Constitutional Law—Exclusionary Rule Applied to State Liquor Authority Administrative Searches

Matter of Finn\u27s Liquor Shop, Inc. v. State Liquor Authority, 24 N.Y.2d 647 (1969)

The role of the stress hormone prolactin and sex differences in early psychosis

In the last 20 years, a huge effort has been made to implement and apply the principles of early diagnosis and treatment, already well established in other branches of medicine, to the field of psychotic disorders. The goal of research on early detection was and still is to prospectively identify people at-risk of developing full-blown psychosis. However, until now it is still not possible to predict transition to psychosis with adequate accuracy. Therefore, the prospective Früherkennung von Psychosen (Fepsy) study aims at improving early detection of psychosis via a multilevel assessment containing a systematic assessment of psychopathological symptoms, a neuropsychological examination, blood sampling, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The present dissertation addresses the role of the hormone prolactin in emerging psychosis on one hand and on the other hand aims to elucidate whether there are any sex differences in emerging psychosis specifically regarding the hormone prolactin, cognitive functioning and the correlation of self- and observer-ratings of psychopathology. In the first publication, the role of the hormone prolactin in early psychosis is discussed whereas the topic of possible sex differences is covered by all of the publications included in this dissertation (1, 2 and 3). The first study validates literature by providing further evidence for frequent hyperprolactinemia in emerging psychosis and that it can even be observed in antipsychotic-naïve patients (>30%). Hence, prolactin is not necessarily elevated as a side effect of antipsychotics but can also be a pre-existing condition probably in relation with the function of prolactin as stress hormone. Furthermore, all three publications which are included in this dissertation consider the aspect of sex differences, which may help to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms underlying psychosis that are specific to women or men. The first study demonstrated higher prolactin levels in women even after correction for the normal biological variation in prolactin levels between the sexes, which potentially provides an indication for a sex dependant stress reaction regarding the hormone prolactin. The results of our second study suggest that sex differences in cognitive functioning in patients are not different from those seen in healthy controls (HC). Specifically, the female advantage in verbal learning and memory, which has frequently been found in HC seems to be equally present in patients with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) for psychosis as well as in patients with a first episode psychosis (FEP). The third study shows that the associations of self- and observer-ratings of psychopathology were rather low and generally not different for men and women. Therefore, the results imply that self-rating scales cannot be a substitute for the more time-consuming observer-rating scales neither for men nor for women. In summary, prolactin plays a possible role in emerging psychosis in relation with its function as stress hormone and stress reactivity seems to be enhanced in women. Overall, there were few sex differences which could have been shown in the second and third study. Regarding sex differences in cognitive functioning (publication 2), they resemble those of the general population and were not different between HC and patients (ARMS, FEP)

The Consumer Movement in the United States

What ever happened to the consumer movement in the United States? In stark contrast to the high visibility and widespread support enjoyed by the consumer movement during the last two decades, overt concern for consumer protection seems to have disappeared since the election of President Ronald Reagan. To answer this question it is necessary first to identify the market conditions that currently dominate the U. S. economy and second to review the history of the consumer movement as it has evolved in this country during the last eighty years

Feature Comment: OMB Issues Final Build America, Buy America (BABA) Guidance Which May Trigger Compliance, Enforcement and Trade Issues—And Bid Protests

The Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued final guidance implementing the “Build America, Buy America” (BABA) provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which President Joseph Biden signed in November 2021. The final guidance is intended, as President Biden said in his 2023 State of the Union address, to ensure that when hundreds of billions of dollars of federally funded infrastructure projects are built with federal grant funding, “we’re going to Buy American.” But because of its extraordinary complexity and the conflicts it creates with other domestic-preference laws, in practice the new OMB guidance may impose heavy compliance burdens on contractors and suppliers, disrupt existing supply chains, and trigger disputes (through bid protests or otherwise) over states’ prior commitments to open their procurement markets under international trade agreements

Position-dependent effects on stability in tricyclo-DNA modified oligonucleotide duplexes

