Facilitating Meaningful Change Within U.S. Law Schools

Despite the widely recognized challenges and complaints facing U.S. legal education, very little is understood about how law schools can adapt faster and better. This Article uses institutional theory, behavioral economics, and psychology to explain why change has proven so difficult for U.S. law schools. Next, using institutional entrepreneurship, the Article explains the theoretical steps necessary to overcome the institutional resistance to change. The Article then discusses the characteristics of opportunities that are most likely to better meet the needs of law students while also providing sustainable benefits to the individually innovating law schools. Using management theory, the Article then proposes a seven-step change process model to enable individual law schools to systematically overcome institutional resistance, formulate unique strategies, and actually achieve meaningful change

Byng’s and Currie’s Commanders: A Still Untold Story of the Canadian Corps

In 1915, the Canadian Corps was little more than a rabble of enthusiastic amateurs. Yet by 1917-18, it had become an accomplished professional fighting force, one characterized by Denis Winter as “much the most effective unit in the BEF” and by Shane Schreiber as “the shock army of the British Empire.” While Canadian military historians have studied this evolution extensively few have examined the decisive element in the transformation—the development of a cadre of proficient senior combat officers. No one questions Currie’s status as Canada’s best fighting general, but of the supporting team he and his predecessor, General Byng, assembled we know precious little. Who, then, were the men commanding the Corps’ four divisions, 12 infantry brigades and supporting machine gun and artillery units—the senior officers whose abilities as trainers and fighters were integral to the CEF’s battlefield success

A black British male perspective of identities

Recently an email was circulated requesting papers for “the first scholarly investigation of the African Diaspora as an aspect of intra-European history” (Johann-Gutenberg-University, 10-13 November, 2005). The organizers’ stated goal was also to “advance the development of new theoretical and methodological tools to understand the African Diaspora within Europe.” The supporting literature provided a diagram that considers Black European identity in relation to a number of constitutive factors (for instance, social and economic variables, ‘White sample’ ideology, etc). These factors underpinned the motivation for the conference, the recognition that the African Diaspora is understood ‘with’ and through North American academia. Implicitly, the conference literature recognized African-American influence in a detailed list of measurement scales used to generate dimensions of Black identity. Such an approach, in wanting to measure a substance-type identity, embraces positivism and tends to be at odds with Africentricism. This raises a number of problems concerning Black identity: (1) the need for an understanding of Black identity within a local context while recognising the hegemonic position of African-American accounts; (2) finding an appropriate means of empirically giving voice to this conception whilst recognizing the claims of an African particularism, and; (3) allowing a diversity of views or consensus about Black identity to emerge. The aim of this paper is to respond to these questions from a particular region, that of Black British male identity. This paper will present some of the identity positions articulated by British born African-Caribbean men. In a previous paper, Hylton & Miller (2004) considered Black Identity in term of macro-narratives. That paper provided a historical context to notions of ‘Blackness’, this paper provides a more micro-analytic, fine-grained analysis of Black identity, from an exclusively Black British stance

WHICH AVENUE FOR SUGAR TRADE REFORM: WTO, REGIONAL OR BILATERAL? A EUROPEAN UNION PERSPECTIVE

International Relations/Trade,

Primitive Divisors in Arithmetic Dynamics

Let F(z) be a rational function in Q(z) of degree at least 2 with F(0) = 0 and such that F does not vanish to order d at 0. Let b be a rational number having infinite orbit under iteration of F, and write F^n(b) = A_n/B_n as a fraction in lowest terms. We prove that for all but finitely many n > 0, the numerator A_n has a primitive divisor, i.e., there is a prime p such that p divides A_n and p does not divide A_i for all i < n. More generally, we prove an analogous result when F is defined over a number field and 0 is a periodic point for F.Comment: Version 2 is substantial revision. The proof of the main theorem has been simplified and strengthened. (16 pages

Issues in the development of advance directives in mental health care

&lt;i&gt;Background&lt;/i&gt;: Interest in advance directives in mental health care is growing internationally. There is no clear universal agreement as to what such an advance directive is or how it should function. &lt;i&gt;Aim&lt;/i&gt;: To describe the range of issues embodied in the development of advance directives in mental health care. &lt;i&gt;Method&lt;/i&gt;: The literature on advance directives is examined to highlight the pros and cons of different versions of advance directive. &lt;i&gt;Results&lt;/i&gt;: Themes emerged around issues of terminology, competency and consent, the legal status of advance directives independent or collaborative directives and their content. Opinions vary between a unilateral legally enforceable instrument to a care plan agreed between patient and clinician. &lt;i&gt;Conclusion&lt;/i&gt;: There is immediate appeal in a liberal democracy that values individual freedom and autonomy in giving weight to advance directives in mental health care. They do not, however, solve all the problems of enforced treatment and early access to treatment. They also raise new issues and highlight persistent problems. &lt;i&gt;Declaration&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;of&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;interest&lt;/i&gt;: The research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation grant number MNH/00015G

Thiamine Acquisition Strategies Impact Metabolism and Competition in the Gut Microbe Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an essential cofactor for all organisms. Humans primarily acquire thiamine through their diet, and thiamine deficiencies have adverse neurological effects. However, the role gut microbes play in modulating thiamine availability is poorly understood, and little is known about how thiamine impacts the stability of microbial gut communities. To investigate thiamine's role in the gut, we utilized the model gut microbe Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. Transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) revealed a global downregulation of thiamine and amino acid biosynthesis, glycolysis, and purine metabolism when thiamine was present. Using genetic mutants with thiamine biosynthesis and transport locus mutations, we determined both systems were critical for growth in thiamine-deficient medium. The defect in the double transport mutant suggests an uncharacterized feedback mechanism between thiamine transport and biosynthesis in B. thetaiotaomicron. Mutant phenotypes were recapitulated during pairwise competitions, reinforcing the importance of encoding versatile thiamine acquisition mechanisms when thiamine concentrations are variable. In addition, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analyses corroborate that exogenous thiamine levels affect the internal thiamine pool of B. thetaiotaomicron. Furthermore, we computationally examined the ability of other gut microbes to acquire thiamine and identified lineage-specific differences in thiamine acquisition strategies. Among the Bacteroidetes, the capacities for both thiamine transport and biosynthesis are common. Together, these data show that thiamine acquisition mechanisms used by B. thetaiotaomicron not only are critical for its physiology and fitness but also provide the opportunity to model how other gut microbes may respond to the shifting availability of thiamine in the gut. IMPORTANCE Variation in the ability of gut microbes to transport, synthesize, and compete for vitamin B1 (thiamine) is expected to impact the structure and stability of the microbiota, and ultimately this variation may have both direct and indirect effects on human health. Our study identifies the diverse strategies employed by gut Bacteroidetes to acquire thiamine. We demonstrate how the presence or absence of thiamine biosynthesis or transport dramatically affects the abundance of B. thetaiotaomicron in a competitive environment. This study adds further evidence that altering the presence or concentrations of water-soluble vitamins such as thiamine may be an effective method for manipulating gut community composition. In turn, targeted thiamine delivery could be used therapeutically to alter dysbiotic communities linked to disease. Author Video: An author video summary of this article is available