Teaching the Way the Brain Is: Working Successfully in an Urban Classroom with Children Who Live in Poverty

During the past three decades, growing attention has been paid to the idea of mind/brain-based teaching and learning—an exciting approach, rooted in neuroscience research, that proves the interrelatedness of the mind, brain, and body. The purpose of this report is multifold: (a) to explain why mind/brain-based teaching and learning is relevant to children growing up in poverty; (b) to offer a review of the findings in cognitive neuroscience; (c) to offer a review of the findings regarding the effects of poverty on the developing mind/brain; (d) to identify themes emerging from these findings (i.e., research and understanding, communication, multiple intelligences, emotions and climate, patterning); (e) to describe my urban classroom settings and my struggles therein; (f) to share cross-curricular practical strategies that I have applied successfully with children living in poverty that reflect the research and emergent themes; and (g) to offer a summary/conclusion with implications for practice

Due Process, Free Expression, and the Administrative State

The first Part of this Article will explore the theoretical foundations of procedural due process, focusing particularly on the essential due process requirement of a neutral adjudicator. We will follow that discussion with an analysis of the extent to which administrative adjudication of constitutional challenges to its regulatory authority or decisions satisfies the demands of procedural due process. After concluding that administrative regulators categorically fail to satisfy the requirements of due process, at least in the context of constitutional challenges to their regulatory authority, we will explain why the availability of post–administrative judicial review cannot cure the constitutional defect in administrative adjudication of First Amendment challenges to its regulatory authority. Finally, we will consider the extent to which modern administrative procedure authorizes the process that we deem constitutionally essential to enable the subject of administrative regulation to present its First Amendment challenge at a meaningful point in the process

Room-Temperature Continuous-Wave Vertical-Cavity Single-Quantum-Well Microlaser Diodes

Room-temperature continuous and pulsed lasing of vertical-cavity, single-quantum-well, surface-emitting microlasers is achieved at ~983nm. The active Ga[sub][0-8]In[sub][0-2]As single quantum well is 100 [angstroms] thick. These microlasers have the smallest gain medium volumes among lasers ever built. The entire laser structure is grown by molecular beam epitaxy and the microlasers are formed by chemically assisted ion-beam etching. The microlasers are 3-50-μm across. The minimum threshold currents are 1.1 mA (pulsed) and 1.5 mA (CW)

The Constitutionality of State and Local Sanctions against Foreign Countries: Affairs State, States\u27 Affairs, or a Sorry State of Affairs?

Since the mid-1990s, many state and local governments have enacted a host of laws barring local governments\u27 procurement of goods and services from persons doing business with certain pariah governments, including Burma (Myanmar), the People\u27s Republic of China, Cuba, Nigeria and even Switzerland. Though ostensibly patterned after earlier laws, most notably longstanding Buy American laws and anti-apartheid laws of the 1980s, the latest wave of subnational sanctions statutes and ordinances is much broader in scope and application, raising troubling questions as to the constitutionality of such laws. An example is a Massachusetts statute forbidding the award of state contracts to companies with business ties to Myanmar. In November 1998, in National Foreign Trade Council v. Baker, the federal District Court for Massachusetts held that the statute encroached upon the Constitution\u27s assignment of plenary authority over foreign affairs to the federal government. The Baker decision has opened the possibility that many other examples of these laws will now be subjected to constitutional challenge. In this article, the authors analyze the constitutionality of state and local procurement sanctions on various grounds. The authors argue that such sanctions not only act as an unconstitutional infringement on the foreign affairs powers reserved to the federal government, as the Baker court held, but that they also violate the dormant Foreign Commerce Clause by impermissibly burdening foreign commerce. Contrary to suggestions that subnational sanctions are defensible under the market-participant exception to the dormant Commerce Clause, the authors conclude that such activities fall outside the intended scope of that exception