Making Judicial Recusal More Rigorous

The right to an impartial arbiter is the bedrock of due process. Yet litigants in most state courts face judges subject to election and reelection – and therefore to majoritarian political pressures that would appear to undermine the judges\u27 impartiality. This tension has existed for as long as judges have been elected (and, to some extent, for as long as they have been appointed, in which case campaigns often take a less public but equally politicized form). In recent years, however, this tension has become more acute. Today, state courts around the country increasingly resemble – and are increasingly perceived to resemble – interest group battlegrounds in which judges represent particular constituencies in addition to, or even instead of, the rule of law. Two key developments are driving this transformation: the role of money in judicial elections is growing while the canons of conduct are shrinking. These trends are creating dramatic new threats to judicial impartiality and due process. Taking our cue from Justice Anthony Kennedy\u27s concurrence in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, we explore in this article a possible solution: making judicial recusal rules more rigorous

Making Judicial Recusal More Rigorous

The right to an impartial arbiter is the bedrock of due process. Yet litigants in most state courts face judges subject to election and reelection – and therefore to majoritarian political pressures that would appear to undermine the judges\u27 impartiality. This tension has existed for as long as judges have been elected (and, to some extent, for as long as they have been appointed, in which case campaigns often take a less public but equally politicized form). In recent years, however, this tension has become more acute. Today, state courts around the country increasingly resemble – and are increasingly perceived to resemble – interest group battlegrounds in which judges represent particular constituencies in addition to, or even instead of, the rule of law. Two key developments are driving this transformation: the role of money in judicial elections is growing while the canons of conduct are shrinking. These trends are creating dramatic new threats to judicial impartiality and due process. Taking our cue from Justice Anthony Kennedy\u27s concurrence in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, we explore in this article a possible solution: making judicial recusal rules more rigorous

Incorporating sustainable forestry into standards for professional forestry education

In 1991, the National Association of Professional Forestry Schools and Colleges (NAPFSC) and the Society of American Foresters (SAF) co-hosted a three-day Forest Resources Education Symposium, entitled Forest Resources Management in the 21st Century: Will Forestry Education Meet the Challenge? The objectives of the national symposium were to present major forces shaping the country\u27s management of forest resources, and then to discuss the adequacy of educational criteria in preparing tomorrow\u27s resource managers to excel under an expanding array of consumer and employer demands. As an outcome, the discussants developed a summary of specific challenges and solutions within five issue areas: The Future of Forestry, Future Educational Needs, Defining Appropriate Curricula, Student Characteristics, and Faculty Characteristics. Many existing problems were identified as a result of that process, as well as potentially useful strategies for corrective action

A study of laser wave scattering due to refractive index perturbations in the propagating medium Final report, 5 Oct. 1965 - 15 Aug. 1966

Data recording and processing systems for GT-7 LASER communicator experiment - laser wave scattering due to refractive index perturbations in propagating mediu

A cultural exploration of the social media manipulators

The widespread use of Internet social media sites for the production and dissemination of propaganda continues to grow and gather attention. Social media sites spread information faster and wider than those institutions and methods historically limited to state-affiliated organizations. There are several characteristics that are unique to virtual space and make the production and dissemination of propaganda different; they include the Internet’s global reach, the recipient’s apparent trust placed in information source as well as the information sources, and the low cost of participation. Thus, the use of social media as a method to spread misleading information exploits trust relationships between the reader and the source. Although propaganda is a weapon with a long history in war, in the 21st century, the delivery and distribution of propaganda through the trusted channel of social media is markedly different than what was historically observed. We investigated the relationships among state-affiliated actors who use social media to produce and distribute propaganda along with their national cultural values. Prior research inferred a link between culture and social media usage (Hofstede et al., 2010; Sample & Karamanian 2014). Specifically, Hofstede et al. (2010) contended that cultures that are more masculine use the Internet for information seeking, whereas more feminine-oriented cultures use social media sites for sharing information, seeking to build better “trusting” relationships. We sought to explore whether masculine countries would leverage the trust relationships that are present with social media users to further the reach of state-affiliated propaganda. We built upon Bradshaw & Howard’s (2017) study on propaganda purveyors, which examined preferred social media deployment techniques across 29 different countries. Using previously published methods, we examined associations with culture using Hofestede’s scale. Since masculine countries have previously been associated with information-seeking behaviors, we sought to explore the potential that more masculine cultural values are associated with greater information-shaping and -distributing behaviors compared with more feminine cultural values. The results showed a strong difference in distributions, countries that deployed fake news via social media tended to have more masculine cultural values. Moderate differences were observed in other cultural values, purveyors of social media propaganda exhibited more authoritarianism and uncertainty avoidance. These findings suggest that specific cultural values associate with the distrubtion of fake news, indicating that culturally aware responses may be more effective when responding to these events

Cooperative action in eukaryotic gene regulation: physical properties of a viral example

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infects more than 90% of the human population, and is the cause of several both serious and mild diseases. It is a tumorivirus, and has been widely studied as a model system for gene (de)regulation in human. A central feature of the EBV life cycle is its ability to persist in human B cells in states denoted latency I, II and III. In latency III the host cell is driven to cell proliferation and hence expansion of the viral population, but does not enter the lytic pathway, and no new virions are produced, while the latency I state is almost completely dormant. In this paper we study a physico-chemical model of the switch between latency I and latency III in EBV. We show that the unusually large number of binding sites of two competing transcription factors, one viral and one from the host, serves to make the switch sharper (higher Hill coefficient), either by cooperative binding between molecules of the same species when they bind, or by competition between the two species if there is sufficient steric hindrance.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Epstein-Barr virus IL-10 gene expression by a recombinant murine gammaherpesvirus in vivo enhances acute pathogenicity but does not affect latency or reactivation.

