The Duty to Decide vs. The Daedalian Doctrine of Abstention

It is the thesis of this article that the growing trend in the federal courts to refuse to exercise their assigned jurisdiction violates the doctrine of the separation of powers, and that the federal judiciary\u27s excuses for refusing to perform their tasks do not pass constitutional muster. Specifically, this article will demonstrate that those excuses either do not rise to a level of constitutional concern sufficient to justify the trend or are based on a perversion of the admittedly constitutional concept of federalism, a concept affording the individual citizen a structural protection against arbitrary government in additionto the structural protection flowing from separated powers, not a concept that properly can be used to deprive the individual of federal protection. After establishing the inadequacies of the courts\u27 excuses for refusing to decide cases, this article then points to the provisions of article III and article I, section 8, clause 9, of the Constitution to show that, given Congress\u27s power to create within constitutional limits the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, 30 and given that judiciary\u27s power to decide all cases properly arising pursuant to Congress\u27s constitutional exercise of its powers, the federal courts abrogate the separation doctrine, in effect destroying their own jurisdiction, however the practice is couched in nonjurisdictional rubric, whenever they refuse to exercise such jurisdiction by not deciding those cases which Congress has determined should be decided. In short, the federal courts have a duty to decide

Tuning the interactions of spin-polarized fermions using quasi-one-dimensional confinement

The behavior of ultracold atomic gases depends crucially on the two-body scattering properties of these systems. We develop a multichannel scattering theory for atom-atom collisions in quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) geometries such as atomic waveguides or highly elongated traps. We apply our general framework to the low energy scattering of two spin-polarized fermions and show that tightly-confined fermions have infinitely strong interactions at a particular value of the 3D, free-space p-wave scattering volume. Moreover, we describe a mapping of this strongly interacting system of two quasi-1D fermions to a weakly interacting system of two 1D bosons.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Descendants of the first stars: the distinct chemical signature of second generation stars

Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars in the Milky Way (MW) allow us to infer the properties of their progenitors by comparing their chemical composition to the metal yields of the first supernovae. This method is most powerful when applied to mono-enriched stars, i.e. stars that formed from gas that was enriched by only one previous supernova. We present a novel diagnostic to identify this subclass of EMP stars. We model the first generations of star formation semi-analytically, based on dark matter halo merger trees that yield MW-like halos at the present day. Radiative and chemical feedback are included self-consistently and we trace all elements up to zinc. Mono-enriched stars account for only $\sim 1\%$ of second generation stars in our fiducial model and we provide an analytical formula for this probability. We also present a novel analytical diagnostic to identify mono-enriched stars, based on the metal yields of the first supernovae. This new diagnostic allows us to derive our main results independently from the specific assumptions made regarding Pop III star formation, and we apply it to a set of observed EMP stars to demonstrate its strengths and limitations. Our results may provide selection criteria for current and future surveys and therefore contribute to a deeper understanding of EMP stars and their progenitors.Comment: 18 pages, 20 figures, published in MNRA

Noninvasive optical inhibition with a red-shifted microbial rhodopsin

Optogenetic inhibition of the electrical activity of neurons enables the causal assessment of their contributions to brain functions. Red light penetrates deeper into tissue than other visible wavelengths. We present a red-shifted cruxhalorhodopsin, Jaws, derived from Haloarcula (Halobacterium) salinarum (strain Shark) and engineered to result in red light–induced photocurrents three times those of earlier silencers. Jaws exhibits robust inhibition of sensory-evoked neural activity in the cortex and results in strong light responses when used in retinas of retinitis pigmentosa model mice. We also demonstrate that Jaws can noninvasively mediate transcranial optical inhibition of neurons deep in the brains of awake mice. The noninvasive optogenetic inhibition opened up by Jaws enables a variety of important neuroscience experiments and offers a powerful general-use chloride pump for basic and applied neuroscience.McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT (Razin Fellowship)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Living Foundries Program (HR0011-12-C-0068)Harvard-MIT Joint Research Grants Program in Basic NeuroscienceHuman Frontier Science Program (Strasbourg, France)Institution of Engineering and Technology (A. F. Harvey Prize)McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Neurotechnology (MINT) ProgramNew York Stem Cell Foundation (Robertson Investigator Award)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (New Innovator Award 1DP2OD002002)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (EUREKA Award 1R01NS075421)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 1R01DA029639)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 1RC1MH088182)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 1R01NS067199)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Career Award CBET 1053233)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant EFRI0835878)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DMS0848804)Society for Neuroscience (Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience)Wallace H. Coulter FoundationNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (RO1 MH091220-01)Whitehall FoundationEsther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Inc.JPB FoundationPIIF FundingNational Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (R01-MH102441-01)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (DP2-OD-017366-01)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Simons Center for the Social Brai

The Trouble with \u3ci\u3eZahn\u3c/i\u3e: Progeny of \u3ci\u3eSnyder v. Harris\u3c/i\u3e Further Cripples Class Actions

I. Introduction II. Snyder and the Class Action … A. Development of Class Actions … B. Rule 23(b)(3) and Federal Questions … C. An Environmental Case Study … D. Class Actions in State Courts … E. Jurisdictional Amount vs. Case or Controversy III. Ancillary Jurisdiction, Class Actions, and Joinder of Parties … A. Ancillary and Pendent Jurisdiction … B. Scope of Ancillary and Pendent Jurisdiction … C. Zahn in the Trial Court … D. Issues Raised on Interlocutory Appeal in Zahn … E. Zahn and Ancillary Jurisdiction … F. The Ben-Hur Doctrine—Does It Still Live? IV. Conclusio