15,517 research outputs found
Religious Lawyering\u27s Second Wave
Since the mid-1990s, the religious lawyering movement has expanded dramatically, receiving greater attention within the academy and the bar. As the movement enters what we term its second wave of development, this essay begins with a look back to its first wave of path-breaking scholarship and its gradual shift toward more institutionalized structures and programs. It argues that the predominant characteristic of first-wave religious lawyering scholarship was to claim a space within the professional conversation for lawyers to bring religious values to bear on their work. The essay then predicts that in the second wave religious lawyering conversations and scholarship will increasingly move beyond the question of whether lawyers should bring religious values to bear on their work, toward the difficult issues of how this should be done. It concludes with a glance toward the ways in which international horizons might bring new and refreshing challenges to the religious lawyering movement
Linear response to leadership, effective temperature and decision making in flocks
Large collections of autonomously moving agents, such as animals or
micro-organisms, are able to 'flock' coherently in space even in the absence of
a central control mechanism. While the direction of the flock resulting from
this critical behavior is random, this can be controlled by a small subset of
informed individuals acting as leaders of the group. In this article we use the
Vicsek model to investigate how flocks respond to leadership and make
decisions. Using a combination of numerical simulations and continuous modeling
we demonstrate that flocks display a linear response to leadership that can be
cast in the framework of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, identifying an
'effective temperature' reflecting how promptly the flock reacts to the
initiative of the leaders. The linear response to leadership also holds in the
presence of two groups of informed individuals with competing interests,
indicating that the flock's behavioral decision is determined by both the
number of leaders and their degree of influence.Comment: 8 pages (incl. supplementary information), 8 figures, Supplementary
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Density regulation in strictly metric-free swarms
There is now experimental evidence that nearest-neighbour interactions in
flocks of birds are metric free, i.e. they have no characteristic interaction
length scale. However, models that involve interactions between neighbours that
are assigned topologically are naturally invariant under spatial expansion,
supporting a continuous reduction in density towards zero, unless additional
cohesive interactions are introduced or the density is artificially controlled,
e.g. via a finite system size. We propose a solution that involves a
metric-free motional bias on those individuals that are topologically
identified to be on an edge of the swarm. This model has only two primary
control parameters, one controlling the relative strength of stochastic noise
to the degree of co-alignment and another controlling the degree of the
motional bias for those on the edge, relative to the tendency to co-align. We
find a novel power-law scaling of the real-space density with the number of
individuals N as well as a familiar order-to-disorder transition
Palladium, platinum, and gold distribution in serpentinite seamounts in the Mariana and Izu-Bonin forearcs: evidence from Leg 125 fluids and serpentinites
Palladium, platinum, and gold were analyzed for 20 interstitial water samples from Leg 125. No Pd or Pt was detected in fluids from serpentinite muds from Conical Seamount in the Mariana forearc, indicating that low-temperature seawater-peridotite interaction does not mobilize these elements into the serpentinizing fluids to levels above 0.10 parts per billion (ppb) in solution. However, Au may be mobilized in high pH solutions. In contrast, fluids from vitric-rich clays on the flanks of the Torishima Seamount in the Izu-Bonin forearc have Pd values of between 4.0 and 11.8 nmol/L, Pt values between 2.3 and 5.0 nmol/L and Au values between 126.9 and 1116.9 pmol/L. The precious metals are mobilized, and possibly adsorbed onto clay mineral surfaces, during diagenesis and burial of the volcanic-rich clays. Desorption during squeezing of the sediments may produce the enhanced precious metal concentrations in the analyzed fluids. The metals are mobilized in the fluids probably as neutral hydroxide, bisulfide, and ammonia complexes. Pt/Pd ratios are between 0.42 and 2.33, which is much lower than many of the potential sources for Pt and Pd but is consistent with the greater solubility of Pd compared with Pt in most natural low-temperature fluids
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Possible crater-based pingos, paleolakes and periglacial landscapes in the high latitudes of Utopia Planitia, Mars
Palladium, platinum, and gold distribution in serpentinite seamounts in the Mariana and Izu-Bonin forearcs: evidence from Leg 125 fluids and serpentinites
Palladium, platinum, and gold were analyzed for 20 interstitial water samples from Leg 125. No Pd or Pt was detected in fluids from serpentinite muds from Conical Seamount in the Mariana forearc, indicating that low-temperature seawater-peridotite interaction does not mobilize these elements into the serpentinizing fluids to levels above 0.10 parts per billion (ppb) in solution. However, Au may be mobilized in high pH solutions. In contrast, fluids from vitric-rich clays on the flanks of the Torishima Seamount in the Izu-Bonin forearc have Pd values of between 4.0 and 11.8 nmol/L, Pt values between 2.3 and 5.0 nmol/L and Au values between 126.9 and 1116.9 pmol/L. The precious metals are mobilized, and possibly adsorbed onto clay mineral surfaces, during diagenesis and burial of the volcanic-rich clays. Desorption during squeezing of the sediments may produce the enhanced precious metal concentrations in the analyzed fluids. The metals are mobilized in the fluids probably as neutral hydroxide, bisulfide, and ammonia complexes. Pt/Pd ratios are between 0.42 and 2.33, which is much lower than many of the potential sources for Pt and Pd but is consistent with the greater solubility of Pd compared with Pt in most natural low-temperature fluids
Geometry and mechanics of microdomains in growing bacterial colonies
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are
known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry.
Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a
comprehensive biomechanical picture, highlighting the cell-to-colony dynamics,
is still lacking. Here, using molecular dynamics simulations and continuous
modeling, we investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of a
bacterial colony growing on a substrate with a free boundary and demonstrate
that such an expanding colony self-organizes into a "mosaic" of microdomains
consisting of highly aligned cells. The emergence of microdomains is mediated
by two competing forces: the steric forces between neighboring cells, which
favor cell alignment, and the extensile stresses due to cell growth that tend
to reduce the local orientational order and thereby distort the system. This
interplay results in an exponential distribution of the domain areas and sets a
characteristic length scale proportional to the square root of the ratio
between the system orientational stiffness and the magnitude of the extensile
active stress. Our theoretical predictions are finally compared with
experiments with freely growing E. coli microcolonies, finding quantitative
agreement.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
The Role of Projection in the Control of Bird Flocks
Swarming is a conspicuous behavioural trait observed in bird flocks, fish
shoals, insect swarms and mammal herds. It is thought to improve collective
awareness and offer protection from predators. Many current models involve the
hypothesis that information coordinating motion is exchanged between neighbors.
We argue that such local interactions alone are insufficient to explain the
organization of large flocks of birds and that the mechanism for the exchange
of long-ranged information necessary to control their density remains unknown.
We show that large flocks self-organize to the maximum density at which a
typical individual is still just able to see out of the flock in many
directions. Such flocks are marginally opaque - an external observer can also
just still see a substantial fraction of sky through the flock. Although
seemingly intuitive we show that this need not be the case; flocks could easily
be highly diffuse or entirely opaque. The emergence of marginal opacity
strongly constrains how individuals interact with each other within large
swarms. It also provides a mechanism for global interactions: An individual can
respond to the projection of the flock that it sees. This provides for faster
information transfer and hence rapid flock dynamics, another advantage over
local models. From a behavioural perspective it optimizes the information
available to each bird while maintaining the protection of a dense, coherent
flock.Comment: PNAS early edition published online at
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.140220211
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