Docketology, District Courts, and Doctrine

Empirical legal scholars have traditionally modeled trial court judicial opinion writing by assuming that judges act rationally, seeking to maximize their influence by writing opinions in politically important cases. To test such views, we collected data from a thousand cases in four different jurisdictions. We recorded information about every judicial action over each case’s life, ranging from the demographic characteristics, workload, and experience of the writing judge; to information about the case, including its jurisdictional basis, complexity, attorney characteristics, and motivating legal theory; to information about the individual orders themselves, including the relevant procedural posture and the winning party. Our data reveal opinions to be rare events in the litigation process: only 3% of all orders, and only 17% of orders applying facts to law, are fully reasoned. Using a hierarchical linear model, we conclude that judges do not write opinions to curry favor with the public or with powerful audiences, nor do they write more when they are less experienced, seeking to advance their careers, or in more interesting case types. Instead, opinion writing is significantly affected by procedure: we predict that judges are three times more likely to write an opinion on a summary judgment motion than a discovery motion, all else held equal. Judges similarly write more in cases that are later appealed, and in commercial cases, while writing less in tort and prisoner cases. Finally, jurisdictional culture is very important. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom and suggest the need for further research on the behavioral aspects of opinion writing

Transit Fleet Electrification Barriers, Resolutions and Costs

This paper synthesizes insights from a workshop on fleet electrification at the 2023 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, which included participants from transit agencies, national labs, industry, government and academia. Participants identified barriers to fleet electrification including lack of knowledge on fleet electrification, high utility demand charges, lack of charging infrastructure, delays in grid infrastructure upgrades and high up-front costs. To overcome these challenges, panelists emphasized partnering with OEMs and utilities, and having flexible charging infrastructure with software support tools. Finally, participants identified opportunities for integrating with electricity markets on peak demand management, time-of-use charging, participation in wholesale markets, and various vehicle-to-grid solutions. Based on these findings, we propose specific steps that various stakeholders like fleet operators, utilities and regulatory authorities could take

Access Impediments to Health Care and Social Services Between Anglophone and Francophone African Immigrants Living in Philadelphia with Respect to HIV/AIDS

Objectives To describe the social and cultural differences between Anglophone and Francophone African immigrants which define the impediments that Francophone African immigrants face trying to access health and human services in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Methods Surveys and personal interviews were administered to participants in social events, community meetings, and health centers. A Chi-squared analysis was used to contrast the communities. Results Francophone Africans demonstrated less acculturation, education, English fluency, and more legal documentation problems, and thus face greater challenges accessing health care. Anglophone Africans had a higher level of acculturation, fewer language problems, and perceived fewer barriers in accessing health care than Francophone Africans. Conclusions Educating new immigrants, through a more culturally sensitive infectious disease treatment and prevention program, is integral to achieving a higher access and utilization rates of available services; especially in recent Francophone immigrants. A larger study is needed to extend the findings to other cities where immigrants with similar backgrounds or acculturation issues reside

Skin-impedance in Fabry Disease: A prospective, controlled, non-randomized clinical study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We previously demonstrated improved sweating after enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) in Fabry disease using the thermo-regularity sweat and quantitative sudomotor axon reflex tests. Skin-impedance, a measure skin-moisture (sweating), has been used in the clinical evaluation of burns and pressure ulcers using the portable dynamic dermal impedance monitor (DDIM) system.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We compared skin impedance measurements in hemizygous patients with Fabry disease (22 post 3-years of bi-weekly ERT and 5 ERT naive) and 22 healthy controls. Force compensated skin-moisture values were used for statistical analysis. Outcome measures included 1) moisture reading of the 100^threpetitive reading, 2) rate of change, 3) average of 60–110^threading and 4) overall average of all readings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All outcome measures showed a significant difference in skin-moisture between Fabry patients and control subjects (p < 0.0001). There was no difference between Fabry patients on ERT and patients naïve to ERT. Increased skin-impedance values for the four skin-impedance outcome measures were found in a small number of dermatome test-sites two days post-enzyme infusions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The instrument portability, ease of its use, a relatively short time required for the assessment, and the fact that DDIM system was able to detect the difference in skin-moisture renders the instrument a useful clinical tool.</p

