance. Each CQ required 13% of its total volume and approximately 6% of its total mass to reduce acoustic noise. This paper illustrates the types of model analysis, assumptions, vehicle interactions, and trade-offs required for CQ ventilation and acoustics. Additionally, on-orbit ventilation system performance and initial crew feedback is presented. This approach is applicable to any private enclosed space that the crew will occupy

Using Virtual Markets to Program Global Behavior in Sensor Networks

This paper presents market-based macroprogramming (MBM), a new paradigm for achieving globally efficient behavior in sensor networks. Rather than programming the individual, low-level behaviors of sensor nodes, MBM defines a virtual market where nodes sell "actions" (such as taking a sensor reading or aggregating data) in response to global price information. Nodes take actions to maximize their own utility, subject to energy budget constraints. The behavior of the network is determined by adjusting the price vectors for each action, rather than by directly specifying local node actions, resulting in a globally efficient allocation of network resources. We present the market-based macro-programming paradigm, as well as several experiments demonstrating its value for a sensor network vehicle tracking application.Engineering and Applied Science