Micro-Symposium on Orin Kerr\u27s \u27A Theory of Law\u27

For more than a century, careful readers of the Green Bag have known that “[t]here is nothing sacred in a theory of law...which has outlived its usefulness or which was radically wrong from the beginning...The question is What is the law and what is the true public policy?” Professor Orin Kerr bravely, creatively, and eloquently answered that question in his article, “A Theory of Law,” in the Autumn 2012 issue of the Green Bag. Uniquely among all theories of law that I know of, Kerr’s answer to the fundamental question of law and true public policy enables all scholars to answer that same question in their own ways. The Green Bag is pleased to be featuring his “A Theory of Law” in its first micro-symposium, and just as pleased with the quality, quantity, and diversity of the responses to the call for papers. Blessed with an abundance of good work but cursed by a shortage of space, we were compelled to select a small set – representative and excellent – of those essays to publish in the Green Bag or its sibling publication, the Journal of Law. We regret that we cannot do full justice to the outpouring of first-rate legal-theoretical commentary we received

Optimising intraperitoneal gentamicin dosing in peritoneal dialysis patients with peritonitis (GIPD) study

Background: Antibiotics are preferentially delivered via the peritoneal route to treat peritonitis, a major complication of peritoneal dialysis (PD), so that maximal concentrations are delivered at the site of infection. However, drugs administered intraperitoneally can be absorbed into the systemic circulation. Drugs excreted by the kidneys accumulate in PD patients, increasing the risk of toxicity. The aim of this study is to examine a model of gentamicin pharmacokinetics and to develop an intraperitoneal drug dosing regime that maximises bacterial killing and minimises toxicity

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

The Costs, Benefits, and Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in Mexico

Background: In Mexico, the lifetime risk of dying from maternal causes is 1 in 370 compared to 1 in 2,500 in the U.S. Although national efforts have been made to improve maternal services in the last decade, it is unclear if Millennium Development Goal 5 - to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 - will be met. Methodology/Principal Findings: We developed an empirically calibrated model that simulates the natural history of pregnancy and pregnancy-related complications in a cohort of 15-year-old women followed over their lifetime. After synthesizing national and sub-national trends in maternal mortality, the model was calibrated to current intervention-specific coverage levels and validated by comparing model-projected life expectancy, total fertility rate, crude birth rate and maternal mortality ratio with Mexico-specific data. Using both published and primary data, we assessed the comparative health and economic outcomes of alternative strategies to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. A dual approach that increased coverage of family planning by 15%, and assured access to safe abortion for all women desiring elective termination of pregnancy, reduced mortality by 43% and was cost saving compared to current practice. The most effective strategy added a third component, enhanced access to comprehensive emergency obstetric care for at least 90% of women requiring referral. At a national level, this strategy reduced mortality by 75%, cost less than current practice, and had an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $300 per DALY relative to the next best strategy. Analyses conducted at the state level yielded similar results. Conclusions/Significance: Increasing the provision of family planning and assuring access to safe abortion are feasible, complementary and cost-effective strategies that would provide the greatest benefit within a short-time frame. Incremental improvements in access to high-quality intrapartum and emergency obstetric care will further reduce maternal deaths and disability

Determining Factors of the Level of Disclosure of Information on Business Combinations with the Entry into Force of the Accounting Standard CPC 15

This paper aimed to investigate information disclosure on business combination transactions that took place in Brazil in 2010, when the Accounting Standard CPC 15 entered into force, and evaluate which were the determining factors of the level of disclosure of information related to it. To evaluate the disclosure level, a disclosure index of business combinations (INDCOMB) was prepared, having the disclosure index developed by Shalev (2009) as a basis. We evaluated, in the light of the literature on disclosure and business combinations, whether the following factors influenced on the disclosure level: acquiring company size, recognized percentage of overprice for expected future profitability in relation to the transaction value, dispersion of capital of the acquiring company, audit firm size, and participation of the acquiring company in American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) programs. The control variables used were listing of the acquiring company in the various segments of BM&FBOVESPA, operation sector, origin (state, private company with national capital or private company with foreign capital), and relative acquired company size in relation to the acquiring company. We analyzed business combination transactions that took place in 2010, reported by 40 open capital companies involved in 76 transactions. We conclude that the audit firm size and the relative acquired company size were factors that influenced on the level of disclosure of information regarding business combinations in 2010. The other factors showed no conclusive results

Organizational Heterogeneity of Vertebrate Genomes

Genomes of higher eukaryotes are mosaics of segments with various structural, functional, and evolutionary properties. The availability of whole-genome sequences allows the investigation of their structure as “texts” using different statistical and computational methods. One such method, referred to as Compositional Spectra (CS) analysis, is based on scoring the occurrences of fixed-length oligonucleotides (k-mers) in the target DNA sequence. CS analysis allows generating species- or region-specific characteristics of the genome, regardless of their length and the presence of coding DNA. In this study, we consider the heterogeneity of vertebrate genomes as a joint effect of regional variation in sequence organization superimposed on the differences in nucleotide composition. We estimated compositional and organizational heterogeneity of genome and chromosome sequences separately and found that both heterogeneity types vary widely among genomes as well as among chromosomes in all investigated taxonomic groups. The high correspondence of heterogeneity scores obtained on three genome fractions, coding, repetitive, and the remaining part of the noncoding DNA (the genome dark matter - GDM) allows the assumption that CS-heterogeneity may have functional relevance to genome regulation. Of special interest for such interpretation is the fact that natural GDM sequences display the highest deviation from the corresponding reshuffled sequences

