Unusual Punishment: The Federal Death Penalty in the United States

This material has been presented at Southern Cross University, the Law and Society meetings in Budapest, the University of Georgia, Victoria University, Melbourne University, and LaTrobe University in Australia. The Essay examines the way state and federal legal authority is constituted in the United States by focusing on local jurisdictions that do not have capital punishment as they respond to the federal death penalty. Particular attention is given to both the prosecution of Kristen Gilbert, a nurse who was tried for capital murder in Massachusetts, and research on the federal courts in Puerto Rico

Predicting Responses to Mechanical Ventilation for Preterm Infants with Acute Respiratory Illness using Artificial Neural Networks

Infants born prematurely are particularly susceptible to respiratory illness due to underdeveloped lungs, which can often result in fatality. Preterm infants in acute stages of respiratory illness typically require mechanical ventilation assistance, and the efficacy of the type of mechanical ventilation and its delivery has been the subject of a number clinical studies. With recent advances in machine learning approaches, particularly deep learning, it may be possible to estimate future responses to mechanical ventilation in real‐time, based on ventilation monitoring up to the point of analysis. In this work, recurrent neural networks are proposed for predicting future ventilation parameters due to the highly nonlinear behavior of the ventilation measures of interest and the ability of recurrent neural networks to model complex nonlinear functions. The resulting application of this particular class of neural networks shows promise in its ability to predict future responses for different ventilation modes. Towards improving care and treatment of preterm newborns, further development of this prediction process for ventilation could potentially aid in important clinical decisions or studies to improve preterm infant health

MINERAL PARAGENESIS OF A PARTIALLY SERPENTINIZED DUNITE IN EAST DOVER, VERMONT

Ultramafic rocks exposed on the Earth’s surface offer a rare opportunity to directly study the petrology of the upper mantle. The Appalachian Mountains of Vermont contain variably serpentinized ultramafic rocks that mark the suture zone for the Ordovician Taconic Orogeny. In southern Vermont, the serpentinized ultramafic rocks were subsequently metamorphosed to amphibolite facies during the Devonian Acadian Orogeny. Key localities of partially serpentinized ultramafic rocks and their surrounding lithologies in East Dover, Vermont were sampled to better understand the mineral petrogenesis and metamorphic history of the East Dover meta-dunite. This thesis documents the first occurrence of podiform chromitite, platinum group minerals, arsenic minerals, and metamorphic olivine in ultramafic rocks from the Vermont Appalachian Mountains. Rare chromitite occurs as pods within the dunite and is highly brecciated. Cr# (Cr/Cr+Al) is extremely high in podiform chromitite (0.7 - 0.9) suggesting that it formed via fluid/melt-rock interaction during partial melting of upper mantle peridotite in a supra-subduction zone setting. Rare inclusions of platinum group mineral alloys were found as inclusions in podiform chromitite. Many of these platinum group minerals contained arsenic. Small nickel arsenide minerals are common in serpentinized ultramafic rocks. Whole rock geochemical analyses (XRF) indicate much higher concentrations of arsenic in the more serpentinized samples, suggesting that arsenic was introduced into the ultramafic rocks during serpentinization. In the meta-dunite, the composition of olivine ranges from Fo92 in spinel inclusions to Fo96 in neoblastic olivine. Olivine neoblasts likely formed from serpentine dehydration during peak metamorphic temperatures associated with regional metamorphism during the Devonian Acadian Orogeny. Decussate amphibolite and late stage coarse acicular serpentine likely formed as the region slowly cooled following Devonian orogenesis. Recent near-surface lateritic weathering produced local areas of nickel mineralization. Chromite, platinum group minerals, and nickel minerals do not appear to occur in quantities sufficient for exploitation from the East Dover area. Our findings illustrate the need for an investigation into the mineralogy of other ultramafic bodies in Vermont to better understand the relative timing of mineral petrogenesis and the societal implications of the presence of arsenic bearing minerals in ultramafic rocks

The Responsible Inclusion of Students Receiving Special Education Services for Emotional Disturbance: Unraveling the Practice to Research Gap.

