Paving the Way for Recognizing Postpenetration Rape Through the Mistake of Fact Defense

On February 13, 2019, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Sherman introduced a communication element in rape cases involving withdrawn consent. The prosecutor must prove that the victim communicated the revocation of consent such that a reasonable defendant would understand its withdrawal. In doing so, the court invoked a mistake of fact defense with regard to consent, which Massachusetts historically did not apply in its rape jurisprudence. This Comment notes that Massachusetts is unique in recognizing postpenetration rape as a legal possibility. This Comment compares Sherman to the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in 2008 in Commonwealth v. Blache. In Blache, the court made the mistake of fact defense available to the defendant when the victim was incapacitated and thus could not consent. By comparing Sherman to Blache, this Comment further argues that the mistake of fact defense in cases of postpenetration rape does not expand Massachusetts’ principle that the mistake of fact defense should not apply in most rape cases

\u3cem\u3eMarchand v. Barnhill\u3c/em\u3e\u27s Impact on the Duty of Oversight: New Factors to Assess Directors\u27 Liability for Breaching the Duty of Oversight

In 2019, in Marchand v. Barnhill, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of a complaint alleging that the defendants, Blue Bell directors, breached their duty of oversight. In doing so, the court invoked two new factors—whether the corporation is monoline and whether it is heavily regulated—to consider when evaluating claims against directors for an oversight failure. These factors inform whether a court can identify an essential compliance concern, such that a court can infer the directors violated their obligation to act in good faith by consciously disregarding a known duty. This inference allows a court to find that a plaintiff alleged sufficient facts to state a claim for a breach of the duty of oversight. This Note examines the upper and lower boundaries of the monoline as well as heavily regulated factors established in Marchand via a derivative complaint against The Boeing Company’s directors. Ultimately, this Note isolates factors most important for a plaintiff to consider when evaluating the strength of their breach of the duty of oversight claim, including (1) whether the company makes only one product or has one product that is particularly significant to the company’s success and (2) whether one, primary, external regulator governs the company’s business

Impacts of experimental flooding on microbial communities and methane fluxes in an urban meadow, baton rouge, louisiana

© 2019 King and Henry. The impacts of extended flooding on microbial communities and their activities in natural and agricultural wetlands have been well-documented, but there is little basis for predicting the responses of urban soil microbial communities to infrequent, short-term flooding. To assess these responses, surface soil samples (0–1 cm) and intact soil cores (10 cm depth) were collected from an urban meadow in Baton Rouge, LA subsequent to an unprecedented flood during August 2016. During the flood, a topographically low region of the meadow (LM) was inundated for at least several days, while an elevated area (upper meadow or UM) was not flooded. Microbial community composition and diversity at each site were assessed for soils collected from cores at various depths over the upper 10 cm before and after 3 days of experimental flooding ex situ. Cores from LM and UM were also used to assess methane fluxes before and after the experimental flooding. The results indicated that methane fluxes differed between LM and UM sites, and that they were affected by flooding. LM cores emitted methane prior to flooding, and rates increased substantially post-flooding; UM cores consumed methane to levels below ambient atmospheric concentrations prior to flooding, but emitted methane post-flooding. In contrast both LM and UM microbial communities were resistant to short-term flooding, with no significant changes observed at either site, or at any depth interval from the surface to 10 cm. However, LM and UM soil communities differed significantly, with distinct distributions of Acidobacteria, Nitrospirae, and Thaumarchaeota among others. Based on responses of soil cores to experimental flooding, the differences between sites in microbial communities did not appear to be residual effects of the August, 2016 flood, but rather appeared to arise from physical, chemical, and biological variables that change along a 4-m elevation gradient. Collectively, the results suggest that the composition and diversity for some urban soils might be insensitive to short-term flooding, but that important biogeochemical processes, e.g., methane fluxes, might respond rapidly

Collaborating on Machine Reading: Training Algorithms to Read Complex Collections

Interdisciplinary collaboration between two faculty members in the humanities and computer science, a research librarian, and an undergraduate student has led to remarkable results in an ongoing international DH research project that has at its core 18th century manuscripts. The corpus stems from a vast collection of archival materials held by the Moravian Church in the UK, Germany, and the US. The number of pages to be transcribed, differences in handwriting styles, paper quality, and original language pose enormous problems for the feasibility of human transcription. This presentation will review the hypothesis, process, and findings of a summer research project that builds upon the Transkribus (Transkribus.eu) platform and seeks to refine the process for creating handwriting training recognition (HTR) models to further improve accuracy. An undergraduate student working with a faculty member in computer science developed a deep learning model to help overcome challenges of accuracy in computer transcription

