Dimensions of Equality: Doctrines of Limitation

America can be justifiably proud of the enormous strides its legal system has made since the end of World War II in identifying and vindicating equality rights under the U.S. Constitution. The 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down the separate-but-equal doctrine in public education, provided the inspiration and the doctrinal basis for racial minorities, women, aliens, children born out of wedlock, the disabled, and the poor to pursue their claims for evenhanded treatment in the courts. We also have seen greater judicial protection of equality in the exercise of rights guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution, such as freedom of religion, speech, and the press. For all this progress, however, the Supreme Court has over the last two decades embraced doctrines of limitation that severely constrain the ability of equality claims to get a judicial hearing and to receive vindication. These doctrines raise serious questions as to whether the federal court system can be looked to in the future for meaningful protection of equality rights. It is to a brief discussion of a few of these doctrines-state action, discriminatory intent, and federalism-that I would like to turn

Sweep maps: A continuous family of sorting algorithms

We define a family of maps on lattice paths, called sweep maps, that assign levels to each step in the path and sort steps according to their level. Surprisingly, although sweep maps act by sorting, they appear to be bijective in general. The sweep maps give concise combinatorial formulas for the q,t-Catalan numbers, the higher q,t-Catalan numbers, the q,t-square numbers, and many more general polynomials connected to the nabla operator and rational Catalan combinatorics. We prove that many algorithms that have appeared in the literature (including maps studied by Andrews, Egge, Gorsky, Haglund, Hanusa, Jones, Killpatrick, Krattenthaler, Kremer, Orsina, Mazin, Papi, Vaille, and the present authors) are all special cases of the sweep maps or their inverses. The sweep maps provide a very simple unifying framework for understanding all of these algorithms. We explain how inversion of the sweep map (which is an open problem in general) can be solved in known special cases by finding a "bounce path" for the lattice paths under consideration. We also define a generalized sweep map acting on words over arbitrary alphabets with arbitrary weights, which is also conjectured to be bijective.Comment: 21 pages; full version of FPSAC 2014 extended abstrac

Proposal for a Topological Plasmon Spin Rectifier

We propose a device in which the spin-polarized AC plasmon mode in the surface state of a topological insulator nanostructure induces a static spin accumulation in a resonant, normal metal structure coupled to it. Using a finite-difference time-domain model, we simulate this spin-pump mechanism with drift, diffusion, relaxation, and precession in a magnetic field. This optically-driven system can serve as a DC "spin battery" for spintronic devices.Comment: Eq. 1 corrected; Figs 3 and 4 update

Statistical deconvolution of enthalpic energetic contributions to MHC-peptide binding affinity

Background: MHC Class I molecules present antigenic peptides to cytotoxic T cells, which forms an integral part of the adaptive immune response. Peptides are bound within a groove formed by the MHC heavy chain. Previous approaches to MHC Class I-peptide binding prediction have largely concentrated on the peptide anchor residues located at the P2 and C-terminus positions. Results: A large dataset comprising MHC-peptide structural complexes was created by re-modelling pre-determined x-ray crystallographic structures. Static energetic analysis, following energy minimisation, was performed on the dataset in order to characterise interactions between bound peptides and the MHC Class I molecule, partitioning the interactions within the groove into van der Waals, electrostatic and total non-bonded energy contributions. Conclusion: The QSAR techniques of Genetic Function Approximation (GFA) and Genetic Partial Least Squares (G/PLS) algorithms were used to identify key interactions between the two molecules by comparing the calculated energy values with experimentally-determined BL50 data. Although the peptide termini binding interactions help ensure the stability of the MHC Class I-peptide complex, the central region of the peptide is also important in defining the specificity of the interaction. As thermodynamic studies indicate that peptide association and dissociation may be driven entropically, it may be necessary to incorporate entropic contributions into future calculations

A Covenant Interpretive Hypothesis for the Sacrifice of Isaac: Unbinding with the Test Answer Key

Abraham’s test of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 hangs on God’s words. God’s last speech in the test functions as a divine interpretation of Abraham’s test actions (“because you have done this thing“ v. 16) for the covenant blessings (vv. 16-18) sequentially evoke all of Abraham’s seven covenant revelations except for the sixth (Abraham’s intercession in Gen 18). Since the covenant lessons are used as the divine norm for evaluating Abraham, one logical interpretative hypothesis for the test is a covenant-crisis challenge designed to elicit a comprehensive covenant response from the divinely trained Abraham. This covenant interpretation satisfies the coherence criteria by aligning all three divine speeches uni-directionally and satisfies the correspondence criteria of the details in the test. However, Abraham’s actions demonstrated compliant literal obedience and resurrection faith instead. The ensuing interaction of the anthropocentric (Abraham) and theocentric (God) viewpoints are captured by the uneven structure of actional dynamics, which, if reconstructed symmetrically according to the literary chiasm, indicates the ideal covenantal response to the test according to the narrator

They are written right there : an investigation of royal Chronicles as sources in 1-2 Kings

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2282/thumbnail.jp

On Language Teachers’ Classroom Practices: Bridging Conversation Analysis with Language Teacher Education Research

Since the late 1980s, second language teacher education (SLTE) research has grown immensely as a field of inquiry within applied linguistics, particularly as teacher knowledge, expertise, and cognition have been found to influence students’ language learning processes in classroom contexts (Borg, 2011). Much empirical evidence illustrating this connection has been gathered using a variety of ethnographic data techniques such as individual interviews, focus groups, journal writing, questionnaires, field notes, and stimulated recall sessions. The strengths of these data sources are numerous in that, when triangulated, they provide insight into teachers’ thought processes and perceptions of their teaching practices. It has been asserted elsewhere (see Fagan, in press a), though, that while many studies within the SLTE field have attempted to draw implications from such findings for teachers’ classroom practices, the methods used do not allow for such assumptions. In fact, as Borg (2011) presents in his summary of SLTE research over the past two decades, there remains a lack of juxtaposition between findings on teachers’ perceptions and their actual classroom practices in situ. That is not to say that there have been no studies bridging such data sources. Tsui (2003), for example, utilizes varied ethnographic data sources, including the use of classroom discourse data, to get at language teachers’ development of expertise. This study, however, is representative of the few in the SLTE field that incorporates glosses of interactions into their analyses. In other words: (a) transcriptions tend to solely consist of the verbal non-suprasegmental components of the discourse rather than include other interactional resources (i.e., prosodic cues, pausing, nonverbal conduct) illustrating the intricate constructions of teachers’ communication; (b) the focus of the classroom data does not detail the specific sequential environments in which certain teacher practices appear

Implicit Bias Predicts Liking of Ingroup Members Who Are Comfortable With Intergroup Interaction.

We test a novel framework for how ingroup members are perceived during intergroup interaction. Across three experiments, we found that, above and beyond egalitarian attitudes and motivations, White observers' automatic responses to Blacks (i.e., their implicit anti-Black bias) shaped their affiliation toward ingroup targets who appeared comfortable engaging in interracial versus same-race interaction. White observers' implicit anti-Black bias negatively correlated with liking of White targets who were comfortable with Blacks (Experiments 1-3). The relationship between implicit bias and liking varied as a function of targets' nonverbal comfort in interracial interactions (Experiment 1). Specifically, implicit bias negatively correlated with liking of targets when targets' nonverbal behaviors revealed observers felt comfortable with interracial contact, irrespective of the nature of those behaviors (Experiment 2). Finally, the relationship between implicit bias and target liking was mediated by perceived similarity (Experiment 3). Theoretical implications for stigma-by-association, social network homogeneity, and extended contact are discussed