\u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Jordan Linn Graham\u3c/em\u3e: Can We Try This Again?

Did the District Court err in denying Defendant Jordan Linn Graham’s motion to supplement the record with draft jury instructions? Did the District Court err in denying Graham’s motion to withdraw her guilty plea because the prosecution’s plea deal was offered in bad faith

Montana’s Campaign Contribution Limits Put to the Test in \u3cem\u3eLair v. Bullock\u3c/em\u3e

Montana’s campaign contribution limits directly address the anti-corruption state interest. While the minimum standard for corruption applied in Eddleman was much broader, the facts of that case also meet the definition of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. Even if the contribution limits were originally conceived to prohibit a broader range of activity, they are still sufficiently tailored to pass muster under the narrower Citizens United standard. Montana’s long history of combatting corruption demonstrates that there is a compelling state interest. Montana’s contribution limits are also closely drawn to that anticorruption interest. There is a freedom to affiliate that has been unchanged since Eddleman was decided. While Montana’s individual contribution limits are low by national standards, candidates still are capable of amassing sufficient resources to mount effective campaigns. Under an Eddleman analysis, the contribution limits are not so stifling as to render campaigns ineffective. Montanans wanted low contribution limits specifically to combat the type of quid pro quo corruption experienced in the age of the Copper Kings by requiring candidates to obtain broad-based contribution support. The limits are narrowly tailored given Montana’s history of political corruption. Because Montana has a compelling state interest and its campaign contribution limits are narrowly tailored to that interest, the limits should be upheld in the next hearing before the district court

\u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Jordan Linn Graham\u3c/em\u3e: Can We Try This Again?

Did the District Court err in denying Defendant Jordan Linn Graham’s motion to supplement the record with draft jury instructions? Did the District Court err in denying Graham’s motion to withdraw her guilty plea because the prosecution’s plea deal was offered in bad faith

Carbon Sequestering Bio Concrete as a Solution to Growing Atmospheric Concentrations of CO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e

High levels of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere are propelling climate change, which has been proven to be highly detrimental to the planet. Cement production for the construction industry is a leading cause of these harmful carbon emissions. This project introduces a potential solution to this issue in the form of a new biological concrete that is treated with carbon sequestering bacteria of the Bacillus family to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The consolidated research presented in this project will explain the biology behind this process, and how it can be implemented in construction to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Additionally, this paper will evaluate the feasibility of implementing CO2 sequestering concrete in construction on the basis of its strength and cost. Finally, new knowledge will be recorded in the form of interviews of industry professionals to clearly illustrate how carbon sequestering bio concrete could be implemented in construction

Crystallization histories of the group IIF iron meteorites and Eagle Station pallasites

The group IIF iron meteorites and Eagle Station pallasites (PES) have highly siderophile element abundances (HSE; Re, Os, Ir, Ru, Pt, and Pd) of metal that are consistent with formation in planetesimal cores by fractional crystallization with minor to major solid metal–liquid metal mixing. Modeling of HSE abundances of the IIF irons indicates a complex formation history that included the mixing of primitive and evolved solid and liquid metals. By contrast, modeling of HSE abundances of PES metal suggests these meteorites formed mainly as equilibrium solids from a common liquid. Abundances of some of the siderophile elements in the IIF irons and PES are permissive of a common core origin; however, the abundances of W and Ni indicate the PES ultimately formed on a more oxidized body. The PES most likely formed by the injection of olivine present at the core–mantle boundary into a metallic core liquid as a result of impact. The core then crystallized inward, trapping the olivine.NASA Emerging Worlds grants NNX16AN07G and 80NSSC20K033

Full STEAM ahead: a manifesto for integrating arts pedagogics in to STEM education

This paper sets out to challenge the common pedagogies found in STEM education with a particular focus on engineering. The dominant engineering pedagogy remains “chalk and talk”; despite research evidence that demonstrates its ineffectiveness. The paper argues that there is a potential confusion in engineering education around the role of active learning approaches, and that the adoption of these approaches may be limited as a result of this confusion, combined with a degree of disciplinary egocentrism. The paper presents examples of engineering and “engineering like” projects that demonstrate the effectiveness of adopting pedagogies and delivery methods more usually attributed to the liberal arts such as studio based learning. The paper concludes with some suggestions about how best to create a fertile environment from which inquiry based learning can emerge as well as a reflection on whether the only real limitation on cultivating such approaches is the disciplinary egocentrism of traditional engineering educators

Potential Long-Run Adjustments for Oklahoma Panhandle Farms

The Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

Evaluation of methods for detecting human reads in microbial sequencing datasets

Sequencing data from host-associated microbes can often be contaminated by the body of the investigator or research subject. Human DNA is typically removed from microbial reads either by subtractive alignment (dropping all reads that map to the human genome) or by using a read classification tool to predict those of human origin, and then discarding them. To inform best practice guidelines, we benchmarked eight alignment-based and two classification-based methods of human read detection using simulated data from 10 clinically prevalent bacteria and three viruses, into which contaminating human reads had been added. While the majority of methods successfully detected >99 % of the human reads, they were distinguishable by variance. The most precise methods, with negligible variance, were Bowtie2 and SNAP, both of which misidentified few, if any, bacterial reads (and no viral reads) as human. While correctly detecting a similar number of human reads, methods based on taxonomic classification, such as Kraken2 and Centrifuge, could misclassify bacterial reads as human, although the extent of this was species-specific. Among the most sensitive methods of human read detection was BWA, although this also made the greatest number of false positive classifications. Across all methods, the set of human reads not identified as such, although often representing 300 bp) bacterial reads, the highest performing approaches were classification-based, using Kraken2 or Centrifuge. For shorter (c. 150 bp) bacterial reads, combining multiple methods of human read detection maximized the recovery of human reads from contaminated short read datasets without being compromised by false positives. A particularly high-performance approach with shorter bacterial reads was a two-stage classification using Bowtie2 followed by SNAP. Using this approach, we re-examined 11 577 publicly archived bacterial read sets for hitherto undetected human contamination. We were able to extract a sufficient number of reads to call known human SNPs, including those with clinical significance, in 6 % of the samples. These results show that phenotypically distinct human sequence is detectable in publicly archived microbial read datasets