Jennings v. Stephens and Judicial Efficiency in Habeas Appeals

This commentary previews the Supreme Court case Jennings v. Stevens which deals with several areas of federal habeas corpus law and procedure. The Court will consider, inter alia, whether a habeas petitioner who succeeds in federal district court nevertheless needs to request a certificate of appealability to bring an alternate grounds for habeas relief at the appellate level. Further, the Court can resolve a major circuit split on whether a court considering an ineffective assistance of counsel claim should consider each instance of ineffective assistance as a single claim or as all parts of one claim. Eric O\u27Brien suggests the Court should err on the side of petitioner\u27s rights and allow an already successful petitioner the opportunity to bring all meritorious arguments to bear at the appellate level

A primer on noise-induced transitions in applied dynamical systems

Noise plays a fundamental role in a wide variety of physical and biological dynamical systems. It can arise from an external forcing or due to random dynamics internal to the system. It is well established that even weak noise can result in large behavioral changes such as transitions between or escapes from quasi-stable states. These transitions can correspond to critical events such as failures or extinctions that make them essential phenomena to understand and quantify, despite the fact that their occurrence is rare. This article will provide an overview of the theory underlying the dynamics of rare events for stochastic models along with some example applications

Why are we losing manufacturing jobs?

In the last 50 years, the share of employment in manufacturing has declined in the United States. The main reason for this phenomenon is labor-saving technological progress. Variation among state tax polices and international economic conditions have played only minor roles. The source of future prosperity will be technological advances in a service-oriented economy.Manufactures ; Labor market

Purchasing Power Parity and Interest Parity in the Laboratory,

This paper analyzes purchasing power parity and uncovered interest parity in the laboratory. It finds strong evidence that purchasing power parity, covered interest parity, and uncovered interest parity hold. Subjects are endowed with an intrinsically useless (green) currency that can be used to purchase another useless (red) currency. Green goods can be bought only with green currency, and red goods can be bought only with red currency. The foreign exchange markets are organized as call markets. In the treatment analyzing purchasing power parity, the price of the red good varies. In a second treatment, the interest rate on red currency varies. In a third treatment, the interest rate on red currency varies, and the price of the red good is random.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Achieving the Vision of Global Health with Justice

We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet” (UN General Assembly, 2015, September 25, preamble). So pronounces the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations declaration on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted on September 25, 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If achieved, the SDGs will secure an improved level of health, development, and global justice. However, if the international community fails to live up to its commitments, an untold number of people will likely perish prematurely, people’s opportunities to thrive will be cut off, social dynamics will continue to leave people behind, and unsustainable environmental pathways will create risks to the health and well-being of generations to come. Here, we systematically review the MDGs—specifically, their formation, achievements, and shortcomings. Next, we review the transition to the SDGs—how they differ from the MDGs, some of the critical challenges they present, and suggestions for a response to these challenges, using a human rights-based approach. Finally, we will offer early markers to assess whether states are sincere in their commitment to longer, healthier lives for all, and offer a next step to ensure that commitment: a global health treaty based on the right to health—embodying the vision of global health with justice

Effect of reaction rate periodicity on detonation propagation

As an alternative to homogeneous reaction rates, we implement "synthetic" hot-spots through a depletion rate that is a function of the local pressure multiplied by a periodic function of the spatial coordinates. We investigate through numerical simulations how the detonation propagation is affected by the heterogeneous rate

The Sustainable Development Goals: One-Health in the World’s Development Agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015, embody a One-Health strategy—healthy people living on a habitable planet. Extending beyond the social development emphasis of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which accelerated progress globally, though unequally, the SDGs also encompass a range of environmental and economic goals, with a health goal that is far more comprehensive than the infectious diseases and maternal/child health focus of the MDGs. To be achieved, the SDGs require resources and political commitment that is yet to be demonstrated. With a cost that could reach $5 trillion for the SDGs overall, achieving health targets will require a mix of increase domestic resources, including taxes on unhealthy foods and products, international assistance, and innovative financing. Annual reviews should identify and monitor threats to the SDGs, both internal contradictions and contradictory government policies such as discriminatory laws, and the necessary rights-based pathways forward. To improve accountability, health information systems with disaggregated data should be prioritized, along with independent monitoring and key governance indicators. Ambitious national benchmarks, drawing on WHO strategies and action plans, could provide markers of success for presently vague health targets. Three early indicators of progress on the health SDGs could be: 1) whether countries establish clear policies on universality, encompassing all people without discrimination, identifying and prioritizing populations with the least access; 2) whether universal health coverage fully incorporates population health; and 3) whether countries provide rapid and sustained increased funding for such necessities as adequate sanitation and nutritious food. A Framework Convention on Global Health, a global health treaty based in the right to health, could fill in critical gaps in the SDGs, creating accountability through capacity-building and compliance-enhancing mechanisms, establishing a financing framework, and ensuring right to health assessments and health in all policies. It could help establish a path forward based on equity and the right to health that would be truly transformative