Measuring the Justice Gap: Flaws in the Interstate Allocation of Civil Legal Services Funding and a Proposed Remedy

With the supply of legal services not particularly responsive to demand, we conclude that the justice gap could be narrowed simply by reforming the way in which policymakers distribute legal services funds while holding constant the total amount of funds distributed. In reaching this conclusion, we proceed in two parts. First, drawing largely from Access Across America and LSC data, we analyze the supply of legal services funding across states. Since eligibility for Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funds is principally determined by income (only individuals in households with income at or below 125% of the federal poverty level are LSC eligible),8 variations in legal services funding among states are strongly correlated with LSC eligibility levels. However, LSC funding likely accounts for well under forty-three percent (43%) of overall legal services funding, with the remainder (“non-LSC funding”) generated by, inter alia, state and local grants, filing fees, interest on lawyer trust accounts (“IOLTA”), and private grants. Because the precise magnitude of non-LSC funding is unclear, we estimate it with three different measures. Using each of these measures, we then analyze its disparity among states. In every case, after explaining Access Across America’s finding that non-LSC funding is not proportional to population, we conclude that it also has no statistically significant relationship to key economic indicators, such as LSC eligibility, median household income, or unemployment. In fact, of the variables we tested, only the number of lawyers in a state relates significantly to any of our measures of non-LSC funding, and of these three measures, the only one for which the number of lawyers has statistical significance is non-LSC funding received by organizations that also receive LSC funding. After examining how legal services funds are supplied across states, we then analyze how they are demanded. Measuring demand is quite challenging, particularly on the state level, because it requires assessing not the amount of legal services that low-income individuals do use, but rather the amount that they want to use, which is an unobservable variable. The LSC has attempted to measure such demand through a survey of individuals seeking assistance from LSC-funded programs, but, as the LSC concedes, this approach comes with inherent limitations that likely under-represent unmet needs. We therefore take a different approach: after assuming that the overall frequency with which civil legal services are delivered reflects the relative demand for these services across states, we estimate demand within each state through proxies for the most significant categories of services. Because, according to LSC data, nearly eighty-five percent (85%) of LSC-eligible cases arise from just four types of disputes (consumer finance, family, housing, and income), we can reasonably project state-level demand for legal services by estimating the frequency of these disputes within each state. Upon doing so, we find that there is no clear connection between state-level demand and supply, particularly with respect to LSC funding. In other words, states with the greatest need for LSC funding (because their residents encounter legal problems the most based on our estimates) do not necessarily have more funding than states with lower funding needs. Though we recognize that fixing this imbalance will not be easy, we conclude by offering a proposal that attempts to do so. In this regard, we recommend that the LSC move away from complete reliance on an income-based test toward a needs-based test. Such a framework would allow the LSC to more effectively serve unmet demand for civil legal services and thus, help realize Justice Powell’s ideal

Management Strategies for Posttransplant Diabetes Mellitus after Heart Transplantation: A Review

Posttransplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM) is a well-recognized complication of heart transplantation and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have yielded wide ranging estimates in the incidence of PTDM due in part to variable definitions applied. In addition, there is a limited published data on the management of PTDM after heart transplantation and a paucity of studies examining the effects of newer classes of hypoglycaemic drug therapies. In this review, we discuss the role of established glucose-lowering therapies and the rationale and emerging clinical evidence that supports the role of incretin-based therapies (glucagon like peptide- (GLP-) 1 agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase- (DPP-) 4 inhibitors) and sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in the management of PTDM after heart transplantation. Recently published Consensus Guidelines for the diagnosis of PTDM will hopefully lead to more consistent approaches to the diagnosis of PTDM and provide a platform for the larger-scale multicentre trials that will be needed to determine the role of these newer therapies in the management of PTDM

Data-driven discovery of molecular photoswitches with multioutput Gaussian processes

Photoswitchable molecules display two or more isomeric forms that may be accessed using light. Separating the electronic absorption bands of these isomers is key to selectively addressing a specific isomer and achieving high photostationary states whilst overall red-shifting the absorption bands serves to limit material damage due to UV-exposure and increases penetration depth in photopharmacological applications. Engineering these properties into a system through synthetic design however, remains a challenge. Here, we present a data-driven discovery pipeline for molecular photoswitches underpinned by dataset curation and multitask learning with Gaussian processes. In the prediction of electronic transition wavelengths, we demonstrate that a multioutput Gaussian process (MOGP) trained using labels from four photoswitch transition wavelengths yields the strongest predictive performance relative to single-task models as well as operationally outperforming time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) in terms of the wall-clock time for prediction. We validate our proposed approach experimentally by screening a library of commercially available photoswitchable molecules. Through this screen, we identified several motifs that displayed separated electronic absorption bands of their isomers, exhibited red-shifted absorptions, and are suited for information transfer and photopharmacological applications. Our curated dataset, code, as well as all models are made available at https://github.com/Ryan-Rhys/The-Photoswitch-Dataset

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them

The 2023 Orthopedic Research Society's international consensus meeting on musculoskeletal infection: Summary from the in vitro section

Antimicrobial strategies for musculoskeletal infections are typically first developed with in vitro models. The In Vitro Section of the 2023 Orthopedic Research Society Musculoskeletal Infection international consensus meeting (ICM) probed our state of knowledge of in vitro systems with respect to bacteria and biofilm phenotype, standards, in vitro activity, and the ability to predict in vivo efficacy. A subset of ICM delegates performed systematic reviews on 15 questions and made recommendations and assessment of the level of evidence that were then voted on by 72 ICM delegates. Here, we report recommendations and rationale from the reviews and the results of the internet vote. Only two questions received a ≥90% consensus vote, emphasizing the disparate approaches and lack of established consensus for in vitro modeling and interpretation of results. Comments on knowledge gaps and the need for further research on these critical MSKI questions are included

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Fridays at Five, chamber music recital, live performance

Chamber music recital. Performing music by New Zealand composers David Farquhar, Michael Norris, Kenneth Young, Ross Harris. 80 minutes duration