Do We Have Reasons to Obey the Law?

Instead of the question, ‘do we have an obligation to obey the law?,’ we should first ask the more modest question, ‘do we have reasons to obey the law?’ This paper offers a new account of the notion of the content-independence of legal reasons in terms of the grounding relation. That account is then used to mount a defense of the claim that we do indeed have content-independent moral reasons to obey the law (because it is the law), and that these reasons, very plausibly, often amount to an obligation to so act

A note on log-convexity of q-Catalan numbers

The q-Catalan numbers studied by Carlitz and Riordan are polynomials in q with nonnegative coefficients. They evaluate, at q=1, to the Catalan numbers: 1, 1, 2, 5, 14,..., a log-convex sequence. We use a combinatorial interpretation of these polynomials to prove a q-log-convexity result. The sequence of q-Catalan numbers is not q-log-convex in the narrow sense used by other authors, so our work suggests a more flexible definition of q-log convex be adopted

Modulation of the Sodium/Iodide Symporter (NIS) by MEK Inhibition in MCF7 Breast Cancer Cells

The Na+/I- symporter (NIS) mediates radioiodine therapy in thyroid cancer patients. NIS is also present in many human breast tumors, suggesting that radioiodine may also be used for detection and ablation of breast cancer. Inhibition of MEK (MAPK/ERK Kinase) signaling has been shown to have anti-tumor activity in breast cancer models. Previous data from our lab shows that MEK inhibition reduces NIS protein level and function via lysosomal degradation in trans-Retinoic Acid/Hydrocortisone treated MCF7 human breast cancer cells. We investigated the effect of MEK inhibition on constitutively expressed NIS in MCF7 Cells Western blot analysis demonstrates that MEK inhibition also reduces exogenous NIS stably expressed in MCF7 cells, suggesting that NIS downregulation by MEK inhibition occurs at the post-transcriptional level. The extent of reduction in NIS activity as determined by radioiodine uptake assay correlates with the reduction of cell surface NIS levels as analyzed by flow cytometry. Fluorescence activated cell sorting was performed to isolate a population of MCF7 cells stably expressing high levels of cell surface NIS. To investigate whether the reduction of surface NIS is due to increased endocytosis, live cell labeling of cell surface NIS was successfully performed and internalization was visualized over time. While NIS remains at the cell surface after labeling with primary antibody alone, NIS endocytosis is induced by conjugated primary and secondary antibodies, presumably due to clustering. An immunofluorescence based internalization assay was performed to determine if the degradation of NIS by MEK inhibition is via increased internalization or by degradation prior to cell surface trafficking. However, no detectable difference in NIS levels between treated and non-treated cells was detected. Western blot analysis to determine the temporal profile of NIS degradation by MEK inhibition revealed that MEK inhibition does not lead to NIS degradation in the population of selected MCF7 cells with high surface NIS expression. Investigation of how NIS degradation is avoided in this population may help to develop strategies to prevent NIS reduction by MEK inhibition such that MEK inhibition and radioiodine therapy could be used concurrently for breast cancer treatment.No embarg

Nurses\u27 Perceptions of Supports and Barriers in Transitioning to the Nurse Faculty Role

This project study addressed nurses\u27 perceptions of supports and barriers in transitioning from a clinician to a faculty role in a 3-year diploma nursing program located in Eastern Pennsylvania. This problem is significant at both the local and national level due to the shortage of qualified nursing faculty members. A qualitative case study design using in-depth interviews was used. The framework to guide the study was Schoening\u27s Nurse Educator Transition (NET) Model. The guiding question addressed perceptions of new nursing faculty members regarding supports and barriers of transitioning to the faculty role. Interview questions focused on participants\u27 identification of their current NET phase, description of an ideal transition into the faculty role, and perceived supports and barriers to role transition. Purposeful sampling was used to obtain 8 new nursing faculty members who had 5 years or less of teaching experience. Interview data were analyzed and coded using a priori codes based on the NET model. The themes identified from data analysis were: being thrown in with no orientation to the role, supportive colleagues, lack of support from administration, formal orientation, assigned resource person, time in the role, and asking questions. Based on findings from the study, an orientation/mentorship program was developed to help support clinical nurses\u27 transition into the nursing faculty role. The orientation/mentorship program could lead to a positive social change by having nursing faculty members remain in their role long term, decreasing both the nursing faculty and registered nurse shortage

The Rawlsian Mirror of Justice

Libertarians(like me) generally disagree with orthodox Rawlsians (like Samuel Freeman) about whether Rawlsian principles of distributive justice are compatible with libertarianism.1In this essay, I set out to explain why. In section 1, I describe the problem, which is essentially that libertarians think the Rawlsian framework does not rule out anti-statist, capitalist, and broadly libertarian approaches to distributive justice and orthodox Rawlsians think that it does. I propose that this problem arises because the Rawlsian framework is underspecified in two ways. First, the Rawlsian framework has a lot of moving parts, so people with different pre-theoretical intuitions can use Rawls’s theory, without error, to arrive at very different conclusions. I make this point in section 2. Second, orthodox Rawlsians advance justice as fairness at an intermediate level of idealization. In section 3, I argue that pitching the theory at this level inherits many of the problems with a non-ideal approach that addresses specific problems with the status quo as well as the problems with a purely ideal approach that addresses the motivating ideals and values. This approach also obscures more than it illuminates to the extent that it is often unclear whether arguments at this level of analysis are justified on principled or pragmatic grounds

Differences in Mathematics and Literacy Achievement Between African American Males and Other 11th-Grade students

The gap in school performance between African American students and students of other subpopulations has shown up in a range of academic success measures including course grades, test scores, course selection, and college graduation rates (Johnston & Viadero 2000); college and high school grade point averages [GPAs] (Banks & Banks, 2004); and dropout rates (Gordon, 1999; Green, 2001; Irvine & Armento, 2001; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Kober, 2001; Lee, 2002). These indicators all point to a disturbing pattern in the educational system and beg the question: What is going on with the education of African American males in the United States? The purpose of this dissertation was to determine if such an achievement gap existed between African American males and their 11th Grade counterparts in three Northeast Arkansas schools on the Arkansas Augmented Benchmark Examination for grades 3-8 in mathematics and literacy. For this longitudinal study, a causal-comparative, non-experimental strategy was used. Data for this study comprised existing standardized test scores obtained from a stratified random sample of 180 students at three high schools (grades 9 through 12) in three urban school districts in Northeast Arkansas. At each school, the inclusion criterion for students in the sample was their continuous residency within the school district between the grade levels being evaluated. Only students who met this criterion were considered for selection. Mixed factorial ANOVAs were run to test each of the four hypotheses. The results of these analyses indicated that African American males scored significantly and consistently lower than to their classmates of other subpopulations in the study. Thus, each of the four hypotheses was rejected

Kinetic inductance detectors for measuring the polarization of the cosmic microwave background

Kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) are superconducting thin-film microresonators that are sensitive photon detectors. These detectors are a candidate for the next generation of experiments designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). I discuss the basic theory needed to understand the response of a KID to light, focusing on the dynamics of the quasiparticle system. I derive an equation that describes the dynamics of the quasiparticle number, solve it in a simplified form not previously published, and show that it can describe the dynamic response of a detector. Magnetic flux vortices in a superconducting thin film can be a significant source of dissipation, and I demonstrate some techniques to prevent their formation. Based on the presented theory, I derive a corrected version of a widely-used equation for the quasiparticle recombination noise in a KID. I show that a KID consisting of a lumped-element resonator can be sensitive enough to be limited by photon noise, which is the fundamental limit for photometry, at a level of optical loading below levels in ground-based CMB experiments. Finally, I describe an ongoing project to develop multichroic KID pixels that are each sensitive to two linear polarization states in two spectral bands, intended for the next generation of CMB experiments. I show that a prototype 23-pixel array can detect millimeter-wave light, and present characterization measurements of the detectors

In The Critical Tradition: An Examination Of National Board Certified Teachers In A Central Florida School District

In 1986, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy published A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century in which it recommended that a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) be established to ascertain and institute criteria for teacher excellence (Steiner, 1995). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) mandated that every classroom employ a highly qualified teacher (No Child Left Behind, 2001a); moreover, NCLB articulated the relationship between improving student achievement and higher standards for qualifying classroom teachers (Rotberg, Futrell & Lieberman, 1998). Research conducted in Miami-Dade County supports Florida\u27s use of National Board Certification (NBC) as an effective signal of teacher quality (CNA Corporation, 2004, p.1). Critical theorist, Michael Apple, emphasized the role of education as an agent for the maintenance of hegemony (Apple, 2004). However, Apple further posited that the actual bureaucracy of school - the institution of education itself - is reflective of the same consumerist ideology of society, thus making the hegemony even more complete. Using the aforementioned theoretical construct, the researcher examined the development of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the distribution of Nationally Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in a central Florida school district, and their professional responsibilities as a means of examining whether this mechanism for identifying highly qualified teachers achieves its stated aim of providing every student with access to a highly qualified teacher, as is legislated and funded per NCLB