Between a Stone and a Hard Place: How the Hajj Can Restore the Spirit of Reasonable Accommodation to Title VII

Although section 701(j) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that employers reasonably accommodate their employees\u27 religious practices and beliefs, many commentators acknowledge that the spirit of reasonable accommodation has not been realized because courts have drastically limited the scope of employers\u27 duty. This may be especially true for Muslims, who, according to a 2012 study, are roughly half as likely to prevail in free-exercise and religiousaccommodation lawsuits as are non-Muslim claimants. One of the central tenets of Islam, the hajj, poses significant challenges for Muslim employees seeking accommodation under Title VII. Because accommodating the hajj will almost always impose more than a de minimis cost on employers, a court is unlikely to find that Title VII requires employers to accommodate a Muslim employee\u27s decision to complete the pilgrimage. This Note attempts to articulate a new method for expanding Title VII\u27s protection of employees\u27 religious beliefs and practices. Specifically, this Note argues that increased involvement by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice in hajj-accommodation cases offers a promising approach to developing a more balanced accommodation doctrine, or at least to realigning the scales so that they are not tilted so heavily in favor of employers. Despite clear precedent limiting an employer\u27s duty to accommodate, increased intervention by the federal government in Title VII hajj-accommodation cases has the potential to shift the conception of reasonable accommodation. Though the government must pick and choose the cases in which to intervene, hajjaccommodation cases present an opportunity to further the dual purposes of the government\u27s Title VII enforcement authority to implement the public interest as well as to bring about more effective enforcement of private rights. Intervention can restore the spirit of accommodation to section 701(j) and give employers more of an incentive to accommodate their employees\u27 religious obligations

Health of children and young people in secure settings

This small-scale descriptive study was commissioned by the Children and Young People's Public Health team within the Department of Health, in partnership with Offender Health, in order to inform preparation and implementation of an Offender Health Strategy document for children and young people. The overall aim was to review what is currently known about healthcare for children and young people in the secure estate, covering all three types of settings (Young Offender Institution, Secure Training Centre and Secure Children's Home) and all aspects of health, but with a particular focus on physical health since more is already known about mental health and substance misuse among young people in secure settings

Interferometric mapping of Magnetic fields: G30.79 FIR 10

We present polarization maps of G30.79 FIR 10 (in W43) from thermal dust emission at 1.3 mm and from CO J=$2 \to 1$ line emission. The observations were obtained using the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association array in the period 2002-2004. The G30.79 FIR 10 region shows an ordered polarization pattern in dust emission, which suggests an hourglass shape for the magnetic field. Only marginal detections for line polarization were made from this region. Application of the Chandrashkar-Fermi method yielded $B_{pos} \approx 1.7$ mG and a statistically corrected mass to magnetic flux ratio $\lambda_{C} \approx 0.9$, or essentially critical.Comment: 11 pages, 2 Figures, Published in Ap

The Estimation and Control of a Laboratory Heating and Ventilation System

This dissertation is concerned with the estimation and control of a laboratory heating and ventilation system (Instrutek VVS-400). The system is a 2x2 multi-input multi-output process (MIMO). It has been shown that simple techniques such as the ultimate cycle method do not provide adequate control of the process. The system was interfaced with a PC using Matlab/Simulink via a data acquisition package (Humusoft). Continuous time process identification techniques were applied to the flow and temperature processes. The alternative tangent and point method was used to model the processes, and their interaction, using a first order lag plus delay model. Models were obtained for a range of operating conditions. The accuracy of the flow and temperature measurement transducers were investigated ¾ some inaccuracies were determined. Tests revealed that both processes were continuously non-linear. This pointed toward adaptive control as appropriate. PI/PID controllers were used because both processes displayed a low time delay to time constant ratio. Tuning rules were selected on the basis of minimising the integral of absolute error. A strong interaction effect between the output temperature and input flow rate was reduced considerably using a static decoupler. A gain scheduler was designed, using look-up tables, to continuously interpolate for the most suitable controller settings and decoupler gain, as process operating conditions varied. The design was compared to an average model controller. Validation tests showed that the overall difference in performance was slim. It was concluded that discrete time identification methods would yield more appealing results for the gain scheduler, and that the design could be applied to other MIMO processes with relative ease

