In a remarkably prescient article in a 1995 Yale Law Journal symposium on "Emerging Media Technology and the First Amendment," Professor Eugene Volokh looked ahead to the coming Internet era and correctly predicted many changes. In Cheap Speech and What It Will Do, Volokh could foresee the rise of streaming music and video services such as Spotify and Netflix, the emergence of handheld tablets for reading books, the demise of classified advertising in the newspaper business, and more generally how cheap speech would usher in radical new opportunities for readers, viewers, and listeners to custom design what they read, see, and hear, while concomitantly undermining the power of intermediaries including publishers and book store owners.
To Volokh, these changes were exciting and democratizing. The overall picture he painted was a positive one, especially as First Amendment doctrine no longer had to deal with the scarcity of broadcast media to craft special First Amendment rules curtailing some aspects of free speech. As this article for a First Amendment Law Review symposium on "Fake News" argues, twenty-two years later, the picture of what cheap speech has already done and is likely to still do — in particular to American democracy — is considerably darker than Volokh's vision. No doubt cheap speech has increased convenience, dramatically lowered the costs of obtaining information, and spurred the creation and consumption of content from radically diverse sources. But the economics of cheap speech also have undermined mediating and stabilizing institutions of American democracy including newspapers and political parties, with negative social and political consequences. In place of media scarcity, we now have a media firehose which has diluted trusted sources of information and led to the rise of "fake news" — falsehoods and propaganda spread by domestic and foreign sources for their own political and pecuniary purposes. The demise of local newspapers sets the stage for an increase in corruption among state and local officials. Rather than democratizing our politics, cheap speech appears to be hastening the irrelevancy of political parties by facilitating the ability of demagogues to secure support from voters by appealing directly to them, sometimes with incendiary appeals. Social media also can both increase intolerance and overcome collective action problems, both allowing for peaceful protest but also supercharging polarization and raising the dangers of violence in the United States.
The Supreme Court's libertarian First Amendment doctrine did not cause the democracy problems associated with the rise of cheap speech, but it may stand in the way of needed reforms. For example, in the campaign finance arena the Court's doctrine and accompanying libertarian ethos may stymie efforts to limit foreign money flowing into elections, including money being spent to propagate "fake news." The Court's reluctance to allow the government to regulate false speech in the political arena could limit laws aimed at requiring social media sites to curb false political advertising. Loose, optimistic dicta in the Justice Kennedy's majority opinion for the Court in 2017's Packingham v. North Carolina case also may have unintended consequences with its infinitely capacious language about First Amendment protection for social media. In the era of cheap speech, some shifts in First Amendment doctrine seem desirable to assist citizens in ascertaining truth and bolstering stabilizing institutions. Nonetheless, it is important not to fundamentally rework First Amendment doctrine, which also serves as a bulwark against government censorship and oppression potentially undertaken in an ostensible effort to battle "fake news."
Non-governmental actors, rather than the courts and government, are in the best position to ameliorate some of the darker effects of cheap speech. Social media hosts and search sites such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter can assist readers, viewers, and listeners in ferreting out the truth if there is the commercial will to do so. Consumer pressure may be necessary to get there, but it is not clear if consumers or shareholders will have the power to move dominant market players who do not want to be moved. Fact checks can also help. Subsidies for (especially local) investigative reporting can also help the problems of corruption and bolster the credibility of newspapers and other supports for civil society. But nothing is certain to work in these precarious times, and the great freedom of information which Volokh rightly foresaw in the era of cheap speech is coming with a steep price for our democracy.


Fresh results of a 2006 survey of members of the American Economic Association suggest that many economists do not seem to believe that American democracy is working—that is, advancing society's welfare. Regardless of political party affiliation, a large majority of economists appear to be skeptical of elected officials and the political process. We discuss these findings in relation to what many, including ourselves, perceive to be a problem in the economics profession, namely, an undue focus on the policy status quo. If economists do not believe that the political process works well, why is there so much focus on the status quo, and, more specifically, so little challenge to status quo interventions?


Photograph of eight tourists on their way to the top of Pike's Peak. The group is posing together in an open car. A sign on the running board says, "At Glen Cove on Pikes Peak, Alt. 11,425 Ft., No24, July 23 1929." There are various buildings and pine trees visible in the background.


Abstract Over-borrowing and financial stress has recently become an important issue in macroeconomic and policy discussions in the US as well as in the EU. In this paper the authors study two regimes of financial stress. In a regime of high financial stress, stress shocks can have large and persistent impacts on the real side of the economy whereas in regimes of low stress, shocks can easily dissipate having no lasting effects. In order to study the macroeconomic dynamics, with alternative paths resulting from financial stress shocks, the authors introduce a macromodel with a finance-macro link which uses a multi-period decision framework of economic agents. The agents can, in a finite horizon context, borrow and accumulate assets where however the above two scenarios may occur. The model is solved through nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). Empirically the authors use a multi-regime VAR (MRVAR) to study the impact of financial stress shocks on the macroeconomy in a large number of countries.


"Legal pluralism" is hot, particularly in family law. As family law and practice in the United States have become global due to the globalization of the family, some argue it is time for U.S. family law to embrace more legal pluralism so that civil government would cede jurisdictional authority over marriage and divorce law to religious communities. They point to forms of pluralism already present in U.S. family law, such as covenant marriage (available in three states) and New York's get statutes. They suggest the U.S. should learn from how many other nations allocate jurisdiction over marriage and divorce law (for example, systems of personal law, in which religious tribunals have such jurisdiction). In this chapter, I argue that an exercise in comparative law does reveal many different ways of allocating jurisdiction over family law, but does not answer the normative question of whether these are good models for U.S. family law. Challenging the call for a "multi-tiered" marriage, I analyze what form of marriage pluralism in the U.S. is sought and what might be motivating this demand. I examine differing views about whether there should be congruence between religious and civil marriage, illustrating with the controversy over same-sex marriage. I raise a normative concern over tensions between religious doctrines and key commitments, values, and functions of civil family law, illustrating with how state courts in the U.S. now navigate those tensions when asked to enforce terms of religious marriage contracts and other religious law. I am also skeptical as to whether a more pluralistic legal system can adequately protect the equal citizenship of women. Nearly every foreign example that proponents of jurisdictional pluralism in family law offer raises troubling question about how to reconcile sex equality with religious freedom. Feminist scholars highlight the importance of claims of national and constitutional citizenship as a strategy for redressing sex inequality, even as they affirm the value of membership in religious and cultural groups. Finally, I ask what lessons we might learn about legal pluralism from the recent controversy over religious family law arbitration (or "sharia arbitration") in Ontario.


