644 research outputs found
Making Good Lawyers
Today, the criticism of law schools has become an industry. Detractors argue that legal education fails to effectively prepare students for the practice of law, that it is too theoretical and detached from the profession, that it dehumanizes and alienates students, too expensive and inapt in helping students develop a sense of professional identity, professional values, and professionalism. In this sea of criticisms it is hard to see the forest from the trees. “There is so much wrong with legal education today,” writes one commentator, “that it is hard to know where to begin.” This article argues that any reform agenda will fall short if it does not start by recognizing the dominant influence of the culture of autonomous self-interest in legal education. Law schools engage in a project of professional formation and instill a very particular brand of professional identity. They educate students to become autonomously self-interested lawyers who see their clients and themselves as pursuing self-interest as atomistic actors. As a result, they understand that their primary role is to serve as neutral partisans who promote the narrow self-interest of clients without regard to the interests of their families, neighbors, colleagues, or communities and to the exclusion of counseling clients on the implications of those interests. They view as marginal their roles as an officer of the legal system and as a public citizen and accordingly place a low priority on traditional professional values, such as the commitment to the public good, that conflict with their primary allegiance to autonomous self-interest. In this work of professional formation, law schools are reflecting the values and commitments of the autonomously self-interested culture that is dominant in the legal profession. Therefore, even if law schools sought to form a professional identity outside of the mold of autonomous self-interest, such a commitment would require much more than curricular reform. It would, at minimum, require the construction of a persuasive alternative understanding of the lawyer’s role. The article seeks to offer such an understanding grounded in a relational perspective on lawyers and clients. Part I offers workable definitions of professionalism and professional identity that enable an informed discussion of the formation of professional identity in and by law schools. Part II explores what and how legal education teaches students showing that both institutionally (at the law school level) and individually (at the law professor level) legal education is proactively engaged in the formation of a professional identity of autonomous self-interest. Part II further explains that its dominance in legal education notwithstanding, autonomous self-interest is but one, often unpersuasive, account of professionalism and professional identity. Part III turns to the competing vision of relationally self-interested professionalism and professional identity and develops an outline for legal education grounded in these conceptions. Because legal education reflects a deep commitment to the dominant culture of autonomous self-interest, it is unlikely that reform proposals that are inconsistent with that culture are likely to succeed in the near future. Yet proposing an alternative account of professional identity that exposes the assumptions of the dominant culture, explains their limitations, and develops a more persuasive understanding is a necessary step toward providing a workable framework for reformers committed to promoting professional values in the long term
noise in variable range hopping conduction
A mechanism of noise due to traps formed by impurities which have no
neighbors with close energies in their vicinity is studied. Such traps slowly
exchange electrons with the rest of conducting media. The concentration of
traps and proportional to it noise exponentially grow with decreasing
temperature in the variable range hopping regime. This theory provides smooth
transition to the nearest neighbor hopping case where it predicts a very weak
temperature dependence
Slow relaxation of conductance of amorphous hopping insulators
We discuss memory effects in the conductance of hopping insulators due to
slow rearrangements of structural defects leading to formation of polarons
close to the electron hopping states. An abrupt change in the gate voltage and
corresponding shift of the chemical potential change populations of the hopping
sites, which then slowly relax due to rearrangements of structural defects. As
a result, the density of hopping states becomes time dependent on a scale
relevant to rearrangement of the structural defects leading to the excess time
dependent conductivity.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
Importance of correlation effects in hcp iron revealed by a pressure-induced electronic topological transition
We discover that hcp phases of Fe and Fe0.9Ni0.1 undergo an electronic
topological transition at pressures of about 40 GPa. This topological change of
the Fermi surface manifests itself through anomalous behavior of the Debye
sound velocity, c/a lattice parameter ratio and M\"ossbauer center shift