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the DR6 CMB Lensing Power Spectrum and its Implications for Structure Growth

We present new measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing over $9400$ sq. deg. of the sky. These lensing measurements are derived from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) CMB dataset, which consists of five seasons of ACT CMB temperature and polarization observations. We determine the amplitude of the CMB lensing power spectrum at $2.3\%$ precision ($43\sigma$ significance) using a novel pipeline that minimizes sensitivity to foregrounds and to noise properties. To ensure our results are robust, we analyze an extensive set of null tests, consistency tests, and systematic error estimates and employ a blinded analysis framework. The baseline spectrum is well fit by a lensing amplitude of $A_{\mathrm{lens}}=1.013\pm0.023$ relative to the Planck 2018 CMB power spectra best-fit $\Lambda$CDM model and $A_{\mathrm{lens}}=1.005\pm0.023$ relative to the $\text{ACT DR4} + \text{WMAP}$ best-fit model. From our lensing power spectrum measurement, we derive constraints on the parameter combination $S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8 \equiv \sigma_8 \left({\Omega_m}/{0.3}\right)^{0.25}$ of $S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8= 0.818\pm0.022$ from ACT DR6 CMB lensing alone and $S^{\mathrm{CMBL}}_8= 0.813\pm0.018$ when combining ACT DR6 and Planck NPIPE CMB lensing power spectra. These results are in excellent agreement with $\Lambda$CDM model constraints from Planck or $\text{ACT DR4} + \text{WMAP}$ CMB power spectrum measurements. Our lensing measurements from redshifts $z\sim0.5$--$5$ are thus fully consistent with $\Lambda$CDM structure growth predictions based on CMB anisotropies probing primarily $z\sim1100$. We find no evidence for a suppression of the amplitude of cosmic structure at low redshiftsComment: 45+21 pages, 50 figures. Prepared for submission to ApJ. Also see companion papers Madhavacheril et al and MacCrann et a

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: High-resolution component-separated maps across one-third of the sky

Observations of the millimeter sky contain valuable information on a number of signals, including the blackbody cosmic microwave background (CMB), Galactic emissions, and the Compton-$y$ distortion due to the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. Extracting new insight into cosmological and astrophysical questions often requires combining multi-wavelength observations to spectrally isolate one component. In this work, we present a new arcminute-resolution Compton-$y$ map, which traces out the line-of-sight-integrated electron pressure, as well as maps of the CMB in intensity and E-mode polarization, across a third of the sky (around 13,000 sq.~deg.). We produce these through a joint analysis of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 4 and 6 at frequencies of roughly 93, 148, and 225 GHz, together with data from the \textit{Planck} satellite at frequencies between 30 GHz and 545 GHz. We present detailed verification of an internal linear combination pipeline implemented in a needlet frame that allows us to efficiently suppress Galactic contamination and account for spatial variations in the ACT instrument noise. These maps provide a significant advance, in noise levels and resolution, over the existing \textit{Planck} component-separated maps and will enable a host of science goals including studies of cluster and galaxy astrophysics, inferences of the cosmic velocity field, primordial non-Gaussianity searches, and gravitational lensing reconstruction of the CMB.Comment: The Compton-y map and associated products will be made publicly available upon publication of the paper. The CMB T and E mode maps will be made available when the DR6 maps are made publi

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing Map and Cosmological Parameters

We present cosmological constraints from a gravitational lensing mass map covering 9400 sq. deg. reconstructed from CMB measurements made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2017 to 2021. In combination with BAO measurements (from SDSS and 6dF), we obtain the amplitude of matter fluctuations $\sigma_8 = 0.819 \pm 0.015$ at 1.8% precision, $S_8\equiv\sigma_8({\Omega_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.840\pm0.028$ and the Hubble constant $H_0= (68.3 \pm 1.1)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ at 1.6% precision. A joint constraint with CMB lensing measured by the Planck satellite yields even more precise values: $\sigma_8 = 0.812 \pm 0.013$, $S_8\equiv\sigma_8({\Omega_{\rm m}}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.831\pm0.023$ and $H_0= (68.1 \pm 1.0)\, \text{km}\,\text{s}^{-1}\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$. These measurements agree well with $\Lambda$CDM-model extrapolations from the CMB anisotropies measured by Planck. To compare these constraints to those from the KiDS, DES, and HSC galaxy surveys, we revisit those data sets with a uniform set of assumptions, and find $S_8$ from all three surveys are lower than that from ACT+Planck lensing by varying levels ranging from 1.7-2.1$\sigma$. These results motivate further measurements and comparison, not just between the CMB anisotropies and galaxy lensing, but also between CMB lensing probing $z\sim 0.5-5$ on mostly-linear scales and galaxy lensing at $z\sim 0.5$ on smaller scales. We combine our CMB lensing measurements with CMB anisotropies to constrain extensions of $\Lambda$CDM, limiting the sum of the neutrino masses to $\sum m_{\nu} < 0.12$ eV (95% c.l.), for example. Our results provide independent confirmation that the universe is spatially flat, conforms with general relativity, and is described remarkably well by the $\Lambda$CDM model, while paving a promising path for neutrino physics with gravitational lensing from upcoming ground-based CMB surveys.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures, prepared for submission to ApJ. Cosmological likelihood data is here: https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/actadv_prod_table.html ; likelihood software is here: https://github.com/ACTCollaboration/act_dr6_lenslike . Also see companion papers Qu et al and MacCrann et al. Mass maps will be released when papers are publishe