Lost Souls: Constitutional Implications For the Deficiencies in Treatment For Persons With Mental Illness In Custody

This Comment explores systemic deficiencies of access to mental health care in prison systems and the Eighth Amendment implications of those deficiencies. Because the Eighth Amendment prohibits, among other things, infliction of cruel and unusual punishments, when denial of adequate mental health care results in undue suffering, the conditions of confinement may violate the Constitution. Therefore, there must be mechanisms in place to ensure necessary treatment is provided while protecting individual rights. Part I of this Comment addresses the duty a state owes to those it incarcerates (e.g., to provide food, clothing, recreation, education, medical care) and what standards exist for the provision of reasonable care and to ensure that prescribed care is in fact delivered. Part I also summarizes the history of prisoners’ efforts to redress conditions of confinement and the standards that have developed for constitutional challenges. Part II focuses on the legal framework for Eighth Amendment challenges brought by prisoners and how the standard for evaluating those claims has evolved. Part III explores the problems persons with mental illness face in challenging the conditions of their confinement after Estelle v. Gamble, identifies the particular barriers to Eighth Amendment challenges for persons with mental health problems created by Farmer v. Brennan, and addresses the tension between providing mental health care to the incarcerated and the right to refuse treatment. Part IV proposes three systemic changes, applicable to both prisons and the surrounding legal framework, that address the deficiencies and disparities in how the needs of inmates with mental health problems are managed. Cite as: 42 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 497 (2012)

Lost Souls: Constitutional Implications For the Deficiencies in Treatment For Persons With Mental Illness In Custody

This Comment explores systemic deficiencies of access to mental health care in prison systems and the Eighth Amendment implications of those deficiencies. Because the Eighth Amendment prohibits, among other things, infliction of cruel and unusual punishments, when denial of adequate mental health care results in undue suffering, the conditions of confinement may violate the Constitution. Therefore, there must be mechanisms in place to ensure necessary treatment is provided while protecting individual rights. Part I of this Comment addresses the duty a state owes to those it incarcerates (e.g., to provide food, clothing, recreation, education, medical care) and what standards exist for the provision of reasonable care and to ensure that prescribed care is in fact delivered. Part I also summarizes the history of prisoners’ efforts to redress conditions of confinement and the standards that have developed for constitutional challenges. Part II focuses on the legal framework for Eighth Amendment challenges brought by prisoners and how the standard for evaluating those claims has evolved. Part III explores the problems persons with mental illness face in challenging the conditions of their confinement after Estelle v. Gamble, identifies the particular barriers to Eighth Amendment challenges for persons with mental health problems created by Farmer v. Brennan, and addresses the tension between providing mental health care to the incarcerated and the right to refuse treatment. Part IV proposes three systemic changes, applicable to both prisons and the surrounding legal framework, that address the deficiencies and disparities in how the needs of inmates with mental health problems are managed. Cite as: 42 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 497 (2012)

Adaptive Risk Network Dependency Analysis of Complex Hierarchical Systems

Recently the number, variety, and complexity of interconnected systems have been increasing while the resources available to increase resilience of those systems have been decreasing. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to quantify the effects of risks and the resulting disruptions over time as they ripple through networks of systems. This dissertation presents a novel modeling and simulation methodology which quantifies resilience, as impact on performance over time, and risk, as the impact of probabilistic disruptions. This work includes four major contributions over the state-of-the-art which are: (1) cyclic dependencies are captured by separation of performance variables into layers which can have different topologies, (2) temporal dependence is modeled using Bayesian networks to allow for incorporation of evidence-based data over time and produce a dynamic model incorporating risk and resilience behavior over time, (3) a combined approach maps from discrete random variables in the risk network to continuous variables in the system network allowing for the propagation of risk throughout the system, and (4) a decomposable architecture allows various components to be represented at different level of detail and overall system reconfiguration to be explored. Applications are provided in supply chain analysis and port logistics to demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the methodology

