Safe, but Not Sound: Limiting Safe Harbor Immunity for Health and Disability Insurers and Self-Insured Employers Under the Americans with Disabilities Act

When Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA ) on July 26, 1990, supporters heralded the Act as a full-scale victory for the 43 million disabled Americans. The Act\u27s protections went far beyond those of its predecessor, the Rehabilitation Act of 1974, which only prohibited discrimination against individuals with disabilities by entities receiving federal funding. The new act was intended to prevent discrimination by private and public employers, public services, and public accommodations. In a bill signing ceremony at the White House, in front of more than two thousand advocates for the disabled, then President George Bush likened the ADA to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Amidst mighty cheers from the crowd, President Bush proclaimed that, because of the new law, every man, woman and child with a disability can now pass through once-closed doors into a bright new era of equality, independence, and freedom. Sandra Swift Parrino, director of the National Council on Disability, stated assuredly that the ADA was a new beginning . . . [that would] shape the lives of those with disabilities for decades to come. Disability advocates\u27 optimism about the broad reach of the ADA was certainly justified, for Congress also had grand goals in mind when enacting the law. The statute states that the main purposes of the ADA are to provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities and to provide clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities . . . . The legislative history also indicates that Congress intended the ADA to be far-reaching in scope and dramatic in impact. Both the Senate arid House Reports state that the purpose of the ADA is to end discrimination against individuals with disabilities and to bring persons with disabilities into the economic and social mainstream of American life . . .

Fracture: Abortion Law and Politics After \u3cem\u3eDobbs\u3c/em\u3e

Before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the case that overturned Roe v. Wade—almost everyone assumed that polarization would continue to define the abortion debate: once states could ban abortion before viability, half the country would criminalize it and half the country would not. The assumption has been that states would prohibit or permit abortion in ways that correspond to political beliefs. This Article demonstrates the limitations of that narrative both as a matter of history and in the current political moment. The future of abortion law and politics is one of fracture. Particularly for the anti-abortion movement, once-foundational priorities will come under pressure, shifting legislative and litigation strategies at the state and federal levels. We map fracture along three critical fault lines: the legal recognition of fetal personhood, the definition of abortion, and the movement for reproductive justice. First, the majority opinion in Dobbs wields the rhetoric of neutrality to advance a singular understanding of history and tradition, defined by efforts to overturn Roe. We show how Dobbs charts a course for recognizing fetal personhood but with the costs of contestation and undermining the majority opinion’s purported neutrality. Significantly, Dobbs has exposed divisions in the anti-abortion movement, which has refashioned its support for fetal personhood in new state laws, raising questions about enforcement inside and outside state borders. Second, Dobbs incited a new struggle over what abortion entails, and both abortion supporters and opponents will contend with whether recent bans include fertility services or specific contraceptives as well as how bans apply when patients face medical emergencies. At the same time, because the nature of early abortion care has changed—available through mailed pills taken at home—abortion will be harder to police and stop. Third and finally, fracture within the abortion-rights movement will become more pronounced as the call for reproductive justice takes on different importance. The end of Roe will realign priorities in litigation, policymaking, and resource allocation around broader issues of social justice. The coming era will be defined by divergent views about who may speak on behalf of those neglected by the law and what it means to recognize the basic humanity of the most marginalized in the country. But as those views are tested for their political and practical feasibility, we should expect abortion antipathy as well as abortion support to be less tethered to party affiliation and more reflective of abortion care on the ground

Single-kernel ionomic profiles are highly heritable indicators of genetic and environmental influences on elemental accumulation in maize grain (Zea mays)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

External fishing effort regulates positive effects of no-take marine protected areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been established across the globe to mitigate the effects of multiple stressors on marine communities. In many locations, MPAs have generated positive effects on fish communities, but the impacts of fishing pressure—the primary stressor MPAs seek to manage—have not been well investigated. We examined changes in fish biomass inside and outside of no-take MPAs over 14 years in central California, USA. Using data from the community-based science program, the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program, we tested which environmental and human-induced stressors most influence the strength of MPA responses. While temperature and productivity were included in the best fit model, we found that fine-scale fishing effort data, following reserve implementation, best explained the spatial variation in fish community responses to MPAs. Specifically, differences in fish biomass between MPAs and sites open to fishing were larger for reserves near heavily fished locations and these areas exhibited the highest rate of change in fish biomass, indicating strong positive effects of the MPA on the most heavily exploited fish communities. As MPAs continue to be used as a prominent conservation strategy in coastal systems, managers should consider both the suite of human-induced (socio-ecological interactions) and environmental conditions that may alter MPA success as well as establish long-term monitoring programs to fully assess the functionality of marine reserves into the future

Marine protected areas, marine heatwaves, and the resilience of nearshore fish communities

