Digital Commons Network^™

The 800 Pound Gorilla Sleeps: The Federal Government's Lackadaisical Liability And Compensation Policies In The Context Of Pre-Event Vaccine Immunization Programs, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

On July 21, 2004, President Bush signed the Project Bioshield Act, which authorizes the spending of $5.6 billion to advance the development and acquisition of vaccines and other countermeasures to biological agents. While the funding and progress are welcome signs for our national biodefense strategy, the failure of the federal Phase I smallpox vaccination program demonstrated that other serious obstacles remain to the implementation of a successful pre-event vaccine immunization program. Specifically, as demonstrated by a field study of several states' health departments, performed at the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, the federal government's inability to provide both sufficient liability …

Strategies For Recruiting Hispanic Women Into A Prospective Cohort Study Of Modifiable Risk Factors For Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, Lisa Chasan-Taber, Renee T. Fortner, Valerie Hastings, Glenn Markenson

Lisa Chasan-Taber

Background The purpose of this article was to describe effective strategies for recruitment of Hispanic women into a prospective cohort study of modifiable risk factors for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Although Hispanic women have two to four times the risk of developing GDM compared with non-Hispanic white women, few GDM prevention studies have included Hispanic women. Methods The study was conducted in the ambulatory obstetrical practices of Baystate Medical Center located in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse city in Massachusetts. The study employed a range of strategies to recruit Hispanic women based on a review of the literature as well …

What Documentary Films Teach Us About The Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Film . . . has been used effectively to shape public perceptions about the criminal justice system. . . . [and] the documentary form has power to convict or release a defendant, as well as to disclose the positive and negative aspects of the criminal justice system. . . . Three articles on this subject appear in this issue of the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND LAW JOURNAL OF RACE, RELIGION, GENDER AND CLASS and add to this body of scholarship. . . .Our goal was to foster a series of dialogues among and between a number of individuals: filmmakers....

Role Of A Conserved Glutamate Residue In The Escherichia Coli Seca Atpase Mechanism, Don Oliver

Don Oliver

Escherichia coli SecA uses ATP to drive the transport of proteins across cell membranes. Glutamate 210 in the "DEVD" Walker B motif of the SecA ATP-binding site has been proposed as the catalytic base for ATP hydrolysis (Hunt, J. F., Weinkauf, S., Henry, L., Fak, J. J., McNicholas, P., Oliver, D. B., and Deisenhofer, J. (2002) Science 297, 2018-2026). Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that mutation of glutamate 210 to aspartate results in a 90-fold reduction of the ATP hydrolysis rate compared with wild type SecA, 0.3 s(-1) versus 27 s(-1), respectively. SecA-E210D also releases ADP at a slower …

Dimeric Seca Is Essential For Protein Translocation, Don Oliver

Don Oliver

SecA facilitates bacterial protein translocation by its association with presecretory or membrane proteins and the SecYEG translocon channel. Once assembled, SecA ATPase undergoes cycles of membrane insertion and retraction at SecYEG that drive protein translocation in a stepwise fashion. SecA exists in equilibrium between a monomer and dimer, and association with its translocation ligands shifts this equilibrium dramatically. Here, we examined the proposal that protein translocation can occur by means of a SecA monomer. We produced a mutant SecA protein lacking residues 2-11, which was found to exist mostly as a monomer, and it was unable to complement a conditional-lethal …

Varriation Of Growth Rates In Yellow-Bellied Marmots, Carmen M. Salsbury, K. B. Armitage

Carmen M. Salsbury

Growth rates of yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) populations over a 32-year period (1965 -1996) varied Significantly with sex, age, location, and year. Overall, males had higher growth rates than females and young and yearlings generally had higher growth rates compared to adults at all locations. The locations varied with respect to elevation and the relationship between elevation and growth rate was complex and likely weather dependent. Low rainfall in late summer was often associated with low growth rates at high elevations where the active season is constrained and delayed by late spring snowmelt compared to low elevations. Growth rates and …

Varriation Of Growth Rates In Yellow-Bellied Marmots, Carmen M. Salsbury, K. B. Armitage

Carmen M. Salsbury

Growth rates of yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) populations over a 32-year period (1965 -1996) varied Significantly with sex, age, location, and year. Overall, males had higher growth rates than females and young and yearlings generally had higher growth rates compared to adults at all locations. The locations varied with respect to elevation and the relationship between elevation and growth rate was complex and likely weather dependent. Low rainfall in late summer was often associated with low growth rates at high elevations where the active season is constrained and delayed by late spring snowmelt compared to low elevations. Growth rates and …

Out Of India: Immigrant Hindus And South Asian Hinduism In The United States, Chad M. Bauman, Jennifer Saunders

Chad M. Bauman

The article provides a survey of research on immigrant Hindus and South Asian Hinduism in the United States, focusing in particular on certain trends in the development of American Hinduism (e.g., Americanization, protestantization, ecumenization, congregationalization, homogenization, ritual adaptation) and prominent themes in more recent scholarship on the topic (e.g., race, transnational connections, and Hindu nationalism).

The Crisis Of Secularism In India, Chad M. Bauman

Chad M. Bauman

The essays in this volume address the "crisis of secularism" in India...

Running Cars, Constitutions And Metaphors Into The Ground, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

Professor Sanford Levinson frequently analogizes the Constitution of the United States to a vehicle that desperately needs repairs. “[R]elying on the present Constitution.” he writes, “is similar to driving a car with very bad brakes and slick tires.” Much commentary on Our Undemocratic Constitution implicitly challenges the automotive metaphor. The Constitution of the United States, supporters profess, is not really as bad as Levinson would have us believe. The following pages take a road less traveled. Ancient constitutional institutions in the United States are suffering from severe wear and tear. Nevertheless, decisions to drive a comparatively unsafe car are often …

The Brazilian Consensus, Andrea P. Pradilla

Andrea P Pradilla

No abstract provided.

Drug Policy Research, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

No abstract provided.

Location Based Services - A Bridge Too Far For Data Linkage And Behaviour Under Security And Privacy Concerns?, Marcus R. Wigan

Marcus R Wigan

Location-based services (LBS) are dependent on a knowledge of a real time location, knowledge of the environment, and integrated with communications. An ideal specification for travel data collection. LBS has become pervasive very swiftly, but the implications are not yet widely recognised. The addition of realtime information, response and service providers to the now familiar combination of GPS, and data recording is the focus of the present paper. The business development path to LBS is outlined, and the implications for data gathering, matching and response considered. The privacy and surveillance aspects are of varying sensitivity in different cultures, even within …

Retaining Participants In Volunteer Computing Projects, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Volunteer computing projects (VCPs) have been set up by groups of scientists to recruit members of the public who are asked to donate spare capacity on their personal computers to the processing of scientific data or computationally intensive models. VCPs serve two purposes: to acquire significant computing capacity and to educate the public about science. A particular challenge for these scientists is the retention of volunteers as there is a very high drop-out rate. This paper develops recommendations for scientists and software engineers setting up or running VCPs regarding which strategies to pursue in order to improve volunteer retention rates. …

Modeling Labor Market Policy In Developing Countries: A Selective Review Of The Literature And Needs For The Future, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Sound labor market policy requires sound labor market models. Sound models have three characteristics. First, from a welfare economic point of view, the policy judgments are explicit, mutually consistent, and thoroughly worked out. Second, from a theoretical point of view, the models are sufficiently detailed and suitably rigorous. And third, from an empirical point of view, the models guide and are guided by solid quantitative evidence. This paper reviews models of labor markets in developing countries from both a positive and a normative point of view. The survey is selective in that it exposits only some of the more …

A Public Lecture: Labour Markets And Economic Development, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] I want to put forward three propositions to you based on decades of work in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. First, economic development can be (but need not be) a win-win-win situation - for businesses, for individuals and groups of individuals, and for governments and non- governmental organisations (NGOs). Second, the labour market can (but need not) serve as an effective mechanism for contributing to economic growth and for transmitting the gains from economic growth. And third, in both of these areas, whether a country experiences the more favorable set of outcomes or the less favorable ones reflects a) …

Legal Bargaining Theory's New "Prospecting" Agenda: It May Be Social Science, But Is It News?, Robert J. Condlin

Robert J. Condlin

In the good old days legal bargaining scholarship was based mostly on negotiator war stories exuberantly told. The social-scientific study of the subject did not begin in earnest until the nineteen-seventies. Since then, however, the literature of storytelling has gone into a pronounced eclipse and social-scientific study is now the principal scholarly game in town. This article questions the wisdom of this shift, almost seismic in its proportions, and argues that it is too soon to jump on the social science bandwagon. Discussion focuses on the uses made of the Prospect Theory of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and the …