Abstract:This article traces literary depictions of the city of Haifa, starting from its utopian literary prototype in Theodor Herzl's influential Altneuland (1902), and continuing with later Israeli writing, by Yehudit Hendel, Sami Michael, and Hillel Mittelpunkt. The article shows how the Israeli works discussed set literary Haifa as a stage for examining questions of identity, belonging, and the relations between individual and society, through an emphasis on the complex ties between language, ethnicity, and space. The literary city of these works is compared to the city of Herzl's utopian vision. I argue that the evolution of literary Haifa is associated with shifts in Israeli collective self-perception: from the utopian mode of thought, in which difficulties and complexities remain invisible, through the gradual turning of the gaze towards the difficulties and fractures in the emergent new society (first within the Jewish society, but then also outside it — among the Arab minority); and finally, to an inability to accept the absence of utopia from the present, leading to escapism and a quest for the longed-for ideal in the pre-national past.


When beloved author Henri Nouwen set out to record this daybook of totally new reflections, he suddenly found himself on "a true spiritual adventure." For in these 366 original, interlocking morsels of daily wisdom, Nouwen provides both sustenance and a trail for us to follow, as he unveils, to his own surprise, his personal map of faith. From the delicate interplay of human experience to the surrender to Christ and the embrace of Christian community, that journey of Christian spirituality is explored and celebrated here in each eloquent, thought-provoking passage, "The table is one of the most intimate places in our lives. It is there that we give ourselves to one another. When we say, 'Take some more, let me serve you another plate, let me pour you another glass, don't be shy, enjoy it, ' we say a lot more than our words express. We invite our friends to become part of our lives. We want them to be nurtured by the same food and drink that nurture us. We desire communion.... Every breakfast, lunch, or dinner can become a time of growing communion with one another." Intimately personal and inspiring, " Bread for the Journey" is a daily feast of fresh insight into the challenges and deep joys of a life lived in close communion with God. Nouwen is a wise, loving companion who invites us along as he finds joy in the community of loss, true freedom in forgiveness of others, and hope in surprising places. Each daily meditation is a stepping-stone along a path of private discovery, offering Nouwen's seasoned yet fresh ideas on kindness, love, suffering, and prayer, the Church as God's people, and the importance of Jesus in one's life-reflecting, as a whole, Nouwen's own 'personal creed.' "Bread for the Journey" brims with daily nourishment and guidance for devoted followers and new friends alike -- food for thought on a yearlong journey of discovery and faith.


If you loved American Sniper this is the book for you. No Easy Day by Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer is the first-person account of Bin Laden's execution. For the first time anywhere, a first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from inside the US Navy Seal team who carried out the extraordinary mission to kill the terrorist mastermind. No Easy Day puts readers inside the elite, handpicked twenty-four-man team known as Seal Team Six as they train for the most important mission of their lives: the Seals were going after bin Laden. From the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter that threatened the mission with disaster to the radio call confirming their target was dead, the Seal team raid on bin Laden's secret HQ is recounted in nail-biting second-by-second detail. In No Easy Day, team leader Mark Owen takes readers behind enemy lines with one of the world's most astonishing fighting forces, in the only insider's account of their most spectacular mission. Praise for No Easy Day: "No Easy Day amounts to a cinematic account of the raid to kill Bin Laden: you feel as if you're sitting in the Black Hawk as it swoops in." (NY Times). "A blistering first-hand account." (The Sun). Mark Owen is a former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as Seal Team Six. In his many years as a Navy Seal, he has participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009. Owen was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 1 May 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind's hideout, where he witnessed bin Laden's death. Mark Owen's name and the names of the other Seals mentioned in this book have been changed for their security. Kevin Maurer has covered special-operations forces for nine years. He has been embedded with the Special Forces in Afghanistan six times, spent a month in 2006 with special-operations units in east Africa, and has embedded with US forces in Iraq and Haiti. He is the author of four books, including several about special operations.


This article reports the findings of an empirical study of arbitration in Arizona's general jurisdiction civil trial courts. The study found that the arbitration program's primary goals of providing faster and less expensive resolution of cases, reducing the court's workload, and maintaining or enhancing the satisfaction of users, were not entirely being met. Many cases did not meet arbitration deadlines and court case processing time standards. Most cases eligible for arbitration concluded before a hearing was held, and those cases that had a hearing seemed more likely to have been diverted from settlement than from trial. Consequently, the arbitration program was likely to affect the court's workload in a relatively small proportion of cases, was more likely to reduce the use of court pretrial rather than trial resources, and was unlikely to substantially reduce litigants' costs. But arbitration did increase access to a hearing on the merits. Lawyers who represented clients in arbitration had generally favorable assessments of the process and award, but expressed concerns about the adequacy of arbitrators' knowledge of both substantive issues and arbitration procedures. A majority of lawyers favored retaining compulsory arbitration and some of its basic components but changing policies relating to arbitrator service and assignment. These findings, which were consistent with studies in other jurisdictions, suggest that court-connected arbitration does not have negative consequences, but also does not consistently or substantially improve the effectiveness and efficiency of dispute resolution.


The phenomenal Number One bestseller about best friends James and Bob. Soon to be a major motion picture. When James Bowen found an injured, ginger street cat curled up in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn't resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable and their diverse, comic and occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other's troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving and uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it.


The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work,enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes), and as individual volumes.


Raewyn Connell famously theorized hegemonic masculinity, explaining its dominance over femininity and "subordinated" and "marginalized" masculinities. Attending to representations of the latter, we argue that "men in the margin" are commonly wrongly and/or simplistically depicted as regressive and violent in response to their marginalization. Focusing on representations of working-class boys and men, we illustrate the stereotypical treatment of "men in the margin" more broadly, making clear that this goes against Connell's treatment of such men. Conversely, privileged boys and men are commonly held up by critical studies on men and masculinities scholars as paragons of progressive change. The characterization of boys and men in the margin as regressive and patriarchal impedes the ability to address problems like violence, misogyny, and homophobia and overlooks the possibilities for transformation that emerge among marginalized communities.


Ditch the failed sales tactics, fill your pipeline, and crush your numberFanatical Prospecting gives salespeople, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives a practical, eye-opening guide that clearly explains the why and how behind the most important activity in sales and business developmentprospecting.The brutal fact is the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe and the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to consistently prospect. By ignoring the muscle of prospecting, many otherwise competent salespeople and sales organizations consistently underperform. Step by step, Jeb Blount outlines his innovative approach to prospecting that works for real people, in the real world, with real prospects. Learn how to keep the pipeline full of qualified opportunities and avoid debilitating sales slumps by leveraging a balanced prospecting methodology across multiple prospecting channels. This book reveals the secrets, techniques, and tips of top earners. Youll learn: Why the 30-Day Rule is critical for keeping the pipeline full Why understanding the Law of Replacement is the key to avoiding sales slumps How to leverage the Law of Familiarity to reduce prospecting friction and avoid rejection The 5 Cs of Social Selling and how to use them to get prospects to call you How to use the simple 5 Step Telephone Framework to get more appointments fast How to double call backs with a powerful voice mail technique How to leverage the powerful 4 Step Email Prospecting Framework to create emails that compel prospects to respond How to get text working for you with the 7 Step Text Message Prospecting Framework And there is so much more! Fanatical Prospecting is filled with the high-powered strategies, techniques, and tools you need to fill your pipeline with high quality opportunities. In the most comprehensive book ever written about sales prospecting, Jeb Blount reveals the real secret to improving sales productivity and growing your income fast. Youll gain the power to blow through resistance and objections, gain more appointments, start more sales conversations, and close more sales. Break free from the fear and frustration that is holding you and your team back from effective and consistent prospecting. It's time to get off the feast or famine sales roller-coaster for good!


Municipalities throughout the nation are plagued by a seemingly unresolvable conflict between pro-growth development interests and skeptical homeowners' groups who oppose growth near their neighborhoods. This paper uses southern California as a case study to examine the ways in which local political structural arrangements have contributed to this conflict, and the reasons why judicial challenges to these structural arrangements have had so little success. As I argue, local politics in southern California are structured in a way that fosters an artificial dichotomy between pro-growth and anti-growth positions, subverting the possibility of compromise and suppressing a wide range of views about growth and other issues. On one hand, the prevalence of at-large voting systems in southern California municipalities favors growth interests by facilitating citywide growth while muting neighborhood opposition. On the other hand, neighborhood groups liberally rely on the initiative and referendum to halt unwanted growth. Ironically, the apparent conflict between pro-growth and anti-growth agendas generated by this political structuring conceals a fundamental continuity. Both at-large voting and the initiative process function to dilute the influence of minorities and other geographically concentrated groups, entrench the political power of the professional middle classes, mute constructive dialogue about the merits of development, and cloak this ideologically loaded process in the rhetoric of a unitary public interest. This distorted political system has been the subject of many judicial challenges, most of which have focused on the local initiative process. The courts, however, have taken pains to uphold the right of the people to enact land use laws by initiative or referendum. Rejecting arguments that the local initiative entails an excess of politics without necessary apolitical counterweights, the courts have expressed confidence in the judiciary's own ability to temper the evils of unchecked politics through judicial review. I assert, however, that this faith in judicial review is misplaced, as the judiciary has proven incapable of balancing the complex array of competing interests involved in land-use regulation. Thus, I argue that the judiciary should instead focus on correcting defects in the political process so that the balancing of competing interests can occur, as it should, in the legislative arena.


Volume 1: Methods in Drug Discovery. History of Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships. Mass spectrometry and drug discovery. Chirality and Biological Activity. Analog design. SNPs: Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms and Pharmacogenomics - individually designed drug therapy. Design of peptidomimetics. Dual Acting Drugs. Combinational chemistry and multiple parallel synthesis. Allosteric proteins and drug discovery. Principles of drug metabolism. Pharmacophore-based drug design. Use of biological fingerprints vs Structure/chemotypes to describe molecules. Recent advances in development, validation and exploitation of QSAR models. The Application of recombinant DNA Technology in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Structural genomics, its application in Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, and Drug Discovery. Volume 2: Discovering Lead Molecules. Virtual screening. Utility and applications of in vitro ADMET profiling in lead discovery. Retrometabolism-Based Drug Design and Targeting. Natural product screening. Microbes to man from the depths to drugs. Multi-objective Optimization For Drug Discovery. GPCR homology model development and applications. Structural Alerts for Toxicity. Protein - Protein Interactions as Drug Discovery Targets. NMR-based Screening and Drug Discovery. Membrane transport proteins and drug transport. Receptor targets in drug discovery and development. Selective Toxicities. Chemogenomics - Systematization of Drug Discovery. Docking and Scoring in Drug Discovery. Recent Trends in Structure-Based Drug Design and Energetics. QM and QM/MM Approaches to Evaluating Binding Affinities. Assessing the Bioavailability of Drug Delivery Systems: Mathematical Modeling. Protein flexibility in in silico screening. Volume 3: Drug Development. Large scale and scale up synthesis. Physicochemical characterization and principles of oral dosage form selection. The FDA and drug regulatory issues. Intellectual property in drug discovery and biotechnology. Polymorphism and conjugation in drug delivery (crystal engineering). Prodrugs: Strategic Deployment, Metabolic Considerations and Chemical Design Principles. Process Development of Protein Therapeutics. Cost-Effectiveness Analyses throughout the Drug Development Life Cycle. Provisional BCS Classification of the Leading Oral Drugs on the Global Market. The role of permeability in drug ADME/PK, interactions and toxicity, and the Permeability-based Classification System (PCS). Salt screening and selection. Enzymatic assays for HTS or Assay Development for HTS. Crystallographic Survey of the Endogenous Albumin Drug Transport System and its Application in Cancer Chemotherapy. Nanotechnology in pharmaceuticals. Volume 4: Cardiovascular, Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases. Diabetes Drugs and Emerging Targets. DPP-4 inhibitors. Nuclear hormone receptor medicinal chemistry. Thyroid hormones and thyromimetics. Antihypertensives:renin inhibitors. Antihypertensives - Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. Atherosclerosis I: LDL Cholesterol Lowering. Atherosclerosis I: HDL Elevation. Anticoagulants. Antiplatelets. Congestive Heart Failure. Endogenous vasoactive peptides. Hematopoietic agents. Oxygen delivery via allosteric effectors of hemoglobin and blood substitutes. Volume 5: Pulmonary, Bone, Immunology, Vitamins and Autocoid Therapeutic Agents. Fundamentals of steroid chemistry and biochemistry. Antiinflammatory Glucocorticoids. Male sex hormones, analogs, and antagonists. Female Sex Hormones (pick up from the online). Medicinal chemistry and therapeutic applications of the gaseotransmitters NO, CO and H2S and their prodrugs. Retinoids. Multiple sclerosis. Ophthalmic agents. Vitamins. Drug Discovery in Non-Life Threatening Disorders: Erectile Dysfunction, Insomnia and Smoking Cessation. Osteoporosis therapy: mechanistic antiresoptives. Osteoporosis therapy: anabolics. Current and Emerging Therapies in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Agents acting on prostanoid & TX receptors. Therapeutic agents acting on RNA. Immunosuppressive agents for the prevention of transplantation rejection. Volume 6: Cancer. Natural product cytotoxics. Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors: A brief overview of their role and medicinal chemistry. Synthetic DNA-targeted chemotherapeutic agents and related tumor-activated prodrugs. PARP Inhibitors as Anticancer Agents. Proteasome inhibitors. CNS Cancers. Kinase inhibitors: Approved Drugs and Clinical Candidates. Structure-Based Design of Kinase Inhibitors: Molecular Recognition of Protein Multiple Conformations. Cancer drug resistance-targets and therapies. HSP inhibitors. Gene therapy with plasmid DNA. Volume 7: Antiinfectives. The FDA Approved HIV-1 Protease Inhibitors for Treatment of HIV/AIDS. HIV integrase. CCR5 Antagonists. Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (RTIs). Anti HCV agents. Anti-DNA Virus Agents. B-lactam antibiotics-include monobactams, b-lactamase inhibitors. Tetracyclines, aminoglycoside, macrolide, and miscellaneous antibiotics. Synthetic antibacterial agents. Antiprotozoal/ Antiparasitic Agents. Antimalarials. Anti-tuberculosis. Volume 8: CNS Disorders. Chemical Perspective on Neurotransmission and Drug Discovery for the Central Nervous System. Cognition. Cholinergics/anticholinergics/muscarinics/nicotinics. CNS stimulants. Anticonvulsants. Antipsychotic agents. Antidepressants. Therapeutic Agents for the Treatment of Migraine. Approaches to Amyloid Therapies for the Treatment of Alzheimers Disease. Non-Amyloid Approaches to Alzheimer's Disease. Stroke. Therapeutic and Diagnostic Agents for Parkinson?s Disease. Opioid Receptor Ligands. PET and SPECT in Drug Development.


A new era in experimental nuclear physics has begun with the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and its dedicated heavy-ion detector system ALICE. Measuring the highest energy density ever produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions, the detector has been designed to study the properties of the created hot and dense medium, assumed to be a Quark-Gluon Plasma. Comprised of 18 high granularity sub-detectors, ALICE delivers data from a few million electronic channels of proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions. The produced data volume can reach up to 26 GByte/s for central Pb–Pb collisions at design luminosity of L = 1027cm−2s−1, challenging not only the data storage, but also the physics analysis. A High-Level Trigger (HLT) has been built and commissioned to reduce that amount of data to a storable value prior to archiving with the means of data filtering and compression without the loss of physics information. Implemented as a large high performance compute cluster, the HLT is able to perform a full reconstruction of all events at the time of data-taking, which allows to trigger, based on the information of a complete event. Rare physics probes, with high transverse momentum, can be identified and selected to enhance the overall physics reach of the experiment. The commissioning of the HLT is at the center of this thesis. Being deeply embedded in the ALICE data path and, therefore, interfacing all other ALICE subsystems, this commissioning imposed not only a major challenge, but also a massive coordination effort, which was completed with the first proton-proton collisions reconstructed by the HLT. Furthermore, this thesis is completed with the study and implementation of on-line high transverse momentum triggers.


In a context of great technological and social change, existing intellectual property regimes such as copyright must contend with parallel forms of ownership and distribution. Proponents of open access, for example, question and undermine the paradigm of exclusivity central to traditional copyright law, thereby fundamentally challenging its ownership structures and the publishing practices these support. In this essay, we attempt to show what it is about the open access endeavour that resonates with a feminist theory of law and society—in other words, we consider what is "feminist" about open access.  First, we provide an overview of a relational feminist critique of traditional copyright law and the assumptions of possessive individualism that pervade it.  We then offer a brief description of the open access movement and the way in which it reflects or responds to this criticism. In doing so, we discover vital synergies between this branch of feminist legal theory and the open access movement. Ultimately, we hope to underscore the importance of an open access policy for legal journals such as this one, whose mission is to support, advance and disseminate a feminist perspective that challenges the prevailing hegemony within traditional legal scholarship. We conclude by offering ways in which this journal can help draw out the synergies between feminist criticism and the open access movement.


We report here on the direct isotopic evidence for Neanderthal and early modern human diets in Europe. Isotopic methods indicate the sources of dietary protein over many years of life, and show that Neanderthals had a similar diet through time (≈120,000 to ≈37,000 cal BP) and in different regions of Europe. The isotopic evidence indicates that in all cases Neanderthals were top-level carnivores and obtained all, or most, of their dietary protein from large herbivores. In contrast, early modern humans (≈40,000 to ≈27,000 cal BP) exhibited a wider range of isotopic values, and a number of individuals had evidence for the consumption of aquatic (marine and freshwater) resources. This pattern includes Oase 1, the oldest directly dated modern human in Europe (≈40,000 cal BP) with the highest nitrogen isotope value of all of the humans studied, likely because of freshwater fish consumption. As Oase 1 was close in time to the last Neanderthals, these data may indicate a significant dietary shift associated with the changing population dynamics of modern human emergence in Europe.