Anthropogenic stressors from climate change can affect individual species, community structure, and ecosystem function. Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are intense thermal anomalies where water temperature is significantly elevated for five or more days. Climate projections suggest an increase in the frequency and severity of MHWs in the coming decades. While there is evidence that marine protected areas (MPAs) may be able to buffer individual species from climate impacts, there is not sufficient evidence to support the idea that MPAs can mitigate large-scale changes in marine communities in response to MHWs. California experienced an intense MHW and subsequent El Niño Southern Oscillation event from 2014 to 2016. We sought to examine changes in rocky reef fish communities at four MPAs and associated reference sites in relation to the MHW. We observed a decline in taxonomic diversity and a profound shift in trophic diversity inside and outside MPAs following the MHW. However, MPAs seemed to dampen the loss of trophic diversity and in the four years following the MHW, taxonomic diversity recovered 75% faster in the MPAs compared to reference sites. Our results suggest that MPAs may contribute to long-term resilience of nearshore fish communities through both resistance to change and recovery from warming events

Arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptides induce membrane multilamellarity and subsequently enter via formation of a fusion pore

Arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptides do not enter cells by directly passing through a lipid membrane; they instead passively enter vesicles and live cells by inducing membrane multilamellarity and fusion. The molecular picture of this penetration mode, which differs qualitatively from the previously proposed direct mechanism, is provided by molecular dynamics simulations. The kinetics of vesicle agglomeration and fusion by an iconic cell-penetrating peptide-nonaarginine-are documented via real-time fluorescence techniques, while the induction of multilamellar phases in vesicles and live cells is demonstrated by a combination of electron and fluorescence microscopies. This concert of experiments and simulations reveals that the identified passive cell penetration mechanism bears analogy to vesicle fusion induced by calcium ions, indicating that the two processes may share a common mechanistic origin.Peer reviewe

Got a Minute? Instruction Tune-Up for Time Pressed Librarians

This book contains 19 essays that have been written by current LIS Students who were enrolled in the LIS4330: Library Instruction class at the University of Denver, 2016. Designed to provide a short and pithy overview of a topic that is related to instruction, education, or information literacy, each essays aims to be accessible and approachable for time-pressed librarians who may not have time to catch up

The Evolution of Early-type Red Galaxies with the GEMS Survey: Luminosity-size and Stellar Mass-size Relations Since z=1

We combine HST/ACS imaging from the GEMS survey with redshifts and rest-frame quantities from COMBO-17 to study the evolution of morphologically early-type galaxies with red colors since z=1. We use a new large sample of 728 galaxies with centrally-concentrated radial profiles (Sersic n>2.5) and rest-frame U-V colors on the red sequence. By appropriate comparison with the local relations from SDSS, we find that the luminosity-size (L-R) and stellar mass-size (M-R) relations evolve in a manner that is consistent with the passive aging of ancient stars. By itself, this result is consistent with a completely passive evolution of the red early-type galaxy population. If instead, as demonstrated by a number of recent surveys, the early-type galaxy population builds up in mass by a factor of 2 since z=1, our results imply that new additions to the early-type galaxy population follow similar L-R and M-R correlations, compared to the older subset of early-type galaxies. Adding early-type galaxies to the red sequence through disk fading appears to be consistent with the data. Through comparison with models, the role of dissipationless merging is limited to <1 major merger on average since z=1 for the most massive galaxies. Predictions from models of gas-rich mergers are not yet mature enough to allow a detailed comparison to our observations. We find tentative evidence that the amount of luminosity evolution depends on galaxy stellar mass, such that the least massive galaxies show stronger luminosity evolution compared to more massive early types. This could reflect a different origin of low-mass early-type galaxies and/or younger stellar populations; the present data is insufficient to discriminate between these possibilities. (abridged)Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 23 pages, Latex using emulateapj5.sty and onecolfloat.sty (included), 10 figures, version with full resolution figures at http://www.astro.umass.edu/~dmac/Papers/ETevol.hires.p

Nanosatellite optical downlink experiment: design, simulation, and prototyping

The nanosatellite optical downlink experiment (NODE) implements a free-space optical communications (lasercom) capability on a CubeSat platform that can support low earth orbit (LEO) to ground downlink rates>10  Mbps. A primary goal of NODE is to leverage commercially available technologies to provide a scalable and cost-effective alternative to radio-frequency-based communications. The NODE transmitter uses a 200-mW 1550-nm master-oscillator power-amplifier design using power-efficient M-ary pulse position modulation. To facilitate pointing the 0.12-deg downlink beam, NODE augments spacecraft body pointing with a microelectromechanical fast steering mirror (FSM) and uses an 850-nm uplink beacon to an onboard CCD camera. The 30-cm aperture ground telescope uses an infrared camera and FSM for tracking to an avalanche photodiode detector-based receiver. Here, we describe our approach to transition prototype transmitter and receiver designs to a full end-to-end CubeSat-scale system. This includes link budget refinement, drive electronics miniaturization, packaging reduction, improvements to pointing and attitude estimation, implementation of modulation, coding, and interleaving, and ground station receiver design. We capture trades and technology development needs and outline plans for integrated system ground testing.United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Research Fellowship ProgramLincoln Laboratory (Lincoln Scholars)Lincoln Laboratory (Military Fellowship Program)Fundación Obra Social de La Caixa (Fellowship)Samsung FellowshipUnited States. Air Force (Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering. Contract FAs872105C0002