Barefoot in Quicksand: The Future of Future Dangerousness Predictions in Death Penalty Sentencing in the World of Daubert and Kumho

To understand the Barefoot decision, it is necessary to examine Jurek v. Texas, an earlier case in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of using predictions of future dangerousness as an element in capital sentencing. I will begin by analyzing the background to Barefoot, and then the Barefoot case itself. I will consider how admissibility of future dangerousness testimony in capital cases may or may not have changed after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael. I will argue that future dangerousness predictions in capital cases are an unconstitutional due process violation, and that they violate evidentiary principles requiring reliability and excluding evidence that is substantially misleading or prejudicial. Finally, I will argue that we must re-think the Daubert/Kumho test for admissibility of expert testimony so as to preserve the insights of the Frye v. United States test and ensure that reliability becomes the keynote in both scientific and technical testimony

Uniformity and the Taylor expansion of ordinary lambda-terms

AbstractWe define the complete Taylor expansion of an ordinary lambda-term as an infinite linear combination–with rational coefficients–of terms of a resource calculus similar to Boudol’s lambda-calculus with multiplicities (or with resources). In our resource calculus, all applications are (multi)linear in the algebraic sense, i.e. commute with linear combinations of the function or the argument. We study the collective behaviour of the beta-reducts of the terms occurring in the Taylor expansion of any ordinary lambda-term, using, in a surprisingly crucial way, a uniformity property that they enjoy. As a corollary, we obtain (the main part of) a proof that this Taylor expansion commutes with Böhm tree computation, syntactically

Filament Compliance Influences Cooperative Activation of Thin Filaments and the Dynamics of Force Production in Skeletal Muscle

Striated muscle contraction is a highly cooperative process initiated by Ca2+ binding to the troponin complex, which leads to tropomyosin movement and myosin cross-bridge (XB) formation along thin filaments. Experimental and computational studies suggest skeletal muscle fiber activation is greatly augmented by cooperative interactions between neighboring thin filament regulatory units (RU-RU cooperativity; 1 RU = 7 actin monomers+1 troponin complex+1 tropomyosin molecule). XB binding can also amplify thin filament activation through interactions with RUs (XB-RU cooperativity). Because these interactions occur with a temporal order, they can be considered kinetic forms of cooperativity. Our previous spatially-explicit models illustrated that mechanical forms of cooperativity also exist, arising from XB-induced XB binding (XB-XB cooperativity). These mechanical and kinetic forms of cooperativity are likely coordinated during muscle contraction, but the relative contribution from each of these mechanisms is difficult to separate experimentally. To investigate these contributions we built a multi-filament model of the half sarcomere, allowing RU activation kinetics to vary with the state of neighboring RUs or XBs. Simulations suggest Ca2+ binding to troponin activates a thin filament distance spanning 9 to 11 actins and coupled RU-RU interactions dominate the cooperative force response in skeletal muscle, consistent with measurements from rabbit psoas fibers. XB binding was critical for stabilizing thin filament activation, particularly at submaximal Ca2+ levels, even though XB-RU cooperativity amplified force less than RU-RU cooperativity. Similar to previous studies, XB-XB cooperativity scaled inversely with lattice stiffness, leading to slower rates of force development as stiffness decreased. Including RU-RU and XB-RU cooperativity in this model resulted in the novel prediction that the force-[Ca2+] relationship can vary due to filament and XB compliance. Simulations also suggest kinetic forms of cooperativity occur rapidly and dominate early to get activation, while mechanical forms of cooperativity act more slowly, augmenting XB binding as force continues to develop

Sarcomere Lattice Geometry Influences Cooperative Myosin Binding in Muscle

In muscle, force emerges from myosin binding with actin (forming a cross-bridge). This actomyosin binding depends upon myofilament geometry, kinetics of thin-filament Ca2+ activation, and kinetics of cross-bridge cycling. Binding occurs within a compliant network of protein filaments where there is mechanical coupling between myosins along the thick-filament backbone and between actin monomers along the thin filament. Such mechanical coupling precludes using ordinary differential equation models when examining the effects of lattice geometry, kinetics, or compliance on force production. This study uses two stochastically driven, spatially explicit models to predict levels of cross-bridge binding, force, thin-filament Ca2+ activation, and ATP utilization. One model incorporates the 2-to-1 ratio of thin to thick filaments of vertebrate striated muscle (multi-filament model), while the other comprises only one thick and one thin filament (two-filament model). Simulations comparing these models show that the multi-filament predictions of force, fractional cross-bridge binding, and cross-bridge turnover are more consistent with published experimental values. Furthermore, the values predicted by the multi-filament model are greater than those values predicted by the two-filament model. These increases are larger than the relative increase of potential inter-filament interactions in the multi-filament model versus the two-filament model. This amplification of coordinated cross-bridge binding and cycling indicates a mechanism of cooperativity that depends on sarcomere lattice geometry, specifically the ratio and arrangement of myofilaments

Machine learning for improved pathological staging of prostate cancer : A performance comparison on a range of classifiers

Peer reviewedPostprin

Mechanical and microstructural characterization of flowing weld lines in injection-molded short fiber-reinforced PBT

The aim of this work is an extensive experimental mechanical and microstructural characterization of flowing weld lines (WLs) in injection-molded short glass fiber-reinforced polybutylenterephthalate (PBT) using X-ray computed tomography and digital image correlation (DIC). It was found that the induced fiber orientation (FO) in a flowing WL is similar to that induced by flow along a wall. In this test case, the impact of the flowing WL on the FO did not vanish after a flow length of 70 mm. The shape of the inserts, which originated the flowing WLs, only had a marginal effect on the induced FO gradient. By reducing part thickness, the erasing of the FO gradient induced by the WL is reached at shorter flow distances. At the WLs, there is a reduction of the fiber volume fraction in comparison to the regions far from the WL plane. DIC results show a pronounced strain localization at the WL, which can be explained by the FO gradient induced by the WL