739 research outputs found
The Price of Pleasure: Children Hurt Too
In her two recent articles on pregnancy support, “Preglimony” in the Stanford Law Review and “The Price of Pleasure” in the Northwestern Law Review, Professor Shari Motro argues that American laws should no longer treat “lovers as strangers.” To minimize “the fundamental gender imbalance,” she urges that the relationship between an unwed heterosexual couple whose sex prompts pregnancy “demands it own legal category.” She calls for a new paradigm that generally holds men financially responsible to women for the burdens of pregnancy, employing both contract and tort principles. Professor Motro invites conversation on her self-described utopian notions. Most curious for us is Professor Motro’s failure to discuss children. Any conversation about the price of sex when children are born must include the children as well as their mothers. They are inextricably linked, as are the paternity opportunity interests of genetic fathers. In accepting Professor Motro’s invitation to converse, we urge new dialogues about expanded duties and rights of prospective fathers, including new prebirth monetary support obligations; enhanced opportunities for prebirth paternity acknowledgments; and, greater protections of “unitary” families into which children are born. Our conversations should also include couples with children where sex did not prompt birth
For Those Not John Edwards: More and Better Paternity Acknowledgments at Birth
When former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards (finally) declared his paternity of Quinn, born of sex to Rielle Hunter, many assumed he could then begin to raise as well as financially support the child he once publicly shunned. Many assumed legal paternity could arise through a court order, if not Rielle’s wishes. Had he been on the Maury Povich television show, the positive genetic tests would have prompted the host to declare John the father. Yet notwithstanding these declarations, there would be no childrearing by John if Rielle determined he should have no contact with Quinn, even if Rielle sought child support from John and even if Quinn’s best interests favored contact between her and John. For genetic fathers like John whose bedmates are not like Rielle, there are often no opportunities to present Christmas gifts. As John and Rielle were never married and as Rielle was not married to another, Quinn was a nonmarital child with no federal constitutional legal father at birth. At birth, John may have had a federal constitutional opportunity interest in establishing parentage, seized by stepping up to parental responsibilities. Yet, as John only declared paternity two years after birth, after denying fatherhood and prompting another man to declare his genetic ties with Quinn, he may have been too late to seize the federal opportunity interest in order to fully parent Quinn without Rielle’s cooperation. Only with Rielle’s consent could John now complete a voluntary paternity acknowledgment, a prerequisite to placing John on Quinn’s birth certificate. And with Rielle’s opposition, any paternity lawsuit by John to establish regular contacts with Quinn would most likely fail even though any paternity lawsuit to establish John’s financial support of Quinn would most likely succeed. Popular misconceptions about legal paternity for nonmarital children born of sex largely arise due to confusion and ignorance about voluntary paternity acknowledgments. Our exploration of the federal and state acknowledgment laws reveals that a John Edwards is often no new father with legal childrearing rights so that without a Rielle Hunter’s help, his relationship with a Quinn would be limited to checks in the mail. Voluntary acknowledgment laws are especially important today because about 1.7 million nonmarital children are born of sex each year in the United States, with about one third, like Quinn, having no legal father at birth. In 1940, there were only about 90,000 nonmarital children. Like Quinn, some of today’s fatherless children have late arriving declarations about genetic ties, and perhaps paternal child care. Far more nonmarital children remain fatherless, though possibly the subject of later suits seeking child support. Many nonmarital children will be born fatherless under law even though U.S. governments proclaim that these children should have both a mother and father under law at birth. Voluntary paternity acknowledgment laws can better prompt dual parentage. After reviewing contemporary acknowledgment forms, we suggest laws to prompt more, and more reliable, paternity acknowledgments, and thus more legal fathers at birth for nonmarital children
Procreative Sex and Same Sex Parents
New state-sanctioned family units headed by couples in committed relationships are on the rise. They include marriages encompassing same sex couples, civil unions, and domestic partnerships. These new family units can originate in state statutes or in judicial decisions. The pace of change is so fast that new units occasionally replace units only recently recognized, as when same sex marriages replace civil unions or domestic partnerships. U.S. Supreme Court precedents permit broad governmental discretion in sanctioning new families and in recognizing parentage therein. Yet such discretion is limited by constitutionally-recognized parental rights and interests when children are born of sex. At times states can and do deny parental status under law at birth to biological fathers. Differences in parentage laws will likely continue for some time. When same sex marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are expanded or created, the new family units typically are deemed equal to, or the same as, longstanding opposite sex marriages. However, when there are children born of sex, equality and sameness are impossible. Same sex couples simply cannot produce children through intrafamily intercourse as can opposite sex couples. Yet, extrafamily intercourse by those in same sex, as well as opposite sex, families can produce children. Given the policies of equality and sameness, should all children conceived through adultery similarly be deemed born into sanctioned family units? That is, should there always operate a presumption of parentage as now typically operates for a husband in an opposite sex marriage? If so, are new written laws needed since the existing parentage presumptions for husbands usually require the possibility of genetic ties – an impossibility in same sex settings? Further, are there limits on any equality between same and opposite sex couples? Finally, are additional laws beyond parentage presumptions at birth needed for children born of sex to same sex couples? This article posits that explicit statutory presumptions are needed for children born to state-sanctioned same sex female couples although there cannot be genetic ties in both mates. Further, it proposes that current voluntary parentage acknowledgment processes, now operating for men who prompt children born of sex to married and unmarried women, be expanded to allow certain same sex male mates to become legal parents at birth, or sooner, to children born of sex into their family units
Legal Paternity (and Other Parenthood) After Lehr and Michael H.
