Habeas Corpus and the Penalty of Death

Adolescence is associated with high impulsivity and risk taking, making adolescent individuals more inclined to use drugs. Early drug use is correlated to increased risk for substance use disorders later in life but the neurobiological basis is unclear. The brain undergoes extensive development during adolescence and disturbances at this time are hypothesized to contribute to increased vulnerability. The transition from controlled to compulsive drug use and addiction involve long-lasting changes in neural networks including a shift from the nucleus accumbens, mediating acute reinforcing effects, to recruitment of the dorsal striatum and habit formation. This study aimed to test the hypothesis of increased dopamine release after a pharmacological challenge in adolescent rats. Potassium-evoked dopamine release and uptake was investigated using chronoamperometric dopamine recordings in combination with a challenge by amphetamine in early and late adolescent rats and in adult rats. In addition, the consequences of voluntary alcohol intake during adolescence on these effects were investigated. The data show a gradual increase of evoked dopamine release with age, supporting previous studies suggesting that the pool of releasable dopamine increases with age. In contrast, a gradual decrease in evoked release with age was seen in response to amphetamine, supporting a proportionally larger storage pool of dopamine in younger animals. Dopamine measures after voluntary alcohol intake resulted in lower release amplitudes in response to potassium-chloride, indicating that alcohol affects the releasable pool of dopamine and this may have implications for vulnerability to addiction and other psychiatric diagnoses involving dopamine in the dorsal striatum

Every Dollar Counts: In Defense of the Education Department\u27s Supplement Not Supplant Proposal

Evidence compellingly demonstrates – as Congress famously recognized in Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) – that children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds require more educational resources than other students. Yet, a half century later, many school districts still spend less money on high-poverty schools than on more privileged schools. In 2011, a study by the U.S. Department of Education discovered that nationwide, more than forty percent of schools eligible for Title I funding based on their high-poverty status receive less state and local funding for instructional and other personnel costs than non-Title I schools in the same districts at the same grade level. A more recent study confirmed that more than 4.5 million low-income students attend Title I schools that on average receive about $1,200 less per student than non-Title I schools in the same district. In 1970, in an effort to prevent the availability of federal funding for high-poverty schools from diminishing state and local funding for those schools, Congress amended the ESEA to forbid districts to use Title I funds to “supplant,” rather than to “supplement,” the local funds they would otherwise have spent on Title I schools. Notwithstanding this “supplement not supplant” requirement, districts often take two steps that result in the spending disparities described above: (1) letting their most experienced and highly salaried teachers opt into schools with more privileged students, leaving Title I schools with less experienced, lower-salaried teachers; then (2) disguising how much less Title I schools spend on instruction than more advantaged schools by omitting teacher salaries from school-funding comparisons. To remedy this situation, President Barack Obama’s Department of Education in 2016 proposed a regulation (hereinafter “the 2016 proposed regulation”) that would have explicitly required districts to account for all aspects of local funding of schools in the course of demonstrating their compliance with the “supplement not supplant” requirement. The civil rights community supported the proposal, but teacher unions and congressional Republicans vehemently opposed it because it disrupts funding patterns favoring non-Title I schools that benefit their constituents

Guiding Capital Sentencing Discretion beyond the Boiler Plate : Mental Disorder as a Mitigating Factor

In five decisions handed down on July 2, 1976, the United States Supreme Court held that the death penalty may be imposed for the crime of murder, so long as there are clear standards to guide the sentencing authority and the sanction is not imposed mandatorily. The authors examine the eighth amendment doctrinal framework used by the Court in the July 2 Cases, with particular reference to the requirement that individualized mitigating information be considered in the sentencing decision. Illustrating that requirement, they contend that mental disorder should be considered as a possibly mitigating factor and then suggest a standard by which the sentencing authority might evaluate evidence of mental disorders, particularly retardation and sociopathy

Essays Honoring Charles M. Haar

There are various ways to honor and declare appreciation to a colleague. For Charles Haar, this festschrift seems just right

Can mineralization of soil organic nitrogen meet maize nitrogen demand?