observed in our experiments. First-principles simulations within the dynamic
mean field approach demonstrate that the transition is induced by many-electron
effects. It is absent in one-electron calculations and represents a clear
signature of correlation effects in hcp Fe
Control of Cation Permeation through the Nicotinic Receptor Channel
We used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to explore the transport of single cations through the channel of the muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). Four MD simulations of 16 ns were performed at physiological and hyperpolarized membrane potentials, with and without restraints of the structure, but all without bound agonist. With the structure unrestrained and a potential of −100 mV, one cation traversed the channel during a transient period of channel hydration; at −200 mV, the channel was continuously hydrated and two cations traversed the channel. With the structure restrained, however, cations did not traverse the channel at either membrane potential, even though the channel was continuously hydrated. The overall results show that cation selective transport through the nAChR channel is governed by electrostatic interactions to achieve charge selectivity, but ion translocation relies on channel hydration, facilitated by a trans-membrane field, coupled with dynamic fluctuations of the channel structure
Observed Limits on Charge Exchange Contributions to the Diffuse X-ray Background
We present a high resolution spectrum of the diffuse X-ray background from
0.1 to 1 keV for a ~1 region of the sky centered at l=90, b=+60 using a
36-pixel array of microcalorimeters flown on a sounding rocket. With an energy
resolution of 11 eV FWHM below 1 keV, the spectrum's observed line ratios help
separate charge exchange contributions originating within the heliosphere from
thermal emission of hot gas in the interstellar medium. The X-ray sensitivity
below 1 keV was reduced by about a factor of four from contamination that
occurred early in the flight, limiting the significance of the results. The
observed centroid of helium-like O VII is 568+2-3 eV at 90% confidence. Since
the centroid expected for thermal emission is 568.4 eV while for charge
exchange is 564.2 eV, thermal emission appears to dominate for this line
complex, consistent with much of the high-latitude O VII emission originating
in 2-3 x 10^6 K gas in the Galactic halo. On the other hand, the observed ratio
of C VI Ly gamma to Ly alpha is 0.3+-0.2. The expected ratios are 0.04 for
thermal emission and 0.24 for charge exchange, indicating that charge exchange
must contribute strongly to this line and therefore potentially to the rest of
the ROSAT R12 band usually associated with 10^6 K emission from the Local Hot
Bubble. The limited statistics of this experiment and systematic uncertainties
due to the contamination require only >32% thermal emission for O VII and >20%
from charge exchange for C VI at the 90% confidence level. An experimental gold
coating on the silicon substrate of the array greatly reduced extraneous
signals induced on nearby pixels from cosmic rays passing through the
substrate, reducing the triggered event rate by a factor of 15 from a previous
flight of the instrument.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Ap
Influence of conformational fluctuations on enzymatic activity: modelling the functional motion of beta-secretase
Considerable insight into the functional activity of proteins and enzymes can
be obtained by studying the low-energy conformational distortions that the
biopolymer can sustain. We carry out the characterization of these large scale
structural changes for a protein of considerable pharmaceutical interest, the
human -secretase. Starting from the crystallographic structure of the
protein, we use the recently introduced beta-Gaussian model to identify, with
negligible computational expenditure, the most significant distortion occurring
in thermal equilibrium and the associated time scales. The application of this
strategy allows to gain considerable insight into the putative functional
movements and, furthermore, helps to identify a handful of key regions in the
protein which have an important mechanical influence on the enzymatic activity
despite being spatially distant from the active site. The results obtained
within the Gaussian model are validated through an extensive comparison against
an all-atom Molecular Dynamics simulation.Comment: To be published in a special issue of J. Phys.: Cond. Mat. (Bedlewo
Workshop
A Microcalorimeter and Bolometer Model
The standard non-equilibrium theory of noise in ideal bolometers and
microcalorimeters fails to predict the performance of real devices due to
additional effects that become important at low temperature. In this paper we
extend the theory to include the most important of these effects, and find that
the performance of microcalorimeters operating at 60 mK can be quantitatively
predicted. We give a simple method for doing the necessary calculations,
borrowing the block diagram formalism from electronic control theory.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figure
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