Understanding Noncompliance: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Title IX Sexual Misconduct Violations Using the Office for Civil Rights Investigative Findings

On April 4, 2011 the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) reminding higher education institutions (HEIs) of their obligations under Title IX to respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. The 2011 DCL was meant to be a guidance document to assist HEIs in complying with Title IX, but many higher education administrators expressed frustrations concerning some of OCR’s requirements. Since releasing the 2011 DCL, OCR has opened more than 200 Title IX investigations at HEIs across the nation. When OCR concludes that a HEI has failed to comply with Title IX, OCR prepares a Letter of Findings (LOFs). This letter outlines OCR’s investigative approach and explains the reason behind their determination of Title IX noncompliance. This qualitative study examined OCR’s construction of Title IX noncompliance concerning how HEIs responded to sexual misconduct complaints. This study explored the following research questions 1) What discernable trends of Title IX noncompliance are identified in OCR’s published LOFs since the issuing of the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter? 2) How does OCR respond to HEIs regarding how sexual misconduct complaints are handled under Title IX? and 3) How does the information found in letters of findings (LOFs) between April 2011 and September 2016 overlap with or add to previous guidance documents provided by OCR? Analyzing LOFs using a social constructionist framework resulted in 9 themes and ancillary findings. Findings demonstrated OCR’s emphasis on social context, identifying trends, and victims. HEIs generally implemented Title IX guidelines, but failed to comply because OCR determined that they did not do enough for victims and the broader campus community. During complaint investigations, OCR is engaging in a comprehensive review of HEIs policies and practices unaffiliated with the original complaint. Lastly, findings also revealed that Title IX noncompliance is a social construct, as OCR’s determination of noncompliance varies. Implications for HEIs and future research are discussed

Tissue ablation with 100-fs and 200-ps laser pulses

The authors used water and human skin tissue to compare the surgical potential of 100-fs and 200-ps laser pulses. For investigation of threshold behavior of 100-fs and 200-ps pulses, the authors use water as a model for tissue. In addition to having a lower threshold, they find that energy deposition is much more consistent with 100-fs pulses. The authors also compared 100-fs and 200-ps laser pulse effects on the surface and in the bulk of human skin tissue. On the surface, pulses with 100-fs and 200-ps duration leave similar size ablation regions. In the bulk both 100-fs and 200-ps pulses produce cavities, however, 100-fs pulses result in a smaller cavity size. On both the surface and in the bulk 100-fs pulses show less collateral tissue damage than 200-ps pulses.published_or_final_versio

Opportunity costs and local health service spending decisions:a qualitative study from Wales

Background: All health care systems face the need to find the resources to meet new demands such as a new, cost-increasing health technology. In England and Wales, when a health technology is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the National Health Service (NHS) is mandated to provide the funding to accommodate it within three months of publication of the recommendation. Identifying what, in practice, is foregone when new cost-increasing technologies are introduced is important for understanding the effects of health technology assessment (HTA) decisions on the NHS or any other health care system. Our objective was to investigate how in practice local NHS commissioners in Wales accommodated financial �shocks� arising from technology appraisals (TAs) issued by NICE and from other cost pressures

Typical-Medium Theory of Mott-Anderson Localization

The Mott and the Anderson routes to localization have long been recognized as the two basic processes that can drive the metal-insulator transition (MIT). Theories separately describing each of these mechanisms were discussed long ago, but an accepted approach that can include both has remained elusive. The lack of any obvious static symmetry distinguishing the metal from the insulator poses another fundamental problem, since an appropriate static order parameter cannot be easily found. More recent work, however, has revisited the original arguments of Anderson and Mott, which stressed that the key diference between the metal end the insulator lies in the dynamics of the electron. This physical picture has suggested that the "typical" (geometrically averaged) escape rate from a given lattice site should be regarded as the proper dynamical order parameter for the MIT, one that can naturally describe both the Anderson and the Mott mechanism for localization. This article provides an overview of the recent results obtained from the corresponding Typical-Medium Theory, which provided new insight into the the two-fluid character of the Mott-Anderson transition.Comment: to be published in "Fifty Years of Anderson localization", edited by E. Abrahams (World Scientific, Singapore, 2010); 29 pages, 22 figures