Revealing the queer-spectrum in STEM: undergraduate student responses to diverse gender identity and sexual orientation demographics questions

includes bibliographical references.includes bibliographical references.Poster was to be presented at the NARST 2020 conference in Portland, Oregon, from March 15-18th, which was canceled.Queer individuals face notable heterosexist and gender-normative expectations in STEM, leading to lower persistence. However, research on the experiences of queer-spectrum individuals is limited by current demographic practices. We developed queer-inclusive demographics questions and administrated them as part of a larger study in undergraduate engineering and computer science classes. We ask: how do responses compare to nation-wide queer demographics, 3-7% for both sexual orientation and gender, and how common are heterosexist or binary-enforcing responses? In a data subset (n=314), 14% of students reported a queer sexual orientation and 1.3% of students reported a queer gender. Few students used the open-response box for gender binary-enforcing (1.3%) or heterosexist (0.3%) commentary (e.g. only two genders exist). Our high rate of queer sexual orientation responses may be explained by our broad definition of queer or differing population demographics for young adults. The low rate of queer gender identity may be due to under-representation, lack of self-reporting, or survey structure. These data will inform analysis of student experiences in our larger study. Additional work developing a research-based queered demographics instrument is needed for larger-scale changes in demographics practices, which will help others identify and address barriers that queer individuals face in STEM fields.Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant nos. 1726268, 1725880 and 1726088, as well as funding from Colorado State University's Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering

Persistence and generalization of adaptive changes in auditory localization behavior following unilateral conductive hearing loss

Introduction: Sound localization relies on the neural processing of binaural and monaural spatial cues generated by the physical properties of the head and body. Hearing loss in one ear compromises binaural computations, impairing the ability to localize sounds in the horizontal plane. With appropriate training, adult individuals can adapt to this binaural imbalance and largely recover their localization accuracy. However, it remains unclear how long this learning is retained or whether it generalizes to other stimuli. Methods: We trained ferrets to localize broadband noise bursts in quiet conditions and measured their initial head orienting responses and approach-to-target behavior. To evaluate the persistence of auditory spatial learning, we tested the sound localization performance of the animals over repeated periods of monaural earplugging that were interleaved with short or long periods of normal binaural hearing. To explore learning generalization to other stimulus types, we measured the localization accuracy before and after adaptation using different bandwidth stimuli presented against constant or amplitude-modulated background noise. Results: Retention of learning resulted in a smaller initial deficit when the same ear was occluded on subsequent occasions. Each time, the animals’ performance recovered with training to near pre-plug levels of localization accuracy. By contrast, switching the earplug to the contralateral ear resulted in less adaptation, indicating that the capacity to learn a new strategy for localizing sound is more limited if the animals have previously adapted to conductive hearing loss in the opposite ear. Moreover, the degree of adaptation to the training stimulus for individual animals was significantly correlated with the extent to which learning extended to untrained octave band target sounds presented in silence and to broadband targets presented in background noise, suggesting that adaptation and generalization go hand in hand. Conclusions: Together, these findings provide further evidence for plasticity in the weighting of monaural and binaural cues during adaptation to unilateral conductive hearing loss, and show that the training-dependent recovery in spatial hearing can generalize to more naturalistic listening conditions, so long as the target sounds provide sufficient spatial information

Feasibility and outcomes of Fibreoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing following prophylactic swallowing rehabilitation in head and neck cancer

Objectives Investigate the feasibility and outcomes of fibreoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) following a programme of prophylactic swallowing exercises in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients treated with radiotherapy. Design Prospective, single cohort, feasibility study. Setting Three head and neck cancer centres in Scotland. Participants Pre‐radiotherapy HNC patients who consented to participate in a prophylactic swallowing intervention. Outcome measures FEES recruitment and retention rates, assessment acceptability and compliance, qualitative process evaluation. Results Higher rates of recruitment and retention were achieved in centres where FEES equipment was available on site. Travel and anticipated discomfort were barriers to recruitment. Data completion was high for all rating scales, with goo d reliability. Following radiotherapy, swallowing safety significantly deteriorated for liquid boluses (p=0.005‐0.03); pharyngeal residue increased for liquid and semi‐solid boluses. Pharyngo‐laryngeal oedema was present pre‐treatment and significantly increased post‐radiotherapy (p=0.001). Patients generally reported positive experience of FEES for their own learning and establishing a baseline. Conclusions FEES is an acceptable method of assessing patients for a prophylactic swallowing intervention and offers some additional information missing from VF. Barriers have been identified and should be taken into account in order to maximise recruitment for future trials