A Comparative Description of the New York and California Criminal Justice Systems: Arrest Through Arraignment

The purpose of this article is to outline by comparative description the arrest and related court processes for handling criminal defendants in New York City and Oakland, California. Hopefully the description will shed light on problem areas shared by both systems and will suggest ways of alleviating these problems. This article discusses the period from arrest through the first judicial appearance in each system. A later study, not yet completed, will detail the sequence between the first judicial appearance and the beginning of trial. For the purposes of convenience and because the term is widely used both in California and in New York, the defendant\u27s first appearance in court will be referred to as the arraignment

Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems

To be effective, data-intensive systems require extensive ongoing customisation to reflect changing user requirements, organisational policies, and the structure and interpretation of the data they hold. Manual customisation is expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. In large complex systems, the value of the data can be such that exhaustive testing is necessary before any new feature can be added to the existing design. In most cases, the precise details of requirements, policies and data will change during the lifetime of the system, forcing a choice between expensive modification and continued operation with an inefficient design.Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems outlines an approach to dealing with these problems in software and data engineering, describing a methodology for aligning these processes throughout product lifecycles. It discusses tools which can be used to achieve these goals, and, in a number of case studies, shows how the tools and methodology have been used to improve a variety of academic and business systems

Challenging Certification of a Class Action: A Hypothetical

This is intended to be an article for the lawyer whose client is suddenly confronted with one of these Frankenstein monster(s) posing as a class action. Our objective is to set forth the arguments and methods available to counsel in seeking to prevent a class from being certified. In order to sharpen the analysis and arguments we will use a hypothetical class action as a model. Since most of the criticism and praise of the class action device has been focused on complaints filed under section (b)(3), observations will be directed primarily at that part of Rule 23. If, in the end, this writing sounds more like a brief in support of a motion to dismiss a complaint as a class action, rather than a scholarly analysis of Rule 23, we will have accomplished our objective

Physical disability and psychological distress in multiple sclerosis : the role of illness representations and experiential avoidance

Objectives: This study explores factors associated with psychological wellbeing and distress in people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The role of physical symptoms, illness representations and experiential avoidance in predicting psychological distress was assessed. Design: Cross-sectional data was collected from 121 participants with a diagnosis of MS. Path analysis was used to test a hypothetical model of distress in MS that hypothesised that experiential avoidance would mediate the relationships between level of symptoms and distress, and between illness representations and distress. Methods: Participants completed questionnaires assessing level of physical symptoms (EDSS), illness representations (BIPQ), experiential avoidance (AAQ-II), and psychological distress (GHQ-30). Path coefficients, allowing direct and indirect relationships to be evaluated, were obtained from a series of simultaneous multiple regression analyses; one for each endogenous variable (experiential avoidance, distress). Results: Participants results highlighted significant positive associations between all the variables (symptoms, illness representations, experiential avoidance) and distress. Path analysis revealed that experiential avoidance did not mediate the relationships between level of symptoms and distress, nor illness representations and distress. Illness representations were the strongest predictor of psychological distress, while experiential avoidance was the strongest predictor when distress was conceptualised as depression. Conclusions: Overall the study did not suggest that experiential avoidance mediates the relationship between illness representations and psychological distress; instead illness representations alone accounted for most of the variance in psychological distress. Experiential avoidance accounted for most of the depression experienced by participants. These results have a direct impact on how psychological interventions are delivered for people with MS, suggesting that disease factors, and beliefs about the illness, need to be taken account of and incorporated into treatment for presenting problems.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems

To be effective, data-intensive systems require extensive ongoing customisation to reflect changing user requirements, organisational policies, and the structure and interpretation of the data they hold. Manual customisation is expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. In large complex systems, the value of the data can be such that exhaustive testing is necessary before any new feature can be added to the existing design. In most cases, the precise details of requirements, policies and data will change during the lifetime of the system, forcing a choice between expensive modification and continued operation with an inefficient design.Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems outlines an approach to dealing with these problems in software and data engineering, describing a methodology for aligning these processes throughout product lifecycles. It discusses tools which can be used to achieve these goals, and, in a number of case studies, shows how the tools and methodology have been used to improve a variety of academic and business systems

