292 research outputs found
American Equal Protection and Global Convergence
Commentators have noted that equal protection doctrine is in a state of transformation. The nature of that transformation, however, is poorly understood. This Article offers a clearer view of the change underway. This Article is the first to reveal and synthesize three major trajectories along which the U.S. Supreme Court has begun to move. First, the Court has begun to blur the line that it previously drew between facial discrimination and disparate impact. Second, the Court has begun to collapse its previously established tiered standards for reviewing discrimination. These two trajectories combine to produce a third trajectory of change: by blurring the distinction between facial discrimination and disparate impact, and by collapsing tiered review, the United States’ equal protection doctrine is converging with equality jurisprudence from peer jurisdictions abroad. After describing these changes, we argue that the collective wisdom of foreign jurisdictions should serve as persuasive authority encouraging the United States to continue along its current trajectories of doctrinal reform. We contend that foreign jurisdictions have served as laboratories of doctrinal innovation from which the United States could learn
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s Environmental Justice Promise
In 2019, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“CLCPA”) into law. The CLCPA was passed with the objective of addressing climate change and minimizing the adverse impacts on the “economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of New York.” S. 6599, 2019-2020 Sen., Reg. Sess. § 1 (N.Y. 2019). The CLCPA seeks to meet these objectives by reducing statewide greenhouse gas emissions, scaling up renewable energy to avoid further climate change, and improving the resiliency of the state in order to address unavoidable climate change impacts. Id. The law created the Climate Action Council that is tasked with developing a scoping plan to meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction targets. N.Y. ENVTL. CONSERV. LAW § 75-0103(1)
A Communication Middleware for Ubiquitous Multimedia Adaptation Services
Ubiquitous services have gained increasing attention in the area of mobile communication aiming to allow service access anywhere, anytime and anyhow while keeping complexity to a minimum for both users and service providers. Ubiquitous environment features a wide range and an increasing number of access devices and network technologies. Context-aware content/service adaptation is deemed necessary to ensure best user experience. We developed an Adaptation Management Framework (AMF) Web Service which manages the complexity of dynamic and autonomous content adaptation and serves as an invisible enabler for ubiquitous service delivery. It remains challenging to manage the tasks involved in the communication between the AMF Web Service and the user's environment, typically represented by various types of intelligent agents. This work presents a middleware which manages those tasks and serves not only as a protocol gateway, but also as a message translator, a service broker, a complexity shield etc., between AMF Web Services and User Agents
Carceral Carousel
The prison industrial complex is a highly adaptive mechanism that is constantly shifting to sustain itself. In recent years, the movement against mass incarceration has gained traction in reducing penal incarceration in the United States. In this report in collaboration with the Detention Watch Network, we detail select case examples of jails and prisons that closed for one purpose, only to cage a different group of people. The case studies demonstrate how sustained pressure and community organizing can lead to transformative wins that can help free people and keep cages shut down for good
The prevalence of depressive symptoms among older patients with hypertension in rural China
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139900/1/gps4628.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139900/2/gps4628_am.pd
Generalized Quantum Telecloning
We present a generalized telecloning (GTC) protocol where the quantum channel
is non-optimally entangled and we study how the fidelity of the telecloned
states depends on the entanglement of the channel. We show that one can
increase the fidelity of the telecloned states, achieving the optimal value in
some situations, by properly choosing the measurement basis at Alice's, albeit
turning the protocol to a probabilistic one. We also show how one can convert
the GTC protocol to the teleportation protocol via proper unitary operations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, RevTex4; v2: published version, 8 pages, 4
figures, RevTex4, to appear at Eur. Phys. J.
Protocol of an ongoing randomized controlled trial of care management for comorbid depression and hypertension: the Chinese Older Adult Collaborations in Health (COACH) study
Abstract
Background
Depression and hypertension are common, costly, and destructive conditions among the rapidly aging population of China. The two disorders commonly coexist and are poorly recognized and inadequately treated, especially in rural areas.
Methods
The Chinese Older Adult Collaborations in Health (COACH) Study is a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) designed to test the hypotheses that the COACH intervention, designed to manage comorbid depression and hypertension in older adult, rural Chinese primary care patients, will result in better treatment adherence and greater improvement in depressive symptoms and blood pressure control, and better quality of life, than enhanced Care-as-Usual (eCAU). Based on chronic disease management and collaborative care principles, the COACH model integrates the care provided by the older person’s primary care provider (PCP) with that delivered by an Aging Worker (AW) from the village’s Aging Association, supervised by a psychiatrist consultant. One hundred sixty villages, each of which is served by one PCP, will be randomly selected from two counties in Zhejiang Province and assigned to deliver eCAU or the COACH intervention. Approximately 2400 older adult residents from the selected villages who have both clinically significant depressive symptoms and a diagnosis of hypertension will be recruited into the study, randomized by the villages in which they live and receive primary care. After giving informed consent, they will undergo a baseline research evaluation; receive treatment for 12 months with the approach to which their village was assigned; and be re-evaluated at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after entry. Depression and HTN control are the primary outcomes. Treatment received, health care utilization, and cost data will be obtained from the subjects’ electronic medical records (EMR) and used to assess adherence to care recommendations and, in a preliminary manner, to establish cost and cost effectiveness of the intervention.
Discussion
The COACH intervention is designed to serve as a model for primary care-based management of common mental disorders that occur in tandem with common chronic conditions of later life. It leverages existing resources in rural settings, integrates social interventions with the medical model, and is consistent with the cultural context of rural life.
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov ID:
NCT01938963
; First posted: September 10, 2013.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143862/1/12877_2018_Article_808.pd
Neutron Scattering Signature of Phonon Renormalization in Nickel (II) Oxide
The physics of mutual interaction of phonon quasiparticles with electronic
spin degrees of freedom, leading to unusual transport phenomena of spin and
heat, has been a subject of continuing interests for decades. Despite its
pivotal role in transport processes, the effect of spin-phonon coupling on the
phonon system, especially acoustic phonon properties, has so far been elusive.
By means of inelastic neutron scattering and first-principles calculations,
anomalous scattering spectral intensity from acoustic phonons was identified in
the exemplary collinear antiferromagnetic nickel (II) oxide, unveiling strong
spin-lattice correlations that renormalize the polarization of acoustic phonon.
In particular, a clear magnetic scattering signature of the measured neutron
scattering intensity from acoustic phonons is demonstrated by its momentum
transfer and temperature dependences. The anomalous scattering intensity is
successfully modeled with a modified magneto-vibrational scattering cross
section, suggesting the presence of spin precession driven by phonon. The
renormalization of phonon eigenvector is indicated by the observed
"geometry-forbidden" neutron scattering intensity from transverse acoustic
phonon. Importantly, the eigenvector renormalization cannot be explained by
magnetostriction but instead, it could result from the coupling between phonon
and local magnetization of ions.Comment: Research pape
Frustration-induced diffusive scattering anomaly and dimension change in
Magnetic frustration, arising from the competition of exchange interactions,
has received great attention because of its relevance to exotic quantum
phenomena in materials. In the current work, we report an unusual
checkerboard-shaped scattering anomaly in , far from the known
incommensurate magnetic satellite peaks, for the first time by inelastic
neutron scattering. More surprisingly, such phenomenon appears as spin dynamics
at low temperature, but it becomes prominent above N\'eel transition as elastic
scattering. A new model Hamiltonian that includes an intraplane next-nearest
neighbor was proposed and attributes such anomaly to the near-perfect magnetic
frustration and the emergence of unexpected two-dimensional magnetic order in
the quasi-one-dimensional .Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure
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