Actual genetic ties do not always establish, or even help to establish, legal paternity of children born of consensual sex, that is, male parental rights and/or duties as of the time of birth. Paternity status, typically governed by state law, is often dependent upon the marital status of the mothers, or the nonsex acts of men preconception, prebirth, or shortly after birth. For example, husbands of mothers are often deemed parents at birth because genetic ties are presumed. Thus, for nonmarital children born to certain married women, legal paternity is not founded on actual genetic ties. Similarly, actual male genetic ties may not lead to paternity when children are born of sex to unmarried women. Again preconception, prebirth or at birth conduct may be important. The 1983 United States Supreme Court decision in Lehr v. Robertson recognizes that American states can require natural fathers, at least in the adoption setting, to do more than prove genetic ties in order to acquire paternity. When such fathers do enough, they acquire “substantial” federal constitutional childrearing interests so that any proposed adoption requires their consent. When such fathers do not do enough, Lehr allows states to deny them legal parentage. Lehr does forbid states from omitting too many natural fathers from governmental schemes for eliminating parental interests. And Lehr does not forbid a state, at least within adoption, from designating legal paternity for a nonmarital child in a man with no genetic ties. Many American states, in fact, say that genetic ties alone are an insufficient basis for legal paternity. And, within adoption, and often elsewhere, states recognize childrearing interests in nonmarital children for certain nongenetic fathers. The U.S. Supreme Court has said little since Lehr about male parentage under law for nonmarital children born of sex. It has, however, spoken on legal paternity for children of married mothers whose husbands are not the genetic fathers, a different breed of nonmarital children. In Michael H. v. Gerald D. in 1989, the court recognized that an American state could create an irrebuttable presumption of genetic ties in a husband for a child born during marriage where the marriage remains intact after birth and the married couple chooses to raise the child. After reviewing Lehr and Michael H., we find the Lehr guidelines have not been properly followed in and outside of adoption, including safe haven and custody/visitation settings. We also review American paternity laws in child support, torts and inheritance settings where male childrearing is not always at issue. Along the way we explore the possible expansion of Lehr’s childrearing opportunity interests in children born of sex to those uninvolved in sex. We conclude that Lehr rights should be expanded to natural fathers outside adoption and to certain nongenetic parents, including both women and men
Astro2020 White Paper: A Direct Measure of Cosmic Acceleration
Nearly a century after the discovery that we live in an expanding Universe,
and two decades after the discovery of accelerating cosmic expansion, there
remains no direct detection of this acceleration via redshift drift - a change
in the cosmological expansion velocity versus time. Because cosmological
redshift drift directly determines the Hubble parameter H(z), it is arguably
the cleanest possible measurement of the expansion history, and has the
potential to constrain dark energy models (e.g. Kim et al. 2015). The challenge
is that the signal is small - the best observational constraint presently has
an uncertainty several orders of magnitude larger than the expected signal
(Darling 2012). Nonetheless, direct detection of redshift drift is becoming
feasible, with upcoming facilities such as the ESO-ELT and SKA projecting
possible detection within two to three decades. This timescale is uncomfortably
long given the potential of this cosmological test. With dedicated experiments
it should be possible to rapidly accelerate progress and detect redshift drift
with only a five-year observational baseline. Such a facility would also be
ideal for precision radial velocity measurements of exoplanets, which could be
obtained as a byproduct of the ongoing calibration measurements for the
experiment.Comment: White paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. 6 page
Astro2020 Project White Paper: The Cosmic Accelerometer
We propose an experiment, the Cosmic Accelerometer, designed to yield
velocity precision of cm/s with measurement stability over years to
decades. The first-phase Cosmic Accelerometer, which is at the scale of the
Astro2020 Small programs, will be ideal for precision radial velocity
measurements of terrestrial exoplanets in the Habitable Zone of Sun-like stars.
