Justice John Marshall Harlan as Prophet: The Plessy Dissenter\u27s Color-Blind Constitution

The concept of color-blindness has long elicited much debate over its precise meaning and the role it should play in jurisprudence. Such debate was catalyzed by Justice John Marshall Harlan\u27s well-known Plessy dissent. In the wake of the efforts of both civil rights activists and conservatives to use color-blindness to further their respective goals, Professor O\u27Brien seeks to clarify Harlan\u27s vision of color-blind jurisprudence and examines the ways in which recent Supreme Court decisions echo Harlan\u27s concepts regarding a color-blind constitution. Professor O\u27Brien first provides a brief introduction to the concept of color-blindness. O\u27Brien then examines Harlan\u27s experiences in politics and war to explain the bases of Harlan\u27s beliefs, which O\u27Brien argues were steeped in white paternalism and Republican federalism. By analyzing Harlan\u27s decisions in several key cases, O\u27Brien pinpoints two consistencies in Harlan\u27s race jurisprudence: his commitment to federalism and his belief that for a court to find that a plaintiff has been racially discriminated against, the discrimination must have been explicit and purposeful. Finally, O\u27Brien adresses the limitations of constitutional color-blindness and the ways in which current members of the Supreme Court continue to echo Harlan\u27s opinions regarding the interaction between federalism and color-blind racial justice. Professor O\u27Brien concludes that although John Marshall Harlan was prophetic in his prediction that legally sanctioned segregation would place minorities in a position of legal inferiority, Harlan\u27s world-view caused him to fail to address pervasive prejudice against African-Americans by elevating formal equality and federalism concerns above social realities and remedial needs. Additionally, O\u27Brien concludes that, like Harlan, the current Supreme Court unnecessarily has limited its remedial power with regard to racial justice

Precision measurements with polar molecules: the role of the black body radiation

In the perspective of the outstanding developments of high-precision measurements of fundamental constants using polar molecules related to ultimate checks of fundamental theories, we investigate the possibly counterproductive role of black-body radiation on a series of diatomic molecules which would be trapped and observed for long durations. We show that the absorption of black-body radiation at room temperature may indeed limit the lifetime of trapped molecules prepared in a well-defined quantum state. Several examples are treated, corresponding to pure rotational absorption, pure vibrational absorption or both. We also investigate the role of a black-body radiation-induced energy shift on molecular levels and how it could affect high-precision frequency measurements

Electrostatic extraction of cold molecules from a cryogenic reservoir

We present a method which delivers a continuous, high-density beam of slow and internally cold polar molecules. In our source, warm molecules are first cooled by collisions with a cryogenic helium buffer gas. Cold molecules are then extracted by means of an electrostatic quadrupole guide. For ND$_3$ the source produces fluxes up to $(7 \pm ^{7}_{4}) \times 10^{10}$ molecules/s with peak densities up to $(1.0 \pm ^{1.0}_{0.6}) \times 10^9$ molecules/cm$^3$. For H$_2$CO the population of rovibrational states is monitored by depletion spectroscopy, resulting in single-state populations up to $(82 \pm 10)$.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, changes to the text, updated figures and reference

Near and mid-IR sub-arcsecond structure of the dusty symbiotic star R Aqr

The results of a high-resolution interferometric campaign targeting the symbiotic long-period variable (LPV) R~Aqr are reported. With both near-infrared measurements on baselines out to 10m and mid-infrared data extending to 32m, we have been able to measure the characteristic sizes of regions from the photosphere of the LPV and its extended molecular atmosphere, out to the cooler circumstellar dust shell. The near-infrared data were taken using aperture masking interferometry on the Keck-I telescope and show R~Aqr to be partially resolved for wavelengths out to 2.2 microns but with a marked enlargement, possibly due to molecular opacity, at 3.1 microns. Mid-infrared interferometric measurements were obtained with the U.C. Berkeley Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) operating at 11.15 microns from 1992 to 1999. Although this dataset is somewhat heterogeneous with incomplete coverage of the Fourier plane and sampling of the pulsation cycle, clear changes in the mid-infrared brightness distribution were observed, both as a function of position angle on the sky and as a function of pulsation phase. Spherically symmetric radiative transfer calculations of uniform-outflow dust shell models produce brightness distributions and spectra which partially explain the data, however limitations to this approximation are noted. Evidence for significant deviation from circular symmetry was found in the mid-infrared and more tentatively at 3.08 microns in the near-infrared, however no clear detection of binarity or of non-LPV elements in the symbiotic system is reported.Comment: Accepted to Astrophysical Journal. To appear in volume 534. 14 pages; 3 postscript figure

Imaging the disk around the luminous young star LkHalpha 101 with infrared interferometry