Extraordinary diversity among members of the large gene family, 185/333, from the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent analysis of immune-related genes within the sea urchin genome revealed a number of large gene families with vertebrate homologues, such as the Toll-like and NOD/NALP-like receptor families and C-type lectins in addition to a rudimentary complement system. Therefore, the immune response of the purple sea urchin appears to be more complex than previously believed. Another component of the sea urchin immune response is an unusual family of mRNAs, known as <it>185/333</it>, which is strongly upregulated in response to pathogen challenge. The work presented here indicates that this family of transcripts is derived from an unexpectedly diverse gene family.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The <it>185/333 </it>genes are small (< 2 kb) with only two exons. Their extraordinary diversity was exemplified by 121 unique sequences identified from 171 cloned genes. Sequences from the second exons were aligned optimally by introducing large gaps, which defined blocks of sequence known as elements. Genes were defined by the presence or absence of elements. Phylogenetic analysis defined five intron types which, when combined with the exon element patterns resulted in 31 gene patterns, 14 of which were not described previously. Sequence diversity was present in all elements, and was higher in the intron than the exons. Repeats within the sequence facilitated multiple alignments, of which two were analyzed in detail. Although the two alignments differed in length, number of elements, and number of patterns, both were about equally accurate at describing the <it>185/333 </it>sequences. The genes were closely linked and flanked by short repeats. The repeats within and between the genes may promote their diversification through gene conversion, recombination, and meiotic mispairing.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The diversity of the <it>185/333 </it>gene family represents an intriguing addition to what is known about the <it>S. purpuratus </it>immune response, and provides further evidence that invertebrate immune systems are neither simple nor static.</p

Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

While laboratory instruction is a cornerstone of physics education, the impact of student behaviours in labs on retention, persistence in the field, and the formation of students' physics identity remains an open question. In this study, we performed in-lab observations of student actions over two semesters in two pedagogically different sections of the same introductory physics course. We used a cluster analysis to identify different categories of student behaviour and analyzed how they correlate with lab structure and gender. We find that, in lab structures which fostered collaborative group work and promoted decision making, there was a task division along gender lines with respect to laptop and equipment usage (and found no such divide among students in guided verification labs).Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Iolta in the Balance: The Battle of Legality and Morality between Robin Hood and the Miser Recent Development.

Interest on Lawyers Trust Account (IOLTA) programs recently survived a constitutional challenge. IOLTA programs require interest earned from trust accounts deposited with client money to fund legal services for the poor. Many states, including Texas, maintain a mandatory IOLTA program, requiring all lawyers who handle client funds to participate. Proponents of IOLTA argue it benefits civil justice. Opponents argue it is an unconstitutional taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Circuit held IOLTA accounts to be an unconstitutional taking of client property. The Ninth Circuit, however, found IOLTA accounts constitutional, holding that IOLTA accounts are not a taking for which just compensation is due. The issue was recently resolved in the Supreme Court of the United States\u27 decision in Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington. The Court, recognizing the public purpose served by IOLTA accounts, found such accounts to be constitutional and not in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.   The Texas IOLTA program serves as a significant source of funding for civil legal services, which generated over $ 5 million in 2001. Without IOLTA funding, thousands of poor individuals in Texas would be unable to obtain legal services to resolve even the most pressing of legal concerns. An analogy of the debate can be drawn using the literary characters of Robin Hood and the Miser, Robin Hood, who wants to take IOLTA interest for the good of society, and the Miser, who wants nothing more than to keep what is rightfully his. Although the Supreme Court clearly settled the Fifth Amendment debate related to the taking of interest accrued on IOLTA accounts, the morality and legality of the current IOLTA programs may still be in the balance on First Amendment grounds. Nonetheless, IOLTA programs should survive a First Amendment constitutional challenge with consent from the client

A New Class of non-Hermitian Quantum Hamiltonians with PT Symmetry

In a remarkable development Bender and coworkers have shown that it is possible to formulate quantum mechanics consistently even if the Hamiltonian and other observables are not Hermitian. Their formulation, dubbed PT quantum mechanics, replaces hermiticity by another set of requirements, notably that the Hamiltonian should be invariant under the discrete symmetry PT, where P denotes parity and T denotes time reversal. All prior work has focused on the case that time reversal is even (T^2 = 1). We generalize the formalism to the case of odd time reversal (T^2 = -1). We discover an analogue of Kramer's theorem for PT quantum mechanics, present a prototypical example of a PT quantum system with odd time reversal, and discuss potential applications of the formalism. Odd time reversal symmetry applies to fermionic systems including quarks and leptons and a plethora of models in nuclear, atomic and condensed matter physics. PT quantum mechanics makes it possible to enlarge the set of possible Hamiltonians that physicists could deploy to describe fundamental physics beyond the standard model or for the effective description of condensed matter phenomena.Comment: Replaced submitted version with accepted version; to appear in Phys Rev