What Is Quality? Advancing Value-Added Approaches to Assessing Law School Bar Exam Performance

U.S. News & World Report rankings and tier groupings are often used as proxy measures of law school quality. But many of the factors that contribute to both law school outcomes and U.S. News rankings (e.g., undergraduate GPAs [UGPA], LSAT scores, admission rates) do not reflect the impact law schools have on student outcomes, such as bar passage and employment. We propose a method for measuring institutional quality that is based on a school’s ability to improve its graduates’ likelihood of first-time bar passage while controlling for those students’ preadmission characteristics. Using a value-added modeling technique, we first isolate each law school’s expected bar performance for the 2013–2018 bar takers given those cohorts’ entering characteristics and the school’s attrition and transfer patterns, then identify the degree to which this prediction overperforms or underperforms the school’s actual bar performance. Additionally, we utilize a bar pass differential rather than a school’s first-time bar pass rate, allowing us to account for variation between jurisdictions’ grading and cut scores. Finally, we provide a ranked list of law schools based on their added value for each entering cohort

Cold Positrons from Decaying Dark Matter

Many models of dark matter contain more than one new particle beyond those in the Standard Model. Often heavier particles decay into the lightest dark matter particle as the Universe evolves. Here we explore the possibilities that arise if one of the products in a (Heavy Particle) $\rightarrow$ (Dark Matter) decay is a positron, and the lifetime is shorter than the age of the Universe. The positrons cool down by scattering off the cosmic microwave background and eventually annihilate when they fall into Galactic potential wells. The resulting 511 keV flux not only places constraints on this class of models but might even be consistent with that observed by the INTEGRAL satellite.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

The Inhibition of Growth of S. cerevisiae, U. maydis, and M. lychinidis-dioicae by Apiaecea Plant Extracts

The Apiaceae family of plants contains over 3,500 species, many of which are used as food crops: vegetables (carrot, parsnip, celery, etc.), herbs (cilantro, fennel, dill, etc.), and spices (cumin, anise, caraway, etc.). Many spices have been shown to exhibit antimicrobial properties against both bacteria and fungi. We set out to determine if the Apiaceae spice extracts currently used in our lab for anticancer studies exhibit any antimicrobial properties. Ethanolic extracts were made from several Apiaceae seeds: Apium graveolens (celery), Cuminum cyminum (cumin), Anethum graveolens(dill), Foeniculum vulgare (fennel), Coriandrum satvium (coriander), Pimpinella ansium (anise), Trachyspermum ammi (ajwain), Carum carvi (caraway).The antimicrobial effects of the extracts were assayed with the Kirby-Bauer (KB) Assay against several microbial species; four bacterial species (E. coli, S. aureus, S. pyogenes, S. enterica) and three fungal species (U. maydis, S. cerevisiae, and M. lyocens-diociae). KB assays for bacteria were performed on LB plates with ampicillin positive controls and ethanol solvent controls, while fungal KB assays were performed on YPD plates with zeocin positive controls and ethanol solvent controls. KB diffusion disks were placed on inoculated plates and impregnated with the extracts and controls. The zones of inhibition for each extract and control were measured and compared. The antibacterial KB assays revealed minimal effects when compared to the ethanol control in all bacterial species tested. The antifungal KB assays indicated that some of the spice extracts exhibit antifungal properties. The celery and ajwain extracts had broad antifungal effects against all three fungal species, while the anise and cumin were only able to inhibit U. maydis, showing minimal effects against the other two fungal species.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1055/thumbnail.jp

It\u27s Not Where You Start, It\u27s How You Finish: Predicting Law School and Bar Success

In this study, we examine the extent to which academic and student engagement factors explain law school grades and first-time bar exam performance. Applying fixed effects linear and logit modeling, our analysis leverages law student transcript data and responses to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) among students from a diverse group of 20 law schools to estimate academic performance and odds of bar passage. Most notably, we find that GPA improvement during law school is associated with greater odds of passing the bar exam, particularly among students who struggle the most during the first semester. Furthermore, while we find that LSAT scores and undergraduate GPA are predictive (p \u3c 0.05) of both law school performance and bar success (as in previous research), these effects are quite modest. Based on these findings, we propose and discuss several recommendations. These should be helpful to higher education scholars and practitioners, particularly law school deans, administrators, faculty, and academic support staff

Can we avoid dark energy?

The idea that we live near the centre of a large, nonlinear void has attracted attention recently as an alternative to dark energy or modified gravity. We show that an appropriate void profile can fit both the latest cosmic microwave background and supernova data. However, this requires either a fine-tuned primordial spectrum or a Hubble rate so low as to rule these models out. We also show that measurements of the radial baryon acoustic scale can provide very strong constraints. Our results present a serious challenge to void models of acceleration.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; minor changes; version published in Phys. Rev. Let