Constitutional Law—Conversion of Fine Into Term of Imprisonment for Offenders Financially Unable to Pay Fine Held Violative of Equal Protection Clause

Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971)

The Political Economy of Law Enforcement

The legal order is the legitimate foundation of liberal democracy. Its incomplete enforcement of the law can therefore appear dysfunctional, reflecting weak institutions, state capture, and corrupt practices. This paper casts doubt on such categorical assessments by systematically examining the reasons for and intentions behind incomplete enforcement. It argues that law enforcement is part of the political process that is deeply affected by the constellation of actors concerned. Choices over law enforcement produce social order that is analytically distinct from the production of legal norms and their formal implementation. By analyzing different types of partial enforcement, its rationales, and intended effects, we propose an approach that studies law enforcement as an integral part of public policy analysis and of the study of socioeconomic orders.Si l’on considère le droit comme fondement légitime de la démocratie libérale, son application partielle peut paraître dysfonctionnelle, témoignage de la faiblesse des institutions, de la capture étatique ou de la corruption. Cet article met en question une analyse aussi catégorique, en interrogeant les motivations et objectifs d’une mise en application juridique incomplète ou sélective. Nous concevons l’application de la loi comme partie intégrante de l’action publique, profondément façonnée par la constellation des acteurs concernés. Les arbitrages sur la mise en vigueur des lois sont une manière de produire de l’ordre social qui doit être analytiquement distincte de la production des lois et de sa mise en oeuvre. En examinant différentes formes de l’application partielle de la loi, leurs motivations et leurs impacts, nous proposons une approche qui inclut la mise en application du droit comme partie intégrante de l’action publique et de l’étude des ordres socio-économiques.1 Introduction 2 Common explanations for variations in law enforcement 3 The political economy of law enforcement 4 Typologies of enforcement 5 How to study uneven enforcement 6 Conclusion Reference

Aging and scaling laws in β\beta-hydroquinone-clathrate

The dielectric permittivity of the orientational glass methanol(x=0.73)-$\beta$-hydroquinone-clathrate has been studied as function of temperature and waiting time using different temperature-time-protocols. We study aging, rejuvenation and memory effects in the glassy phase and discuss similarities and differences to aging in spin-glasses. We argue that the diluted methanol-clathrate, although conceptually close to its magnetic pendants, takes an intermediate character between a true spin-glass and a pure random field system

The Organization of Working Memory Networks is Shaped by Early Sensory Experience

Early deafness results in crossmodal reorganization of the superior temporal cortex (STC). Here, we investigated the effect of deafness on cognitive processing. Specifically, we studied the reorganization, due to deafness and sign language (SL) knowledge, of linguistic and nonlinguistic visual working memory (WM). We conducted an fMRI experiment in groups that differed in their hearing status and SL knowledge: deaf native signers, and hearing native signers, hearing nonsigners. Participants performed a 2-back WM task and a control task. Stimuli were signs from British Sign Language (BSL) or moving nonsense objects in the form of point-light displays. We found characteristic WM activations in fronto-parietal regions in all groups. However, deaf participants also recruited bilateral posterior STC during the WM task, independently of the linguistic content of the stimuli, and showed less activation in fronto-parietal regions. Resting-state connectivity analysis showed increased connectivity between frontal regions and STC in deaf compared to hearing individuals. WM for signs did not elicit differential activations, suggesting that SL WM does not rely on modality-specific linguistic processing. These findings suggest that WM networks are reorganized due to early deafness, and that the organization of cognitive networks is shaped by the nature of the sensory inputs available during development

Follow up after Primary Treatment of Soft Tissue Sarcoma: A Survey of Current Practice in the United Kingdom

Despite the clinical and financial implications, there is little evidence about how patients who have been treated for soft tissue sarcoma should be followed up. The purpose of this study was to determine current practice in the United Kingdom. 192 clinicians treating patients with soft tissue sarcoma were surveyed with a postal questionnaire enquiring about frequency and method of follow up and how patients would be followed up in each of 3 clinical scenarios: a patient with a trunk or extremity tumour at low risk of relapse; a patient with a trunk or extremity tumour at high risk of relapse; and a patient with a retroperitoneal or abdominal tumour. 155 (81%) clinicians responded. Clinic visits and X-rays were the most frequently used methods of follow up. Chest CT scans, local site imaging, and blood tests were used infrequently. The intensity and methods of follow up varied with each of the clinical scenarios. There was a seven-to-twenty fold variation in cost between the least and the most expensive regimes. Respondents were generally supportive of the development of the clinical trial in this area

Propofol inhibits the voltage-gated sodium channel NaChBac at multiple sites.

Voltage-gated sodium (NaV) channels are important targets of general anesthetics, including the intravenous anesthetic propofol. Electrophysiology studies on the prokaryotic NaV channel NaChBac have demonstrated that propofol promotes channel activation and accelerates activation-coupled inactivation, but the molecular mechanisms of these effects are unclear. Here, guided by computational docking and molecular dynamics simulations, we predict several propofol-binding sites in NaChBac. We then strategically place small fluorinated probes at these putative binding sites and experimentally quantify the interaction strengths with a fluorinated propofol analogue, 4-fluoropropofol. In vitro and in vivo measurements show that 4-fluoropropofol and propofol have similar effects on NaChBac function and nearly identical anesthetizing effects on tadpole mobility. Using quantitative analysis by 19F-NMR saturation transfer difference spectroscopy, we reveal strong intermolecular cross-relaxation rate constants between 4-fluoropropofol and four different regions of NaChBac, including the activation gate and selectivity filter in the pore, the voltage sensing domain, and the S4-S5 linker. Unlike volatile anesthetics, 4-fluoropropofol does not bind to the extracellular interface of the pore domain. Collectively, our results show that propofol inhibits NaChBac at multiple sites, likely with distinct modes of action. This study provides a molecular basis for understanding the net inhibitory action of propofol on NaV channels. © 2018 Wang et al

Neural Networks Supporting Phoneme Monitoring Are Modulated by Phonology but Not Lexicality or Iconicity: Evidence From British and Swedish Sign Language

Sign languages are natural languages in the visual domain. Because they lack a written form, they provide a sharper tool than spoken languages for investigating lexicality effects which may be confounded by orthographic processing. In a previous study, we showed that the neural networks supporting phoneme monitoring in deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users are modulated by phonology but not lexicality or iconicity. In the present study, we investigated whether this pattern generalizes to deaf Swedish Sign Language (SSL) users. British and SSLs have a largely overlapping phoneme inventory but are mutually unintelligible because lexical overlap is small. This is important because it means that even when signs lexicalized in BSL are unintelligible to users of SSL they are usually still phonologically acceptable. During fMRI scanning, deaf users of the two different sign languages monitored signs that were lexicalized in either one or both of those languages for phonologically contrastive elements. Neural activation patterns relating to different linguistic levels of processing were similar across SLs; in particular, we found no effect of lexicality, supporting the notion that apparent lexicality effects on sublexical processing of speech may be driven by orthographic strategies. As expected, we found an effect of phonology but not iconicity. Further, there was a difference in neural activation between the two groups in a motion-processing region of the left occipital cortex, possibly driven by cultural differences, such as education. Importantly, this difference was not modulated by the linguistic characteristics of the material, underscoring the robustness of the neural activation patterns relating to different linguistic levels of processing