Making the Case: Did the Government's Response to Hurricane Katrina Violate the Equal Protection Clause (Note)

The first section of this Note focuses on the city and residents of New Orleans. The second section discusses FEMA's role in natural disasters, its reorganization under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and its response to Hurricane Katrina. After discussing FEMA's response and its racially disparate impact, the Note explores the relationship between this response and the Constitution. Specifically, it investigates whether FEMA's response violated the Equal Protection Clause. The fourth section analyzes FEMA's response to Katrina under the intent requirement established in the Supreme Court decisions of Davis" and Feeney." Even though a survivor could likely establish a disparate impact between Blacks and Whites, the intent requirement would likely preclude the establishment of a constitutional violation. In light of the heavy burden the intent requirement imposes, the fifth section advances the arguments for and against the intent requirement and discusses the potential solutions to its shortcomings. As the fifth and sixth sections argue, the Court should re-evaluate its interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause and find a way to reduce the harms of racial inequality and the burden imposed on the plaintiff by the intent requirement. A negligence standard would better provide "equal protection of the laws.

On Eigenvalue Decompactification in QCD1+1_{1+1}

The question whether it is necessary to decompactify the gauge eigenvalue degrees of freedom in QCD$_{1+1}$ is addressed. A careful consideration of the dynamics governing these degrees of freedom leads to the conclusion that eigenvalue decompactification is not necessary due to the curvature on the space of eigenvalues.Comment: 4 revtex pages; replaced version contains some additional footnotes and a changed final comment on the path integral pictur

Effective potential for the order parameter of the SU(2) Yang-Mills deconfinement transition

The Polyakov loop variable serves as an order parameter to characterize the confined and deconfined phases of Yang-Mills theory. By integrating out the vector fields in the SU(2) Yang-Mills partition function in one-loop approximation, an effective action is obtained for the Polyakov loop to second order in a derivative expansion. The resulting effective potential for the Polyakov loop is capable of describing a second-order deconfinement transition as a function of temperature.Comment: 5 pages latex, 1 ps figur

Pathologies of Quenched Lattice QCD at non--zero Density and its Effective Potential

We simulate lattice QCD at non--zero baryon density and zero temperature in the quenched approximation, both in the scaling region and in the infinite coupling limit. We investigate the nature of the forbidden region -- the range of chemical potential where the simulations grow prohibitively expensive, and the results, when available, are puzzling if not unphysical. At weak coupling we have explored the sensitivity of these pathologies to the lattice size, and found that using a large lattice ($64 \times 16^3$) does not remove them. The effective potential sheds considerable light on the problems in the simulations, and gives a clear interpretation of the forbidden region. The strong coupling simulations were particularly illuminating on this point.Comment: 49 pages, uu-encoded expanding to postscript;also available at ftp://hlrz36.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de/pub/mpl/hlrz72_95.p

Hadron Properties just before Deconfinement

We have investigated hadron screening masses, the chiral condensate, and the pion decay constant close to the deconfinement phase transition in the confined phase of QCD. The simulations were done in the quenched approximation, on a lattice of size \mbox{$32^{3}\times 8$}. We examined temperatures ranging from 0.75\tc up to 0.92\tc. We see no sign of a temperature dependence in the chiral condensate or the meson properties, but some temperature dependence for the nucleon screening mass is not excluded.Comment: Postscript file, uuencoded compresse

Flux tubes and their interaction in U(1) lattice gauge theory

We investigate singly and doubly charged flux tubes in U(1) lattice gauge theory. By simulating the dually transformed path integral we are able to consider large flux tube lengths, low temperatures, and multiply charged systems without loss of numerical precision. We simulate flux tubes between static sources as well as periodically closed flux tubes, calculating flux tube profiles, the total field energy and the free energy. Our main results are that the string tension in both three and four dimensions scales proportionally to the charge -- which is in contrast to previous lattice results -- and that in four-dimensional U(1) there is an attractive interaction between flux tubes for beta approaching the phase transition.Comment: 19 pages, latex2e with tex- and eps-figures; complete postscript file also available at ftp://is1.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/zach/np97.ps.g

Hepatotoxicity reports in the FDA adverse event reporting system database: A comparison of drugs that cause injury via mitochondrial or other mechanisms

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a leading reason for preclinical safety attrition and post-market drug withdrawals. Drug-induced mitochondrial toxicity has been shown to play an essential role in various forms of DILI, especially in idiosyncratic liver injury. This study examined liver injury reports submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) for drugs associated with hepatotoxicity via mitochondrial mechanisms compared with non-mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity. The frequency of hepatotoxicity was determined at a group level and individual drug level. A reporting odds ratio (ROR) was calculated as the measure of effect. Between the two DILI groups, reports for DILI involving mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity had a 1.43 (95% CI 1.42–1.45; P \u3c 0.0001) times higher odds compared to drugs associated with non-mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity. Antineoplastic, antiviral, analgesic, antibiotic, and antimycobacterial drugs were the top 5 drug classes with the highest ROR values. Although the top 20 drugs with the highest ROR values included drugs with both mitochondrial and non-mitochondrial injury mechanisms, the top 4 drugs (ROR values \u3e18: benzbromarone, troglitazone, isoniazid, rifampin) were associated with mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity. The major demographic influence for DILI risk was also examined. There was a higher mean patient age among reports for drugs that were associated with mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity [56.1 ± 18.33 (SD)] compared to non-mitochondrial mechanisms [48 ± 19.53 (SD)] (P \u3c 0.0001), suggesting that age may play a role in susceptibility to DILI via mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity. Univariate logistic regression analysis showed that reports of liver injury were 2.2 (odds ratio: 2.2, 95% CI 2.12–2.26) times more likely to be associated with older patient age, as compared with reports involving patients less than 65 years of age. Compared to males, female patients were 37% less likely (odds ratio: 0.63, 95% CI 0.61–0.64) to be subjects of liver injury reports for drugs associated with mitochondrial toxicity mechanisms. Given the higher proportion of severe liver injury reports among drugs associated with mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity, it is essential to understand if a drug causes mitochondrial toxicity during preclinical drug development when drug design alternatives, more clinically relevant animal models, and better clinical biomarkers may provide a better translation of drug-induced mitochondrial toxicity risk assessment from animals to humans. Our findings from this study align with mitochondrial mechanisms of toxicity being an important cause of DILI, and this should be further investigated in real-world studies with robust designs