Pleading Civil Rights Complaints: Wheat and Chaff

The purpose of this Article is two-fold. First, there will be a brief survey of the opinions that have required specificity in pleading civil rights complaints. Courts ought to speak for themselves before being criticized. The second part will evaluate the reasons federal courts provide for this requirement

A systematic methodology to assess the impact of human factors in ship design

Evaluating ship layout for human factors (HF) issues using simulation software such as maritimeEXODUS can be a long and complex process. The analysis requires the identification of relevant evaluation scenarios; encompassing evacuation and normal operations; the development of appropriate measures which can be used to gauge the performance of crew and vessel and finally; the interpretation of considerable simulation data. Currently, the only agreed guidelines for evaluating HFs performance of ship design relate to evacuation and so conclusions drawn concerning the overall suitability of a ship design by one naval architect can be quite different from those of another. The complexity of the task grows as the size and complexity of the vessel increases and as the number and type of evaluation scenarios considered increases. Equally, it can be extremely difficult for fleet operators to set HFs design objectives for new vessel concepts. The challenge for naval architects is to develop a procedure that allows both accurate and rapid assessment of HFs issues associated with vessel layout and crew operating procedures. In this paper we present a systematic and transparent methodology for assessing the HF performance of ship design which is both discriminating and diagnostic. The methodology is demonstrated using two variants of a hypothetical naval ship

Self-Interest, Love, and Economic Justice: A Dialogue Between Classical Economic Liberalism and Catholic Social Teaching

This essay seeks to start a dialogue between two traditions that historically have interpreted the economy in opposing ways: the individualism of classic economic liberalism (CEL), represented by Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, and the communitarianism of Catholic social teaching (CST), interpreted primarily through the teachings of popes and secondarily the U.S. Catholic bishops. The present authors, an economist and a moral theologian who identify with one or the other of the two traditions, strive to clarify objectively their similarities and differences with the opposing perspective. Section one focuses on each position\u27s perspective of love of self and love of others. We find both CEL and CST saying that self-love, rightly understood, constitutes a moral good and that the love of others serves as an important principle in the political economy. We find less agreement in section two regarding justice and rights, but even here, we discover a few surprises. Both traditions uphold justice (giving to each party what is due) as essential to the political economy, and recognize some similarity in that type of justice called commutative. We note, however, substantial differences regarding a second type of justice that we call public justice. First, they differ over the extent to which government should be involved. Here the meaning of rights, especially that of individual freedom, arises. Secondly, the traditions diverge over whether benevolence as a motivator ought to serve as a partner for public justice. Thirdly, CEL in general opposes CST\u27s emphasis on social justice that calls upon institutions to be proactive in helping citizens and groups to become active participants in the economy. We conclude our essay by summarizing our discoveries and by suggesting areas for further dialogue

Introducing usability in a conceptual modeling-based software development process.

Usability plays an important role to satisfy users? needs. There are many recommendations in the HCI literature on how to improve software usability. Our research focuses on such recommendations that affect the system architecture rather than just the interface. However, improving software usability in aspects that affect architecture increases the analyst?s workload and development complexity. This paper proposes a solution based on model-driven development. We propose representing functional usability mechanisms abstractly by means of conceptual primitives. The analyst will use these primitives to incorporate functional usability features at the early stages of the development process. Following the model-driven development paradigm, these features are then automatically transformed into subsequent steps of development, a practice that is hidden from the analyst

Practice with anxiety improves performance, but only when anxious: evidence for the specificity of practice hypothesis

We investigated for the first time whether the principles of specificity could be extended to the psychological construct of anxiety and whether any benefits of practicing with anxiety are dependent on the amount of exposure and timing of that exposure in relation to where in learning the exposure occurs. In Experiment 1, novices practiced a discrete golf-putting task in one of four groups: all practice trials under anxiety (anxiety), non-anxiety (control), or a combination of these two (i.e., the first half of practice under anxiety before changing to non-anxiety conditions, anxiety-control, or the reverse of this, control-anxiety). Following acquisition, all groups were transferred to an anxiety condition. Results revealed a significant acquisition-to-transfer decrement in performance between acquisition and transfer for the control group only. In Experiment 2, novices practiced a complex rock climbing task in one of the four groups detailed above, before being transferred to both a high-anxiety condition and a low-anxiety condition (the ordering of these was counterbalanced across participants). Performance in anxiety transfer was greater following practice with anxiety compared to practice without anxiety. However, these benefits were influenced by the timing of anxiety exposure since performance was greatest when exposure to anxiety occurred in the latter half of acquisition. In the low-anxiety transfer test, performance was lowest for those who had practiced with anxiety only, thus providing support for the specificity of practice hypothesis. Results demonstrate that the specificity of learning principle can be extended to include the psychological construct of anxiety. Furthermore, the specificity advantage appears dependent on its timing in the learning process

