9,026 research outputs found
A Summary Report Prepared for the Office of the Governor, Boards and Commissions
This research project was undertaken by the author in partial fulfillment of a Master
of Judicial Studies degree awarded December 2012 by the University of Nevada Reno
and the National Judicial College. Although the project was funded by the author, the
preparation of this report was funded by the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice
Center. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Justice Center staff
and faculty, especially André Rosay, Ph.D., Justice Center Director, Sharon Chamard,
Ph.D., Associate Professor of Justice, and Barbara Armstrong, M.A., Research
Associate.
Points of view in this publication are those of the author and do not represent the
official position or policies of the Justice Center, the University of Alaska Anchorage,
the University of Nevada Reno, the National Judicial College, or the State of Alaska,
Office of the Governor, Boards and Commissions and its staff.This report presents results of a survey of lay adjudicators in mixed-administrative tribunals in Alaska. Mixed administrative tribunals are appointed boards or commissions in which lay members decide legal issues with the involvement of a professional administrative law judge. This involvement varies in degree and methods, depending on the tribunal’s rules and statutes. The report describes reported participation, role perception, attitudes toward law, recruitment, and satisfaction with experience.List of Tables / The Purpose of this Research / The Participants / Respondents' Understanding of Member Duties / Participation in Decision-Making / Respondent Attitudes toward Law / Recruitment / Member Satisfaction / Maintaining the Strengths of Alaska's Mixed Tribunal
A Survey of Studies on Judicial Selection
The Alaska legislature is considering a bill — Senate Joint Resolution 3 — that would put before voters a state constitutional amendment to change the composition of the Alaska Judicial Council and the way its members are selected. The Alaska Judicial Council plays a constitutionally-mandated role in the selection of Alaska’s judges and also makes recommendations to voters concerning retaining or not retaining judges as part of the judicial retention election process. This article reviews selected existing studies relevant to potential effects of this proposed change to the council composition — studies that examined judicial effectiveness, responsiveness of judges to public opinion, and public perception of judges. Also provided are flowcharts of the selection processes for members of the Alaska Judicial Council and of judges of the Alaska Court System; a detailed table of judicial selection methods in U.S. states and the District of Columbia; and a bibliography.Studies on Nominating Commissions /
Measures of Voter Satisfaction /
Objective Measures of Judicial Performance /
Complexity of Judicial Decisions /
Judicial Productivity and Independence /
Politicization of Judicial Elections /
Conclusion /
Resources on Judicial Selection (bibliography) /
References (bibliography)Ye
Discontinuity induced bifurcations of non-hyperbolic cycles in nonsmooth systems
We analyse three codimension-two bifurcations occurring in nonsmooth systems,
when a non-hyperbolic cycle (fold, flip, and Neimark-Sacker cases, both in
continuous- and discrete-time) interacts with one of the discontinuity
boundaries characterising the system's dynamics. Rather than aiming at a
complete unfolding of the three cases, which would require specific assumptions
on both the class of nonsmooth system and the geometry of the involved
boundary, we concentrate on the geometric features that are common to all
scenarios. We show that, at a generic intersection between the smooth and
discontinuity induced bifurcation curves, a third curve generically emanates
tangentially to the former. This is the discontinuity induced bifurcation curve
of the secondary invariant set (the other cycle, the double-period cycle, or
the torus, respectively) involved in the smooth bifurcation. The result can be
explained intuitively, but its validity is proven here rigorously under very
general conditions. Three examples from different fields of science and
engineering are also reported
Unique metabolic features of pancreatic cancer stroma: relevance to the tumor compartment, prognosis, and invasive potential.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a dismal prognosis. The aggressiveness and therapeutic recalcitrance of this malignancy has been attributed to multiple factors including the influence of an active desmoplastic stroma. How the stromal microenvironment of PDAC contributes to the fatal nature of this disease is not well defined. In the analysis of clinical specimens, we observed diverse expression of the hypoxic marker carbonic anhydrase IX and the lactate transporter MCT4 in the stromal compartment. These stromal features were associated with the epithelial to mesenchymal phenotype in PDAC tumor cells, and with shorter patient survival. Cultured cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) derived from primary PDAC exhibited a high basal level of hypoxia inducible factor 1a (HIF1α) that was both required and sufficient to modulate the expression of MCT4. This event was associated with increased transcription and protein synthesis of HIF1α in CAFs relative to PDAC cell lines, while surprisingly the protein turnover rate was equivalent. CAFs utilized glucose predominantly for glycolytic intermediates, whereas glutamine was the preferred metabolite for the TCA cycle. Unlike PDAC cell lines, CAFs were resistant to glucose withdrawal but sensitive to glutamine depletion. Consistent with the lack of reliance on glucose, CAFs could survive the acute depletion of MCT4. In co-culture and xenograft studies CAFs stimulated the invasive potential and metastatic spread of PDAC cell lines through a mechanism dependent on HIF1α and MCT4. Together, these data indicate that stromal metabolic features influence PDAC tumor cells to promote invasiveness and metastatic potential and associate with poor outcome in patients with PDAC
Vertex Fault Tolerant Additive Spanners
A {\em fault-tolerant} structure for a network is required to continue
functioning following the failure of some of the network's edges or vertices.