This is an edited transcript of the proceedings of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law's Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable on Assessing Dodd-Frank, which was held on April 1, 2011. The roundtable was jointly sponsored with the Yale Law & Business Society and Yale Journal on Regulation, and brought together policymakers, legal practitioners, members of the financial community, and academics from finance, economics and law to discuss the principal legislative response to the financial crisis. The roundtable consisted of four panel sessions. The first session, "Overview," was introduced by Robert Post, Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Panelists were Viral V. Acharya, Professor of Finance, New York University Stern School of Business; John Geanakoplos, James Tobin Professor of Economics, Yale University; Gary B. Gorton, Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Management and Finance, Yale School of Management; and Lawrence S. Makow, Partner, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Roberta Romano, Sterling Professor of Law and Center Director, moderated. The second session addressed, "'Too Big to Fail' and the New Resolution Authority." Panelists were Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Legal Group, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Jeffrey N. Gordon, Alfred W. Bressler Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, Randall D. Guynn, Head, Financial Institutions Group, Davis Polk & Wardwell; and Andrew Metrick, Deputy Dean for Faculty Development, Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Corporate Governance, Professor of Finance and Faculty Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance, Yale School of Management. Alan Schwartz, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School, moderated.The third session considered "Housing and Mortgage Reform." Panelists were Christopher J. Mayer, Senior Vice Dean and Paul Milstein Professor of Real Estate, Finance & Economics Division, Columbia Business School; Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University; Susan M. Wachter, Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and Professor of Real Estate and Finance, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School; and Peter J. Wallison, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute and Member, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The moderator was Robert C. Ellickson, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law, Yale Law School. The fourth session, "Assessment," had the following panelists: Michael S. Barr, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School and former U.S. Department of Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions; H. Rodgin Cohen, Senior Chairman, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP; Eugene A. Ludwig, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Promontory Financial Group LLC and former Comptroller of the Currency; and Jonathan R. Macey, Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law, Yale Law School. The panel was moderated by Shyam Sunder, James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance, Yale School of Management.


According to Locke's theory of the social contract, which was widely accepted by the Founders, political authority is limited by those natural moral rights that individuals reserve against the government. In this Article, I argue that Locke's theory generates paradoxical conclusions concerning the government's authority over civil disobedients, that is, people who resist the government because they believe it is violating reserved moral rights. If the government lacks the authority to compel the civil disobedient to abide by its laws, the result is anarchism: The limits on governmental authority are whatever each individual says they are. If the government has this authority, the result is authoritarianism: The limits on governmental authority are whatever the government says they are. Both conclusions are unacceptable. Because of the Lockean paradox, auxiliary constitutional rights, whose purpose is to protect civil disobedience, are likewise paradoxical. I argue that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms are examples of auxiliary rights, and I use the Lockean paradox to explain the intractable nature of the debates over whether these two rights provide anything of moral value. To their critics, these rights are anarchistic. All they do is give individuals the power to frustrate the government's legitimate attempts to protect citizens against mutually-imposed risks of violence. To their supporters, these rights are a bulwark against authoritarianism. To deny citizens the power to resist the government is to accept that the only views about the limits of political authority that matter are the government's. These disagreements cannot be resolved, because both sides are right. Supporters of these rights are anarchistic and their critics are authoritarian. As long as we continue to accept the Founders' Lockean view that governmental authority is limited by reserved moral rights, we will never be able to reject or accept these two constitutional rights. The Lockean paradox also explains the difficulties that courts and academics have experienced delineating the scope of these rights in a conceptually satisfying manner. Here too I argue that these problems cannot be overcome. The limits that are placed on these rights will always be arbitrary and ad hoc.


"During a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks' robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior . . . a treasure that could reshape the world." With the Vatican in turmoil, SIGMA Force leaps into action. An elite team of scientific and Special Forces operatives under the command of Grayson Pierce and accompanied by Lieutenant Rachel Verona of Rome's "carabinieri," they are pursuing a deadly mystery that weaves through sites of the Seven Wonders of the World and ends at the doorstep of an ancient, mystical, and terrifying secret order. For there are those with dark plans for the stolen sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind . . . when science and religion unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.


Russian Citizenship is the first book to trace the Russian state's citizenship policy throughout its history. Focusing on the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the consolidation of Stalin's power in the 1930s, Eric Lohr considers whom the state counted among its citizens and whom it took pains to exclude. His research reveals that the Russian attitude toward citizenship was less xenophobic and isolationist and more similar to European attitudes than has been previously thought--until the drive toward autarky after 1914 eventually sealed the state off and set it apart. Drawing on untapped sources in the Russian police and foreign affairs archives, Lohr's research is grounded in case studies of immigration, emigration, naturalization, and loss of citizenship among individuals and groups, including Jews, Muslims, Germans, and other minority populations. Lohr explores how reform of citizenship laws in the 1860s encouraged foreigners to immigrate and conduct business in Russia. For the next half century, citizenship policy was driven by attempts to modernize Russia through intensifying its interaction with the outside world. But growing suspicion toward non-Russian minorities, particularly Jews, led to a reversal of this openness during the First World War and to a Soviet regime that deprived whole categories of inhabitants of their citizenship rights. Lohr sees these Soviet policies as dramatically divergent from longstanding Russian traditions and suggests that in order to understand the citizenship dilemmas Russia faces today--including how to manage an influx of Chinese laborers in Siberia--we must return to pre-Stalin history.


Ever since the creation of the General Court ("GC"), the effectiveness of judicial review in European Union ("EU") competition cases has sparked intense scholarly debates. This paper seeks to further contribute to this discussion in three ways. First, it devotes some space to fundamental, yet often overlooked questions, such as the goals or functions of judicial review and why judicial review of administrative decisions is important; particularly so in competition law matters. Second, this paper attempts to throw some empirical light on the GC's judicial review of European Commission ("Commission") decisions in the field of competition law. Third, it places a specific emphasis on the particular situation of abuse of dominance law, where the GC has exercised its judicial review power with more restraint than in other areas of competition law (such as restrictive agreements and mergers). With these goals in mind, this paper follows a five-stage progression. First, on the basis of a survey of the relevant legal, economic and political science literature, it defines the functions of judicial review and identifies a set of indicators which can be used to assess the performance of the GC's judicial scrutiny (Part I). Second, it explains why judicial review in EU competition law cases is of critical importance notably given the institutional and procedural deficiencies of the EU enforcement structure (Part II). Third, it discusses the nature and standard of review currently applied by the GC with a particular focus on the degree to which the GC is willing to review "complex economic matters" (Part III). Fourth, it provides some quantitative data on the case-law of the GC to assess whether several goals or functions attributed to judicial review by the scientific literature are met (Part IV). Finally, this paper takes a closer look at the (controversial) case-law of the GC in the field of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("TFEU") (Part V). It observes that while the GC has taken initiatives to modernize normative legal standards in the fields of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("TFEU") and merger control, it has taken a conservative approach with respect to Article 102 TFEU where it has essentially relied on the formalistic case-law of the ECJ on exclusionary behaviour. In our view, this explains in large part why over the past decade, undertakings challenging Commission decisions have never been successful. The issue is not so much that the GC has turned a blind eye on the Commission's abuse of dominance position decisions (although it may also be part of the problem), but that the normative legal standards that are used to determine whether dominant firm conduct infringes Article 102 TFEU are so unfavorable to dominant firms and give so much discretion to the Commission that it is almost impossible for such firms to have infringement decisions overturned. Unless these standards evolve, there is a considerable risk that benign dominant firm conduct will be prohibited. These standards will also act as an impediment to economics- or effects-based oriented reforms, such as those initiated by the Commission in its Guidance Paper on Article 102 TFEU.