A Methodology for a Pavement Resurfacing Strategy to Minimize Life-cycle Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In recent decades pavement management optimization has been designed with the objective of minimizing user and agency life-cycle costs. However, pavement management decisions also have significant impacts on life-cycle energy use and environmental emissions from pavement management activity and user vehicles. This study expands beyond optimizing pavement rehabilitation strategy for minimization of life-cycle costs to also include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We extend previous work on the single-facility, continuous-state, continuous-time optimal pavement resurfacing problem to solve the multi-criteria optimization problem with the two objectives of minimizing costs and GHG emissions. The balance between the potentially two different optimal rehabilitation policies is found through the use of a Pareto frontier, which exists in the span between the cost- and emission- optimal strategies. The Pareto frontier provides decision makers with the dollars per tonne of GHG emissions saved due to a change in rehabilitation strategy. Results using California data indicate that there is a tradeoff between costs and emissions when developing a pavement resurfacing strategy, providing a range of GHG emissions reduction cost-effectiveness options. Case studies for a two-lane arterial and a ten-lane major highway in California are presented, where traditional hot-mix asphalt overlays are applied. The 2011 case studies are particular to California by traffic loadings and pavement durability. However, the user and agency emission and cost estimations are based on national data. Thus, generalizing the case study results should be subject to these caveats. An ordinary medium-volume metropolitan state-designed road and an extremely heavily traveled highway bearing commuters into and from San Francisco are optimized as representative situations. Results for a one-kilometer segment of Interstate 80, in Berkeley California, with ten lanes and 273,000 light-duty vehicles and 13,100 heavy-duty vehicles per day, indicate that the life-cycle cost minimum occurs when asphalt overlays are applied every 15 years or equivalently when the pavement roughness reaches an international roughness index (IRI) of 2.7 m/km. Coincidentally, this is the same roughness Caltrans uses to decide when to apply an overlay for the state's roads. However, where any of the conditions or characteristics for any pavement segments are different, the coincidence may cease to exist. The minimum life-cycle cost at this optimal pavement rehabilitation strategy is approximately $490,000 per kilometer per year, at which point resurfacing activity and user vehicles would emit approximately 220 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year. The GHG emissions minimum corresponds to an overlay interval of 22 years or the equivalent threshold roughness IRI of 3.4 m/km. The minimum GHG emissions (user emissions plus agency emissions) are approximately 200 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year, with life-cycle costs (user costs plus agency costs) at approximately$520,000 per kilometer per year. Agency and user emission (and cost) estimates each change in opposing directions when overlay intervals change. Thus, when each of the like agency and user attributes are added together, a minimum is guaranteed to exist. Any pavement rehabilitation strategy that makes use of overlay intervals outside of this sub-interval defined by the life-cycle cost and GHG emissions optima are trivial in that any strategy change designed to reduce costs also reduces emissions. However, inside this special sub-interval, any change in strategy that reduces costs will increase emissions and vice versa. Thus, this special sub-interval constitutes a Pareto frontier of optimal solutions where tradeoffs are associated with each change. For example, if Caltrans is currently operating at the life-cycle cost minimum by applying an overlay interval every 15 years but decides to reduce emissions by changing the interval to every 18 years, there will be a reduction in emissions. However, it will come at a total life-cycle cost of approximately $500 per tonne of CO2 equivalents. Of course different pavement rehabilitation strategy changes will present different cost-effectiveness ratios. If the change spans points outside the Pareto frontier, the costs may be minimal or even negative. However, within the Pareto frontier, attempts to save even more emissions will increase costs per unit of CO2 equivalents saved.If a market value for CO2 exists, then a unique optimal pavement rehabilitation strategy is defined. On the Pareto frontier is every possible market value as the negative of the slope of the tangent line to each point on the curve represents a market value starting with zero dollars per tonne of emissions (cost minimum) to infinite dollars per tonne of emissions (emissions minimum).Results for a two-lane arterial road segment, also in Berkeley, which has only 25,000 light-duty vehicles and 480 heavy-duty vehicles per day, indicate that similar pavement rehabilitation strategy overlay intervals are optimal. For the life-cycle cost minimum, a 16-year overlay interval is optimal, which corresponds to a threshold roughness IRI of 2.1 m/km. For the GHG emissions minimum, an overlay interval of 25 years and its associated threshold roughness IRI of 2.5 m/km are optimal. Although the overlay intervals are not that different from the larger ten-lane interstate highway case, the threshold roughness values are more favorable in the two-lane case. The life-cycle cost minimum occurs at approximately$80,000 per kilometer per year and is associated with approximately 51 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year. The GHG emissions minimum occurs at approximately 47 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year and is associated with approximately $86,000 per kilometer per year. A sensitivity analysis on model input parameters revealed which parameters required the best accuracy and shed light on policy decisions. Pavement deterioration rate, within a 20% variation, had a relatively little effect on outcomes. This indicates that uncertainty around the pavement deterioration rate is not very important. However, a small change in vehicle miles traveled had a large effect on outcomes. Other results highlighted the contrast between strategy decisions for various pavement and vehicle technologies. For example, it is found that, in both case studies, improving vehicle fleet fuel economy will save total (tailpipe plus pavement) emissions. The two-lane case showed a larger percentage of relative reduction in emissions but the ten-lane case was found to have a larger total reduction in emissions. However, an improved fuel economy for the vehicle fleets means that the effect of roughness on fuel consumption is less. Thus, the GHG emissions associated with pavement management become a larger share of the total emissions. This means that at the emissions optimal, the pavements are allowed to become rougher before being rehabilitated again. Thus, to counteract the expected fuel economy improvements of the future, the use of new technologies that reduce emissions associated with pavement overlay activity, but also reduce roughness at optimality, is paramount. For the same reason, technologies that provide more durable pavements are also encouraged

