Meaningful Access: True Equality or Frightening Reality?

“It’s too good to be true” summarizes the decision in Childress v. Fox Associates, LLC. The Childress court admirably aimed to create a more accessible society for individuals with disabilities but may have unintentionally created the exact opposite. Courts require public accommodations to provide “meaningful access” to individuals with disabilities in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). However, “meaningful access” is an unclear, evolving standard. The Childress decision strayed from precedent by heightening the standard for meaningful access to a level equal to identical access. While this heightened standard strives for the goal of true equality, it consequently shifts the focus of courts’ decisions to the sufficiency of a claimed affirmative defense – that is, the requested accommodation would pose an undue buden. Analyzing a case based on the sufficiency of an affirmative defense – especially in the context of ADA Accommodations – is detrimental because it forces courts to determine whether an accommodation must be provided at all, instead of deciding what degree satisfies meaningful access. The framework for analyzing meaningful access set forth by the Childress decision may create detrimental impacts long into the future

Hindsight 20/20: Missouri’s Use of Statutory Interpretation as a Key Insight for Future Litigation Missouri State Conference of Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. State, 607 S.W.3d 728 (Mo. 2020).

In Missouri State Conference of Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. State (hereinafter “NAACP v. State”), the Supreme Court of Missouri interpreted a Missouri statute that expanded the right to vote absentee in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new provision allowed all registered Missouri voters to vote absentee during the 2020 elections but required most absentee voters to have their ballots notarized. Voters who were “confined due to illness” or qualified as part of an “at-risk” category, however, were not required to have their ballots notarized. Appellants challenged the bill, claiming that voluntarily confining oneself as a precautionary measure and in accordance with social distancing guidelines was a form of “confinement due to illness,” which would permit valid absentee voting without requiring the certification of a notary. Appellants also argued that requiring notarization for individuals that do not fall into the enumerated categories infringed on their fundamental right to vote under the Missouri Constitution. The Supreme Court of Missouri employed various methods of statutory interpretation to determine when individuals are “confined due to illness” and how enacted safety and social distancing measures affect the Constitutional right to vote.6 The decision in NAACP v. State provides insight into the Supreme Court of Missouri’s interpretation of legislative action in response to emergency situations

Running GAGs: myxoid matrix in tumor pathology revisited: What’s in it for the pathologist?

Ever since Virchow introduced the entity myxoma, abundant myxoid extracellular matrix (ECM) has been recognized in various reactive and neoplastic lesions. Nowadays, the term “myxoid” is commonly used in daily pathological practice. But what do today’s pathologists mean by it, and what does the myxoid ECM tell the pathologist? What is known about the exact composition and function of the myxoid ECM 150 years after Virchow? Here, we give an overview of the composition and constituents of the myxoid ECM as known so far and demonstrate the heterogeneity of the myxoid ECM among different tumors. We discuss the possible role of the predominant constituents of the myxoid ECM and attempt to relate them to differences in clinical behavior. Finally, we will speculate on the potential relevance of this knowledge in daily pathological practice

Insect Pollinated Crops, Insect Pollinators and US Agriculture: Trend Analysis of Aggregate Data for the Period 1992–2009

In the US, the cultivated area (hectares) and production (tonnes) of crops that require or benefit from insect pollination (directly dependent crops: apples, almonds, blueberries, cucurbits, etc.) increased from 1992, the first year in this study, through 1999 and continued near those levels through 2009; aggregate yield (tonnes/hectare) remained unchanged. The value of directly dependent crops attributed to all insect pollination (2009 USD) decreased from $14.29 billion in 1996, the first year for value data in this study, to$10.69 billion in 2001, but increased thereafter, reaching $15.12 billion by 2009. The values attributed to honey bees and non-Apis pollinators followed similar patterns, reaching$11.68 billion and $3.44 billion, respectively, by 2009. The cultivated area of crops grown from seeds resulting from insect pollination (indirectly dependent crops: legume hays, carrots, onions, etc.) was stable from 1992 through 1999, but has since declined. Production of those crops also declined, albeit not as rapidly as the decline in cultivated area; this asymmetry was due to increases in aggregate yield. The value of indirectly dependent crops attributed to insect pollination declined from$15.45 billion in 1996 to $12.00 billion in 2004, but has since trended upward. The value of indirectly dependent crops attributed to honey bees and non-Apis pollinators, exclusive of alfalfa leafcutter bees, has declined since 1996 to$5.39 billion and $1.15 billion, respectively in 2009. The value of alfalfa hay attributed to alfalfa leafcutter bees ranged between$4.99 and $7.04 billion. Trend analysis demonstrates that US producers have a continued and significant need for insect pollinators and that a diminution in managed or wild pollinator populations could seriously threaten the continued production of insect pollinated crops and crops grown from seeds resulting from insect pollination