The effects of organic farming on the soil physical environment

The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of organic farming practices on the development of soil physical properties, and in particular, soil structure in comparison with conventional agricultural management. The soil structure of organically and conventionally managed soils at one site was compared in a quantitative manner at different scales of observations using image analysis. Key soil physical and chemical properties were measured as well as the pore fractal geometry to characterise pore roughness. Organically managed soils had higher organic matter content and provided a more stable soil structure than conventionally managed soils. The higher porosity (%) at the macroscale in soil under conventional management was due to fewer larger pores while mesoand microscale porosity was found to be greater under organic management. Organically managed soils typically provided spatially well distributed pores of all sizes and of greater roughness compared to those under conventional management. These variations in the soil physical environment are likely to impact significantly on the performance of these soils for a number of key processes such as crop establishment and water availabilit

Modeling of radiation damage in silicon solar cells

One MeV electron irradiation produces preponderantly isolated vacancy interstitial pairs. If neither of these defects is mobile, the concentration of each grows linearly with fluence. Annealing of damage depends on the nature of the damage. Vacancy interstitial pairs which are bound by an interaction such that they mutually annihilate rather than dissociate are termed close pairs; close pair recovery usually occurs at a lower temperature than the temperature at which long distance defect migration occurs. Annealing of the remaining frozen in damage occurs when a temperature is reached where the vacancy or interstitial is mobile; usually the interstitial is more mobile than the vacancy. The recovery occurs in two regimes which may be resoluable

Root anatomical traits contribute to deeper rooting of maize under compacted field conditions

© The Author(s) 2020. To better understand the role of root anatomy in regulating plant adaptation to soil mechanical impedance, 12 maize lines were evaluated in two soils with and without compaction treatments under field conditions. Penetrometer resistance was 1–2 MPa greater in the surface 30 cm of the compacted plots at a water content of 17–20% (v/v). Root thickening in response to compaction varied among genotypes and was negatively associated with rooting depth at one field site under non-compacted plots. Thickening was not associated with rooting depth on compacted plots. Genotypic variation in root anatomy was related to rooting depth. Deeper-rooting plants were associated with reduced cortical cell file number in combination with greater mid cortical cell area for node 3 roots. For node 4, roots with increased aerenchyma were deeper roots. A greater influence of anatomy on rooting depth was observed for the thinner root classes. We found no evidence that root thickening is related to deeper rooting in compacted soil; however, anatomical traits are important, especially for thinner root classes

Crowdsourcing: A Geographic Approach to Public Engagement, The Programmable City Working Paper 6

In this paper we examine three geographic crowdsourcing models, namely: volunteered geographic information (VGI), citizen science (CS) and participatory mapping (PM) (Goodchild, 2007; Audubon Society, 1900; and Peluso, 1995). We argue that these geographic knowledge producing practices can be adopted by governments to keep databases up to date (Budhathoki et al., 2008), to gain insight about natural resources (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011), to better understand the socio-economy of the people it governs (Johnston and Sieber, 2013) and as a form of data-based public engagement. The paper will be useful to governments and public agencies considering using geographic crowdsourcing in the future. We begin by defining VGI, CS, PM and crowdsourcing. Two typologies are then offered as methods to conceptualize these practices and the Kitchin (2014) data assemblage framework is proposed as a method by which state actors can critically examine their data infrastructures. A selection of exemplary VGI, CS and PM from Canada and the Republic of Ireland are discussed and the paper concludes with some high level recommendations for administrations considering a geographic approach to crowdsourcing