A Defender\u27s Take on Good Prosecutors

When Professor Abbe Smith asked “Can You Be a Good Person and a Good Prosecutor” in 2001 (and answered it mostly in the negative), she began a conversation that would result in me, a public defender, having to repeatedly answer the question from earnest law students and young lawyers. I haven’t yet forgiven Professor Smith. My first impulse when I’m asked the question is to hand out her home phone number. My second impulse is to answer: “Why are you asking me?” I’m a defense lawyer. Worse still, I am a public defender. I’m not, shall we say, naturally drawn to answering questions about who should become a prosecutor. Nor am I naturally drawn to “good people.” But here we are seventeen years later and the question is still on the table—perhaps more so than ever with the election of several “progressive prosecutors” in notable jurisdictions. I will start by saying that I would like to practice in a criminal justice system where the question of whether a “good person” can be a “good prosecutor” is a silly, even offensive, question. The fact that in this day and age it is instead a legitimate question fraught with moral significance speaks volumes about the system itself

Creating Momentum: The Atlantic Philanthropies' Investments to Repeal the Death Penalty in the United States

The Atlantic Philanthropies invested about $60 million between 2004 and 2016 to support efforts to repeal the death penalty in the United States. To assess the effectiveness of this work and to generate lessons for human rights activists and other funders involved in the repeal movement, the foundation commissioned this evaluation. The findings contained in this report are the result of extensive documentation review as well as interviews with foundation and grantee board and staff

A self-consistent Hartree-Fock approach for interacting bosons in optical lattices

A theoretical study of interacting bosons in a periodic optical lattice is presented. Instead of the commonly used tight-binding approach (applicable near the Mott insulating regime of the phase diagram), the present work starts from the exact single-particle states of bosons in a cubic optical lattice, satisfying the Mathieu equation, an approach that can be particularly useful at large boson fillings. The effects of short-range interactions are incorporated using a self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation, and predictions for experimental observables such as the superfluid transition temperature, condensate fraction, and boson momentum distribution are presented.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figure file

Writing readiness and children with Down Syndrome in an Irish context

There is a dearth of studies investigating writing readiness in children with Down Syndrome (DS) and limited information on appropriate interventions. This article reports on a study conducted in the Republic of Ireland. An uncontrolled pretest-posttest design was implemented using writing readiness measures specifically adapted/developed from the literature to collect data on the writing readiness skills of 28 school-aged children with DS attending mainstream schools in the Republic of Ireland. Teacher/parent perspectives were also gathered during focus groups. The children presented with complex needs in relation to posture, pencil grasp, copying basic shapes, name/letter copying. Teacher and parent reports highlighted the need for collaborative intervention with occupational therapy. Findings from the study supports the need for targeted early collaborative syndrome-specific intervention to support the development of writing readiness in children with DS as an important part of school readiness. Intervention should include adopting a broader emergent literacy approach, teacher education regarding writing readiness and parental involvement in intervention

Exploring the participation of children with Down Syndrome in Handwriting Without Tears®

Background Children with Down Syndrome typically experience difficulties with attention to task and lack motivation when learning to write. This article provides an evaluation of the HWT® method applied as an intervention to promote handwriting amongst children with Down Syndrome attending mainstream school in The Republic of Ireland. Methods In the absence of standardised measures, a purpose-designed group task participation scale and pre- and post-intervention teacher/parent questionnaire were developed by the first author and used to investigate the participation of 40 children with Down Syndrome in HWT® activities. Results Positive changes in participation in HWT® activities were recorded in group data and in teacher/parent report. Conclusions Hands-on multisensory learning approaches such as HWT® may encourage children with Down Syndrome to participate in activities that promote handwriting skills. Further research and the development of robust measures to evaluate handwriting intervention for this population of children is require

Shear Flows of Rapidly Flowing Granular Materials

Shear flows of granular materials are studied in an open channel. The wall shear is calculated from an open channel momentum equation which includes the density variations in the flow. An experimental technique was developed that allowed the measurement of the average density of the flow at different longitudinal locations in the channel. Two sizes of glass beads are examined and results show the variations in the wall shear as a function of various dimensionless parameters

Spotlight on zebrafish:translational impact

In recent years, the zebrafish has emerged as an increasingly prominent model in biomedical research. To showcase the translational impact of the model across multiple disease areas, Disease Models & Mechanisms has compiled a Special Issue that includes thought-provoking reviews, original research reporting new and important insights into disease mechanisms, and novel resources that expand the zebrafish toolkit. This Editorial provides a summary of the issue’s contents, highlighting the diversity of zebrafish disease models and their clinical applications