In this paper, we address the problem of designing a {\em fault-tolerant}
additive spanner, namely, a subgraph of the network such that
subsequent to the failure of a single vertex, the surviving part of still
contains an \emph{additive} spanner for (the surviving part of) , satisfying
for every
. Recently, the problem of constructing fault-tolerant additive
spanners resilient to the failure of up to \emph{edges} has been considered
by Braunschvig et. al. The problem of handling \emph{vertex} failures was left
open therein. In this paper we develop new techniques for constructing additive
FT-spanners overcoming the failure of a single vertex in the graph. Our first
result is an FT-spanner with additive stretch and
edges. Our second result is an FT-spanner with additive stretch and
edges. The construction algorithm consists of two main
components: (a) constructing an FT-clustering graph and (b) applying a modified
path-buying procedure suitably adopted to failure prone settings. Finally, we
also describe two constructions for {\em fault-tolerant multi-source additive
spanners}, aiming to guarantee a bounded additive stretch following a vertex
failure, for every pair of vertices in for a given subset of
sources . The additive stretch bounds of our constructions are 4
and 8 (using a different number of edges)
A direct D-bar reconstruction algorithm for recovering a complex conductivity in 2-D
A direct reconstruction algorithm for complex conductivities in
, where is a bounded, simply connected Lipschitz
domain in , is presented. The framework is based on the
uniqueness proof by Francini [Inverse Problems 20 2000], but equations relating
the Dirichlet-to-Neumann to the scattering transform and the exponentially
growing solutions are not present in that work, and are derived here. The
algorithm constitutes the first D-bar method for the reconstruction of
conductivities and permittivities in two dimensions. Reconstructions of
numerically simulated chest phantoms with discontinuities at the organ
boundaries are included.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article
accepted for publication in [insert name of journal]. IOP Publishing Ltd is
not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript
or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at
10.1088/0266-5611/28/9/09500
RB loss contributes to aggressive tumor phenotypes in MYC-driven triple negative breast cancer
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is characterized by multiple genetic events occurring in concert to drive pathogenic features of the disease. Here we interrogated the coordinate impact of p53, RB, and MYC in a genetic model of TNBC, in parallel with the analysis of clinical specimens. Primary mouse mammary epithelial cells (mMEC) with defined genetic features were used to delineate the combined action of RB and/or p53 in the genesis of TNBC. In this context, the deletion of either RB or p53 alone and in combination increased the proliferation of mMEC; however, the cells did not have the capacity to invade in matrigel. Gene expression profiling revealed that loss of each tumor suppressor has effects related to proliferation, but RB loss in particular leads to alterations in gene expression associated with the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. The overexpression of MYC in combination with p53 loss or combined RB/p53 loss drove rapid cell growth. While the effects of MYC overexpression had a dominant impact on gene expression, loss of RB further enhanced the deregulation of a gene expression signature associated with invasion. Specific RB loss lead to enhanced invasion in boyden chambers assays and gave rise to tumors with minimal epithelial characteristics relative to RB-proficient models. Therapeutic screening revealed that RB-deficient cells were particularly resistant to agents targeting PI3K and MEK pathway. Consistent with the aggressive behavior of the preclinical models of MYC overexpression and RB loss, human TNBC tumors that express high levels of MYC and are devoid of RB have a particularly poor outcome. Together these results underscore the potency of tumor suppressor pathways in specifying the biology of breast cancer. Further, they demonstrate that MYC overexpression in concert with RB can promote a particularly aggressive form of TNB
The influence of polar vortex ozone depletion on NH mid-latitude ozone trends in spring
International audienceReverse domain-filling trajectory calculations have been performed for the years 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2000 to calculate the spreading of ozone depleted air from the polar vortex to midlatitudes in spring. We find that for these years with massive Arctic ozone depletion the zonal mean total ozone column at midlatitudes is reduced with between 7 and 12 DU in the April-May period. The polar vortex and remnants have preferred locations which leads to longitudinal differences in the midlatitude ozone trends. Together with decadal variations in circulation the dilution of ozone depleted air may explain the major fraction of longitudinal differences in midlatitude ozone trends. For the period 1979?1997 the dilution may explain 50% of the longitudinal differences in ozone trends and for the period 1979?2002 it may explain 45%. The dilution also has a significant impact on the zonal mean ozone trends in the April-May period. Although uncertainties are large due to uncertainties in the ozone depletion values and neglect of ozone depletion in other years than 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2000 we have tried to calculate the size of this effect. We estimate that dilution may explain 29% of the trend in the period 1979?1997 and 33% of the trend in the period 1979?2002 as a lower limit
- …