Report of the President

It was in January, 1888—65 years ago—that 35 lawyers met at the Territorial Capital in Olympia to form the Washington Bar Association, with Judge Elwood Evans as President. Six years later the second president, John Arthur—some of you remember him—appointed a committee consisting of Thomas Burke, Harold Preston and E. C. Hughes, of Seattle, William C. Jones of Spokane, Charles S. Fogg of Tacoma, and A. R. Coleman of Port Townsend—names illustrious in the history of the bar of this state—to prepare a program and make all arrangements for a banquet and for a reunion of the Bar of this State, to be held in the Summer

Report of the Washington State Bar Foundation

Five years ago the Washington State Bar Foundation was incorporated, one of the objects of which was to raise funds for the acquisition of a State Bar Association Center building

Report of Committee on Selection of Judges

As pointed out in the report, the duties vary with regard to superior court vacancies and appointments and supreme court vacancies and appointments. It has been the policy of the committee to obtain from the local bar a selection preference by secret ballot with respect to vacancies occurring in the superior court. The state committee, in view of the obvious inability to know the local citizens, acts only as a screening committee and submits subject to special screening the results of the opinions of the local bar. In some cases the selection is made by names and they are submitted alphabetically, and sometimes it reaches the Governor\u27s office with a number of sheets; but, in any event, the preparation of lists with regard to the superior court originates and should originate in the local bar where the appointment is to be made

Towards an Ontological Modelling of Preference Relations

Preference relations are intensively studied in Economics, but they are also approached in AI, Knowledge Representation, and Conceptual Modelling, as they provide a key concept in a variety of domains of application. In this paper, we propose an ontological foundation of preference relations to formalise their essential aspects across domains. Firstly, we shall discuss what is the ontological status of the relata of a preference relation. Secondly, we investigate the place of preference relations within a rich taxonomy of relations (e.g. we ask whether they are internal or external, essential or contingent, descriptive or nondescriptive relations). Finally, we provide an ontological modelling of preference relation as a module of a foundational (or upper) ontology (viz. OntoUML). The aim of this paper is to provide a sharable foundational theory of preference relation that foster interoperability across the heterogeneous domains of application of preference relations

Accurately constraining velocity information from spectral imaging observations using machine learning techniques

Determining accurate plasma Doppler (line-of-sight) velocities from spectroscopic measurements is a challenging endeavour, especially when weak chromospheric absorption lines are often rapidly evolving and, hence, contain multiple spectral components in their constituent line profiles. Here, we present a novel method that employs machine learning techniques to identify the underlying components present within observed spectral lines, before subsequently constraining the constituent profiles through single or multiple Voigt fits. Our method allows active and quiescent components present in spectra to be identified and isolated for subsequent study. Lastly, we employ a Ca II 8542 {\AA} spectral imaging dataset as a proof-of-concept study to benchmark the suitability of our code for extracting two-component atmospheric profiles that are commonly present in sunspot chromospheres. Minimisation tests are employed to validate the reliability of the results, achieving median reduced $\chi^2$ values equal to 1.03 between the observed and synthesised umbral line profiles.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures. Improved formatting of abstract and reference

Spectropolarimetric Fluctuations in a Sunspot Chromosphere

The instrumental advances made in this new era of 4-meter class solar telescopes with unmatched spectropolarimetric accuracy and sensitivity, will enable the study of chromospheric magnetic fields and their dynamics with unprecedented detail. In this regard, spectropolarimetric diagnostics can provide invaluable insight into magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) wave processes. MHD waves and, in particular, Alfv\'enic fluctuations associated to particular wave modes, were recently recognized as important mechanisms not only for the heating of the outer layers of the Sun's atmosphere and the acceleration of the solar wind, but also for the elemental abundance anomaly observed in the corona of the Sun and other Sun-like stars (also known as first ionisation potential; FIP) effect. Here, we take advantage of state-of-the-art and unique spectropolarimetric IBIS observations to investigate the relation between intensity and circular polarisation (CP) fluctuations in a sunspot chromosphere. Our results show a clear link between the intensity and CP fluctuations in a patch which corresponds to a narrow range of magnetic field inclinations. This suggests the presence of Alfv\'enic perturbations in the sunspot.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

Substitution in a sense

The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like

Utilisation of specialist epilepsy services and antiseizure medication adherence rates in a cohort of people with epilepsy (PWE) accessing emergency care

Background: An epilepsy-related attendance at A&E is associated an increased risk of subsequent death within 6 months. Although further work is required to provide a definitive explanation to account for these findings, in the interim it would seem reasonable that services are designed to ensure timely access and provide support at a time of greatest risk. We aim to determine the frequency of patients accessing specialist neurology services following an epilepsy-related admission/unscheduled care episode and consider ASM adherence at the point of attendance. Methods: Patients were identified retrospectively via the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde live integrated epilepsy Dashboard following an unscheduled epilepsy-related admission or A&E attendance between 1st January 2022 and 30th June 2022. We calculated adherence to anti-seizure medication for a period of 6 months prior to admission and defined poor medication adherence as a medication possession ratio of less than 80%. We evaluated the rate of any outpatient neurology clinic attendance in the subsequent 3, 6 and 12 months following an epilepsy-related unscheduled care episode. Additional clinical information was identified via the electronic patient records. Results: Between 1st Jan 2022 and 30th June 2022, there were 266 emergency care seizure-related attendances. The mean age at attendance was 46 years (range: 16-91). Most of PWE were males (63%) and 37% were females. Epilepsy classification-29.3% had GGE, 41.7 % had focal epilepsy, and in 29% of cases the epilepsy was unclassified. Of the admissions, 107/ 266 (40.2%) generated follow-up within 6 months of attendance. Poor medication adherence was noted in 54/266 (20.3%). 28.2% of cases had input from on-call neurology service during admission/ED attendance, and of those 60% had ASM adjusted. 18% of attendances had a background diagnosis of learning disability. One-third of attendances of PWE had a history of mental health disorder 35% (93/266). 25% of ED attendances noted an active history of alcohol consumption misuse or/and recreational drug use. 14 (5.5%) of PWE died during the period of interest (12 months following the last ED visit). In 6/14 (42.3%) death was associated with poor medication adherence. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that a significant proportion of patients who experienced seizure-related admissions/ attendance did not access specialist neurology services in a timely manner. In addition, poor medication adherence remains a problem for a substantial number of people living with epilepsy. Early access to specialist services may go some way to improving care and reducing excessive mortality in PWE by allowing anti-seizure medication to be titrated and poor medication adherence to be addressed in those at greatest risk

Solar Wind Turbulence and the Role of Ion Instabilities

International audienc