Measuring the Values and Costs of Experiential Education, Report of the Working Group on Cost and Sustainability

This report is one of a series of Working Group reports from the Alliance for Experiential Education in Law, collected in “Experience the Future: Papers from the Second National Symposium on Experiential Education in Law,” 7 Elon Law Review 1-108 (2015). The Report of the Working Group on Cost and Sustainability seeks to provide a basis for thoughtful analysis and discussion of both the values and costs of experiential legal education by breaking those values and costs down into their component parts. The way these component parts are arranged will vary from school to school, and this report does not attempt to catalogue every possible combination. Our aim is to categorize the types of value that education adds to experience and the types of costs that need to be assessed, providing a basis for more nuanced discussion of the cost and sustainability of experiential educational programming in law schools. The challenge educators face is not the hypothetical comparison of one clinic and one doctrinal course, but the shaping of programs in which the benefits of experiential education can be realized as fully as possible while the costs are recognized and effectively managed

Measuring the Values and Costs of Experiential Education, Report of the Working Group on Cost and Sustainability

This report is one of a series of Working Group reports from the Alliance for Experiential Education in Law, collected in “Experience the Future: Papers from the Second National Symposium on Experiential Education in Law,” 7 Elon Law Review 1-108 (2015). The Report of the Working Group on Cost and Sustainability seeks to provide a basis for thoughtful analysis and discussion of both the values and costs of experiential legal education by breaking those values and costs down into their component parts. The way these component parts are arranged will vary from school to school, and this report does not attempt to catalogue every possible combination. Our aim is to categorize the types of value that education adds to experience and the types of costs that need to be assessed, providing a basis for more nuanced discussion of the cost and sustainability of experiential educational programming in law schools. The challenge educators face is not the hypothetical comparison of one clinic and one doctrinal course, but the shaping of programs in which the benefits of experiential education can be realized as fully as possible while the costs are recognized and effectively managed

Substrate rigidity deforms and polarizes active gels

We present a continuum model of the coupling between cells and substrate that accounts for some of the observed substrate-stiffness dependence of cell properties. The cell is modeled as an elastic active gel, adapting recently developed continuum theories of active viscoelastic fluids. The coupling to the substrate enters as a boundary condition that relates the cell's deformation field to local stress gradients. In the presence of activity, the coupling to the substrate yields spatially inhomogeneous contractile stresses and deformations in the cell and can enhance polarization, breaking the cell's front-rear symmetry.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, EPL forma

The 10Be contents of SNC meteorites

Several authors have explored the possibility that the Shergottites, Nakhlites, and Chassigny (SNC) came from Mars. The spallogenic gas contents of the SNC meteorites have been used to: constrain the sizes of the SNC's during the last few million years; to establish groupings independent of the geochemical ones; and to estimate the likelihood of certain entries in the catalog of all conceivable passages from Mars to Earth. The particular shielding dependence of Be-10 makes the isotope a good probe of the irradiation conditions experienced by the SNC meteorites. The Be-10 contents of nine members of the group were measured using the technique of accelerator mass spectrometry. The Be-10 contents of Nakhla, Governador Valadares, Chassigny, and probably Lafayette, about 20 dpm/kg, exceed the values expected from irradiation of the surface of a large body. The Be-10 data therfore do not support scenario III of Bogard et al., one in which most of the Be-10 in the SNC meteorites would have formed on the Martian surface; they resemble rather the Be-10 contents found in many ordinary chondrites subjected to 4 Pi exposures. The uncertainties of the Be-10 contents lead to appreciable errors in the Be-10 ages, t(1) = -1/lambda ln(1 Be-10/Be-10). Nonetheless, the Be-10 ages are consistent with the Ne-21 ages calculated assuming conventional, small-body production rates and short terrestrial ages for the finds. It is believed that this concordance strengthens the case for at least 3 different irradiation ages for the SNC meteorites. Given the similar half-thicknesses of the Be-10 and Ne-21 production rates, the ratios of the Be-10 and Ne-21 contents do not appear consistent with common ages for any of the groups. In view of the general agreement between the Be-10 and Ne-21 ages it does not seem useful at this time to construct multiple-stage irradiation histories for the SNC meteorites

Self-organization and Mechanical Properties of Active Filament Bundles

A phenomenological description for active bundles of polar filaments is presented. The activity of the bundle results from crosslinks, that induce relative displacements between the aligned filaments. Our generic description is based on momentum conservation within the bundle. By specifying the internal forces, a simple minimal model for the bundle dynamics is obtained, capturing generic dynamic behaviors. In particular, contracted states as well as solitary and oscillatory waves appear through dynamic instabilities. The introduction of filament adhesion leads to self-organized persistent filament transport. Furthermore, calculating the tension, homogeneous bundles are shown to be able to actively contract and to perform work against external forces. Our description is motivated by dynamic phenomena in the cytoskeleton and could apply to stress-fibers and self-organization phenomena during cell-locomotion.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure

Spontaneous waves in muscle fibres

Mechanical oscillations are important for many cellular processes, e.g. the beating of cilia and flagella or the sensation of sound by hair cells. These dynamic states originate from spontaneous oscillations of molecular motors. A particularly clear example of such oscillations has been observed in muscle fibers under non-physiological conditions. In that case, motor oscillations lead to contraction waves along the fiber. By a macroscopic analysis of muscle fiber dynamics we find that the spontaneous waves involve non-hydrodynamic modes. A simple microscopic model of sarcomere dynamics highlights mechanical aspects of the motor dynamics and fits with the experimental observations.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure