West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War

The Idealized West and Reconstruction West from Appomattox by Heather Cox Richardson offers an ambitious synthesis of the decades after the Civil War; she shifts the vantage point from race in the South to incorporate western and national developments as well. The author is no neop...

Alabama\u27s Class Politics Through The Civil War Crisis -- And Its Echoes

In an overview of the role of poor whites in Alabama\u27s political development, and of the non-slaveholding majority of whites specifically, one cannot define a simple pattern. But two broad factors structured Alabama\u27s antebellum evolution. The first is the commitment to racial supremacy across a...

The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community

Randolph Paul Runyon recounts an episode of racial justice in Reconstruction-era Kentucky in The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community. Reviewer Michael W. Fitzgerald writes that Runyon “engagingly” describes a “vivid episode” in which the Black Baptist Minister Elisha Green successfully sought redress from the courts after two white Southern Methodist ministers forcibly removed the recently disabled Green from his seat in a first-class train car. Green viewed his paltry reward of fifteen dollars as a “highlight of his life.” Fitzgerald concludes that Runyon “knows how to tell a story.

Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861-1908

A New Look at Reconstruction Politics The cover proclaims this a “highly original study, and for once a jacket blurb tells truth. One ought to be grateful for anything fresh appearing on the Reconstruction era, moving the topic beyond the issues highlighted by the civil rights years. ...

Gaping Gaps in the History of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine: McPherson v. Blacker, Usurpation, and the Right of the People to Choose Their President

The so-called independent state legislature doctrine was the jurisprudential heart of the effort by former President Trump and allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election and was featured in the briefs for Texas v. Pennsylvania. The idea that state legislatures might have power to intervene against the popular vote for the electoral college helped animate the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Frighteningly, at the very end of the 2021 Term, the Supreme Court accepted review of a North Carolina case—Moore v. Harper—in which Republican Party legislators invoked the independent state legislature doctrine to contend that state legislators are at liberty to create entirely partisan congressional districts, freed from constraints in the North Carolina Constitution as interpreted by the state’s judiciary.1 A victory by these legislators would directly implicate their parallel power to reject or ignore any state’s popular vote for President. The independent state legislature doctrine rests on dubious dicta in McPherson v. Blacker.2 McPherson concluded that “plenary power” over the appointment of presidential electors was “conceded” to state legislatures through the “practical construction” of the Constitution.3 Yet the Court excluded, with almost surgical precision, extensive historical evidence that shows that the legislative election of electors was not intended by the Framers nor by those who ratified the Constitution.4 Further, such legislative election authority was vigorously contested whenever it mattered—in the presidential elections in 1800, 1812, and 1824—and was soon thereafter abandoned in the face of the claim that this doctrine was a “usurpation.”5 The doctrine was more emphatically rejected following the Civil War, including through Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, Bush v. Gore repeated McPherson’s historical amnesia and provoked a doctrine that directly threatened such core democratic values as state court authority to interpret state constitutions and the power of the people to elect the President of the United States

Longitudinal Monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG Seropositivity to Detect COVID-19.

BackgroundSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a novel beta-coronavirus that has recently emerged as the cause of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based tests are optimal and recommended for the diagnosis of an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Serology tests for viral antibodies provide an important tool to diagnose previous exposure to the virus. Here we evaluate the analytical performance parameters of the Diazyme SARS-CoV-2 IgM/IgG serology assays and describe the kinetics of IgM and IgG seroconversion observed in patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 who were admitted to our hospital.MethodsWe validated the performance of the Diazyme assay in 235 presumed SARS-CoV-2 negative subjects to determine specificity. Subsequently, we evaluated the SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG seroconversion of 54 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients and determined sensitivity of the assay at three different timeframes.ResultSensitivity and specificity for detecting seropositivity at ≥15 days following a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR result, was 100.0% and 98.7% when assaying for the panel of IgM and IgG. The median time to seropositivity observed for a reactive IgM and IgG result from the date of a positive PCR was 5 days (IQR: 2.75-9 days) and 4 days (IQR: 2.75-6.75 days), respectively.ConclusionsOur data demonstrate that the Diazyme IgM/IgG assays are suited for the purpose of detecting SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgM in patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infections. For the first time, we report longitudinal data showing the evolution of seroconversion for both IgG and IgM in a cohort of acutely ill patients in the United States. We also demonstrate a low false positive rate in patients who were presumed to be disease free

Using local rural knowledge to enhance STEM learning for gifted and talented students in Australia

In order to supply a future Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce, Australia needs to engage its most capable and gifted secondary students in quality STEM learning, either within school or through extra-curricular opportunities, so that they will continue into STEM-based tertiary degrees. High-achieving students in rural communities may face additional barriers to STEM learning that can limit their ability to pursue advanced STEM studies and occupations. This small-scale research project sought to explore a group of gifted lower secondary students’ engagement and experiences in a STEM programme designed around a local rural knowledge model as reported by Avery (2013), which uses local knowledge as a vehicle for science learning. This multi-method study was conducted with 26 students years 7 and 8 in a rural school. Information about students’ general science class experiences were collected quantitatively. These experiences contrasted the local rural knowledge programme, where the students worked with an ecologist and experienced science educators to rehabilitate small plots of damaged land close to the school site. Qualitative data were collected throughout the programme to determine its influence on students’ engagement and learning in STEM. The research found that the local rural knowledge model enhanced students’ engagement in STEM learning and they felt that they retained knowledge better as a result of the authentic learning experience. Students also engaged the wider community in the process, leading to broader translation of the STEM learning

Faculty Perceptions Of Distance Education Courses: A Survey

This paper discusses the results of a study of the perceptions of a national sample of business faculty members from various business disciplines regarding distance (online) education and teaching distance education courses.  In the past few years, distance learning programs have become very popular, and the number of offerings continues to increase.  However, distance learning courses offer significant differences from the classic classroom environment.  The results of this study suggest that the offering of online courses in business is still in the early or developmental stages, and that only a small percentage of the respondents indicate that they would teach online courses in the future

Common Representation of Information Flows for Dynamic Coalitions

We propose a formal foundation for reasoning about access control policies within a Dynamic Coalition, defining an abstraction over existing access control models and providing mechanisms for translation of those models into information-flow domain. The abstracted information-flow domain model, called a Common Representation, can then be used for defining a way to control the evolution of Dynamic Coalitions with respect to information flow

The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP)

NITARP, the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program, partners small groups of predominantly high school educators with research astronomers for a year-long research project. This paper presents a summary of how NITARP works and the lessons learned over the last 13 years. The program lasts a calendar year, January to January, and involves three ~week-long trips: to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) winter meeting, to Caltech in the summer (with students), and back to a winter AAS meeting (with students) to present their results. Because NITARP has been running since 2009, and its predecessor ran from 2005-2008, there have been many lessons learned over the last 13 years that have informed the development of the program. The most critical is that scientists must see their work with the educators on their team as a partnership of equals who have specialized in different professions. NITARP teams appear to function most efficiently with approximately 5 people: a mentor astronomer, a mentor teacher (who has been through the program before), and 3 new educators. Educators are asked to step into the role of learner and develop their question-asking skills as they work to develop an understanding of a subject in which they will not have command of all the information and processes needed. Critical to the success of each team is the development of communication skills and fluid plan of action to keep the lines of communication open. This program has allowed more than 100 educators to present more than 60 total science posters at the AAS