Two rival versions of historical inquiry and their application to the study of the Sixteenth Amendment

In this dissertation I identify the philosophy of Giambattista Vico and Karl Marx as representing, broadly, two rival versions of historical inquiry. Put simply, these rival versions endorse either reasons or causes, respectively, as the proper objects of study for historians. After introducing the study of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as an example of the type of historical event towards which these versions of inquiry might by directed, I then outline the arguments Vico and Marx give for these rival versions. Paying special attention to the assumptions about human nature, reason, and freedom at work in these arguments, I propose that comparing the plausibility and feasibility of these assumptions might allow a means of adjudicating between these comprehensive and mutually incompatible methods of historical study. I proceed to draw on the work of John Rawls and Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, to show that MarxÂs conceptions of human nature, reason, and freedom are ultimately flawed and therefore untenable. I conclude by arguing that VicoÂs version of historical inquiry relies on an understanding of these concepts that is more plausible than MarxÂs and withstands the objections to which MarxÂs understanding succumbs. Finally, I return my focus to the study of the Sixteenth Amendment and consider how VicoÂs version of historical inquiry might inform this project

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation Law

This year witnessed the advance of a wide variety of antitrust and trade regulation theories, most of which met with little success. Of the antitrust cases, Continental Airlines waged a successful battle to eliminate carry-on baggage restrictions at Dulles Airport. Additionally, Maryland\u27s price-setting scheme for liquor was not accorded state action immunity. On the other side of the ledger, another antitrust litigant failed to overcome the requirement that efforts to petition the government must be objectively baseless in order to meet the sham exception to the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. Difficulties in proving an antitrust injury and the intent element of a section conspiracy to monopolize claim ended another long-pitched battle over limited vermiculite resources. The Fourth Circuit treated an exclusive supply case with the same sort of back-of-the-hand treatment accorded most vertical restraint cases over the past ten years. Likewise, regardless of the statutory or regulatory scheme, dealership and franchise termination cases met with little success. Finally, while the malice requirement in the Virginia Business Conspiracy Act (the Act ) has become ingrained in Virginia jurisprudence as the legal malice standard, courts are finding other ways to dispose of these claims. In doing so, courts have enunciated a clear and convincing evidence standard for cases under the Act

Working from Home and Walking during and after COVID

We investigate the relationship between people who worked from home during the pandemic and how often they walked before, during, and after COVID. We find that people who worked from home during the pandemic had the largest increases in walking frequency compared to people who did not work from home and people who were unemployed. Similarly, people who work from home also expect to walk more after the pandemic subsides compared to others. After controlling for socio-economic, demographic, and transportation factors, we found that working from home and having a high income are associated with a higher propensity of walking during and after the pandemic

Recovery Act - Demonstration of Sodium Ion Battery for Grid Level Applications

Aquion Energy received a $5.179 million cooperative research agreement under the Department of Energyâs Smart Grid Demonstration Program â Demonstration of Promising Energy Storage Technologies (Program Area 2.5) of FOA DE-FOE-0000036. The main objective of this project was to demonstrate Aquionâs low cost, grid-scale, ambient temperature sodium ion energy storage device. The centerpiece of the technology is a novel hybrid energy storage chemistry that has been proven in a laboratory environment. The objective was to translate these groundbreaking results from the small-batch, small-cell test environment to the pilot scale to enable significant numbers of multiple ampere-hour cells to be manufactured and assembled into test batteries. Aquion developed a proof of concept demonstration unit that showed similar performance and major cost improvement over existing technologies. Beyond minimizing cell and system cost, Aquion built a technology that is safe, environmentally benign and durable over many thousands of cycles as used in a variety of grid support roles. As outlined in the Program documents, the original goals of the project were to demonstrate a unit that: 1. Has a projected capital cost of less than$250/kWh at the pack level 2. A deep discharge cycle life of > 10,000 cycles 3. A volumetric energy density of >20 kWh/m3 4. Projected calendar life of over 10 years 5. A device that contains no hazardous materials and retains best in class safety characteristics. Through the course of this project Aquion developed its aqueous electrolyte electrochemical energy storage device to the point where large demonstration units (> 10 kWh) were able to function in grid-supporting functions detailed by their collaborators. Aquionâs final deliverable was an ~15 kWh system that has the ability to perform medium to long duration (> 2 hours) charge and discharge functions approaching 95% DC-DC efficiency. The system has functioned, and continues to function as predicted with no indication that it will not tolerate well beyond 10 calendar years and 10,000 cycles. It has been in continuous operation for more than 1 year with 1,000 cycles (of varying depth of discharge, including 100% depth of discharge) and no identifiable degradation to the system. The final thick electrode cell structure has shown an energy density of 25 kWh/m3 at a five hour (or greater) discharge time. The primary chemistry has remained non-toxic, containing no acids or other corrosive chemicals, and the battery units have passed numerous safety tests, including flame resistance testing. These tests have verified the claim that the device is safe to use and contains no hazardous materials. Current projections show costs at the pack level to offer best in class value and are competitive with lead-acid batteries, factoring in LCOE

A perceptual model of motion quality for rendering with adaptive refresh-rate and resolution