In this article we explore the relational materiality of fragments of human
 cadavers used to produce DNA profiles of the unidentified dead at a forensic
 genetics police laboratory in Rio de Janeiro. Our point of departure is an
 apparently simple problem: how to discard already tested materials in order to
 open up physical space for incoming tissue samples. However, during our study we
 found that transforming human tissues and bone fragments into disposable trash
 requires a tremendous institutional investment of energy, involving negotiations
 with public health authorities, criminal courts and public burial grounds. The
 dilemma confronted by the forensic genetic lab suggests not only how some
 fragments are endowed with more personhood than others, but also how the very
 distinction between human remains and trash depends on a patchwork of multiple
 logics that does not necessarily perform according to well-established or
 predictable scripts.


This Article provides the first comprehensive look at state constitutional provisions explicitly granting the right to vote. We hear that the right to vote is "fundamental," the "essence of a democratic society," and "preservative of all rights." Yet courts and scholars are still searching for a solution to the puzzle of how best to protect voting rights, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court has underenforced the right to vote. The answer, however, is right in front of us: state constitutions. Virtually every state constitution includes direct, explicit language granting the right to vote, as contrasted with the federal constitution, which mentions voting rights only implicitly. And yet those seeking to protect the right to vote have largely ignored this state constitutional source. This is because many state courts "lockstep" their state constitutional voting provisions with federal jurisprudence of the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, following the U.S. Supreme Court's lead in curtailing voter protections. The article explains why this lockstepping approach is wrong for the right to vote and advocates for courts to use a state-focused methodology when construing their state constitutions. It does so through the lens of recent voter ID litigation, showing how various state courts have differed in determining whether voter ID laws are constitutional based on whether the courts faithfully apply the state constitutional provisions conferring voting rights. The federal-state structure of voting rights protections requires a state-focused interpretation for state constitutional clauses that grant the right to vote. First, Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution points directly to state qualification rules to determine voter eligibility. Second, the textual and substantive differences between federal equal protection voting rights jurisprudence and state constitutional grants of the right to vote counsel toward a state-first methodology. The article also proposes a test for state courts to use when construing their constitutional voting rights clauses: a law that adds an additional voter qualification beyond what the state constitution allows is presumptively invalid, and a state must justify burdens on the right to vote with specific evidence tied to the legislature's authority under the state constitution. Finally, an Appendix presents a chart illustrating all fifty state constitutions and the language they employ for the right to vote.


"If you want to understand the future before it happens, you'll love this book. If you want to change the future before it happens to you, this book is required reading."

–Reed Hundt, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission"There is no simpler or clearer statement of the radical change that digital technologies will bring, nor any book that better prepares one for thinking about the next steps."

–Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School and Author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace"Blown to Bits will blow you away. In highly accessible and always fun prose, it explores all the nooks and crannies of the digital universe, exploring not only how this exploding space works but also what it means."

–Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, Author of Ruling the Waves and The Baby Business"This is a wonderful book

–probably the best since Hal Varian and Carl Schultz wrote Digital Rules. The authors are engineers, not economists. The result is a long, friendly talk with the genie, out of the lamp, and willing to help you avoid making the traditional mistake with that all-important third wish."

–David Warsh, Author of Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations"Blown to Bits is one of the clearest expositions I've seen of the social and political issues arising from the Internet. Its remarkably clear explanations of how the Net actually works lets the hot air out of some seemingly endless debates. You've made explaining this stuff look easy. Congratulations!"

–David Weinberger, Coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Author of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder."Blown to Bits is a timely, important, and very readable take on how information is produced and consumed today, and more important, on the approaching sea change in the way that we as a society deal with the consequences."

–Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology, Google, Inc."This book gives an overview of the kinds of issues confronting society as we become increasingly dependent on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Every informed citizen should read this book and then form their own opinion on these and related issues. And after reading this book you will rethink how (and even whether) you use the Web to form your opinions..."

–James S. Miller, Senior Director for Technology Policy and Strategy, Microsoft Corporation"Most writing about the digital world comes from techies writing about technical matter for other techies or from pundits whose turn of phrase greatly exceeds their technical knowledge. In Blown to Bits, experts in computer science address authoritatively the practical issues in which we all have keen interest."

–Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Author of Multiple Intelligences and Changing Minds"Regardless of your experience with computers, Blown to Bits provides a uniquely entertaining and informative perspective from the computing industry's greatest minds.A fascinating, insightful and entertaining book that helps you understand computers and their impact on the world in a whole new way.This is a rare book that explains the impact of the digital explosion in a way that everyone can understand and, at the same time, challenges experts to think in new ways."

–Anne Margulies, Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"Blown to Bits is fun and fundamental. What a pleasure to see real teachers offering such excellent framework for students in a digital age to explore and understand their digital environment, code and law, starting with the insight of Claude Shannon. I look forward to you teaching in an open online school."

–Professor Charles Nesson, Harvard Law School, Founder, Berkman Center for Internet and Society"To many of us, computers and the Internet are magic. We make stuff, send stuff, receive stuff, and buy stuff. It's all pointing, clicking, copying, and pasting. But it's all mysterious. This book explains in clear and comprehensive terms how all this gear on my desk works and why we should pay close attention to these revolutionary changes in our lives. It's a brilliant and necessary work for consumers, citizens, and students of all ages."

–Siva Vaidhyanathan, cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity"The world has turned into the proverbial elephant and we the blind men. The old and the young among us risk being controlled by, rather than in control of, events and technologies. Blown to Bits is a remarkable and essential Rosetta Stone for beginning to figure out how all of the pieces of the new world we have just begun to enter

–law, technology, culture, information

–are going to fit together. Will life explode with new possibilities, or contract under pressure of new horrors? The precipice is both exhilarating and frightening. Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, together, have ably managed to describe the elephant. Readers of this compact book describing the beginning stages of a vast human adventure will be one jump ahead, for they will have a framework on which to hang new pieces that will continue to appear with remarkable speed. To say that this is a 'must read' sounds trite, but, this time, it's absolutely true."

–Harvey Silverglate, criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer and writerEvery day, billions of photographs, news stories, songs, X-rays, TV shows, phone calls, and emails are being scattered around the world as sequences of zeroes and ones: bits. We can't escape this explosion of digital information and few of us want to

–the benefits are too seductive. The technology has enabled unprecedented innovation, collaboration, entertainment, and democratic participation.But the same engineering marvels are shattering centuries-old assumptions about privacy, identity, free expression, and personal control as more and more details of our lives are captured as digital data.Can you control who sees all that personal information about you? Can email be truly confidential, when nothing seems to be private? Shouldn't the Internet be censored the way radio and TV are? Is it really a federal crime to download music? When you use Google or Yahoo! to search for something, how do they decide which sites to show you? Do you still have free speech in the digital world? Do you have a voice in shaping government or corporate policies about any of this?Blown to Bits offers provocative answers to these questions and tells intriguing real-life stories. This book is a wake-up call to the human consequences of the digital explosion.Preface xiiiChapter 1: Digital Explosion: Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake? 1Chapter 2: Naked in the Sunlight: Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 19Chapter 3: Ghosts in the Machine: Secrets and Surprises of Electronic Documents 73Chapter 4: Needles in the Haystack: Google and Other Brokers in the Bits Bazaar 109Chapter 5: Secret Bits: How Codes Became Unbreakable 161Chapter 6: Balance Toppled: Who Owns the Bits? 195Chapter 7: You Can't Say That on the Internet: Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression 229Chapter 8: Bits in the Air: Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech 259Conclusion: After the Explosion 295Appendix: The Internet as System and Spirit 301Endnotes 317Index 347


The Spring 2016 issue of Ploughshares. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year's three issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles, with the Winter issue staff-edited.Acclaimed poets Tom Sleigh and Alan Shapiro guest-edit this poetry and prose issue of Ploughshares. In a heartfelt introduction the two dedicate the issue to Mark Strand, Philip Levine, C.K. Williams, and Seamus Heaney, writing, "We wanted to bring them back--if only in these pages." Featuring work from the aforementioned poets alongside their students, peers, and also variety of emerging voices, the stories and poems in these pages reassure us that great writers and teachers never really leave us.Read new poetry from Sharon Olds, Mary Karr, and Robert Pinksy, and new prose from Katherine Damm, Taylor Koekkek, and Soraya Palmer. The Spring 2016 issue also includes a Look2 essay on the fiction of Joshua Cohen, and a profile of our Alice Hoffman winner, Ramona Asubel. The cover art is by Mark Strand.


Abstract Background Heart failure is a condition in which the heart does not pump enough blood to meet all the needs of the body. Symptoms of heart failure include breathlessness, fatigue and fluid retention. Outcomes for patients with heart failure are highly variable; however on average, these patients have a poor prognosis. Prognosis can be improved with early diagnosis and appropriate use of medical treatment, use of devices and transplantation. Patients with heart failure are high users of healthcare resources, not only due to drug and device treatments, but due to high costs of hospitalisation care. B‐type natriuretic peptide levels are already used as biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of heart failure, but could offer to clinicians a possible tool to guide drug treatment. This could optimise drug management in heart failure patients whilst allaying concerns over potential side effects due to drug intolerance. Objectives To assess whether treatment guided by serial BNP or NT‐proBNP (collectively referred to as NP) monitoring improves outcomes compared with treatment guided by clinical assessment alone. Search methods Searches were conducted up to 15 March 2016 in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in the Cochrane Library; MEDLINE (OVID), Embase (OVID), the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database in the Cochrane Library. Searches were also conducted in the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Conference Proceedings Citation Index on Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry and ClinicalTrials.gov. We applied no date or language restrictions. Selection criteria We included randomised controlled trials of NP‐guided treatment of heart failure versus treatment guided by clinical assessment alone with no restriction on follow‐up. Adults treated for heart failure, in both in‐hospital and out‐of‐hospital settings, and trials reporting a clinical outcome were included. Data collection and analysis Two review authors independently selected studies for inclusion, extracted data and evaluated risk of bias. Risk ratios (RR) were calculated for dichotomous data, and pooled mean differences (MD) (with 95% confidence intervals (CI)) were calculated for continuous data. We contacted trial authors to obtain missing data. Using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, we assessed the quality of the evidence and GRADE profiler (GRADEPRO) was used to import data from Review Manager to create a 'Summary of findings' table. Main results We included 18 randomised controlled trials with 3660 participants (range of mean age: 57 to 80 years) comparing NP‐guided treatment with clinical assessment alone. The evidence for all‐cause mortality using NP‐guided treatment showed uncertainty (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.01; patients = 3169; studies = 15; low quality of the evidence), and for heart failure mortality (RR 0.84, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.30; patients = 853; studies = 6; low quality of evidence). The evidence suggested heart failure admission was reduced by NP‐guided treatment (38% versus 26%, RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.61 to 0.80; patients = 1928; studies = 10; low quality of evidence), but the evidence showed uncertainty for all‐cause admission (57% versus 53%, RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.03; patients = 1142; studies = 6; low quality of evidence). Six studies reported on adverse events, however the results could not be pooled (patients = 1144; low quality of evidence). Only four studies provided cost of treatment results, three of these studies reported a lower cost for NP‐guided treatment, whilst one reported a higher cost (results were not pooled; patients = 931, low quality of evidence). The evidence showed uncertainty for quality of life data (MD ‐0.03, 95% CI ‐1.18 to 1.13; patients = 1812; studies = 8; very low quality of evidence). We completed a 'Risk of bias' assessment for all studies. The impact of risk of bias from lack of blinding of outcome assessment and high attrition levels was examined by restricting analyses to only low 'Risk of bias' studies. Authors' conclusions In patients with heart failure low‐quality evidence showed a reduction in heart failure admission with NP‐guided treatment while low‐quality evidence showed uncertainty in the effect of NP‐guided treatment for all‐cause mortality, heart failure mortality, and all‐cause admission. Uncertainty in the effect was further shown by very low‐quality evidence for patient's quality of life. The evidence for adverse events and cost of treatment was low quality and we were unable to pool results.