Discerning natural and anthropogenic organic matter inputs to salt marsh sediments of Ria Formosa lagoon (South Portugal)

Sedimentary organic matter (OM) origin and molecular composition provide useful information to understand carbon cycling in coastal wetlands. Core sediments from threors' Contributionse transects along Ria Formosa lagoon intertidal zone were analysed using analytical pyrolysis (Py-GC/MS) to determine composition, distribution and origin of sedimentary OM. The distribution of alkyl compounds (alkanes, alkanoic acids and alkan-2-ones), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), lignin-derived methoxyphenols, linear alkylbenzenes (LABs), steranes and hopanes indicated OM inputs to the intertidal environment from natural-autochthonous and allochthonous-as well as anthropogenic. Several n-alkane geochemical indices used to assess the distribution of main OM sources (terrestrial and marine) in the sediments indicate that algal and aquatic macrophyte derived OM inputs dominated over terrigenous plant sources. The lignin-derived methoxyphenol assemblage, dominated by vinylguaiacol and vinylsyringol derivatives in all sediments, points to large OM contribution from higher plants. The spatial distributions of PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) showed that most pollution sources were mixed sources including both pyrogenic and petrogenic. Low carbon preference indexes (CPI > 1) for n-alkanes, the presence of UCM (unresolved complex mixture) and the distribution of hopanes (C-29-C-36) and steranes (C-27-C-29) suggested localized petroleum-derived hydrocarbon inputs to the core sediments. Series of LABs were found in most sediment samples also pointing to domestic sewage anthropogenic contributions to the sediment OM.EU Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate fellowship (FUECA, University of Cadiz, Spain)EUEuropean Commission [FP7-ENV-2011, 282845, FP7-534 ENV-2012, 308392]MINECO project INTERCARBON [CGL2016-78937-R]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Socioeconomic mobility and talent utilization of workers from poorer backgrounds: The overlooked importance of within-organization dynamics

Socioeconomic mobility, or the ability of individuals to improve their socioeconomic standing through merit-based contributions, is a fundamental ideal of modern societies. The key focus of societal efforts to ensure socioeconomic mobility has been on the provision of educational opportunities. We review evidence that even with the same education and job opportunities, being born into a poorer family undermines socioeconomic mobility due to processes occurring within organizations. The burden of poorer background might, ceteris paribus, be economically comparable to the gender gap. We argue that in the societal and scientific effort to promote socioeconomic mobility, the key context in which mobility is supposed to happen—organizations—as well as the key part of the life of people striving toward socioeconomic advancement—that as working adults—have been overlooked. We integrate the organizational literature pointing to key within-organizational processes impacting objective (socioeconomic) success with research, some emergent in organizational sciences and some disciplinary, on when, why, and how people from poorer backgrounds behave or are treated by others in the relevant situations. Integrating these literatures generates a novel and useful framework for identifying issues people born into poorer families face as employees, systematizes extant evidence and makes it more accessible to organizational scientists, and allows us to lay the agenda for future organizational scholarshi