The Herbig Ae/Be star LkHalpha 101 has been imaged at high angular resolution at a number of wavelengths in the near-infrared (from 1 to 3 microns) using the Keck 1 Telescope, and also observed in the mid-infrared (11.15 microns) using the U.C. Berkeley Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI). The resolved circular disk with a central hole or cavity reported in Tuthill et al. (2001) is confirmed. This is consistent with an almost face-on view (inclination < 35 deg) onto a luminous pre- or early-main sequence object surrounded by a massive circumstellar disk. With a multiple-epoch study spanning almost four years, relative motion of the binary companion has been detected, together with evidence for changes in the brightness distribution of the central disk/star. The resolution of the LkHalpha 101 disk by ISI mid-infrared interferometry constitutes the first such measurement of a young stellar object in this wavelength region. The angular size was found to increase only slowly from 1.6 to 11.15 microns, inconsistent with standard power-law temperature profiles usually encountered in the literature, supporting instead models with a hot inner cavity and relatively rapid transition to a cool or tenuous outer disk. The radius of the dust-free inner cavity is consistent with a model of sublimation of dust in equilibrium with the stellar radiation field. Measurements from interferometry have been combined with published photometry enabling an investigation of the energetics and fundamental properties of this prototypical system.Comment: Appearing in Astrophysical Journal. 24 pages; 8 figure

Modern optical astronomy: technology and impact of interferometry

The present `state of the art' and the path to future progress in high spatial resolution imaging interferometry is reviewed. The review begins with a treatment of the fundamentals of stellar optical interferometry, the origin, properties, optical effects of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, the passive methods that are applied on a single telescope to overcome atmospheric image degradation such as speckle interferometry, and various other techniques. These topics include differential speckle interferometry, speckle spectroscopy and polarimetry, phase diversity, wavefront shearing interferometry, phase-closure methods, dark speckle imaging, as well as the limitations imposed by the detectors on the performance of speckle imaging. A brief account is given of the technological innovation of adaptive-optics (AO) to compensate such atmospheric effects on the image in real time. A major advancement involves the transition from single-aperture to the dilute-aperture interferometry using multiple telescopes. Therefore, the review deals with recent developments involving ground-based, and space-based optical arrays. Emphasis is placed on the problems specific to delay-lines, beam recombination, polarization, dispersion, fringe-tracking, bootstrapping, coherencing and cophasing, and recovery of the visibility functions. The role of AO in enhancing visibilities is also discussed. The applications of interferometry, such as imaging, astrometry, and nulling are described. The mathematical intricacies of the various `post-detection' image-processing techniques are examined critically. The review concludes with a discussion of the astrophysical importance and the perspectives of interferometry.Comment: 65 pages LaTeX file including 23 figures. Reviews of Modern Physics, 2002, to appear in April issu

AvBD1 nucleotide polymorphisms, peptide antimicrobial activities and microbial colonisation of the broiler chicken gut

Abstract Background The importance of poultry as a global source of protein underpins the chicken genome and associated SNP data as key tools in selecting and breeding healthy robust birds with improved disease resistance. SNPs affecting host peptides involved in the innate defences tend to be rare, but three non-synonymous SNPs in the avian β-defensin (AvBD1) gene encoding the variant peptides NYH, SSY and NYY were identified that segregated specifically to three lines of commercial broiler chickens Line X (LX), Line Y(LY) and Line Z. The impacts of such amino acid changes on peptide antimicrobial properties were analysed in vitro and described in relation to the caecal microbiota and gut health of LX and LY birds. Results Time-kill and radial immune diffusion assays indicated all three peptides to have antimicrobial properties against gram negative and positive bacteria with a hierarchy of NYH > SSY > NYY. Calcein leakage assays supported AvBD1 NYH as the most potent membrane permeabilising agent although no significant differences in secondary structure were identified to explain this. However, distinct claw regions, identified by 3D modelling and proposed to play a key role in microbial membrane attachment, and permeation, were more distinct in the NYH model. In vivo AvBD1 synthesis was detected in the bird gut epithelia. Analyses of the caecal gut microbiota of young day 4 birds suggested trends in Lactobacilli sp. colonisation at days 4 (9% LX vs × 30% LY) and 28 (20% LX vs 12% LY) respectively, but these were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Conclusion Amino acid changes altering the killing capacity of the AvBD1 peptide were associated with two different bird lines, but such changes did not impact significantly on caecal gut microbiota

Global Reorganization of Replication Domains During Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation

DNA replication in mammals is regulated via the coordinate firing of clusters of replicons that duplicate megabase-sized chromosome segments at specific times during S-phase. Cytogenetic studies show that these “replicon clusters” coalesce as subchromosomal units that persist through multiple cell generations, but the molecular boundaries of such units have remained elusive. Moreover, the extent to which changes in replication timing occur during differentiation and their relationship to transcription changes has not been rigorously investigated. We have constructed high-resolution replication-timing profiles in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) before and after differentiation to neural precursor cells. We demonstrate that chromosomes can be segmented into multimegabase domains of coordinate replication, which we call “replication domains,” separated by transition regions whose replication kinetics are consistent with large originless segments. The molecular boundaries of replication domains are remarkably well conserved between distantly related ESC lines and induced pluripotent stem cells. Unexpectedly, ESC differentiation was accompanied by the consolidation of smaller differentially replicating domains into larger coordinately replicated units whose replication time was more aligned to isochore GC content and the density of LINE-1 transposable elements, but not gene density. Replication-timing changes were coordinated with transcription changes for weak promoters more than strong promoters, and were accompanied by rearrangements in subnuclear position. We conclude that replication profiles are cell-type specific, and changes in these profiles reveal chromosome segments that undergo large changes in organization during differentiation. Moreover, smaller replication domains and a higher density of timing transition regions that interrupt isochore replication timing define a novel characteristic of the pluripotent state