BackgroundMany viral genes affect cytokine function within infected hosts, with interleukin 10 (IL-10) as a commonly targeted mediator. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) encodes an IL-10 homologue (vIL-10) expressed during productive (lytic) infection and induces expression of cellular IL-10 (cIL-10) during latency. This study explored the role of vIL-10 in a murine gammaherpesvirus (MHV) model of viral infection.MethodsThe EBV vIL-10 gene was inserted into MHV-76, a strain which lacks the ability to induce cIL-10, by recombination in transfected mouse cells. Mice were infected intranasally with the recombinant, vIL-10-containing MHV-76 or control virus strains and assayed at various days post infection for lung virus titer, spleen cell number, percentage of latently infected spleen cells and ability to reactivate virus from spleen cells.ResultsRecombinant murine gammaherpesvirus expressing EBV vIL-10 rose to significantly higher titers in lungs and promoted an increase in spleen cell number in infected mice in comparison to MHV strains lacking the vIL-10 gene. However, vIL-10 expression did not alter the quantity of latent virus in the spleen or its ability to reactivate.ConclusionsIn this mouse model of gammaherpesvirus infection, EBV vIL-10 appears to influence acute-phase pathogenicity. Given that EBV and MHV wild-type strains contain other genes that induce cIL-10 expression in latency (e.g. LMP-1 and M2, respectively), vIL-10 may have evolved to serve the specific role in acute infection of enlarging the permissive host cell population, perhaps to facilitate initial survival and dissemination of viral-infected cells

Defining Reasoning, Reflective Practice, and Evidence-Based Practice in Occupational Therapy Education: A Delphi Study

Reasoning, reflective practice, and evidence-based practice are essential skills for occupational therapy practitioners, but it is unclear how these skills are defined in occupational therapy education. We used Delphi methodology to explore educator conceptualizations of clinical reasoning, professional reasoning, reflective practice, and evidence-based practice. Eligible participants on the Delphi expert panel were required to have been an educator in an occupational therapy program for at least three years at the master’s level or higher, to be a current occupational therapy educator, based in the United States, and available across multiple survey rounds. Nine participants completed all three survey rounds. Among members of the expert panel there was continued moderate disagreement about terminology related to reasoning and there were some discrepancies between expert perspectives and the occupational therapy literature. However, these educators largely agreed on key features of the complex constructs. Consistency about the use of these terms will support both education and research related to essential professional skills

Recommendations to improve wildlife exposure estimation for development of soil screening and cleanup values

An integral component in the development of media-specific values for the ecological risk assessment of chemicals is the derivation of safe levels of exposure for wildlife. Although the derivation and subsequent application of these values can be used for screening purposes, there is a need to identify the threshold for effects when making remedial decisions during site-specific assessments. Methods for evaluation of wildlife exposure are included in the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) ecological soil screening levels (Eco-SSLs), registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals (REACH), and other risk-based soil assessment approaches. The goal of these approaches is to ensure that soil-associated contaminants do not pose a risk to wildlife that directly ingest soil, or to species that may be exposed to contaminants that persist in the food chain. These approaches incorporate broad assumptions in the exposure and effects assessments and in the risk characterization process. Consequently, thresholds for concluding risk are frequently very low with conclusions of risk possible when soil metal concentrations fall in the range of natural background. A workshop held in September, 2012 evaluated existing methods and explored recent science about factors to consider when establishing appropriate remedial goals for concentrations of metals in soils. A Foodweb Exposure Workgroup was organized to evaluate methods for quantifying exposure of wildlife to soil-associated metals through soil and food consumption and to provide recommendations for the development of ecological soil cleanup values (Eco-SCVs) that are both practical and scientifically defensible. The specific goals of this article are to review the current practices for quantifying exposure of wildlife to soil-associated contaminants via bioaccumulation and trophic transfer, to identify potential opportunities for refining and improving these exposure estimates, and finally, to make recommendations for application of these improved models to the development of site-specific remedial goals protective of wildlife. Although the focus is on metals contamination, many of the methods and tools discussed are also applicable to organic contaminants. The conclusion of this workgroup was that existing exposure estimation models are generally appropriate when fully expanded and that methods are generally available to develop more robust site-specific exposure estimates. Improved realism in site-specific wildlife Eco-SCVs could be achieved by obtaining more realistic estimates for diet composition, bioaccumulation, bioavailability and/or bioaccessibility, soil ingestion, spatial aspects of exposure, and target organ exposure. These components of wildlife exposure estimation should be developed on a site-, species-, and analyte-specific basis to the extent that the expense for their derivation is justified by the value they add to Eco-SCV development