Limited GPU performance budgets and transmission bandwidths mean that real-time rendering often has to compromise on the spatial resolution or temporal resolution (refresh rate). A common practice is to keep either the resolution or the refresh rate constant and dynamically control the other variable. But this strategy is non-optimal when the velocity of displayed content varies. To find the best trade-off between the spatial resolution and refresh rate, we propose a perceptual visual model that predicts the quality of motion given an object velocity and predictability of motion. The model considers two motion artifacts to establish an overall quality score: non-smooth (juddery) motion, and blur. Blur is modeled as a combined effect of eye motion, finite refresh rate and display resolution. To fit the free parameters of the proposed visual model, we measured eye movement for predictable and unpredictable motion, and conducted psychophysical experiments to measure the quality of motion from 50 Hz to 165 Hz. We demonstrate the utility of the model with our on-the-fly motion-adaptive rendering algorithm that adjusts the refresh rate of a G-Sync-capable monitor based on a given rendering budget and observed object motion. Our psychophysical validation experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than constant-refresh-rate solutions, showing that motion-adaptive rendering is an attractive technique for driving variable-refresh-rate displays.</jats:p

Mitochondrial Overload and Incomplete Fatty Acid Oxidation Contribute to Skeletal Muscle Insulin Resistance

SummaryPrevious studies have suggested that insulin resistance develops secondary to diminished fat oxidation and resultant accumulation of cytosolic lipid molecules that impair insulin signaling. Contrary to this model, the present study used targeted metabolomics to find that obesity-related insulin resistance in skeletal muscle is characterized by excessive β-oxidation, impaired switching to carbohydrate substrate during the fasted-to-fed transition, and coincident depletion of organic acid intermediates of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. In cultured myotubes, lipid-induced insulin resistance was prevented by manipulations that restrict fatty acid uptake into mitochondria. These results were recapitulated in mice lacking malonyl-CoA decarboxylase (MCD), an enzyme that promotes mitochondrial β-oxidation by relieving malonyl-CoA-mediated inhibition of carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1. Thus, mcd−/− mice exhibit reduced rates of fat catabolism and resist diet-induced glucose intolerance despite high intramuscular levels of long-chain acyl-CoAs. These findings reveal a strong connection between skeletal muscle insulin resistance and lipid-induced mitochondrial stress

3D Medical Collaboration Technology to Enhance Emergency Healthcare

Two-dimensional (2D) videoconferencing has been explored widely in the past 15–20 years to support collaboration in healthcare. Two issues that arise in most evaluations of 2D videoconferencing in telemedicine are the difficulty obtaining optimal camera views and poor depth perception. To address these problems, we are exploring the use of a small array of cameras to reconstruct dynamic three-dimensional (3D) views of a remote environment and of events taking place within. The 3D views could be sent across wired or wireless networks to remote healthcare professionals equipped with fixed displays or with mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs). The remote professionals’ viewpoints could be specified manually or automatically (continuously) via user head or PDA tracking, giving the remote viewers head-slaved or hand-slaved virtual cameras for monoscopic or stereoscopic viewing of the dynamic reconstructions. We call this idea remote 3D medical collaboration. In this article we motivate and explain the vision for 3D medical collaboration technology; we describe the relevant computer vision, computer graphics, display, and networking research; we present a proof-of-concept prototype system; and we present evaluation results supporting the general hypothesis that 3D remote medical collaboration technology could offer benefits over conventional 2D videoconferencing in emergency healthcare

Precision exercise medicine: understanding exercise response variability

There is evidence from human twin and family studies as well as mouse and rat selection experiments that there are considerable interindividual differences in the response of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and other cardiometabolic traits to a given exercise programme dose. We developed this consensus statement on exercise response variability following a symposium dedicated to this topic. There is strong evidence from both animal and human studies that exercise training doses lead to variable responses. A genetic component contributes to exercise training response variability. In this consensus statement, we (1) briefly review the literature on exercise response variability and the various sources of variations in CRF response to an exercise programme, (2) introduce the key research designs and corresponding statistical models with an emphasis on randomised controlled designs with or without multiple pretests and post-tests, crossover designs and repeated measures designs, (3) discuss advantages and disadvantages of multiple methods of categorising exercise response levels-a topic that is of particular interest for personalised exercise medicine and (4) outline approaches that may identify determinants and modifiers of CRF exercise response. We also summarise gaps in knowledge and recommend future research to better understand exercise response variability531811411153The consensus meeting that led to the writing of this manuscript was held with the financial support of the Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center Division of Education, the LSU Boyd Professorship and the John W. Barton, Sr. Chair in Genetics and Nutrition. No funding and/or honorarium was provided to any member of the writing group for the production of this manuscrip

Transcription and Expression of Plasmodium falciparum Histidine-Rich Proteins in Different Stages and Strains: Implications for Rapid Diagnostic Tests

Background: Although rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for Plasmodium falciparum infection that target histidine rich protein 2 (PfHRP2) are generally sensitive, their performance has been reported to be variable. One possible explanation for variable test performance is differences in expression level of PfHRP in different parasite isolates. Methods: Total RNA and protein were extracted from synchronised cultures of 7 P. falciparum lines over 5 time points of the life cycle, and from synchronised ring stages of 10 falciparum lines. Using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, Western blot analysis and ELISA we investigated variations in the transcription and protein levels of pfhrp2, pfhrp3 and PfHRP respectively in the different parasite lines, over the parasite intraerythrocytic life cycle. Results: Transcription of pfhrp2 and pfhrp3 in different parasite lines over the parasite life cycle was observed to vary relative to the control parasite K1. In some parasite lines very low transcription of these genes was observed. The peak transcription was observed in ring-stage parasites. Pfhrp2 transcription was observed to be consistently higher than pfhrp3 transcription within parasite lines. The intraerythrocytic lifecycle stage at which the peak level of protein was present varied across strains. Total protein levels were more constant relative to total mRNA transcription, however a maximum 24 fold difference in expression at ring-stage parasites relative to the K1 strain was observed. Conclusions: The levels of transcription of pfhrp2 and pfhrp3, and protein expression of PfHRP varied between different P. falciparum strains. This variation may impact on the detection sensitivity of PfHRP2-detecting RDTs