The Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence of the Roberts Court

[Excerpt] “In 1976, four years after finding the nation’s death penalty laws to be constitutionally flawed, the U.S. Supreme Court established the parameters of modern American death penalty jurisprudence. Since then the Court has gone through several phases. The Court proceeded cautiously from 1977 to 1982, limiting the death penalty to those who committed murder in a manner deemed especially heinous and despicable by judges and juries, requiring even-handedness and consistency in capital sentencing, and insisting that sentencing authorities examine the individual characteristics of each offender and the particular circumstances of his crime. From 1983 to 2001, however, the Court took a more aggressive stance in favor of capital punishment. The Justices rejected major constitutional challenges to the fairness of death penalty laws and upheld the constitutionality of executing mentally retarded offenders, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old offenders, and felony accomplices who neither killed nor intended to kill. Beginning in 2002, the Justices once again began to scrutinize death penalty statutes and procedures closely and with a critical eye. The Court reversed its holdings permitting the executions of mentally retarded offenders and juvenile offenders, tightened standards for appellate review of the competence of capital defense attorneys, and invalidated sentencing procedures that seemed likely to produce arbitrary or discriminatory life-ending verdicts.

In the eye of the storm: T cell behavior in the inflammatory microenvironment.

Coordinated unfolding of innate and adaptive immunity is key to the development of protective immune responses. This functional integration occurs within the inflamed tissue, a microenvironment enriched with factors released by innate and subsequently adaptive immune cells and the injured tissue itself. T lymphocytes are key players in the ensuing adaptive immunity and their proper function is instrumental to a successful outcome of immune protection. The site of inflammation is a "harsh" environment in which T cells are exposed to numerous factors that might influence their behavior. Low pH and oxygen concentration, high lactate and organic acid content as well as free fatty acids and reactive oxygen species are found in the inflammatory microenvironment. All these components affect T cells as well as other immune cells during the immune response and impact on the development of chronic inflammation. We here overview the effects of a number of factors present in the inflammatory microenvironment on T cell function and migration and discuss the potential relevance of these components as targets for therapeutic intervention in autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases

Microscopic study of 40^{40}Ca+58,64^{58,64}Ni fusion reactions

Background: Heavy-ion fusion reactions at energies near the Coulomb barrier are influenced by couplings between the relative motion and nuclear intrinsic degrees of freedom of the colliding nuclei. The time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) theory, incorporating the couplings at the mean-field level, as well as the coupled-channels (CC) method are standard approaches to describe low energy nuclear reactions. Purpose: To investigate the effect of couplings to inelastic and transfer channels on the fusion cross sections for the reactions $^{40}$Ca+$^{58}$Ni and $^{40}$Ca+$^{64}$Ni. Methods: Fusion cross sections around and below the Coulomb barrier have been obtained from coupled-channels (CC) calculations, using the bare nucleus-nucleus potential calculated with the frozen Hartree-Fock method and coupling parameters taken from known nuclear structure data. The fusion thresholds and neutron transfer probabilities have been calculated with the TDHF method. Results: For $^{40}$Ca+$^{58}$Ni, the TDHF fusion threshold is in agreement with the most probable barrier obtained in the CC calculations including the couplings to the low-lying octupole $3_1^{-}$ state for $^{40}$Ca and to the low-lying quadrupole $2_1^{+}$ state for $^{58}$Ni. This indicates that the octupole and quadrupole states are the dominant excitations while neutron transfer is shown to be weak. For $^{40}$Ca+$^{64}$Ni, the TDHF barrier is lower than predicted by the CC calculations including the same inelastic couplings as those for $^{40}$Ca+$^{58}$Ni. TDHF calculations show large neutron transfer probabilities in $^{40}$Ca+$^{64}$Ni which could result in a lowering of the fusion threshold. Conclusions: Inelastic channels play an important role in $^{40}$Ca+$^{58}$Ni and $^{40}$Ca+$^{64}$Ni reactions. The role of neutron transfer channels has been highlighted in $^{40}$Ca+$^{64}$Ni

Comparison of classical and second quantized description of the dynamic Stark shift

We compare the derivation of the dynamic Stark shift of hydrogenic energy levels in a classical framework with an adiabatically damped laser-atom interaction, which is equivalent to the Gell-Mann-Low-Sucher formula, and a treatment based on time-independent perturbation theory, with a second-quantized laser-atom dipole interaction Hamiltonian. Our analysis applies to a laser that excites a two-photon transition in atomic hydrogen or in a hydrogenlike ion with low nuclear charge number. Our comparisons serve to demonstrate why the dynamic Stark shift may be interpreted as a stimulated radiative correction and illustrates connections between the two derivations. The simplest of the derivations is the fully quantized approach. The classical and the second-quantized treatment are shown to be equivalent in the limit of large photon numbers.Comment: 5 page

Towards Automated Retrieval of 3D Designed Data in 3D Sensed Data

Construction productivity, one major project performance indicator, requires the continuous assessment of construction progress over time. Current practices for construction progress assessment are labour intensive, expensive, and generally result in partial and sometimes erroneous information. It is thus difficult to make appropriate and timely management decisions. However, recent three-dimensional (3D) Computer Aided Design (CAD), 3D scanning and global positioning technologies present an opportunity for developing more efficient, robust and automated approaches. After reviewing and analyzing previous works conducted in the field of automated object detection, this paper presents a new approach taking advantage of global positioning technologies for robustly retrieving 3D CAD elements within 3D scanned data. This approach is implemented and experimented in laboratory. Results are conclusive towards further experiments for its application to many different fields including automated construction progress assessment for effortless productivity tracking

The uniting of Europe and the foundation of EU studies: revisiting the neofunctionalism of Ernst B. Haas

This article suggests that the neofunctionalist theoretical legacy left by Ernst B. Haas is somewhat richer and more prescient than many contemporary discussants allow. The article develops an argument for routine and detailed re-reading of the corpus of neofunctionalist work (and that of Haas in particular), not only to disabuse contemporary students and scholars of the normally static and stylized reading that discussion of the theory provokes, but also to suggest that the conceptual repertoire of neofunctionalism is able to speak directly to current EU studies and comparative regionalism. Neofunctionalism is situated in its social scientific context before the theory's supposed erroneous reliance on the concept of 'spillover' is discussed critically. A case is then made for viewing Haas's neofunctionalism as a dynamic theory that not only corresponded to established social scientific norms, but did so in ways that were consistent with disciplinary openness and pluralism

Ecosystem management via interacting models of political and ecological processes

The decision to implement environmental protection options is a political one. Political realities may cause a country to not heed the most persuasive scientific analysis of an ecosystem's future health. A predictive understanding of the political processes that result in ecosystem management decisions may help guide ecosystem management policymaking. To this end, this article develops a stochastic, temporal model of how political processes influence and are influenced by ecosystem processes. This model is realized in a system of interacting influence diagrams that model the decision making of a country's political bodies. These decisions interact with a model of the ecosystem enclosed by the country. As an example, a model for Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) management in Kenya is constructed and fitted to decision and ecological data