Interpretations of Intent: Sovereignty, the Second Amendment, and US Gun Culture

In this paper, I engage foundational theorists such as Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke to examine the philosophies of sovereignty that underpin the US Constitution and the creation of the Second Amendment. I find that the US Founders\u27 reaction to these foundational theories of sovereignty allowed for a breakdown in the system of sovereignty in the country, and made way for the implementation of the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law, in turn, created the conditions of possibility for the psyche of radical individualism that now permeates the US. This radical individualism allowed for the reinterpretation of the Second Amendment as demonstrated in cases such as DC vs Heller, and in turn upholds models of liability that prevent gun violence from being addressed as a systemic issue. Utilizing traditional and contemporary theorists, I wade through all of this discourse in order to propose a normative shift toward a more connection based model of political engagement and gun policy in the United States

The Effect Of Automation On Job Opportunities

The intense concern of workers with the effect of automation on jobs began as early as 1912 when an article by Robert Johnstone Wheeler, now a resident of Allentown, Pennsylvania, appeared in the Industrial Review magazine. Showing the number of hand blowers was dropping steadily as more automatic machines were installed in glass bottle manufacturing plants, Wheeler also described the economic effects of this displacement of workers. The automatic machine takes no apprentices, he wrote. It does not eat or wear anything. It has no wife or children to support. Who will buy its products in the coming years when the workers are done away with? Who will feed and clothe the millions, workless, because of automation? Shall man cease to exist because he has per infected tools of production

Low-Dose Continuous 5-Fluorouracil Combined with Leucovorin, nab-Paclitaxel, Oxaliplatin, and Bevacizumab for Patients with Advanced Pancreatic Cancer: A Retrospective Analysis.

BackgroundContinuous-infusion 5-fluorouracil (5FU) and calcium leucovorin plus nab-paclitaxel and oxaliplatin have been shown to be active in patients with pancreatic cancer. As a protracted low-dose infusion, 5FU is antiangiogenic, and has synergy with bevacizumab. As shown in the treatment of breast cancer, bevacizumab and nab-paclitaxel are also synergetic.ObjectiveIn this paper we retrospectively analyze the survival of 65 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who were treated with low-dose continuous (metronomic) chemotherapy given in conjunction with conventional anti-VEGF therapy.Patients and methodsSince July of 2008, we have treated 65 patients with 5FU (180 mg/m2/day × 14 days) via an ambulatory pump. Calcium leucovorin (20 mg/m2 IV), nab-paclitaxel (60 mg/m2) IV as a 30-min infusion, and oxaliplatin (50 mg/m2) IV as a 60-min infusion were given on days 1, 8, and 15. Bevacizumab (5 mg/kg) IV over 30 min was administered on days 1 and 15. Cycles were repeated every 28-35 days. There were 42 women and 23 men, and the median age was 59 years. Forty-six patients had stage IV disease.ResultsThe median survival was 19 months, with 82% of patients surviving 12 months or longer. The overall response rate was 49%. There were 28 patients who had received prior treatment, 15 of whom responded to therapy. Fifty-two patients had elevated CA 19-9 prior to treatment. Of these, 21 patients had 90% or greater reduction in CA 19-9 levels. This cohort had an objective response rate of 71% and a median survival of 27 months. Thirty patients stopped treatment due to disease progression, and an additional 22 stopped because of toxicity. One patient died while on therapy.ConclusionsThis non-gemcitabine-based regimen resulted in higher response rates and better survival than what is commonly observed with therapy given at conventional dosing schedules. Low-dose continuous (metronomic therapy) cytotoxic chemotherapy combined with antiangiogenic therapy is safe and effective

Incidence, aetiology and neurodisability associated with severe microcephaly: a national surveillance study

Objective To determine the incidence, causes and neurodevelopmental impact of severe microcephaly (head circumference <–3SD) up to age 2 years. Design Binational active paediatric surveillance study undertaken in 2017–2018 to identify and characterise new diagnoses of severe microcephaly. Setting UK and Ireland. Participants Infants aged under 12 months at diagnosis. Interventions Observational study. Main outcome measures Incidence, aetiology and neurodevelopmental outcomes at age 2 years. Results Fifty-nine infants met the case definition, of whom 30 (51%) were girls; 24 (41%) were born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestation); and 34 (58%) were of ‘white’ ethnicity. Eight (14%) children died before 12 months of age. Incidence of severe microcephaly was 5.5 per 100 000 infants (95% CI 4.0 to 7.3). Higher relative risk (RR) was associated with preterm birth (RR 7.7, 95% CI 3.8 to 15.1) and British Asian ethnicity (RR 3.6, 95% CI 1.6 to 7.8). Microcephaly was mainly due to genetic causes (59%), brain ischaemia/hypoxia (10%) and congenital infection (8%), and 19% remained undetermined. Each child was referred on average to eight specialists, and 75% had abnormal brain imaging. By 2 years of age, 55 children experienced neurodevelopmental abnormalities, including feeding problems (68%), motor delay (66%), visual impairment (37%), hearing loss (24%) and epilepsy (41%). Conclusions Although severe microcephaly is uncommon, it is associated with high mortality, complex multimorbidity and neurodisability, thus representing a significant ongoing burden for families and healthcare services. Potentially preventable causes include preterm birth, hypoxic/ischaemic brain injury and congenital infections. Clinical guidelines are essential to standardise aetiological investigation and optimise multidisciplinary management

Charged-Lepton-Flavour Violation in the CMSSM in View of the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment

We use the BNL E821 measurement of g - 2, the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, to normalize, within a supersymmetric GUT framework, constrained MSSM (CMSSM) predictions for processes that violate charged-lepton flavour conservation, including mu to e gamma, mu to e conversion and K^0_L to mu e. We illustrate our analysis with two examples of lepton mass matrix textures motivated by data on neutrino oscillations. We find that mu to e gamma may well occur at a rate within one or two (two or three) orders of magnitude of the present experimental upper limit if g - 2 is within the one- (two-)standard deviation range indicated by E821. We also find that mu to e conversion is likely to occur at rate measurable by MECO, and there is a chance that K^0_L to mu e may be observable in an experiment using an intense proton source.Comment: 14 pages, 3 eps figure

Does wage rank affect employees' well-being?

How do workers make wage comparisons? Both an experimental study and an analysis of 16,000 British employees are reported. Satisfaction and well-being levels are shown to depend on more than simple relative pay. They depend upon the ordinal rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group. “Rank” itself thus seems to matter to human beings. Moreover, consistent with psychological theory, quits in a workplace are correlated with pay distribution skewness

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to W+W−W^+W^- production at the LHC in Randall Sundrum model

We present next-to-leading order QCD corrections to production of two $W$ bosons at the LHC in the Randall-Sundrum model. Various kinematical distributions are obtained to order $\alpha_s$ in QCD by taking into account all the parton level subprocesses. We estimate the impact of the QCD corrections on various observables and find that they are significant. We also show the reduction in factorization scale uncertainty when ${\cal O}(\alpha_s)$ effects are included.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure