Creating Online Tutorials: Five Lessons Learned

In the fall of 2005, two librarians, a legal research and writing program director, and an instructional technologist at Wayne State University received a grant to create online tutorials introducing novices to the basics of legal research. Tutorials were planned on subjects that the library and the legal research and writing program had traditionally covered jointly via library workshops, coordinated with classroom instruction for first-year law students. Since the mission of the law library is to support campus-wide activity and to assist members of the general public with legal research needs, the content of the tutorials was designed to serve multiple audiences.With a year to finish the tutorials in time for the next incoming class, the group began work toward the completion of seven tutorials on a shoestring budget of $4,000. Since the completion of the tutorials, librarians have asked us directly or made general calls for information looking for ideas about tools, costs, and the process of beginning similar projects. Our response to this question has not been to chronicle our journey but, rather, to share a few lessons we learned from the process

Before You Log-On: Incorporating the Free Web in Your Legal Research Strategy

In 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) published its Legal Technology Survey Report, which included a volume on Online Research. In the report, attorneys responded that 91% are conducting at least some of their research online. Though 39% report that they start their research using a fee-based service like Westlaw or Lexis, the report shows that even those who start their research with a fee-based resource eventually get it right-87% of attorneys report using some free online resources at some point over the course of a research project

Voices of American Law: US Supreme Court Cases Meet the 21st Century

reviewing Voices of American Law documentary series(Thomas B. Metzloff & Sarah Wood producers

Diffractive Interactions: Theory Summary

I review various theory issues in diffraction that have been presented and discussed in the working group on diffractive interactions, and a few points concerning the comparison of theory with data.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the 7th International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and QCD (DIS 99), Zeuthen, Germany, 19-23 April 199

Transversity Distribution Does Not Contribute to Hard Exclusive Electroproduction of Mesons

We show that in hard exclusive electroproduction, ep-->eVp, the leading-twist hard-scattering coefficient for the production of a transversely polarized vector meson V vanishes to all orders of perturbation theory. This implies that this process cannot be used to measure the skewed transversity distribution of quarks in a hadron. In contrast, a recent calculation obtained a non-zero value at NLO. We show that this calculation is incorrect because it failed to include the necessary collinear subtractions. Our method of proof also applies to other processes whose hard-scattering coefficients are constrained by chirality and helicity conservation, and thus validates helicity selection rules based on these symmetries.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, ReVTe

The space-time structure of hard scattering processes

Recent studies of exclusive electroproduction of vector mesons at JLab make it possible for the first time to play with two independent hard scales: the virtuality Q^2 of the photon, which sets the observation scale, and the momentum transfer t to the hadronic system, which sets the interaction scale. They reinforce the description of hard scattering processes in terms of few effective degrees of freedom relevant to the Jlab-Hermes energy range.Comment: 4 pages; 5 figure

Inflation and the E M S

Since the European Monetary System was instituted in March 1979, there has been a dramatic reduction in the inflation rates of member countries This development is widely attributed to the EMS itself. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the theoretical and empirical basis for such a claim is far from conclusive. On the theoretical side, the paper develops a model which highlights two issues. First, changes in the "rules" of the exchange rate system need not coincide with changes in expectations about Central Bank behavior. In fact, I expectations in France do not seem to have changed until policy makers "got tough" in 1982-83. Second, different researchers have made quite different I assumptions about exactly what "rules" the EMS imposes. The paper shows that how the system works matters in terns of the effect joining will have on inflation. On the empirical side, the paper shows that effects which have been attributed to the EMS are in large part due to the global deflation since 1979 and to the fact that EMS members had relatively low inflation before 1979. However, even these estimates should be interpreted with caution. They are very sensitive to time period and to which non EMS countries are included in the sample.

Gamma rays from accretion onto rotating black holes

Ionized matter falling onto an isolated, rotating black hole will be heated sufficiently that proton-proton collisions will produce mesons, including neutral pions, which decay into gamma rays. For massive (1000 M sub circled dot), black holes, the resulting gamma-ray luminosity may exceed 10 to the 36th power engs/s, with a spectrum peaked near 20 MeV

Construction and Refinement of Coarse-Grained Models

A general scheme, which includes constructions of coarse-grained (CG) models, weighted ensemble dynamics (WED) simulations and cluster analyses (CA) of stable states, is presented to detect dynamical and thermodynamical properties in complex systems. In the scheme, CG models are efficiently and accurately optimized based on a directed distance from original to CG systems, which is estimated from ensemble means of lots of independent observable in two systems. Furthermore, WED independently generates multiple short molecular dynamics trajectories in original systems. The initial conformations of the trajectories are constructed from equilibrium conformations in CG models, and the weights of the trajectories can be estimated from the trajectories themselves in generating complete equilibrium samples in the original systems. CA calculates the directed distances among the trajectories and groups their initial conformations into some clusters, which correspond to stable states in the original systems, so that transition dynamics can be detected without requiring a priori knowledge of the states.Comment: 4 pages, no figure