Justice Shepard and Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Legacy of ICLEO

In his presentation, Dean Klein discusses the importance of role models and mentors in promoting the value of diversity in the legal profession. His presentation includes personal background relating to his own involvement with the Indiana Council on Legal Education Opportunity ("ICLEO") program and highlights the accomplishments of several former ICLEO fellows who have become leaders and role models themselves. Dean Klein concludes by praising former Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard and the ICLEO program for providing a pipeline of leaders committed to the legal profession and a pipeline of mentors for future generations of lawyers who are committed to the important role that diversity plays in ensuring a system of justice

Predicting the Outcomes of NCAA Basketball Championship Games

This paper uses the difference in seeding ranks to predict the outcome of March Madness games. It updates the Boulier-Stekler method by predicting the outcomes by rounds. We also use the consensus rankings obtained from individuals, systems and poll. We conclude that the consensus rankings were slightly better predictors in the early rounds but had the same limitations as the seedings in the later rounds.Sports forecasts, March Madness, Ranking methods, Expert forecasts, Consensus forecasts

How Many Democrats per Republican at UC-Berkeley and Stanford? Voter Registration Data Across 23 Academic Departments

Using the records of the seven San Francisco Bay Area counties that surround University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, we conducted a systematic and thorough study of the party registration of the Berkeley and Stanford faculty in 23 academic departments. The departments span the social sciences, humanities, hard sciences, math, law, journalism, engineering, medicine, and the business school. Of the total of 1497 individual names on the cumulative list, we obtained readings on 1005, or 67 percent. The findings support the “one-party campus” conjecture. For UC-Berkeley, we found an overall Democrat:Republican ratio of 9.9:1. For Stanford, we found an overall D:R ratio of 7.6:1. Moreover, the breakdown by faculty rank shows that Republicans are an “endangered species” on the two campuses. This article contains a link to the complete data (with individual identities redacted).academia; diversity; Democratic; Republican; voting; political parties

Differential in vitro infection of neural cells by astroviruses

Encephalitis remains a diagnostic conundrum in humans as over 50% of cases are managed without the identification of an etiology. Astroviruses have been detected from the central nervous system of mammals in association with disease, suggesting that this family of RNA viruses could be responsible for cases of some neurological diseases that are currently without an ascribed etiology. However, there are significant barriers to understanding astrovirus infection as the capacity of these viruses to replicate in nervous system cells in vitro has not been determined. We describe primary and immortalized cultured cells of the nervous system that support infection by astroviruses. These results further corroborate the role of astroviruses in causing neurological diseases and will serve as an essential model to interrogate the neuropathogenesis of astrovirus infection.Recent advances in unbiased pathogen discovery have implicated astroviruses as pathogens of the central nervous system (CNS) of mammals, including humans. However, the capacity of astroviruses to be cultured in CNS-derived cells in vitro has not been reported to date. Both astrovirus VA1/HMO-C (VA1; mamastrovirus 9) and classic human astrovirus 4 (HAstV4; mamastrovirus 1) have been previously detected from cases of human encephalitis. We tested the ability of primary human neurons, primary human astrocytes, and other immortalized human nervous system cell lines (SK-N-SH, U87 MG, and SW-1088) to support infection and replication of these two astrovirus genotypes. Primary astrocytes and SK-N-SH cells supported the full viral life cycle of VA1 with a >100-fold increase in viral RNA levels during a multistep growth curve, detection of viral capsid, and a >100-fold increase in viral titer. Primary astrocytes were permissive with respect to HAstV4 infection and replication but did not yield infectious virus, suggesting abortive infection. Similarly, abortive infection of VA1 was observed in SW-1088 and U87 MG cells. Elevated expression of the chemokine CXCL10 was detected in VA1-infected primary astrocytes and SK-N-SH cells, suggesting that VA1 infection can induce a proinflammatory host response. These findings establish an in vitro cell culture model that is essential for investigation of the basic biology of astroviruses and their neuropathogenic potential

Star Cluster Formation in Turbulent, Magnetized Dense Clumps with Radiative and Outflow Feedback

We present three Orion simulations of star cluster formation in a 1000 Msun, turbulent molecular cloud clump, including the effects of radiative transfer, protostellar outflows, and magnetic fields. Our simulations all use self-consistent turbulent initial conditions and vary the mean mass-to-flux ratio relative to the critical value over 2, 10, and infinity to gauge the influence of magnetic fields on star cluster formation. We find, in good agreement with previous studies, that magnetic fields of typically observed strengths lower the star formation rate by a factor of 2.4 and reduce the amount of fragmentation by a factor of 2 relative to the zero-field case. We also find that the field increases the characteristic sink particle mass, again by a factor of 2.4. The magnetic field also increases the degree of clustering in our simulations, such that the maximum stellar densities in the strong field case are higher than the others by again a factor of 2. This clustering tends to encourage the formation of multiple systems, which are more common in the rad-MHD runs than the rad-hydro run. The companion frequency in our simulations is consistent with observations of multiplicity in Class I sources, particularly for the strong field case. Finally, we find evidence of primordial mass segregation in our simulations reminiscent of that observed in star clusters like the Orion Nebula Cluster.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, accepted by MNRA

Choosing Prevention Products: Questions to Ask When Considering Sexual and Relationship Violence and Stalking Prevention Products

The purpose of this white paper is to provide guidance to university and college leaders on how to choose products that address concerns of sexual and relationship violence and stalking from the perspective of prevention

Factors Affecting the Output and Quit Propensities of Production Workers

We have used a proprietary data set of newly hired semi-skilled production workers at one location of a large unionized firm to investigate several issues in labor economics. This data set is unique in several respects: the workers in our sample faced the same wage schedules, had the same promotional opportunities, the same job tenure (zero), similar working conditions, and had jobs for which we were able to record their physical output. We analyze these data by formulating a simultaneous equation model to explain wages, output, education, and a worker's quit decision. The model is estimated by maximum likelihood and subjected to a variety of specification tests. Such tests include a comparison of the standard error estimates that form the basis for White's information test, and White's version of a Hausman specification test. Our principal findings are: 1. Individuals that choose more education than we would expect from their observed characteristics have lower than expected quit propensities. We argue that this low quit propensity is one of the unmeasured (and unobserved) attributes that sorting models posit are correlated with education and hence distort the usual estimates of rates of return to education. 2. The performance of non-whites in our sample was no lower than that of whites. However, on their previous jobs non-whites received lower wages than did whites. 3. The output per hour of males in our sample was higher than that of females; however, we were unable to conclude from our data whether these productivity differences could explain the higher wages received by men on their previous jobs. Moreover, this output difference may be transitory and may diminish with on-the-job learning. 4. The expected value of alternative wages had a positive (but not statistically very significant) effect on quit rates. Workers with better alternative opportunities were more likely to quit (all workers had the same opportunities on their current job). 5. Finally we found that workers with high output levels were more likely to quit than were workers with average output levels.