The British background of the American theory of judicial review

Since 1803 there has been discussion over the powers of the Supreme Court of the United States. Those who favor judicial review of legislative acts regard the Justices of the Supreme Court as the guardians of the Constitution; those who oppose it speak of " judicial usurpation of executive and legislative powers."When Sir Henry Maine stated, " The success of this experiment (judicial review) has blinded men to its novelty. There is no precedent for it, either in the ancient or in the modern world, "he accredited the founders of American constitutionalism with too much originality. Certainly none other than the American nation can be held responsible for its success or failure in the United States, yet it is of contemporary interest to understand the contributions which other countries, and in particular, Great Britain have made to this doctrine.Whenever judicial review has been attacked, the supporters of the theory have claimed that its foundation is deeply rooted in the past.For example, in the records of the New York State Ear Association Reports for 1915 one reads:The American Revolution was a lawyers' revolution to enforce the principle laid down in Lord Coke's, Lord Hobart's and Lord Holt's decisions that acts of Parliament against common right or in violation of the natural liberties of Englishmen were void,It is submitted that when such astounding statements are made by a committee of lawyers of the New York Bar, the evidence to support such statements should be investigated and evaluated. When and where did Lord Coke, Lord Hobart, and Lord Holt lay down such a principle?Chief Justice Marshall stated that the written constitution was the fundamental law of the land. Is there British authority for this statement? What is the British background of the doctrine of judicial review?The writer realizes that the British people are beginning to tire of the tendency upon the part of Americans to justify their customs and institutions on the ground that the customs and institutions originated in Great Britain. Recently newspapers reported that the new American Ambassador was well liked because he did not look for his ancestors' tombstones the day after he arrived at Southampton

House Industries: A Type of Learning

Exhibition review of House Industries: A Type of Learning, Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Dearborn, Michigan, United States, 27.05.2017 - 04.09.201

International Internet Retail Marketing: Do Product Characteristics Really Matter?

Many practitioners and academic researchers are engaged in the evaluation and study of the impact of the Internet on global retail marketing. Findings have generally focused on the unique attributes of the Internet marketplace and many have discussed product attributes or characteristics which seem important to market success.  However, a 2003 Irish retail study claims there are no correlations between the types of product purchased on the Internet and challenges the validity of product characteristics as an important consideration for Internet marketing (Golden, Hughes and Gallagher, 2003).  This article reviews the development of product characteristic marketing theory and discusses the findings of recent studies which investigate product characteristics and their importance to Internet based international retail marketing plans

A genetic analysis of molecular traits in skeletal muscle

Genome Wide Association Studies (GWASs) have identified variants associated with disease that promise to deliver insights into disease aetiology. However, because many GWAS variants lie in non-coding genomic regions, it is difficult to define the genes and pathways underlying a GWAS signal. The possibility of linking GWAS variants to molecular traits, combined with the development of high throughput assays, has motivated the mapping of molecular quantitative trait loci (QTLs), genetic associations with molecular traits such as gene expression (eQTLs) and DNA methylation (mQTLs). The Finland-United States Investigation of NIDDM (FUSION) tissue biopsy study is motivated by the desire to understand the molecular pathogenesis of Type 2 diabetes (T2D), a complex disease where the vast majority of the ~100 independent GWAS loci occur in non-coding regions. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying these signals, we collected skeletal muscle biopsies, a T2D-relevant tissue, from 318 extensively phenotyped individuals who exhibit a range of glucose tolerance levels. From these biopsies, we generated genotype, gene expression, and DNA methylation information, enabling us to directly measure the effects of T2D on molecular traits, and to link non-coding T2D GWAS loci to candidate molecular targets. In this thesis, I present a catalogue of genetic effects on gene expression and DNA methylation. I use this catalogue firstly, to reveal basic biology of the genetic regulators of skeletal muscle molecular traits, and secondly, to identify molecular traits that are relevant to T2D, glycemic, and other complex traits. In regards to basic biology, I characterise the broader genomic context of QTLs by calculating the enrichment of QTLs in chromatin states across a diverse panel of cell/tissue types. I also identify key skeletal muscle transcription factors (TFs) and classify them as activators or repressors by aggregating the effects of QTLs predicted to perturb TF binding sites. In addition, I characterise the properties of methylation sites associated with gene expression and use inference models to dissect these methylation-expression relationships, classifying cases where the genetic effect is mediated by methylation, expression, or is independent. I also integrate molecular trait genetics with complex traits. First, I perform a conditional analysis, mapping GWAS variants for T2D and glycemic traits to molecular traits, prioritising disease relevant skeletal muscle molecular traits. Second, recognising QTLs may also be specific to a disease state or environmental context, I leverage the rich phenotyping of participants to map genotype by environment (GxE) effects on gene expression—eQTLs that exhibit effects specific to an environmental context. Altogether, these analyses form a thorough survey of the genetic regulators of skeletal muscle expression and DNA methylation, and provide an important resource for interpreting complex diseases.National Institutes of Health - Cambridge scholars progra