Aims High-yielding maize-based crop systems require maize to take up large quantities of nitrogen over short periods of time. Nitrogen management in conventional crop systems assumes that soil N mineralization alone cannot meet rapid rates of crop N uptake, and thus large pools of inorganic N, typically supplied as fertilizer, are required to meet crop N demand. Net soil N mineralization data support this assumption; net N mineralization rates are typically lower than maize N uptake rates. However, net N mineralization does not fully capture the flux of N from organic to inorganic forms. Gross ammonification may better represent the absolute flux of inorganic N produced by soil N mineralization. Methods Here we utilize a long-term cropping systems experiment in Iowa, USA to compare the peak rate of N accumulation in maize biomass to the rate of inorganic N production through gross ammonification of soil organic N. Results Peak maize N uptake rates averaged 4.4 kg N ha−1 d−1, while gross ammonification rates over the 0–80 cm depth averaged 23 kg N ha−1 d−1. Gross ammonification was highly stratified, with 63% occurring in the 0–20 cm depth and 37% in the 20–80 cm depth. Neither peak maize N uptake rate nor gross ammonification rate differed significantly among three cropping systems with varied rotation lengths and fertilizer inputs. Conclusions Gross ammonification rate was 3.4 to 4.5 times greater than peak maize N uptake across the cropping systems, indicating that inorganic N mineralized from soil organic matter may be able to satisfy a large portion of crop N demand, and that explicit consideration of gross N mineralization may contribute to development of strategies that reduce crop reliance on large soil inorganic N pools that are easily lost to the environment

Measuring Health Care Costs of Individuals with Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in the U.S.: A Comparison of Survey and Claims Data

As the core nationally representative health expenditure survey in the United States, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is increasingly being used by statistical agencies to track expenditures by disease. However, while MEPS provides a wealth of data, its small sample size precludes examination of spending on all but the most prevalent health conditions. To overcome this issue, statistical agencies have turned to other public data sources, such as Medicare and Medicaid claims data, when available. No comparable publicly available data exist for those with employer-sponsored insurance. While large proprietary claims databases may be an option, the relative accuracy of their spending estimates is not known. This study compared MEPS and MarketScan estimates of annual per person health care spending on individuals with employer-sponsored insurance coverage. Both total spending and the distribution of annual per person spending differed across the two data sources, with MEPS estimates 10 percent lower on average than estimates from MarketScan. These differences appeared to be a function of both underrepresentation of high expenditure cases and underestimation across the remaining distribution of spending.

Organic vs. Conventional Farming Systems

Organic agriculture has become a major industry in the last decade, driven by increasing consumer demand, price premiums, and improving market opportunities. In 1977, a study was started at the Northeast Research and Demonstration Farm to demonstrate two alternative farming systems

Perspectives on Policing in Nineteenth-Century America

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50951/1/176.pd

Rotary-linear axes for high speed machining

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-358).This thesis presents the design, analysis, fabrication, and control of a rotary-linear axis; this axis is a key subsystem for high speed, 5-axis machine tools intended for fabricating centimeter-scale parts. The rotary-linear axis is a cylinder driven independently in rotation and translation. This hybridization minimizes machine inertias and thereby maximizes accelerations allowing for the production of parts with complex surfaces rapidly and accurately. Such parts might include dental restorations, molds, dies, and turbine blades. The hybrid rotary and linear motion provides special challenges for precision actuation and sensing. Our prototype rotary-linear axis consists of a central shaft, 3/4 inch (1.91 cm) in diameter and 15 inches (38.10 cm) long, supported by two cylindrical air bearings. The axis has one inch (2.54 cm) of linear travel and unlimited rotary travel. Two frameless permanent magnet motors respectively provide up to 41 N continuous force and 0.45 N-m continuous torque. The rotary motor is composed of commercially available parts; the tubular linear motor is completely custom-built. The prototype axis achieves a linear acceleration of 3 g's and a rotary acceleration of 1,300 rad/s2. With higher power current amplifiers and reduced sensor inertia, we predict the axis could attain peak accelerations of 12 g's and 17,500 rad/s2 at low duty cycles. This thesis also examines several concepts for developing a precision rotary-linear sensor that can tolerate axial translation.Our prototype rotary sensor uses two laser interferometers to measure the orientation of a slightly tilted mirror attached to the shaft. A third interferometer measures shaft translation. The rotary axis has a control bandwidth of 40 Hz; the linear axis has a bandwidth of 70 Hz. The rotary-linear axis has 2.5 nm rms linear positioning noise and 3.1 prad rms rotary positioning noise. This thesis presents one novel 5-axis machine topology which uses two rotary-linear axes. The first axis rotates and translates the part. The second axis carries the cutting tool and provides high speed spindle rotation as well as infeed along the axis of rotation. For use as a spindle, precision rotary sensing is not required, and a sensorless control scheme based on motor currents and voltages can be used.by Michael Kevin Leibman.Ph.D