Drawing Lines: Racial Gerrymandering in Bethune-Hill v. Virginia Board of Elections

In Bethune-Hill v. Virginia Board of Elections, the Supreme Court had to decide whether twelve Virginia challenged legislative districts, in which a one-size-fits-all 55% black voting age population floor was imposed, withstood constitutional scrutiny. The Court, though stating that the lower court misapplied precedent, declined to hold that race predominated in the formation of the districts and that strict scrutiny would be triggered, instead remanding to the lower court for reexamination. This commentary argues that the Court missed an opportunity to hold that a 55% BVAP floor prioritized above all else is per se racial predomination, and such a holding would be justified by serious policy goals

The reformation of English military medicine and the army of Elizabeth I in Flanders, 1585-1603 : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in History at Massey University, Albany Campus, New Zealand

Queen Elizabeth the First committed an army to Flanders in 1585 to support the cause of the Protestant Provinces of the Low Lands against the Spanish. It had become established that medical 'practitioners' should accompany armed forces. The practitioners were a polyglot group levied from village healers, licensed and unlicenced practitioners, as well as apothecaries and barber-surgeons. Despite significant medical and surgical advances on the Continent of Europe, particularly from the advanced concepts espoused by Paracelsus, there is little evidence to support widespread use of new initiatives in the English army. Wounds of a kind new to most 'practitioners' were encountered, due to the introduction of gunpowder-fueled firearms and cannons. Severe and deforming wounds caused by the impact of low velocity bullets were the results of the new battle tactics. Burns from gunpowder mishaps needed new approaches in treatment. Some changes to initiate new concepts in military medicine did occur but were the result of informal pressures, probably learned in the field, and not by formal teaching. Significant changes in the recognition of the basics of hygiene in the armed forces occurred in the late sixteenth century and some attempts to implement these was found in the army disciplinary codes. The attitudes towards prisoners and wounded were also changing with compassionate treatment being shown to the victims of war. The need for hospitals for the wounded did not develop in England until after the Flanders campaign The English forces suffered extreme privations due to bad leadership resulting in loss of morale, starvation and desertion. Lack of pay for the troops was a major issue throughout the campaign

A Stochastic Compartmental Model for Fast Axonal Transport

In this paper we develop a probabilistic micro-scale compartmental model and use it to study macro-scale properties of axonal transport, the process by which intracellular cargo is moved in the axons of neurons. By directly modeling the smallest scale interactions, we can use recent microscopic experimental observations to infer all the parameters of the model. Then, using techniques from probability theory, we compute asymptotic limits of the stochastic behavior of individual motor-cargo complexes, while also characterizing both equilibrium and non-equilibrium ensemble behavior. We use these results in order to investigate three important biological questions: (1) How homogeneous are axons at stochastic equilibrium? (2) How quickly can axons return to stochastic equilibrium after large local perturbations? (3) How is our understanding of delivery time to a depleted target region changed by taking the whole cell point-of-view