Anti-SLAPP Confabulation & the Government Speech Doctrine

NOTE: The attached article is an updated version of the print edition, 9Dec2014. California was the first state to find judicial acceptance of the notion that government may avail itself of anti-SLAPP protections against private citizens who petition for redress of grievances. It is the purpose of this article to explore the judicial entrenchment of such a misguided balancing of government interests against constitutional rights, and to illustrate why it is shortsighted and a very harmful misinterpretation of otherwise very worthy and beneficial statutes

Discrimination, Coping, and Depression among Black Men Who Have Sex with Men

Black men who have sex with men (BMSM) have elevated risk for depression compared to the general population. BMSM’s capacity to cope with these experiences is not well understood. Increased understanding of how multiple forms of discrimination contribute to depression and how BMSM cope with discrimination can better inform interventions. Data come from 3,510 BMSM who attended Black Pride events in six U.S. cities from 2015-2017. Participants completed a health survey that ascertained their psychosocial health and resiliency profiles. Using multivariable logistic regression models, we tested the associations between type-specific discrimination (race, sexuality, HIV status) and depression. We then conducted sub-analyses to determine if coping attenuated the association between type-specific discrimination and depression. Our findings indicated that increased odds of depression among BMSM were associated with discrimination based on race (aOR=1.38, 95% CI = 1.08-1.76), sexual orientation (aOR=1.32, 95% CI = 1.01-1.72), and HIV status (aOR=1.53, 95% CI = 1.08-2.17). Sub-analyses indicated coping had inconsistent moderation effects between type-specific discrimination and depression. Our findings demonstrate that impact of various forms of discrimination on BMSM’s mental health and the mitigating role of coping. Interventions should seek to address depression by reducing experiences of discrimination and building coping resiliency

Toward a Socially Just Peace in the War on Drugs?: The Illinois Cannabis Social-Equity Program

Laudably, when Illinois legalized the recreational use of cannabis, it also sought to repair the damage wrought by the War on Drugs (WOD)through its social-equity initiatives. That harm included excessive and disproportionate incarceration in communities of color, over-policing within those communities, and all of the social and economic harms implicit in those realities. This harm necessarily creates intergenerational harm, as parents and children lose necessary pillars of support. Moreover, compelling evidence suggests that the progenitors of the WOD in-tended this harm. Measured against this historic social injustice, the social equity efforts in Illinois fail to secure a material unwinding of the WOD harms. Illinois needs a broader approach to ending the War on Drugs beyond cannabis. Treatment should displace criminalization for narcotics. Expungements should become automatic and more widely available. The state should immediately issue more social-equity licenses in affected communities. Investment of revenues from cannabis and other decriminalized drugs in affected communities should continue

Irrigation for cerumen removal causing meningitis – case report

Introduction: Cerumen impaction is a common problem seen in primary care clinics. There are a variety of methods to deal with impacted cerumen including water irrigation but meningitis after water irrigation cerumen removal has not been previously reported. Methods: We describe the case of a 59-year-old female with otitis media who developed meningitis with empyema after water-jet irrigation for impacted cerumen. Results: Our patient presented 24-hours after water-jet irrigation for impacted cerumen with worsening headaches. Workup included positive CSF cultures and empyema on MRI consistent with meningitis. She also had ear drainage from the treated ear which was positive for multiple organisms. Neurologically she deteriorated in the short term but began to improve with intensive intravenous treatment. She was treated with six months of intravenous antibiotics and transitioned to further treatment with oral antibiotics as her laboratory testing and imaging improved. She showed ultimate resolution of labs, imaging and neurologic findings, returning to baseline. Conclusion: We report the first case to our knowledge of meningitis after water-jet irrigation for impacted cerumen. We recommend care when treating impacted cerumen in patients with underlying otitis media as there may be a risk for meningitis in certain circumstances

Cosmic Inflation and Genetic Algorithms

Large classes of standard single-field slow-roll inflationary models consistent with the required number of e-folds, the current bounds on the spectral index of scalar perturbations, the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and the scale of inflation can be efficiently constructed using genetic algorithms. The setup is modular and can be easily adapted to include further phenomenological constraints. A semi-comprehensive search for sextic polynomial potentials results in roughly O(300,000) viable models for inflation. The analysis of this dataset reveals a preference for models with a tensor-to-scalar ratio in the range 0.0001 < r < 0.0004. We also consider potentials that involve cosine and exponential terms. In the last part we explore more complex methods of search relying on reinforcement learning and genetic programming. While reinforcement learning proves more difficult to use in this context, the genetic programming approach has the potential to uncover a multitude of viable inflationary models with new functional forms.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

Propiedades físicas y mecánicas de concreto hidráulico modificado con microsilice y cal en revestimiento de canales, Puno 2022

Para la presente investigación titulada: “Propiedades Físicas y Mecánicas de concreto hidráulico modificado con microsilice y cal en revestido de canales, Puno 2022”, fijo como objetivo: “Determinar la variación de las propiedades físicas y mecánicas de concreto hidráulico modificado con microsilice y cal en revestido de canales, Puno 2022”. Como metodología, se aplicó método científico, tipo factorial del nivel explicativo y diseño experimental. Los resultados que se obtuvieron fueron: la durabilidad mostro un valor de 10.73% ± 2.01 % a la edad de 28 días, así mismo la absorción presentó un valor óptimo de 10.999 % ± 0.129 % en la edad de 28 días, seguidamente la resistencia a la compresión registro el valor más alto de f’c= 121.07 % ± 11.44 kg/cm2, por último la resistencia a la flexión obteniendo el valor máximo Mr = 32.99 kg/cm2 ± 2.03 kg/cm2. Concluyendo al aumentar la durabilidad, la absorción y aumentar aún más la resistencia a la compresión y la resistencia a la flexión, el uso de (5% de microsilice, 10% de cal), (3% de microsilice, 12% de cal), (10% de microsilice, 5% de cal) y (3% de microsilice, 12% de cal) mejora las propiedades físicas y mecánicas del hormigón hidráulico

Automated, high accuracy classification of Parkinsonian disorders: a pattern recognition approach

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA) and idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) can be clinically indistinguishable, especially in the early stages, despite distinct patterns of molecular pathology. Structural neuroimaging holds promise for providing objective biomarkers for discriminating these diseases at the single subject level but all studies to date have reported incomplete separation of disease groups. In this study, we employed multi-class pattern recognition to assess the value of anatomical patterns derived from a widely available structural neuroimaging sequence for automated classification of these disorders. To achieve this, 17 patients with PSP, 14 with IPD and 19 with MSA were scanned using structural MRI along with 19 healthy controls (HCs). An advanced probabilistic pattern recognition approach was employed to evaluate the diagnostic value of several pre-defined anatomical patterns for discriminating the disorders, including: (i) a subcortical motor network; (ii) each of its component regions and (iii) the whole brain. All disease groups could be discriminated simultaneously with high accuracy using the subcortical motor network. The region providing the most accurate predictions overall was the midbrain/brainstem, which discriminated all disease groups from one another and from HCs. The subcortical network also produced more accurate predictions than the whole brain and all of its constituent regions. PSP was accurately predicted from the midbrain/brainstem, cerebellum and all basal ganglia compartments; MSA from the midbrain/brainstem and cerebellum and IPD from the midbrain/brainstem only. This study demonstrates that automated analysis of structural MRI can accurately predict diagnosis in individual patients with Parkinsonian disorders, and identifies distinct patterns of regional atrophy particularly useful for this process