The Unexamined Life: A Framework to Address Judicial Bias in Custody Determinations and Beyond

Scholars and litigators alike have long wondered about what is on the minds of judges. Kahan et al. have studied how judges’ political commitments influence their perception of legally consequential facts. Sheri Johnson et al. confirmed the presence of implicit bias among a sample of judges and analyzed the relationship between that bias and the judges’ decision-making. In a seminal piece and subsequent work, Guthrie et al. attempted to identify archetypes of judicial bias and opined about how we might debias judicial determinations. This project both contributes to and redirects these conversations in several important ways. First, this piece takes the conversation about judging into a court that daily touches the intimate affairs of litigants—namely family courts. In so doing, the project attempts to bring the same rigor of discussion about judicial bias, and imagination about corrective action, into one of the lower courts where litigants are routinely poor, disenfranchised, or unrepresented. Second, the project specifically sees connections between judicial bias and the orientation to fact finding that judges are invited to take—namely that the judge is the only fact finder (there are no juries) and judges are invited to place their own worldview and experiences at the epicenter of the scene playing out before them, an invitation that is inapposite to unbiased, rational consideration of the lives of others. In focusing specifically on how judicial bias thwarts expansive views of mothers and mothering in the twenty-first century, the piece aims to highlight the ways in which courts are in (imperfect and controlling) conversation with societal norms, norms that silence non-dominant narratives. Lastly, the project notices how the law’s circumscribed examination of litigants’ lives and the blindness to the ways that judges’ lives constrict their world views stand in marked contrast to the orientation of therapists, where controlling for one’s self and attention to a nuanced sense of other is the foundation from which therapists listen to, and learn about, people. Therefore, the project engages interdisciplinary scholarship not just to discuss what bias and stereotyping are, but also to excavate the ways in which the schooling and support in counseling professions aim to abate the gravitational pull toward bias. From this scaffolding, the piece closes with concrete, actionable steps for the bench and bar to resist bias and invite reform

Client, Self, Systems: A Framework for Integrated Skills-Justice Education

As scholars and administrators look to experiential learning and clinical education specifically to cultivate practice-ready law school graduates there is worry amongst some clinicians that they must sanitize the experiential learning experience of its social justice bent, or at the very least dilute it, so as to make it marketable to the legal academy and the typical enrolled, or enrolling, law student. On the other hand, the time is particularly ripe for clinicians to recommit to clinical legal education\u27s social justice roots and remind the academy that social justice skills are relevant, transferable, and effective in preparing students for rigorous (but also humane and sustained) legal practice. Too often conversations such as these are framed as a debate: skills training versus social justice. This Article takes an alternative approach by insisting instead that the timeworn skills versus social justice debate misses an obvious point: clinical education\u27s social justice mission can be advanced by developing the skills dimension of social justice education. This Article, therefore, intentionally blurs the line between social justice education and skills education. Social justice is defined herein as having a skills dimension; meanwhile, the skills featured are described in a manner that demonstrates how they are enriched by contextualizing them in social justice. A starting premise is that social justice education is imperative for any institution wishing to act in accordance with our professional standards. A concluding sentiment is that training students in social justice skills meets many pedagogical goals for a varied student body. The framework that moves the Article from the starting premise to the pedagogical conclusions rejects a common approach to social justice in clinics: teaching skills alone while supposing that the client or project experience will provide the conversion moment. Rather, the proposed framework separates the curriculum into themes of client awareness, self-awareness, and systems awareness and developing an integrated presentation of the social justice imperatives and the essential skills within each category

GWIPS-viz: development of a ribo-seq genome browser

We describe the development of GWIPS-viz (http://gwips.ucc.ie), an online genome browser for viewing ribosome profiling data. Ribosome profiling (ribo-seq) is a recently developed technique that provides genome-wide information on protein synthesis (GWIPS) in vivo. It is based on the deep sequencing of ribosome-protected messenger RNA (mRNA) fragments, which allows the ribosome density along all mRNA transcripts present in the cell to be quantified. Since its inception, ribo-seq has been carried out in a number of eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms. Owing to the increasing interest in ribo-seq, there is a pertinent demand for a dedicated ribo-seq genome browser. GWIPS-viz is based on The University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Genome Browser. Ribo-seq tracks, coupled with mRNA-seq tracks, are currently available for several genomes: human, mouse, zebrafish, nematode, yeast, bacteria (Escherichia coli K12, Bacillus subtilis), human cytomegalovirus and bacteriophage lambda. Our objective is to continue incorporating published ribo-seq data sets so that the wider community can readily view ribosome profiling information from multiple studies without the need to carry out computational processing

The direct healthcare costs associated with psychological distress and major depression : A population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada

The objective of our study was to estimate direct healthcare costs incurred by a population-based sample of people with psychological distress or depression. We used the 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey on Mental Health and Well Being and categorized individuals as having psychological distress using the Kessler-6, major depressive disorder (MDD) using DSM-IV criteria and a comparison group of participants without MDD or psychological distress. Costs in 2013 USD were estimated by linking individuals to health administrative databases and following them until March 31, 2013. Our sample consisted of 9,965 individuals, of whom 651 and 409 had psychological distress and MDD, respectively. Although the age-and-sex adjusted per-capita costs were similarly high among the psychologically distressed ($3,364, 95$2,791, $3,937) and those with MDD ($3,210, 95% CI: $2,413,$4,008) compared to the comparison group ($2,629, 95$2,312, $2,945), the population-wide excess costs for psychological distress ($441 million) were more than twice that for MDD ($210 million) as there was a greater number of people with psychological distress than depression. We found substantial healthcare costs associated with psychological distress and depression, suggesting that psychological distress and MDD have a high cost burden and there may be public health intervention opportunities to relieve distress. Further research examining how individuals with these conditions use the healthcare system may provide insight into the allocation of limited healthcare resources while maintaining high quality care

Early structural and functional defects in synapses and myelinated axons in stratum lacunosum moleculare in two preclinical models for tauopaty

The stratum lacunosum moleculare (SLM) is the connection hub between entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, two brain regions that are most vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease. We recently identified a specific synaptic deficit of Nectin-3 in transgenic models for tauopathy. Here we defined cognitive impairment and electrophysiological problems in the SLM of Tau.P301L mice, which corroborated the structural defects in synapses and dendritic spines. Reduced diffusion of DiI from the ERC to the hippocampus indicated defective myelinated axonal pathways. Ultrastructurally, myelinated axons in the temporoammonic pathway (TA) that connects ERC to CA1 were damaged in Tau.P301L mice at young age. Unexpectedly, the myelin defects were even more severe in bigenic biGT mice that co-express GSK3β with Tau.P301L in neurons. Combined, our data demonstrate that neuronal expression of protein Tau profoundly affected the functional and structural organization of the entorhinal-hippocampal complex, in particular synapses and myelinated axons in the SLM. White matter pathology deserves further attention in patients suffering from tauopathy and Alzheimer’s disease

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article

Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely