Impartial Justice: Restoring Integrity to Impeachment Trials

In recent decades, we have witnessed the diminution of the impeachment process by various actors—especially political parties. But the Founders envisioned a vastly different process, one that was insulated from partisanship. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, impeachment trials were assigned to the Senate because the Senate is “a tribunal sufficiently dignified [and] sufficiently independent.” Examples from the most recent impeachment trials of President Donald J. Trump reflect the Senate’s loss of dignity and independence, with Senator McConnell pledging to work with the White House throughout the first impeachment process and senators from both parties conceding that they made up their minds before the trials even began. After identifying the permeation of partisanship into the impeachment process, this Article draws attention to the senatorial impeachment oath— the oath taken by senators to “do impartial justice”—as one avenue for reform. The oath has been overlooked in much of the secondary literature about impeachment, receiving as little as two sentences in one of the most prominent books about the subject, Charles Black’s Impeachment: A Handbook. After canvassing the history of the senators’ oath and comparing that oath to other prominent oaths in American law, this Article explores two possible reforms: (1) a perjury-like law criminalizing oath-breaking by senators and (2) Senate rule changes designed to amplify the force of the oath. Ultimately, Senate rule changes are both more practical and more likely to survive constitutional scrutiny, but by considering both paths, this Article presents the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the two modes of reform

Niches for Species, a multi-species model to guide woodland management: An example based on Scotland's native woodlands

Designating and managing areas with the aim of protecting biodiversity requires information on species distributions and habitat associations, but a lack of reliable occurrence records for rare and threatened species precludes robust empirical modelling. Managers of Scotland’s native woodlands are obliged to consider 208 protected species, which each have their own, narrow niche requirements. To support decision-making, we developed Niches for Species (N4S), a model that uses expert knowledge to predict the potential occurrence of 179 woodland protected species representing a range of taxa: mammals, birds, invertebrates, fungi, bryophytes, lichens and vascular plants. Few existing knowledge-based models have attempted to include so many species. We collated knowledge to define each species’ suitable habitat according to a hierarchical habitat classification: woodland type, stand structure and microhabitat. Various spatial environmental datasets were used singly or in combination to classify and map Scotland’s native woodlands accordingly, thus allowing predictive mapping of each species’ potential niche. We illustrate how the outputs can inform individual species management, or can be summarised across species and regions to provide an indicator of woodland biodiversity potential for landscape scale decisions. We tested the model for ten species using available occurrence records. Although concordance between predicted and observed distributions was indicated for nine of these species, this relationship was statistically significant in only five cases. We discuss the difficulties in reliably testing predictions when the records available for rare species are typically low in number, patchy and biased, and suggest future model improvements. Finally, we demonstrate how using N4S to synthesise complex, multi-species information into an easily digestible format can help policy makers and practitioners consider large numbers of species and their conservation needs

Genetic Insight into Yield-Associated Traits of Wheat Grown in Multiple Rain-Fed Environments

Background: Grain yield is a key economic driver of successful wheat production. Due to its complex nature, little is known regarding its genetic control. The goal of this study was to identify important quantitative trait loci (QTL) directly and indirectly affecting grain yield using doubled haploid lines derived from a cross between Hanxuan 10 and Lumai 14. Methodology/Principal Findings: Ten yield-associated traits, including yield per plant (YP), number of spikes per plan

Plant phenomics, from sensors to knowledge

Major improvements in crop yield are needed to keep pace with population growth and climate change. While plant breeding efforts have greatly benefited from advances in genomics, profiling the crop phenome (i.e., the structure and function of plants) associated with allelic variants and environments remains a major technical bottleneck. Here, we review the conceptual and technical challenges facing plant phenomics. We first discuss how, given plants’ high levels of morphological plasticity, crop phenomics presents distinct challenges compared with studies in animals. Next, we present strategies for multi-scale phenomics, and describe how major improvements in imaging, sensor technologies and data analysis are now making high-throughput root, shoot, whole-plant and canopy phenomic studies possible. We then suggest that research in this area is entering a new stage of development, in which phenomic pipelines can help researchers transform large numbers of images and sensor data into knowledge, necessitating novel methods of data handling and modelling. Collectively, these innovations are helping accelerate the selection of the next generation of crops more sustainable and resilient to climate change, and whose benefits promise to scale from physiology to breeding and to deliver real world impact for ongoing global food security efforts

Effects of ipsilateral and contralateral fatigue and muscle blood flow occlusion on the complexity of knee extensor torque output in humans

Neuromuscular fatigue reduces the temporal structure, or complexity, of torque output during muscular contractions. To determine whether the fatigue-induced loss of torque complexity could be accounted for by central or peripheral factors, nine healthy participants performed four experimental trials involving intermittent isometric contractions of the knee extensors at 50% of the maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) torque. These trials involved: 1) two bouts of contractions to failure using the right leg separated by 3 min recovery (IPS); 2) the same protocol but with cuff occlusion during the 3-min recovery (IPS-OCC); 3) contractions of the left leg to failure, followed 1 min later by contractions of the right leg to failure (CONT); and 4) the same protocol but with cuff occlusion applied to the left leg throughout both the recovery period and right leg contractions (CONT-OCC). Supramaximal electrical stimulation during MVCs was used to determine the degree of central and peripheral fatigue, whilst complexity was determined using Approximate Entropy (ApEn) and Detrended Fluctuation Analysis ? exponent (DFA ?). Neuromuscular fatigue was consistently associated with a loss of torque complexity in all conditions (e.g., IPS bout 1 ApEn from [mean {plus minus} SD]: 0.46 {plus minus} 0.14 to 0.12 {plus minus} 0.06 [P < 0.001]). In IPS-OCC, occlusion abolished the recovery from fatigue and torque complexity remained at the values observed at task failure in the preceding bout (IPS-OCC bout 2, first minute: 0.14 {plus minus} 0.03, P < 0.001). Prior contralateral contractions, with or without blood flow occlusion, had no effect on torque complexity

Vehicle-Moose Accidents in Newfoundland

During 1987 and 1988, in Newfoundland, there were 661 motor-vehicle accidents involving a moose; 133 people were injured and three died. This constitutes a major problem for the provincial health-care system. In 95 per cent of the patients who were involved in fifty-five primary collisions (the vehicle hit only the moose), the injury-severity score was less than 9 (mean and standard deviation, 3.2 +/- 4.6). There were thirty-six secondary collisions: in eighteen, the vehicle hit other objects after avoiding the moose (group A), and in the other eighteen, the vehicle hit the moose and then hit other objects (group B). In group A, the mean injury-severity score was 4.2 +/- 2.9 and in group B, it was 19.6 +/- 27.1. The three patients who died were in group B. There were more injuries to the thorax, thoracolumbar spine, and abdomen in group B than in the single-collision groups (primary-collision group and group A)