Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence, and Segmentation Strategies in Education

The task of creating a public will is daunting in any political system, but a democracy dedicated to the principles of participation and public deliberation faces specific challenges, including overcoming organized opposition that may not accept democratic tenets. In the sphere of education (and social reproduction more generally), business-influenced movements to reform public education question many of the established goals and norms of democratic education and thus may be the vanguard of such opposition. In order to interpret and explore these movements, this article enlists Amy Gutmann\u27s work as a heuristic device. In so doing, it looks at the task of instituting a unified public school system and organized opposition to this task within the context of a democratic polity and its deliberative processes

Pseudomonas Bacteriophage Phi6 as a Model for Virus Emergence

The Pseudomonas bacteriophage Φ6 has a long and well-established history as a model organism. Here we describe a set of experiments to extend this model system to concepts previously unclaimed. Chapter 1 presents a brief background of the ecology of viruses that infect microorganisms. Chapter 2 examines genetic mutations allowing for host range expansion. Chapter 3 presents a novel paired strain assay to study how a non genetic host-acquired factor affects fitness of these enveloped viruses on subsequent hosts. Chapter 4 is an extension of this system to include how the bacteria host is affected in virus-host coevolution

From Mountains to Molehills: A Comparative Analysis of Drug Policy

This paper examines the debate surrounding the trend of global movements away from prohibition and towards a harms reduction approach to drug policy. This paper reviews the prohibitionist model that is, by and large, the global status quo of how countries deal with drugs. Under the prohibitionist approach, governments criminally ban the production, trafficking, sale, possession, and use of drugs in an effort to directly combat the harms associated with drugs. Section I of this paper presents the prohibitionist approach as the international status quo and examines the effects and failures of that approach. Section II examines a variety of harms reduction approaches that attempt to address harms to drug users and society at large through treatment, tolerance, and the recognition of human rights. However, the potential successes of harms reduction models are still constrained by the reality of prohibitionist legal regimes whose stricter criminalization of drugs often contradict and frustrate the policies and legislative efforts of harms reduction proponents. Because the harms reduction approaches are restrained by a prohibitionist legal regime that criminalizes their policies, legalization becomes a necessary step to achieving the goals of harms reduction approaches. Therefore, section III of this paper presents an alternative to legal systems that ban drugs in order to remove this clash between prohibitionist and harms reduction policies. Section III lays out three arguments for the legalization of drugs on a global scale. This paper concludes that a legalization-based approach is the best drug policy. It advocates that governing bodies all over the world adopt an intelligent, legalized approach to the problem of drugs in society as a more effective approach to combating the harms of drug addiction and the crimes of the drug trade while upholding human rights, global equity, and rule of law. Cite as: 19 Annl. Survey Int\u27l. Comp. L. 197 (2013)

From Mountains to Molehills: A Comparative Analysis of Drug Policy

This paper examines the debate surrounding the trend of global movements away from prohibition and towards a harms reduction approach to drug policy. This paper reviews the prohibitionist model that is, by and large, the global status quo of how countries deal with drugs. Under the prohibitionist approach, governments criminally ban the production, trafficking, sale, possession, and use of drugs in an effort to directly combat the harms associated with drugs. Section I of this paper presents the prohibitionist approach as the international status quo and examines the effects and failures of that approach. Section II examines a variety of harms reduction approaches that attempt to address harms to drug users and society at large through treatment, tolerance, and the recognition of human rights. However, the potential successes of harms reduction models are still constrained by the reality of prohibitionist legal regimes whose stricter criminalization of drugs often contradict and frustrate the policies and legislative efforts of harms reduction proponents. Because the harms reduction approaches are restrained by a prohibitionist legal regime that criminalizes their policies, legalization becomes a necessary step to achieving the goals of harms reduction approaches. Therefore, section III of this paper presents an alternative to legal systems that ban drugs in order to remove this clash between prohibitionist and harms reduction policies. Section III lays out three arguments for the legalization of drugs on a global scale. This paper concludes that a legalization-based approach is the best drug policy. It advocates that governing bodies all over the world adopt an intelligent, legalized approach to the problem of drugs in society as a more effective approach to combating the harms of drug addiction and the crimes of the drug trade while upholding human rights, global equity, and rule of law. Cite as: 19 Annl. Survey Int\u27l. Comp. L. 197 (2013)

Test-retest reliability of time-frequency measures of auditory steady-state responses in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

BackgroundAuditory steady-state response (ASSR) paradigms have consistently demonstrated gamma band abnormalities in schizophrenia at a 40-Hz driving frequency with both electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Various time-frequency measures have been used to assess the 40-Hz ASSR, including evoked power, single trial total power, phase-locking factor (PLF), and phase-locking angle (PLA). While both EEG and MEG studies have shown power and PLF ASSR measures to exhibit excellent test-retest reliability in healthy adults, the reliability of these measures in patients with schizophrenia has not been determined.MethodsASSRs were obtained by recording EEG data during presentation of repeated 20-Hz, 30-Hz and 40-Hz auditory click trains from nine schizophrenia patients (SZ) and nine healthy controls (HC) tested on two occasions. Similar ASSR data were collected from a separate group of 30 HC on two to three test occasions. A subset of these HC subjects had EEG recordings during two tasks, passively listening and actively attending to click train stimuli. Evoked power, total power, PLF, and PLA were calculated following Morlet wavelet time-frequency decomposition of EEG data and test-retest generalizability (G) coefficients were calculated for each ASSR condition, time-frequency measure, and subject group.ResultsG-coefficients ranged from good to excellent (> 0.6) for most 40-Hz time-frequency measures and participant groups, whereas 20-Hz G-coefficients were much more variable. Importantly, test-retest reliability was excellent for the various 40-Hz ASSR measures in SZ, similar to reliabilities in HC. Active attention to click train stimuli modestly reduced G-coefficients in HC relative to the passive listening condition.DiscussionThe excellent test-retest reliability of 40-Hz ASSR measures replicates previous EEG and MEG studies. PLA, a relatively new time-frequency measure, was shown for the first time to have excellent reliability, comparable to power and PLF measures. Excellent reliability of 40 Hz ASSR measures in SZ supports their use in clinical trials and longitudinal observational studies

Alternatives to air-conditioning: policies, design, technologies, behaviours

Far from being a panacea, air-conditioning is shown to create social, environmental and economic problems. Alternatives to air-conditioning are identified as a key means of reducing energy demand and carbon emissions, improving resilience to heat, and providing a healthy indoor environment. These alternatives are more than a technological issue and help to reframe coolth as an attribute and not a commodity. This editorial introduces the themes and individual papers in this special issue. It explores the implications of these alternative solutions across a range of issues: health and wellbeing; air quality; heat stress; technical/design solutions; economics and equity; climate change; social expectations and practices; policy and regulation; supply chain and procurement; education and training. Recommendations for change involve policy and regulation, construction industry business models, redefining the design decision process, improving performance and feedback, and updating workforce skills and capabilities