An Argument for Supreme Court Term Limits

The United States Supreme Court is meant to be above politics, but in reality, it has been politicized since its inception. Republican presidents appoint conservative justices while Democrats appoint liberal justices. Currently, six of the nine Supreme Court justices have been appointed by a Republican president, even though a Republican nominee has not won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004, effectively creating a Court that is already politically stacked against the preference of a majority of Americans. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justice, stated that the framers did not want nine old people in Washington sitting in robes telling everybody else how to live. This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review website on November 10, 2020. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Intention Recognition With ProbLog

In many scenarios where robots or autonomous systems may be deployed, the capacity to infer and reason about the intentions of other agents can improve the performance or utility of the system. For example, a smart home or assisted living facility is better able to select assistive services to deploy if it understands the goals of the occupants in advance. In this article, we present a framework for reasoning about intentions using probabilistic logic programming. We employ ProbLog, a probabilistic extension to Prolog, to infer the most probable intention given observations of the actions of the agent and sensor readings of important aspects of the environment. We evaluated our model on a domain modeling a smart home. The model achieved 0.75 accuracy at full observability. The model was robust to reduced observability

The effect of the number of wavebands used in spectral radiation heat transfer calculations

A spectral radiation heat transfer model that conserves emitted and absorbed energy has been developed and used to model the combustion space of an industrial glass furnace. This comprehensive radiation heat transfer model coupled with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code was used to investigate the effect of spectral dependencies on the computed results. The results of this work clearly indicate the need for a spectral approach as opposed to a gray body approach since the gray body approach (one waveband) severely underestimates the energy emitted via radiation

Investigation of spectral radiation heat transfer and NO{sub x} emission in a glass furnace

A comprehensive radiation heat transfer model and a reduced NOx kinetics model were coupled with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code and then used to investigate the radiation heat transfer, pollutant formation and flow characteristics in a glass furnace. The radiation model solves the spectral radiative transport equation in the combustion space of emitting and absorbing media, i.e., CO{sub 2}, H{sub 2}O, and soot and emission/reflection from the furnace crown. The advanced numerical scheme for calculating the radiation heat transfer is extremely effective in conserving energy between radiation emission and absorption. A parametric study was conducted to investigate the impact of operating conditions on the furnace performance with emphasis on the investigation into the formation of NOx

Association between circulating levels of sex steroid hormones and esophageal adenocarcinoma in the FINBAR Study

Funding: The study was supported by NIH Intramural Research Program, National Cancer Institute; Cancer Focus Northern Ireland (formerly the Ulster Cancer Foundation); the Northern Ireland R&D office; and the Health Research Board, Ireland. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Advancing the use of noncoding RNA in regulatory toxicology: Report of an ECETOC workshop

The European Centre for the Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC) organised a workshop to discuss the state-of-the-art research on noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) as biomarkers in regulatory toxicology and as analytical and therapeutic agents. There was agreement that ncRNA expression profiling data requires careful evaluation to determine the utility of specific ncRNAs as biomarkers. To advance the use of ncRNA in regulatory toxicology, the following research priorities were identified: (1) Conduct comprehensive literature reviews to identify possibly suitable ncRNAs and areas of toxicology where ncRNA expression profiling could address prevailing scientific deficiencies. (2) Develop consensus on how to conduct ncRNA expression profiling in a toxicological context. (3) Conduct experimental projects, including, e.g., rat (90-day) oral toxicity studies, to evaluate the toxicological relevance of the expression profiles of selected ncRNAs. Thereby, physiological ncRNA expression profiles should be established, including the biological variability of healthy individuals. To substantiate the relevance of key ncRNAs for cell homeostasis or pathogenesis, molecular events should be dose-dependently linked with substance-induced apical effects. Applying a holistic approach, knowledge on ncRNAs, 'omics and epigenetics technologies should be integrated into adverse outcome pathways to improve the understanding of the functional roles of ncRNAs within a regulatory context

Indonesian Throughflow drove Australian climate form humid Pliocene to arid Pleistocene

Late Miocene to mid-Pleistocene sedimentary proxy records reveal that northwest Australia underwent an abrupt transition from dry to humid climate conditions at 5.5 million years (Ma), likely receiving year-round rainfall, but after ~3.3 Ma, climate shifted toward an increasingly seasonal precipitation regime. The progressive constriction of the Indonesian Throughflow likely decreased continental humidity and transferred control of northwest Australian climate from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, leading to drier conditions punctuated by monsoonal precipitation. The northwest dust pathway and fully established seasonal and orbitally controlled precipitation were in place by ~2.4 Ma, well after the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. The transition from humid to arid conditions was driven by changes in Pacific and Indian Ocean circulation and regional atmospheric moisture transport, influenced by the emerging Maritime Continent. We conclude that the Maritime Continent is the switchboard modulating teleconnections between tropical and high-latitude climate systems.published_or_final_versio

Prevalence of human papillomavirus among oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma cases: systematic review and meta-analysis

Background:Oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) has been hypothesised as a risk factor for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), but aetiological research has been limited by the varying methodology used for establishing HPV prevalence. The aims of this systematic review and meta-analysis were to estimate the prevalence of HPV DNA detected in OSCC tumours and the influence of study characteristics.Methods:Study-level estimates of overall and type-specific HPV prevalence were meta-analysed to obtain random-effects summary estimates.Results:This analysis included 124 studies with a total of 13 832 OSCC cases. The average HPV prevalence (95% confidence interval) among OSCC cases was 0.277 (0.234, 0.320) by polymerase chain reaction; 0.243 (0.159, 0.326) by in situ hybridisation; 0.304 (0.185, 0.423) by immunohistochemistry; 0.322 (0.154, 0.490) by L1 serology; and 0.176 (0.061, 0.292) by Southern/slot/dot blot. The highest HPV prevalence was found in Africa and Asia, notably among Chinese studies from provinces with high OSCC incidence rates.Conclusions:Future research should focus on quantifying HPV in OSCC cases using strict quality control measures, as well as determining the association between HPV and OSCC incidence by conducting large, population-based case–control studies. Such studies will provide a richer understanding of the role of HPV in OSCC aetiology

Functional status declines among cancer survivors: Trajectory and contributing factors

This study aimed to quantify functional status (FS) trajectories pre- and post-diagnosis of cancer, FS trajectories among cancer-free individuals, and factors affecting FS