NASA Redox system development project status

NASA-Redox energy storage systems developed for solar power applications and utility load leveling applications are discussed. The major objective of the project is to establish the technology readiness of Redox energy storage for transfer to industry for product development and commercialization by industry. The approach is to competitively contract to design, build, and test Redox systems progressively from preprototype to prototype multi-kW and megawatt systems and conduct supporting technology advancement tasks. The Redox electrode and membrane are fully adequate for multi-kW solar related applications and the viability of the Redox system technology as demonstrated for multi-kW solar related applications. The status of the NASA Redox Storage System Project is described along with the goals and objectives of the project elements

Pathways to Work from Incapacity Benefits: A study of experience and use of Return to Work Credit

The Pathways to Work/Incapacity Benefit Reforms pilot was introduced in October 2003 and aims to increase the number of incapacity benefit recipients who move towards and into paid work. The reforms comprise a package of measures, initially introduced in seven Jobcentre Plus districts in England, Scotland and Wales. A further 14 districts are being phased into the pilot from October 2005. This report presents findings from a focused study of Return to Work Credit (RTWC) and is based on qualitative research conducted by the Social Policy Research Unit, the National Centre for Social Research and the Policy Studies Institute in 2005/06. This study is one of several being undertaken to inform the overall evaluation of the Pathways to Work pilots

Market access agreements for pharmaceuticals in Europe: diversity of approaches and underlying concepts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Market Access Agreements (MAA) between pharmaceutical industry and health care payers have been proliferating in Europe in the last years. MAA can be simple discounts from the list price or very sophisticated schemes with inarguably high administrative burden.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>We distinguished and defined from the health care payer perspective three kinds of MAA: Commercial Agreements (CA), Payment for Performance Agreements (P4P) and Coverage with Evidence Development (CED). Apart from CA, the agreements assumed collection and analysis of real-life health outcomes data, either from a cohort of patients (CED) or on per patient basis (P4P). We argue that while P4P aim at reducing drug cost to payers without a systematic approach to addressing uncertainty about drugs' value, CED were implemented provisionally to reduce payer's uncertainty about value of a medicine within a defined time period.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>We are of opinion that while CA and P4P have a potential to reduce payers' expenditure on costly drugs while maintaining a high list price, CED address initial uncertainty related to assessing the real-life value of new drugs and enable a final HTA recommendation or reimbursement and pricing decisions. Further, we suggest that real cost to health care payers of drugs in CA and P4P should be made publicly available in a systematic manner, to avoid a perverse impact of these MAA types on the international reference pricing system.</p

The Descent of Responsible Procreation: A Genealogy of an Ideology

Just as societal practices related to marriage and procreation have changed remarkably during the past several decades, the amount of litigation regarding same-sex marriage has increased substantially. Over time, defenders of state bans on same-sex marriage have primarily leaned on the responsible-procreation defense, which surmises that same-sex couples already procreate responsibly and that the rights and responsibilities of marriage should be limited to furthering the goal of encouraging more responsible procreation by heterosexuals. This Article traces the genealogy of responsible procreation. Rooted in religion, the defense was once rejected as a justification for limiting heterosexuals’ constitutional rights. Later, it appeared as a justification of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Soon, courts split on its constitutionality: the high court of Massachusetts found it to be “unpersuasive” while other state appellate courts used it as a justification for their rejections of challenges to same-sex-marriage bans. Finally, with the first federal trial and subsequent Ninth Circuit decision on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the responsible-procreation defense succumbed to the overwhelming weight of evidence against its logic. As a result, the emerging trend is that both executive officials and courts are rejecting the defense and concluding that same-sex-marriage bans are drawn not to further proper legislative ends but to make same-sex couples and their children unequal to everyone else

Equal Protection’s Antinomies and the Promise of a Co-Constitutive Approach

This article explores how a central insight of Law and Society scholarship – that law and society are mutually constitutive – explains and informs Equal Protection jurisprudence. Professor Nice describes the state of equal protection discourse as caught in perpetual antinomic debates, with courts typically endorsing the more conservative alternative within such debates, including: (1) adopting assimilation (not anti-subordination) as the goal; (2) treating subordinated persons the same as (not different than) dominant persons; (3) looking backward toward remediation (not forward toward substantive equality); (4) requiring blindness (not consciousness) of the relevant trait; (5) focusing on the classifying trait (not the disadvantaged class); (6) requiring proof of prejudicial intent (not merely disproportionate effects); (7) limiting equal protection to public (not private) action; (8) focusing on process (not substance); (9) understanding identity as singular (not multiple); and (10) treating identity as fixed (not fluid). Professor Nice suggests that, because law and society are mutually constitutive, choosing between these antinomic alternatives is unnecessary and also impairs our understanding of how socio-legal meaning is shaped. Borrowing an example from her prior work, she argues the Supreme Court relied on a co-constitutive understanding to invalidate laws in a trilogy of prominent outlier cases (Romer, Plyer, M.L.B.), not because they infringed a fundamental right or discriminating against a suspect class, but because they excluded a class from the enjoyment of an important right, the lack of which marked the class as inferior

Forty Years of Welfare Policy Experimentation: No Acres, No Mule, No Politics, No Rights

This introductory essay questions putting nearly all effort into social policywhich has failed to reduce povertyand calls instead for reinvigorating other tactics and re-imagining the unfinished dream of economic justice. Indeed, what Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned was an actual war on poverty, not merely the abbreviated, under-funded, and ultimately unsuccessful effort of the 1960s, nor the imposter war on welfare that has dominated our social policy effort since. But our social policy has not only failed to reduce poverty, it failed to focus long-needed attention on poverty and inequality. Nor has social policy facilitated the political mobilization of poor people or secured their legal rightstwo other means for seeking economic justice. Thus, this essay reviews the problems associated with working for less than a minimum living wage (No Acres and No Mule), including the lack of political power (No Politics), and constitutional rights (No Rights). The essay concludes by raising questions of welfare experimentation and argues social policy must be changed in order to reverse course in our battle against poverty