The Administrative Procedure Act and How the “Final Rule” Designation Allows Agencies to Perpetuate Harm by Failing to Act

In order to preserve the historic authenticity of Alexander Hamilton’s only home, concerned citizens, community groups, and the National Park Service (NPS) created a plan to move Hamilton’s Home. The Friends of Hamilton Grange (“Friends”) were created to assist the NPS in that process. The Friends never filed official paperwork to become an official “friends group” of the NPS. After years of planning, the NPS approved plans for Hamilton’s home that conflicted with the interests of the Friends. The Friends claimed that the NPS did not properly consult with them throughout the planning process and the undeveloped land where Hamilton’s home once stood would attract crime, inflicting injury on the local community. The Friend’s filed suit under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”) requesting injunctive relief, but the court ruled that the Friends lacked of standing under both the NHPA and the APA

“Warning: Use May Result in Cruel and Unusual Punishment”: How Administrative Law and Adequate Warning Labels Can Bring About the Demise of Lethal Injection

Lethal injection, although currently the preferred method of execution in the United States, causes more botched executions than any other method. Despite recorded instances of extreme pain and suffering, the United States Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) does not regulate lethal injection drugs for safety and effectiveness because their use occurs “off-label” and thus outside of the purview of the FDA’s regulatory scope. Challengers to the FDA’s lack of regulation have thus far been unsuccessful in the courts due to the deference that the courts give to agency decisions. This Note discusses the ways in which administrative law can be used to bring about the demise of lethal injection. Existing FDA regulations require warning labels when a specific use of a drug causes harm. This Note proposes that concerned parties should file a citizen’s petition under Administrative Procedure Act § 553(e) to compel the FDA to require drug manufacturers to update the labels to warn of the harms of using the drugs for execution. These warning labels can then be used to support Eighth Amendment challenges to the constitutionality of lethal injection

DIVERSITY AND CROSS-INFECTION POTENTIAL OF COLLETOTRICHUM ON APPLES AND SMALL FRUITS IN KENTUCKY MIXED-FRUIT ORCHARDS

Fungi in the genus Colletotrichum cause apple, blueberry, and strawberry fruit rots, which result in significant losses for Kentucky growers. Most orchards in Kentucky are agritourism-focused and grow multiple fruits in close proximity. These mixed-fruit orchards may facilitate Colletotrichum cross-infection, which has serious management implications. Small fruit and apple Colletotrichum isolates from Kentucky orchards were characterized by morphotype, phylogenetic species identification, cross-inoculation, genome sequencing, and telomere fingerprinting. The small fruit isolates grouped into seven morphotypes, representing two species complexes: C. acutatum and C. gloeosporioides. All blueberry isolates belonged to the species C. fioriniae, and the majority of strawberry isolates were C. nymphaeae. Two other species found less frequently on strawberry were identified as C. siamense and C. fructicola. The same four species identified on small fruits were also present on apple in Kentucky. Cross-inoculation assays on detached apple, blueberry, and strawberry fruits revealed that all species tested were pathogenic on all three fruits. The genome tree was compared to nine single gene sequence trees, and CHS for the C. acutatum complex and ApMat for C. gloeosporioides were identified as superior sequences for species identification. Telomere fingerprinting revealed C. fioriniae clonal lineages within three orchards on apple, blueberry, and strawberry, but did not show evidence of cross-infection. Understanding more about Colletotrichum in Kentucky orchards will help improve fruit anthracnose management practices

'Family members screaming for help makes it very difficult to don PPE'. A qualitative study on UK ambulance staff experiences of infection prevention and control practices during the COVID-19 pandemic

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/BACKGROUND: During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, ambulance staff continued to deliver direct patient care whilst simultaneously adapting to a considerable escalation in evolving infection prevention and control (IPC) practices. AIM: To enable learning to benefit future planning, this qualitative article aims to describe ambulance staff's experiences of this rapid escalation of IPC practices. METHOD: Three online surveys were presented during the acceleration, peak, and deceleration phases of the pandemic's first wave in the UK (2020). Overall, 18 questions contributed 14,237 free text responses that were examined using inductive thematic analysis at both descriptive and interpretive levels. FINDINGS: Many participants lacked confidence in policies related to the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) because of perceived inadequate supporting evidence, confusing communication, and low familiarity with items. Compliance with policy and confidence in PPE use were further influenced by discomfort, urgency, and perceptions of risk. Various suggestions were made to improve IPC practices within the work environment, including reducing unnecessary exposure through public education and remote triage improvements. DISCUSSION: Some participants' poor experiences of escalating IPC practices were shared with health care workers studied in other environments and in previous epidemics, emphasising the need for lessons to be learnt. PPE should be developed with consideration of ambulance staff's unique working environment and regular familiarisation training could be beneficial. Pragmatic, evidence-based, clearly communicated policies implemented with sufficient resources may protect staff and facilitate them to maintain standards of care delivery during a pandemic.Peer reviewe

Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge

In this session, Dr. Julia Christensen Hughes and Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton will reflect on academic integrity in Canada, synthesize their various contributions, and challenge future practice. Drawing from their book, Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential challenge, they will highlight their experience and insights, since the seminal work of Christensen Hughes and McCabe (2006), focusing on the enduring and essential challenge of building cultures and practices aligned with academic integrity in Canadian higher education today. Participants will gain insight into current challenges and strategies for supporting academic integrity in their own administrative and teaching and research practice

Competition between Discrete Random Variables, with Applications to Occupancy Problems

Consider $n$ players whose "scores" are independent and identically distributed values $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^n$ from some discrete distribution $F$. We pay special attention to the cases where (i) $F$ is geometric with parameter $p\to0$ and (ii) $F$ is uniform on $\{1,2,...,N\}$; the latter case clearly corresponds to the classical occupancy problem. The quantities of interest to us are, first, the $U$-statistic $W$ which counts the number of "ties" between pairs $i,j$; second, the univariate statistic $Y_r$, which counts the number of strict $r$-way ties between contestants, i.e., episodes of the form ${X_i}_1={X_i}_2=...={X_i}_r$; $X_j\ne {X_i}_1;j\ne i_1,i_2,...,i_r$; and, last but not least, the multivariate vector $Z_{AB}=(Y_A,Y_{A+1},...,Y_B)$. We provide Poisson approximations for the distributions of $W$, $Y_r$ and $Z_{AB}$ under some general conditions. New results on the joint distribution of cell counts in the occupancy problem are derived as a corollary.Comment: 21 page

Indenture, Marshall County, MS, 1 December 1856

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aldrichcorr_c/1112/thumbnail.jp

Indenture, Marshall County, MS, 31 December 1858

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aldrichcorr_c/1178/thumbnail.jp