A Neuron-Glial Perspective for Computational Neuroscience

International audienceThere is growing excitement around glial cells, as compelling evidence point to new, previously unimaginable roles for these cells in information processing of the brain, with the potential to affect behavior and higher cognitive functions. Among their many possible functions, glial cells could be involved in practically every aspect of the brain physiology in health and disease. As a result, many investigators in the field welcome the notion of a Neuron-Glial paradigm of brain function, as opposed to Ramon y Cayal's more classical neuronal doctrine which identifies neurons as the prominent, if not the only, cells capable of a signaling role in the brain. The demonstration of a brain-wide Neuron-Glial paradigm however remains elusive and so does the notion of what neuron-glial interactions could be functionally relevant for the brain computational tasks. In this perspective, we present a selection of arguments inspired by available experimental and modeling studies with the aim to provide a biophysical and conceptual platform to computational neuroscience no longer as a mere prerogative of neuronal signaling but rather as the outcome of a complex interaction between neurons and glial cells

Hindsight 20/20: Missouri’s Use of Statutory Interpretation as a Key Insight for Future Litigation Missouri State Conference of Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. State, 607 S.W.3d 728 (Mo. 2020).

In Missouri State Conference of Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. State (hereinafter “NAACP v. State”), the Supreme Court of Missouri interpreted a Missouri statute that expanded the right to vote absentee in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new provision allowed all registered Missouri voters to vote absentee during the 2020 elections but required most absentee voters to have their ballots notarized. Voters who were “confined due to illness” or qualified as part of an “at-risk” category, however, were not required to have their ballots notarized. Appellants challenged the bill, claiming that voluntarily confining oneself as a precautionary measure and in accordance with social distancing guidelines was a form of “confinement due to illness,” which would permit valid absentee voting without requiring the certification of a notary. Appellants also argued that requiring notarization for individuals that do not fall into the enumerated categories infringed on their fundamental right to vote under the Missouri Constitution. The Supreme Court of Missouri employed various methods of statutory interpretation to determine when individuals are “confined due to illness” and how enacted safety and social distancing measures affect the Constitutional right to vote.6 The decision in NAACP v. State provides insight into the Supreme Court of Missouri’s interpretation of legislative action in response to emergency situations

Meaningful Access: True Equality or Frightening Reality?

“It’s too good to be true” summarizes the decision in Childress v. Fox Associates, LLC. The Childress court admirably aimed to create a more accessible society for individuals with disabilities but may have unintentionally created the exact opposite. Courts require public accommodations to provide “meaningful access” to individuals with disabilities in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). However, “meaningful access” is an unclear, evolving standard. The Childress decision strayed from precedent by heightening the standard for meaningful access to a level equal to identical access. While this heightened standard strives for the goal of true equality, it consequently shifts the focus of courts’ decisions to the sufficiency of a claimed affirmative defense – that is, the requested accommodation would pose an undue buden. Analyzing a case based on the sufficiency of an affirmative defense – especially in the context of ADA Accommodations – is detrimental because it forces courts to determine whether an accommodation must be provided at all, instead of deciding what degree satisfies meaningful access. The framework for analyzing meaningful access set forth by the Childress decision may create detrimental impacts long into the future

Impact of Activity-Based Therapy on Respiratory Outcomes in a Medically Complex Child

Introduction: Activity-based therapies (ABTs) focus on activating the neuromuscular system below the level of spinal cord injury (SCI) promoting neuromuscular capacity. Case description: A 2 year 7 month old with history of prematurity at 29 weeks, neonatal epidural abscess, resultant cervical SCI, respiratory failure, and global developmental delays presented for enrollment in an outpatient activity-based therapy program. Upon presentation to this program, he required nighttime mechanical ventilation via tracheostomy and daytime suctioning. He could not perform any age-appropriate activities and was described by his mother as ‘present’, neither engaged nor attentive. During and after 7 months of participation in ABTs including locomotor training and neuromuscular electrical stimulation, the patient demonstrated unexpected changes in his respiratory status leading to ventilator weaning with concomitant improvements in head and trunk control, participation, development, and quality of life. Discussion: ABT was not only safe for a medically complex child, but also this intervention had a remarkable effect on unresolved respiratory capacity and a more widespread impact on other functions as well as development. A child with a chronic, severe SCI demonstrated positive and impactful improvements in health, functional status, and quality of life during an episode of ABT