Contrast Measure-Based Automated Regularization Parameter Selection For Radar Image Restoration, Cher Hau Seng, Abdesselam Bouzerdoum, Son Lam Phung

Cher Hau Seng

Images formed by acquisition devices are usually corrupted by noise and other interferences. Hence, regularization methods have been introduced to restore the degraded images and obtain solutions that are stable in the presence of perturbations. While the regularization parameter is crucial to the characteristics of the restoration, most existing selection methods either require memory-intensive computation or prior knowledge of the noise [1]. Moreover, the use of a small regularization parameter will produce a restoration that is dominated by large, high frequency noise components, whereas large regularization parameter imposes greater importance on the regularizer, causing important information to be lost. Therefore, …

Blended Spaces, Work-Based Learning And The Notion Of Constructive Alignment : Impacts On Student Engagement, Peter Reaburn, Nona Muldoon, Cheryl Bookallil

Peter Reaburn

Emerging Role Of Micrornas In Liver Diseases, Shashi Bala, Miguel Marcos, Gyongyi Szabo

Gyongyi Szabo

MicroRNAs are a class of small non-coding RNAs that are found in plants, animals, and some viruses. They modulate the gene function at the post-transcriptional level and act as a fine tuner of various processes, such as development, proliferation, cell signaling, and apoptosis. They are associated with different types and stages of cancer. Recent studies have shown the involvement of microRNAs in liver diseases caused by various factors, such as Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, metabolic disorders, and by drug abuse. This review highlights the role of microRNAs in liver diseases and their potential use as therapeutic molecules.

Production System Models Of Complex Cognition, John R. Anderson, Bonnie E. John, Marcel Adam Just, Patricia A. Carpenter, David E. Kieras, David E. Meyer

Marcel Adam Just

No abstract provided.

Where Power Comes From (Brownout In Tondo), Tom Montgomery-Fate

Tom Montgomery Fate

No abstract provided.

Manila Squater, Tom Montgomery-Fate

Tom Montgomery Fate

No abstract provided.

A Mother And A Daughter On The Subject Of Men, Deborah Adelman

Deborah Adelman

No abstract provided.

The Faye Stories, Deborah Adelman

Deborah Adelman

No abstract provided.

Inside Literacy Teacher Education: Lessons From The Field, Francesca Pomerantz

Francesca Pomerantz

For Both Love And Money: Viviana Zelizer's "The Purchase Of Intimacy", Martha M. Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

Viviana Zelizer’s recent book, The Purchase of Intimacy (2005) presents an innovative theory of how social and legal actors negotiate rights and obligations when money changes hands in intimate relationships--a perspective that could change how we understand many things, from valuations of homemaking labor to the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. This essay describes Zelizer’s critique of the reductionist “Hostile Worlds” and “Nothing But” approaches to economic exchange in intimate relationships, then explains her more three-dimensional approach, “Connected Lives.” While Zelizer focuses on family law, the essay goes beyond that context, extending Zelizer’s approach to transfers of genetic material, and concluding …

Bonding Limited Liability, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

Limited liability is considered a “birthright” of corporations. The concept is entrenched in legal theory, and it is a fixed reality of the political economy. But it remains controversial. Scholarly debate has been engaged in absolute terms of defending the rule or advocating its abrogation. Though compelling, these polar positions, often expressed in abstract arguments, are associated with disquieting effects. Without limited liability, efficiency may be severely compromised. With it, involuntary tort creditors bear some of the cost of an enterprise. Most other proposals for reforming limited liability have been incremental, such as modifying veil piercing. However, neither absolutism nor …

Reexamination Of The Role Of The Amino Terminus Of Seca In Promoting Its Dimerization And Functional State, Don Oliver

Don Oliver

No abstract provided.

Seca Dimer Cross-Linked At Its Subunit Interface Is Functional For Protein Translocation, Don Oliver

Don Oliver

SecA facilitates protein transport across the eubacterial plasma membrane by its association with cargo proteins and the SecYEG translocon, followed by ATP-driven conformational changes that promote protein translocation in a stepwise manner. Whether SecA functions as a monomer or a dimer during this process has been the subject of considerable controversy. Here we utilize cysteine-directed mutagenesis along with the crystal structure of the SecA dimer to create a cross-linked dimer at its subunit interface, which was normally active for in vitro protein translocation.