Financing and Supply Chain Operations Resilience and Juxtaposing: The Role of Finance in Improving the Supply Chain in the COVID-19 Pandemic Environment

Amidst the renewed quest for supply chain resiliency, finance outgrows its traditional role in B2B; instead, finance position itself to become a more integrated partner in supply chain management activities. Areas such as global trade management and supply chain risk management are fluid areas for finance to flourish, coupled with increasing demands for finance to take a more active role in supply chain management. The global supply chain has experienced several disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme climate change-induced events, natural disasters, conflict, financial crises, recessions, shortages of raw materials for manufacturing, and macroeconomic imbalances; however, futuristic disruptions are already projected by several stakeholders in the logistics and transport sector. Hence, companies must concentrate on building their resilience to all manner of supply chain disruptions. The initial motive of firm management to increase leverage and engage in financial goods is diminished when the economic dilemma of supply chain value is resolved; by so doing, the internal financial situations could facilitate the advancement of enterprise value. Keywords: supply chain, financial service innovations, distribution dimension, COVID-19 DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-7-01 Publication date: April 30th 202

The 5-year Spam: Tracking a Persistent Chinese Influence Operation

This report analyzes the behavior of a single, coordinated inauthentic information operator working within China and in the interests of the Chinese government. This operator has been called by different names by different analysts, including “Spamouflage Dragon“ (by the network analysis firm Graphika) and “Dragonbridge” (by the Google owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant) and has been operating continuously since, at least, April 2017. In this report we will refer to this actor as Dragonbridge. Section II of this report gives an update on several campaign this actor has engaged in recent months. Section III presents a synthetic overview of some of Dragonbridge’s past and ongoing tactics and targets. Section IV draws some more general lessons about how this actor operates

BoostMe accurately predicts DNA methylation values in whole-genome bisulfite sequencing of multiple human tissues

Abstract Background Bisulfite sequencing is widely employed to study the role of DNA methylation in disease; however, the data suffer from biases due to coverage depth variability. Imputation of methylation values at low-coverage sites may mitigate these biases while also identifying important genomic features associated with predictive power. Results Here we describe BoostMe, a method for imputing low-quality DNA methylation estimates within whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) data. BoostMe uses a gradient boosting algorithm, XGBoost, and leverages information from multiple samples for prediction. We find that BoostMe outperforms existing algorithms in speed and accuracy when applied to WGBS of human tissues. Furthermore, we show that imputation improves concordance between WGBS and the MethylationEPIC array at low WGBS depth, suggesting improved WGBS accuracy after imputation. Conclusions Our findings support the use of BoostMe as a preprocessing step for WGBS analysis.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143848/1/12864_2018_Article_4766.pd

Voltaiq data format—A standard data format for collection of battery data to enable big data comparisons and analyses across the battery lifecycle

Batteries have enabled modernization of society through portability of electricity. Batteries are also a crucial component to enabling clean technologies of the future such as grid storage and electrified transportation. Because of their ubiquity in modern society, global organizations develop and commercialize batteries for their electrified products. Across the field of battery development, in both commercial and academic settings, there is broad utility in standardization of data formats amongst disparate data sources, labs, equipment, organizations, industries, and lifecycle phases. Due to the way the nascent industry developed, there is a lack of standardization for how performance data is recorded, which is now hindering the industry’s ability to learn from data and accelerate growth. Herein, we describe the different types of data, formats, conventions, and standardization for each phase in the battery lifecycle. Next, we provide a standard data format and conventions for the community to either utilize in their data collection practices or map their existing data into: the Voltaiq Data Format (VDF). This standard data format provides the flexibility needed to capture the variability in data formats and conventions along the battery lifecycle. The utility of this standard format aids in collaboration within and across organizations, accelerating innovation across the industry, and paves the way for the battery community to start utilizing the power of machine learning and data science

Modeling islet enhancers using deep learning identifies candidate causal variants at loci associated with T2D and glycemic traits.

Genetic association studies have identified hundreds of independent signals associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related traits. Despite these successes, the identification of specific causal variants underlying a genetic association signal remains challenging. In this study, we describe a deep learning (DL) method to analyze the impact of sequence variants on enhancers. Focusing on pancreatic islets, a T2D relevant tissue, we show that our model learns islet-specific transcription factor (TF) regulatory patterns and can be used to prioritize candidate causal variants. At 101 genetic signals associated with T2D and related glycemic traits where multiple variants occur in linkage disequilibrium, our method nominates a single causal variant for each association signal, including three variants previously shown to alter reporter activity in islet-relevant cell types. For another signal associated with blood glucose levels, we biochemically test all candidate causal variants from statistical fine-mapping using a pancreatic islet beta cell line and show biochemical evidence of allelic effects on TF binding for the model-prioritized variant. To aid in future research, we publicly distribute our model and islet enhancer perturbation scores across ~67 million genetic variants. We anticipate that DL methods like the one presented in this study will enhance the prioritization of candidate causal variants for functional studies