CARSHARING’S IMPACT ON HOUSEHOLD VEHICLE HOLDINGS: RESULTS FROM A NORTH AMERICAN SHARED-USE VEHICLE SURVEY

Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished within metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The result has been a new transportation landscape, which offers urban residents an alternative to automobility without car ownership. As carsharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental impacts. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). The authors establish a “before-and-after” analytical design with a focus on carsharing’s impacts on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most of this shift constitutes one-car households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 miles per gallon (mpg) more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharing households is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysis suggests that carsharing has taken between 90,000 to 130,000 vehicles off the road. This equates to 9 to 13 vehicles (including shed and postponed auto purchases) for each carsharing vehicle

Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Holdings

Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished in metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The new transportation landscape offers urban residents an alternative to automobility, one without car ownership. As carsharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental effects. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). A before-and-after analytical design is established with a focus on carsharing\u27s effects on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average number of vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most of this shift constitutes onecar households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 mi/gal more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharing households is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysis suggests that carsharing has taken between 90,000 and 130,000 vehicles off the road. This equates to 9 to 13 vehicles (including shed autos and postponed auto purchases) taken off the road for each carsharing vehicle

Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Holdings: Resultsvfrom a North American Shared-Use Vehicle Survey

Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished within metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The result has been a new transportation landscape, which offers urban residents an alternative to automobility without carownership. As carsharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental impacts. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). The authors establish a “before-and-after” analytical design with a focus oncarsharing’s impacts on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most ofthis shift constitutes one-car households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 miles per gallon (mpg) more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharinghouseholds is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysis suggests that carsharing has taken between 90,000 to 130,000 vehicles off the road. This equates to 9 to 13 vehicles (including shed and postponed auto purchases) for each carsharing vehicle

CARSHARING’S IMPACT ON HOUSEHOLD VEHICLE HOLDINGS: RESULTS FROM A NORTH AMERICAN SHARED-USE VEHICLE SURVEY

Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished within metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The result has been a new transportation landscape, which offers urban residents an alternative to automobility without car ownership. As carsharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental impacts. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). The authors establish a “before-and-after ” analytical design with a focus on carsharing’s impacts on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most of this shift constitutes one-car households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 miles per gallon (mpg) more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharing households is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysi