The Two Modes of Visual Processing: Implications for Spatial Orientation

The roles of the focal and ambient visual systems in spatial orientation are discussed. The two modes are defined and compared. The contribution of each system is illustrated through examples such as spatial disorientation/motion sickness, vehicle guidance/night driving, visual narrowing under stress/cortical brain damage, and aircraft instrumentation. Emphasis is placed on the need for testing procedures for the ambient system

Free edge strain concentrations in real composite laminates: Experimental-theoretical correlation

The magnitude of the maximum shear strain at the free edge of axially loaded theta (2)/-theta(2)(s) and (+ or - theta(2) (s) composite laminates was investigated experimentally and numerically to ascertain the actual value of strain concentration in resin matrix laminates and to determine the accuracy of finite element results. Experimental results using moire interferometry show large, but finite, shear strain concentrations at the free edge of graphite-epoxy and graphite-polyimide laminates. Comparison of the experimental results with those obtained using several different finite element representations showed that a four node isoparametric finite element provided the best and most trouble free numerical results. The results indicate that the ratio of maxium shear strain at the free edge to applied axial strain varies with fiber orientation and does not exceed nine for the most critical angle which is 15 deg

Protecting the Constitution from the People: Juricentric Restrictions on Section Five Power

Symposium: Congressional Power in the Shadow of the Rehnquist Court: Strategies for the Future held at Indiana University Law School, February 1-2, 2002

Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After Morrison and Kimel

Last Term, the Supreme Court sent ominous signals about the future of federal antidiscrimination law. The Court twice ruled that Congress lacked power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact laws prohibiting discrimination. In Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, the Court concluded that Section 5 did not give Congress the power to abrogate state Eleventh Amendment immunity for suits under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and in United States v. Morrison, the Court held that Congress was without power under either the Commerce Clause or Section 5 to enact a provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) creating a federal civil remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence. Both Kimel and Morrison are written in forceful and broad strokes that threaten large stretches of congressional authority under Section 5. Yet the Court\u27s Section 5 holdings were rendered without dissent. Although in Kimel there were four Justices prepared to disagree strenuously with the decision\u27s liberal interpretation of Eleventh Amendment immunity, and although in Morrison there were four Justices prepared to disagree strenuously with the decision\u27s restrictive interpretation of federal Commerce Clause power, not a single Justice in either case was ready to vote to sustain congressional power under Section 5, even as Justice Breyer identified key deficiencies in Morrison\u27s justification for its Section 5 holding. This silence is remarkable, yet explicable. Since the New Deal, the Commerce Clause has shaped core understandings of the contours of national power. In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court took the consequential step of upholding the public accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Commerce Clause grounds alone, despite the fact that Congress had asserted authority to enact the legislation under both the Commerce Clause and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. We have ever since grown habituated to the use of Commerce Clause power to sustain federal antidiscrimination law, never definitively resolving the shape and reach of Section 5 authority. What might be called the jurisdictional compromise of the 1960s was forged at a time when the Commerce Clause seemed to offer boundless support for Congress\u27s authority to enact antidiscrimination laws. But this no longer appears to be the case. Given the Court\u27s current determination to impose limits on Congress\u27s authority to enact antidiscrimination legislation under the Commerce Clause, the time has come to examine thoroughly, at long last, a question that the Court has now rendered inescapable: the extent of Congress\u27s power to enact antidiscrimination legislation under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment

Originalism as a Political Practice: The Right’s Living Constitution

To whatever extent the Rehnquist Court actually executed a counterrevolution, surely a good deal of its inspiration came from originalism, \u27 from the view that the only acceptable method of interpreting the U.S. Constitution is to apply the text and original meaning of various specific constitutional provisions. Originalists attacked progressive Warren Court decisions as judicial usurpations in need of discipline and reversal. Drawing on the work of pioneer conservative academics like Robert Bork and Raoul Berger, originalism became a central organizing principle for the Reagan Justice Department\u27s assault on what it regarded as a liberal federal judiciary. Originalism was proudly embraced by aggressively conservative Justices like William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Originalism remains even now a powerful vehicle for conservative mobilization, as can clearly be seen in recent popular opposition to the citation of foreign law

Breaking bad news in the era of artificial intelligence and algorithmic medicine: an exploration of disclosure and its ethical justification using the hedonic calculus

An appropriate ethical framework around the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare has become a key desirable with the increasingly widespread deployment of this technology. Advances in AI hold the promise of improving the precision of outcome prediction at the level of the individual. However, the addition of these technologies to patient–clinician interactions, as with any complex human interaction, has potential pitfalls. While physicians have always had to carefully consider the ethical background and implications of their actions, detailed deliberations around fast-moving technological progress may not have kept up. We use a common but key challenge in healthcare interactions, the disclosure of bad news (likely imminent death), to illustrate how the philosophical framework of the 'Felicific Calculus' developed in the eighteenth century by Jeremy Bentham, may have a timely quasi-quantitative application in the age of AI. We show how this ethical algorithm can be used to assess, across seven mutually exclusive and exhaustive domains, whether an AI-supported action can be morally justified