To track or not to track : refining middle school mathematics

Includes bibliographical references.This research project discusses the issue of tracking, or ability grouping, in the education system. Using this type of system, students are grouped into low, medium,and high ability groups in all or at least several of their subjects in school. This type of grouping is the most commonly used instructional method to facilitate for students' differences. However, educational literature and research shows that although students have differences in abilities and learning styles, tracking is not the most effective, efficient, or equitable way of accommodating for these differences. Hence, this research project not only discusses the evidence for and against tracking, but it also discusses ways to effectively reach all students without homogeneous ability grouping. The other section of this project discusses how to apply these ideas of heterogeneous grouping in a middle school mathematics classroom. Since middle school is an extremely critical time academically and socially for many students, it is imperative to use the most effective instructional strategies to reach them. Thus, the restructuring of the middle school mathematics classroom into an active, group building environment is necessary.B.S.Ed. (Bachelor of Science in Education

Dynamic processes in magnetic thin films. Domain wall motion and ferromagnetic resonance

NOTE: Text or symbols not renderable in plain ASCII are indicated by [...]. Abstract is included in .pdf document. The objective of the present investigation has been threefold: (1) To characterize domain wall motion in thin ferromagnetic films experimentally and to determine what film properties influence wall mobility. (2) To investigate ferromagnetic resonance relaxation in thin films over a wide range of temperature, frequency, and thickness and to determine what physical relaxation processes contribute to the resonance linewidth. (3) To correlate the losses for wall motion with relaxation processes for ferromagnetic resonance. Domain wall mobility for Ni-Fe alloy films has been measured as a function of film thickness from 300 to 1650 [angstroms]. Between 300 and 800 [angstroms] the mobility decreases with increasing film thickness, ranging from 8 x 10[superscript 3] cm/sec-0e at 300 [angstroms] to 3 x 10[superscript 3] cm/sec-0e at 800 [angstroms]. Between 900 and 1000 [angstroms], the mobility increases rapidly with increasing film thickness to about 7 x 10[superscript 3] cm/sec-0e. Above 1000 [angstroms], the mobility increases slowly with film thickness. Predictions based on Lorentz microscopy static wall shape measurements are in good agreement with the data for a constant value of the Landau-Lifshitz damping parameter [alpha] = 0.014. Eddy-current losses are negligible. The crosstie and Bloch line structures associated with domain walls in thin films do not appear to influence the mobility. The sharp increase in mobility between 900 and 1000 [angstroms] is associated with a wall structure transition in this region. Ferromagnetic resonance linewidth measurements have been made for films 150 to 3200 [angstroms] thick at frequencies from 1 to 9 Gc/sec and temperature from 2[degrees]K to 300[degrees]K with the static field in the film plane. Linewidths between 3 0e (1 Gc/sec) and 50 0e (9 Gc/sec) were observed. For fixed thickness, the 300[degrees]K linewidth increases monotonically with anisotropy dispersion. To eliminate dispersion, samples with the smallest linewidth [...] were selected for each thickness. For thickness less than a critical thickness [...]. [...] is independent of thickness, but increases with thickness for D > D[...]. The data are in good agreement with predictions based on two-magnon scattering between the uniform mode and degenerate magnons. Eddy-current losses are not important. The phenomenological damping varies from 0.005 (D = 400[angstroms] to 0.009 (D = 3200[angstroms]) for the 300[degrees]K data. As a function of temperature, the linewidth exhibits a maximum at about 80[degrees]K which is generally larger in thinner films. The amplitude of the peak (as high as 15 0e) is independent of frequency and the peak shifts to slightly higher temperatures with increasing frequency. Two annealing treatments at 150[degrees]C, one in a vacuum and one in hydrogen or oxygen, indicate that the temperature dependence is associated with a surface oxide layer. Two mechanisms, valence exchange and exchange anisotropy, may be important. Even though phenomenological damping parameters for the two processes, wall motion and resonance, are quite different (at 300[degrees]K), there is a definite connection between the losses. Changes in the wall mobility between 300[degrees]K and 77[degrees]K have been measured for films exhibiting, to varying degrees, the above linewidth effect. From these mobility and linewidth data, the losses for wall motion were found to be directly related to the losses for resonance from 300[degrees]K to 77[degrees]K. There is a definite connection between the relaxation processes which are important for wall motion and those involved in resonance