Age-Related Metric Invariance of the BIS/BAS

The goals of this study were to examine the suitability of Carver and White’s (1994) BIS/BAS for use in adults of different ages, by examining the construct validity of the BIS/BAS, and testing for age-related invariance of the BIS/BAS. In addition, this study predicted that older adults would score higher on subscales of the BIS/BAS related to pursuit of immediate positivity, based on Carstensen’s (2006) theory of Socioemotional Selectivity. This study recruited 314 adults under the age of 30, 320 adults of age between 30 and 60, and 341 adults over the age of 60. Participants completed Carver & White’s (1994) BIS/BAS, along with measures Carver and White originally used as comparisons to the BIS/BAS: the EPQ-BV, PANAS, and MAS. The study supported the construct validity of the BIS/BAS subscales in each age group. The study also identified metric invariance of the BIS/BAS subscales with respect to the age. This metric invariance, along with construct validity, suggests that the BIS/BAS is suitable for use in adults of all ages, if scores are not compared between adults of different ages. Younger adults tended to score highest on nearly all measures in the study, which did not match our predictions

Spamming for Legal Services: A Constitutional Right Within a Regulatory Quagmire, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 97 (2003)

This article addresses the regulatory schemes applied to lawyers who advertise their legal services to consumers through electronic communications. Concerns have arisen about lawyers using electronic communications to offer their services to their targeted communities. Since the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Bates, lawyers have been able to advertise their services without state permission. However, states have imposed ethical regulations in an effort to ensure that lawyers do not over reach their boundaries during such advertising efforts. The question is raised as to whether states’ spam rules also apply to lawyers who choose to advertise over the Internet. This article analyzes the problems of enforcing individual state spam regulations. For instance, multi-state law firms would have to ensure their advertising efforts conforms to each individual state they send their advertisement into, which could lead to costly confusion

Cultural Differences in Support for Human Rights (abstract)

This article reviews cultural (and country) differences in support for human rights through multiple conceptual and theoretical lenses. This review will include (a) discussion of the difficulties that language translation imposes of measuring human rights support consistently across countries, (b) studies of whether persons in different cultures have a common understanding of the meaning of human rights, (c) the general level of support for human rights across the world, (d) the stability of cultural differences in support for human rights across the years, and (e) evidence related to whether events that happen within a country (e.g., a terrorist attack) alter human rights support within that country

Gaming the System: Approaching 100% Access to Legal Services through Online Games

By all measures, the American Legal System falls short of providing access to justice for all. Legal needs studies show that people often do not recognize when they have a problem for which there is a legal solution and therefore do not seek out lawyers or the justice system to provide assistance with their problems. Some assert that the costs of legal services are beyond the means of many people. While that is true for the poor in some areas of law, both the marketplace and specific programs, such as lawyer referral modest means panels, provide affordable legal services for many types of legal matters. For many, it is not affordability but lack of engagement that causes people to forego legal solutions. Technology has addressed efficiencies in the legal process, once again driving down costs, but has not fulfilled its potential for creating engagement. Even though the public finds the courtroom a focal point of popular culture, from novels to movies to daytime television, the legal profession has not done a good job of using the Internet to engage the public about their legal needs. The Army has used Massive Multi-player Online Games (MMOGs) to engage potential recruits and in fact serve as an effective recruiting tool. Others have used MMOGs as platforms to explore societal crises such as petroleum dependency and crowdsource solutions to medical issues. Law schools, which are leading the creative use of technology for legal matters, are well-positioned to take the lead in the development of online gaming to advance engagement in ways that enable people to recognize the circumstances under which they have legal solutions to their problems

The Relationship Between Fibrinolytic Capacity and Metabolic Control in Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between fibrinolytic capacity and metabolic control in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Testing protocol was explained and informed consent was obtained from 26 insulin-dependent diabetics and 20 healthy controls who agreed to serve as subjects. Fibrinolytic capacity (FC) was measured as the change in euglobulin lysis time produced by 10 min of venous occlusion with a sphygmomanometer cuff inflated around the upper arm at a pressure midway between systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Metabolic control was evaluated by measurement of hemoglobin A1 (HbA1) using a minicolumn chromatographic technique. Fasting glucose (GLU), cholesterol (CHO), and triglyceride (TRI) were measured on a Coulter Chemistry Analyzer. Significant differences were found to exist between diabetics and controls, respectively, for FC (46.6 (+OR-) 19.3% vs. 64.2 (+OR-) 12.1%), HbA1 (10.3 (+OR-) 2.1% vs. 6.5 (+OR-) .9%), GLU (209 (+OR-) 102 mg% vs. 95 (+OR-) 7 mg%), and CHO (215 (+OR-) 56 mg% vs. 186 (+OR-) 25 mg%). No differences were found for TRI. Bivariate correlations were calculated between FC and HbA1 for diabetics only, for controls only, and for all subjects combined. Significant relationships were found for both the combined sample (r = -.33) and for controls (r = .54), but not for diabetics (r = -.08). Stepwise linear regression revealed that FC could best be explained in insulin-dependent diabetes by TRI (p = .03), and no significance could be attached to HbA1 (p = .46). It is concluded that the positive relationship noted between FC and HbA1 for normal subjects is spurious and that the reduced capacity for fibrinolytic activity in insulin-dependent diabetes is not directly related to metabolic control

Ad Rules Infinitum: The Need for Alternatives to State-Based Ethics Governing Legal Services Marketing

For most of the Twentieth Century, lawyer advertising was prohibited. Beginning with the Canons of Ethics ( Canons ), adopted by the American Bar Association (the ABA or Association ) in 1908, it was unethical for lawyers to advertise or engage in most forms of marketing. The 1977 United States Supreme Court decision of Bates v. State Bar of Arizona held that, under the First Amendment doctrine of commercial speech, states did not have the right to ban lawyer advertising. The decision, however, gave states the responsibility to regulate this activity. This began an experiment to balance consumer protection with the flow of legal commerce that continues on a state-by-state basis today

Ion temperature gradient instability at sub-Larmor radius scales with non-zero ballooning angle

Linear gyro-kinetic stability calculations predict unstable toroidal Ion Temperature Gradient modes with normalised poloidal wave vectors well above one ($k_\theta \rho_i > 1$) for standard parameters and with adiabatic electrons. These modes have a maximum amplitude at a poloidal angle $\theta$ that is shifted away from the low field side ($\theta \ne 0$). The physical mechanism is clarified through the use of a fluid model. It is shown that the shift of the mode away from the low field side ($\theta \ne 0$) reduces the effective drift frequency, and allows for the instability to develop. Numerical tests using the gyro-kinetic model confirm this physical mechanism. It is furthermore shown that modes with $\theta \ne 0$ can be important also for $k_\theta \rho_i < 1$ close to the threshold of the ITG. In fact, modes with $\theta \ne 0$ can exist for normalised temperature gradient lengths below the threshold of the ITG obtained for $\theta = 0$