A series of oligodeoxyribonucleotides and oligoribonucleotides containing single and multiple tricyclo(tc)-nucleosides in various arrangements were prepared and the thermal and thermodynamic transition profiles of duplexes with complementary DNA and RNA evaluated. Tc-residues aligned in a non-continuous fashion in an RNA strand significantly decrease affinity to complementary RNA and DNA, mostly as a consequence of a loss of pairing enthalpy ΔH. Arranging the tc-residues in a continuous fashion rescues Tm and leads to higher DNA and RNA affinity. Substitution of oligodeoxyribonucleotides in the same way causes much less differences in Tm when paired to complementary DNA and leads to substantial increases in Tm when paired to complementary RNA. CD-spectroscopic investigations in combination with molecular dynamics simulations of duplexes with single modifications show that tc-residues in the RNA backbone distinctly influence the conformation of the neighboring nucleotides forcing them into higher energy conformations, while tc-residues in the DNA backbone seem to have negligible influence on the nearest neighbor conformations. These results rationalize the observed affinity differences and are of relevance for the design of tc-DNA containing oligonucleotides for applications in antisense or RNAi therap

Scheduling with Multiprocessors: A rounding network algorithm with a constant error

The candidate will study some special cases of preemptive open shop problems with multiprocessors. He will in particular concentrate on the situation when the processor set is partitioned into 2 multiprocessors. The two cases of preemptions (at integral times only or at arbitrary times) will be considered and the formulation as a linear programming problem will be exploited to get bounds on the minumum completion time. Interpretations in terms of graph colouring (generaling the edge colouring formulation of the open shop model) will be studied as well. Solvable cases wil be described (obtained by restricting for instance the various types of jobs characterized by their individual operations (on single processors) and their group operations (on multiprocessors))

Exploring The Imaginary Domain: An Investigation Of The Interplay Of Alterity, Literature, And The Process Of Self-Definition

This qualitative study explored how six secondary English students imagined definitions and redefinitions of themselves through encounters with self and other within the context of semiotic engagements with literature. A conceptual lens for exploring these imaginary spaces was fashioned by the braiding together of current trends from philosophy, critical theory, feminist theory, literary theory, and semiotic theory. These braided theories guided the research design. This conceptual frame allowed an investigation of the ways the interplay of alterity, the radical difference between self and other, and literature study created imaginary domains where the students could fashion definitions and re-definitions of self. Over a twelve-week period the students read and responded to texts within the context of semiotic theory. Data collected included: field notes, observations, student artifacts, and interviews. Poetic representations described the fluidity of self-definitions that emerged in the context of the literature study. These poetics made the voices of the students\u27 central to this study. Composed by each student with guidance from the researcher and comprised entirely from excerpts from interview data, the poetics served as the primary findings for this study. The six poetics revealed unique journeys of each student\u27s exploration of self. A narrative analysis of the poetics revealed that the challenges to and conditions for the exploration of self blended to create and sustain imaginary spaces within which students could explore the fluidity of self-definition/ redefinition

GSA’s Commercial Marketplaces Initiative: Opening Amazon and Other Private Marketplaces To Direct Purchases By Government Users

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) opened a new chapter in public procurement by awarding three contracts—to Amazon Business, Overstock.com, and Fisher Scientific—that will allow federal users to buy directly from online electronic marketplaces, with sales anticipated to total $6 billion annually. This proof-of-concept effort, dubbed the “commercial platforms” initiative by GSA, marks a radical departure from traditional procurement practices because it will allow individual Government users (not necessarily procurement officials) to make “micro-purchases” (generally up to$10,000) using Government purchase cards. By removing the federal procurement system as an intermediary in the purchasing process, and in essence outsourcing the selection of available sources to private providers of electronic platforms, GSA’s initiative has both reshaped procurement and potentially redrawn a marketplace. This paper reviews the purpose and history of GSA’s commercial platforms initiative, which began with a mandate from Congress to explore electronic commerce options and evolved through long exchanges with industry, users, and other stakeholders. In assessing the reasons for the initiative, the paper notes a longstanding concern (framed by principles of agency theory) that users’ needs were not being met by the traditional procurement system. The paper discusses GSA’s decision to steer the initiative to existing commercial platforms and reviews key elements of the solicitation used to frame the “no-cost” contracts with the online marketplaces. Because Amazon Business was by far the most prominent of the awardees—indeed, Amazon had played an ongoing role in pressing for the procurement—and vendors may want to sell through the commercial platforms to reach federal customers, this paper focuses on Amazon Business’ procedures in discussing how vendors might join the commercial platforms. The paper concludes with a series of Guidelines that vendors and other market participants might use, as they enter this new corner of the federal marketplace