Interlocutory Appeals in New York-Time Has Come for a More Efficient Approach

Currently, the appellate division must decide an enormous number of appeals every year.7 In light of this caseload crisis, New York must reevaluate its generous approach to interlocutory appeals.8 This Comment discusses how the appellate division can deal most efficiently with interlocutory appeals. Part II describes the history of interlocutory appeals in New York, since the creation of the appellate division. Part III explains how other jurisdictions treat interlocutory appeals. Part IV presents the current caseload crisis in the appellate division. Part V describes the controversy over unlimited interlocutory appealability. Part VI evaluates how New York can streamline its approach without sacrificing the appellate division\u27s ability to supervise the lower courts. Part VII suggests that a modified single justice approach is the fairest and most efficient solution. Part VIII concludes that the legislators must take measures to streamline New York\u27s approach to interlocutory appeals

Free Will of an Ontologically Open Mind

The problem of free will has persistently resisted a solution throughout centuries. There is reason to believe that new elements need to be introduced into the analysis in order to make progress. In the present physicalist approach, these elements are emergence and information theory in relation to universal limits set by quantum physics. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as "being able to act differently" is, in the spirit of Carnap, rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for formal analysis. It is argued that the mind is an ontologically open system; a causal high-level system, the future of which cannot be reduced to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, not even if it is rendered physically closed. A positive answer to the question of free will is subsequently outlined

Honey, I’ll Be Working Late Tonight. The Effect of Individual Work Routines on Leisure Time Synchronization of Couples

German time use data for 2001/02 are used to assess the impact of workplace characteristics on the private life of couples. The major aim is to solve the endogeneity resulting from individual preferences for work and leisure to identify the pure effects of the workplace independent from other diluting personal influences in a cross-sectional setting when no appropriate instruments are available. I propose a repeated random assignment of people into pseudo couples as a solution. By this approach, I am able to uncover additional marriage inherent mechanisms that result in a (de-)synchronization of joint time that are still family friendly.Time Use, Time Allocation, Family Economics, Flexibility, Synchronization, Leisure, Endogeneity

On the Solvability of the Mind-Body Problem

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena

The unsolvability of the mind-body problem liberates the will

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is argued that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. A comparison with the significantly more complex neural network of the brain shows that also consciousness is epistemically emergent in a strong sense. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to system limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. In the perspective of a modified definition of free will, the character of the physical interactions of the brain's neural system is subsequently studied. As an ontologically open system, it is asserted that its future states are undeterminable in principle. We argue that this leads to freedom of the will

SIR - an Efficient Solver for Systems of Equations

The Semi-Implicit Root solver (SIR) is an iterative method for globally convergent solution of systems of nonlinear equations. Since publication, SIR has proven robustness for a great variety of problems. We here present MATLAB and MAPLE codes for SIR, that can be easily implemented in any application where linear or nonlinear systems of equations need be solved efficiently. The codes employ recently developed efficient sparse matrix algorithms and improved numerical differentiation. SIR convergence is quasi-monotonous and approaches second order in the proximity of the real roots. Global convergence is usually superior to that of Newtons method, being a special case of the method. Furthermore the algorithm cannot land on local minima, as may be the case for Newtons method with linesearch.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Does International Outsourcing Depress Union Wages?

In this paper, we provide first empirical evidence on the effect of outsourcing on union wages using linked employer-employee data for Germany. We find that low skilled workers experience a decline in the union wage premium when working in industries with high outsourcing intensities. The finding applies to both firm- and sector-level agreements. Hence, outsourcing appears to deteriorate the bargaining position of unions. Outsourcing is not found to have a negative effect on the wages of low skilled employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements. While wages of medium skilled workers are largely unaffected by outsourcing, high skilled workers see their wages rise in industries with a high level of outsourcing. There is no interaction between coverage and outsourcing for these skill groups.Collective Bargaining; International Outsourcing; Union Wages

Guest Editorial: Ethics and Privacy in Learning Analytics

The European Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) project is responsible for an ongoing series of workshops on ethics and privacy in learning analytics (EP4LA), which have been responsible for driving and transforming activity in these areas. Some of this activity has been brought together with other work in the papers that make up this special issue. These papers cover the creation and development of ethical frameworks, as well as tools and approaches that can be used to address issues of ethics and privacy. This editorial suggests that it is worth taking time to consider the often intertangled issues of ethics, data protection and privacy separately. The challenges mentioned within the special issue are summarised in a table of 22 challenges that are used to identify the values that underpin work in this area. Nine ethical goals are suggested as the editors’ interpretation of the unstated values that lie behind the challenges raised in this paper