19F NMR evidence for interactions between the c-AMP binding sites on the c-AMP receptor protein from E. coli

AbstractThe 19F NMR spectra of 3-fluorotyrosine containing c-AMP receptor protein (CRP) from E. coli have been recorded in the presence of increasing amounts of c-AMP. One of the signals (from Tyr B) shifts upfield by 0.6 ppm in the presence of excess c-AMP and shows both slow and fast exchange behaviour during the titration. This is evidence for interactions between the two c-AMP binding sites on the CRP dimer leading to different dissociation rate constants (≤ 75 s−1; ≥ 350 s−1) for complexes containing one and two c-AMP molecules

Physical disability and psychological distress in multiple sclerosis: the role of illness representations and experiential avoidance

Objectives: This study explores factors associated with psychological wellbeing and distress in people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The role of physical symptoms, illness representations and experiential avoidance in predicting psychological distress was assessed. Design: Cross-sectional data was collected from 121 participants with a diagnosis of MS. Path analysis was used to test a hypothetical model of distress in MS that hypothesised that experiential avoidance would mediate the relationships between level of symptoms and distress, and between illness representations and distress. Methods: Participants completed questionnaires assessing level of physical symptoms (EDSS), illness representations (BIPQ), experiential avoidance (AAQ-II), and psychological distress (GHQ-30). Path coefficients, allowing direct and indirect relationships to be evaluated, were obtained from a series of simultaneous multiple regression analyses; one for each endogenous variable (experiential avoidance, distress). Results: Participants results highlighted significant positive associations between all the variables (symptoms, illness representations, experiential avoidance) and distress. Path analysis revealed that experiential avoidance did not mediate the relationships between level of symptoms and distress, nor illness representations and distress. Illness representations were the strongest predictor of psychological distress, while experiential avoidance was the strongest predictor when distress was conceptualised as depression. Conclusions: Overall the study did not suggest that experiential avoidance mediates the relationship between illness representations and psychological distress; instead illness representations alone accounted for most of the variance in psychological distress. Experiential avoidance accounted for most of the depression experienced by participants. These results have a direct impact on how psychological interventions are delivered for people with MS, suggesting that disease factors, and beliefs about the illness, need to be taken account of and incorporated into treatment for presenting problems

The solution structure of the disulphide-linked homodimer of the human trefoil protein TFF1

AbstractThe trefoil factor family protein, TFF1, forms a homodimer, via a disulphide linkage, that has greater activity in wound healing assays than the monomer. Having previously determined a high-resolution solution structure of a monomeric analogue of TFF1, we now investigate the structure of the homodimer formed by the native sequence. The two putative receptor/ligand recognition domains are found to be well separated, at opposite ends of a flexible linker. This contrasts sharply with the known fixed and compact arrangement of the two trefoil domains of the closely related TFF2, and has significant implications for the mechanism of action and functional specificity of the TFF of proteins

Raising argument strength using negative evidence: A constraint on models of induction

Both intuitively, and according to similarity-based theories of induction, relevant evidence raises argument strength when it is positive and lowers it when it is negative. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that argument strength can actually increase when negative evidence is introduced. Two kinds of argument were compared through forced choice or sequential evaluation: single positive arguments (e.g., “Shostakovich’s music causes alpha waves in the brain; therefore, Bach’s music causes alpha waves in the brain”) and double mixed arguments (e.g., “Shostakovich’s music causes alpha waves in the brain, X’s music DOES NOT; therefore, Bach’s music causes alpha waves in the brain”). Negative evidence in the second premise lowered credence when it applied to an item X from the same subcategory (e.g., Haydn) and raised it when it applied to a different subcategory (e.g., AC/DC). The results constitute a new constraint on models of induction