At the same time, this experiment will serve as the technical pathfinder and
facility core for a second-phase larger facility at the Medium scale, which can
provide a significant detection of cosmological redshift drift on a 6-year
timescale. This larger facility will naturally provide further detection/study
of Earth twin planet systems as part of its external calibration process. This
experiment is fundamentally enabled by a novel low-cost telescope technology
called PolyOculus, which harnesses recent advances in commercial off the shelf
equipment (telescopes, CCD cameras, and control computers) combined with a
novel optical architecture to produce telescope collecting areas equivalent to
standard telescopes with large mirror diameters. Combining a PolyOculus array
with an actively-stabilized high-precision radial velocity spectrograph
provides a unique facility with novel calibration features to achieve the
performance requirements for the Cosmic Accelerometer
10-Hydroxy-2-decenoic Acid, a Major Fatty Acid from Royal Jelly, Inhibits VEGF-induced Angiogenesis in Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is reported to be a potent pro-angiogenic factor that plays a pivotal role in both physiological and pathological angiogenesis. Royal jelly (RJ) is a honeybee product containing various proteins, sugars, lipids, vitamins and free amino acids. 10-Hydroxy-2-decenoic acid (10HDA), a major fatty acid component of RJ, is known to have various pharmacological effects; its antitumor activity being especially noteworthy. However, the mechanism underlying this effect is unclear. We examined the effect of 10HDA on VEGF-induced proliferation, migration and tube formation in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). Our findings showed that, 10HDA at 20 µM or more significantly inhibited such proliferation, migration and tube formation. Similarly, 10 µM GM6001, a matrix metalloprotease inhibitor, prevented VEGF-induced migration and tube formation. These findings indicate that 10HDA exerts an inhibitory effect on VEGF-induced angiogenesis, partly by inhibiting both cell proliferation and migration. Further experiments will be needed to clarify the detailed mechanism
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Use of temperature to improve West Nile virus forecasts
Ecological and laboratory studies have demonstrated that temperature modulates West Nile virus (WNV) transmission dynamics and spillover infection to humans. Here we explore whether inclusion of temperature forcing in a model depicting WNV transmission improves WNV forecast accuracy relative to a baseline model depicting WNV transmission without temperature forcing. Both models are optimized using a data assimilation method and two observed data streams: mosquito infection rates and reported human WNV cases. Each coupled model-inference framework is then used to generate retrospective ensemble forecasts of WNV for 110 outbreak years from among 12 geographically diverse United States counties. The temperature-forced model improves forecast accuracy for much of the outbreak season. From the end of July until the beginning of October, a timespan during which 70% of human cases are reported, the temperature-forced model generated forecasts of the total number of human cases over the next 3 weeks, total number of human cases over the season, the week with the highest percentage of infectious mosquitoes, and the peak percentage of infectious mosquitoes that on average increased absolute forecast accuracy 5%, 10%, 12%, and 6%, respectively, over the non-temperature forced baseline model. These results indicate that use of temperature forcing improves WNV forecast accuracy and provide further evidence that temperature influences rates of WNV transmission. The findings provide a foundation for implementation of a statistically rigorous system for real-time forecast of seasonal WNV outbreaks and their use as a quantitative decision support tool for public health officials and mosquito control programs
A World-Volume Perspective on the Recombination of Intersecting Branes
We study brane recombination for supersymmetric configurations of
intersecting branes in terms of the world-volume field theory. This field
theory contains an impurity, corresponding to the degrees of freedom localized
at the intersection. The Higgs branch, on which the impurity fields condense,
consists of vacua for which the intersection is deformed into a smooth
calibrated manifold. We show this explicitly using a superspace formalism for
which the calibration equations arise naturally from F- and D-flatness.Comment: References adde
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