Colorectal cancer Outcomes in people with Severe Mental Illness Cohort (COSMIC): A protocol for an Australian retrospective cohort using linked administrative data

Introduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality is significantly higher in those with severe mental illness (SMI) compared with the general population, despite similar incidence rates, suggesting that barriers to optimal screening and cancer care may contribute to disparities in CRC mortality in those with SMI. This study aims to compare participation in Australia's National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (NBCSP) in those with SMI and those in the general population. We will also investigate treatment pathways after diagnosis to determine whether treatment variations could explain differences in CRC mortality. Methods and analysis: We will undertake a retrospective cohort study of Australians using linked administrative data to assess differences in screening and cancer care between those with and without SMI, aged 50-74 years on or after 1 January 2006. People with SMI will be defined using antipsychotic medication prescription data. The comparison group will be people enrolled in Medicare (Australia's universal healthcare system) who have not been prescribed antipsychotic medication. Data on outcomes (NBCSP participation, follow-up colonoscopy, CRC incidence and CRC-cause and all-cause mortality) and confounders will be obtained from national-based and state-based administrative health datasets. All people in New South Wales, aged 50-74 with a new diagnosis of CRC on or after 1 January 2006, will be ascertained to examine stage at diagnosis and cancer treatment in those with and without SMI. Poisson regression will be used to calculate incidence rates and rate ratios for each outcome. Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval has been obtained from the University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Ethics Committee and data custodians from every Australian State/Territory. Findings will be disseminated via publications in peer-reviewed journals and presented at appropriate conferences. Trial registration number ACTRN12620000781943

Being relevant: Practical guidance for early career researchers interested in solving conservation problems

AbstractIn a human-altered world where biodiversity is in decline and conservation problems abound, there is a dire need to ensure that the next generation of conservation scientists have the knowledge, skills, and training to address these problems. So called “early career researchers” (ECRs) in conservation science have many challenges before them and it is clear that the status quo must change to bridge the knowledge–action divide. Here we identify thirteen practical strategies that ECRs can employ to become more relevant. In this context, “relevance” refers to the ability to contribute to solving conservation problems through engagement with practitioners, policy makers, and stakeholders. Conservation and career strategies outlined in this article include the following: thinking ‘big picture’ during conservation projects; embracing various forms of knowledge; maintaining positive relationships with locals familiar with the conservation issue; accepting failure as a viable (and potentially valuable) outcome; daring to be creative; embracing citizen science; incorporating interdisciplinarity; promoting and practicing pro-environmental behaviours; understanding financial aspects of conservation; forming collaboration from the onset of a project; accepting the limits of technology; ongoing and effective networking; and finally, maintaining a positive outlook by focusing on and sharing conservation success stories. These strategies move beyond the generic and highlight the importance of continuing to have an open mind throughout the entire conservation process, from establishing one’s self as an asset to embracing collaboration and interdisciplinary work, and striving to push for professional and personal connections that strengthen personal career objectives

The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (GeoMIP6): simulation design and preliminary results

International audienceWe present a suite of new climate model experiment designs for the Geoengineering Model Intercompari-son Project (GeoMIP). This set of experiments, named Ge-oMIP6 (to be consistent with the Coupled Model Intercom-parison Project Phase 6), builds on the previous GeoMIP project simulations, and has been expanded to address several further important topics, including key uncertainties in extreme events, the use of geoengineering as part of a portfolio of responses to climate change, and the relatively new idea of cirrus cloud thinning to allow more longwave radiation to escape to space. We discuss experiment designs, as well as the rationale for those designs, showing preliminary results from individual models when available. We also introduce a new feature, called the GeoMIP Testbed, which provides a platform for simulations that will be performed with a few models and subsequently assessed to determine whether the proposed experiment designs will be adopted as core (Tier 1) GeoMIP experiments. This is meant to encourage various stakeholders to propose new targeted experiments that address their key open science questions, with the goal of making GeoMIP more relevant to a broader set of communities