The majority of students receiving special education services for emotional disturbance (ED) receive a significant amount of instruction in general education classrooms, which emphasizes curriculums based on college and career readiness standards. In turn, those teachers who provide instruction to students with ED in inclusive settings are responsible for using evidence-based practices (EBPs) for those teaching situations in which they exist to meet free appropriate public education (FAPE) mandates. However, the identification of EBPs is a necessary pre-condition to eventual school adoption and teacher use of such practices. In this investigation, we completed a synthesis of syntheses to (a) determine the degree to which academic intervention research has focused on students with ED in general education classrooms and (b) identify practices that are effective at improving the academic performance of students with ED in these settings. Overall, few studies were identified. Of those studies identified, half did not disaggregate outcomes for students with ED. A quality indicator coding based on the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) design standards revealed that no studies with disaggregated outcomes permitted causal inferences. Implications for school practice and areas for future research are discussed

Transferring and Constructing Knowledge: Designing an STC

This article describes the design and benefits of a Science and Technology Center (STC)- based workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The topic in this case was hydrologic literacy in teaching issues and concepts concerning semi-arid hydrology in the Southwest, as defined by educators and scientists associated with Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHRA). Participants concluded that a science workshop designed to explicitly combine science content and inquiry-based pedagogy is beneficial, but learning new content is not a guarantee that it will be used in the participants' science curricula. To increase chances for teachers to alter practice, workshops must model new pedagogy while teaching new content, and instructors must be very explicit about how new teaching techniques were used to teach new content. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Chapter 9: Aquatic Macroinvertebrates, Section A: Aquatic Macroinvertebrates (Exclusive of Mosquitoes)

Final Report. Excerpt (Chapter 9, Section A) from The Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstration Project, Volume II, Baseline Survey, edited by Donald L. Hey and Nancy S. PhilippiReport issued on: October 1985INHS Technical Report prepared for Wetlands Research, Inc

A generalized computationally efficient inverse characterization approach combining direct inversion solution initialization with gradient-based optimization

A computationally efficient gradient-based optimization approach for inverse material characterization from incomplete system response measurements that can utilize a generally applicable parameterization (e.g., finite element-type parameterization) is presented and evaluated. The key to this inverse characterization algorithm is the use of a direct inversion strategy with Gappy proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) response field estimation to initialize the inverse solution estimate prior to gradient-based optimization. Gappy POD is used to estimate the complete (i.e., all components over the entire spatial domain) system response field from incomplete (e.g., partial spatial distribution) measurements obtained from some type of system testing along with some amount of a priori information regarding the potential distribution of the unknown material property. The estimated complete system response is used within a physics-based direct inversion procedure with a finite element-type parameterization to estimate the spatial distribution of the desired unknown material property with minimal computational expense. Then, this estimated spatial distribution of the unknown material property is used to initialize a gradient-based optimization approach, which uses the adjoint method for computationally efficient gradient calculations, to produce the final estimate of the material property distribution. The three-step [(1) Gappy POD, (2) direct inversion, and (3) gradient-based optimization] inverse characterization approach is evaluated through simulated test problems based on the characterization of elastic modulus distributions with localized variations (e.g., inclusions) within simple structures. Overall, this inverse characterization approach is shown to efficiently and consistently provide accurate inverse characterization estimates for material property distributions from incomplete response field measurements. Moreover, the solution procedure is shown to be capable of extrapolating significantly beyond the initial assumptions regarding the potential nature of the unknown material property distribution

Applications of Polyhydroxyalkanoates in the Medical Industry

The bio-based, biodegradable family of polymers, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), is an attractive candidate for an environmentally friendly replacement of petroleum-based plastics in many applications. In the past decade, many groups have examined the biodegradability and biocompatibility of PHA in cell culture systems or in an animal host. Findings suggest that PHA is a suitable material for fabrication of resorbable medical devices, such as sutures, meshes, implants, and tissue engineering scaffolds. The degradation kinetics of some PHA polymers is also suggestive of drug release applications. In this review, we examine the progress, potential applications, challenges and outlook in the medical polyhydroxyalkanoate field