A Companion to Cultural Resource Management is an essential guide to those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of CRM and heritage management. Expert contributors share their knowledge and illustrate CRM's practice and scope, as well as the core issues and realities in preserving cultural heritages worldwide. • Edited by one of the world's leading experts in the field of cultural resource management, with contributions by a wide range of experts, including archaeologists, architectural historians, museum curators, historians, and representatives of affected groups • Offers a broad view of cultural resource management that includes archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, historic structures, shipwrecks, scientific and technological sites and objects, as well as intangible resources such as language, religion, and cultural values • Highlights the realities that face CRM practitioners "on the ground"


Disparities in the use of school discipline by race, gender, and sexual orientation have been well-documented and continue to place large numbers of students at risk for shortand long-term negative outcomes. In order to improve the state of our knowledge and encourage effective interventions, the Discipline Disparities Research to Practice Collaborative, a group of 26 nationally known researchers, educators, advocates, and policy analysts, came together to address the problem of disciplinary disparities. Funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and Open Society Foundations, the Collaborative has spent nearly three years conducting a series of meetings with groups of stakeholders—advocates, educators, juvenile justice representatives, intervention agents, researchers, and policymakers—in order to increase the availability of interventions that are both practical and evidence-based, and to develop and support a policy agenda for reform to improve equity in school discipline. The project has funded 11 new research projects to expand the knowledge base, particularly in the area of intervention, and commissioned papers from noted researchers presented at the Closing the School Discipline Gap Conference. A culminating report of the Collaborative's work is the formal release of the Discipline Disparities Briefing Paper Series, three papers on policy, practice, and new research summarizing the state of our knowledge and offering practical, evidence-based recommendations for reducing disparities in discipline in our nation's schools.


The phrase "bundle of rights" does not serve as an accurate conceptual definition of property. Nor has that phrase provided a helpful metaphor as used in Ronald Coase's article "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960) and subsequent legal and economic scholarship. Coase's usage portrays property rights as a collection of individualized permissions to use an asset, when in sound conceptual usage "property" signifies a domain of authority to decide how to use the asset. The "bundle" metaphor may be understood to state that an owner has a right to deploy his property in any specific manner fairly implied by his general rights of ownership. Although this metaphorical usage is helpful, it remains parasitic on a sound conceptual definition of property. Property is best conceived of as a right securing a normative interest in determining exclusively the use of an asset external to the person of the owner.


We propose the concept of Action-Related Place (ARPLACE) as a powerful and flexible representation of task-related place in the context of mobile manipulation. ARPlace represents robot base locations not as a single position, but rather as a collection of positions, each with an associated probability that the manipulation action will succeed when located there. ARPLACES are generated using a predictive model that is acquired through experience-based learning, and take into account the uncertainty the robot has about its own location and the location of the object to be manipulated.

When executing the task, rather than choosing one specific goal position based only on the initial knowledge about the task context, the robot instantiates an ARPLACE, and bases its decisions on this ARPLACE, which is updated as new information about the task becomes available. To show the advantages of this least-commitment approach, we present a transformational planner that reasons about ARPLACE in order to optimize symbolic plans. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that using ARPLACE leads to more robust and efficient mobile manipulation in the face of state estimation uncertainty on our simulated robot.


The Making of Economic Policy begins by observing that most countries' trade policies are so blatantly contrary to all the prescriptions of the economist that there is no way to understand this discrepancy except by delving into the politics. The same is true for many other dimensions of economic policy. Avinash Dixit looks for an improved understanding of the politics of economic policymaking from a transaction cost perspective. Such costs of planning, implementing, and monitoring an exchange have proved critical to explaining many phenomena in industrial organization. Dixit discusses the variety of similar transaction costs encountered in the political process of making economic policy and how these costs affect the operation of different institutions and policies. Dixit organizes a burgeoning body of research in political economy in this framework. He uses U.S. fiscal policy and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as two examples that illustrate the framework, and show how policy often deviates from the economist's ideal of efficiency. The approach reveals, however, that some seemingly inefficient practices are quite credible attempts to cope with transaction costs such as opportunism and asymmetric information.


Today, the mechanism of the spending power drives the gears of the modern federal machine. But early nineteenth century constitutional debates demonstrate that the spending power is essentially a workaround, and a recent one at that – a tool by which Congress achieves certain political and legal ends while respecting the formal boundaries set by Article I and the Tenth Amendment. This "interbellum" period was enormously significant for American constitutional law, in particular the constellation of related doctrines concerning congressional power that we now place under the general heading of "federalism": the spending power, the enumerated powers of Article I, and the anticommandeering principle of the Tenth Amendment. As a historical matter, political and legal actors in the early nineteenth century believed themselves to be living in what this Article argues was a long founding moment, in which the fundamental terms of the federal-state relationship were still open to debate. Constitutional scholars have mistakenly overlooked the constitutional creativity of the period. As a normative matter, I argue for an approach to millennial constitutional interpretation that recognizes the ever-changing nature of the landscape of constitutional permissibility, and that offers documentary evidence of the precise contours of that change. Studying the evolution of the spending power over time, especially where the text itself remains constant, demonstrates that ideas about federal structure are not fixed. Therefore, constitutional federalism itself is not fixed – a particularly important insight in an area of constitutional doctrine that is dominated by originalist approaches.


Text on planar surfaces in 3-D scenes in video imagery can undergo complex apparent motion and distortion as the surfaces move relative to the camera. Tracking such text and its motion through a contiguous sequence of video frames in which it is visible is desirable primarily for two reasons. First, reliable tracking of text enables the images of text persisting across multiple frames to be grouped, processed, and understood as a single unit. Second, text tracking aids the mapping of corresponding text and background pixels across multiple frames to enhance image quality and resolution before character recognition. Existing text tracking approaches, however, are limited to approximate pixel-based correspondences of adjacent frames without any explicit, rigorous modeling of 3-D scene geometry. To this end, we describe an approach that tracks planar regions of scene text that can undergo arbitrary 3-D rigid motion and scale changes. Our approach computes homographies on blocks of contiguous frames simultaneously using a combination of factorization and robust statistical methods. In spite of low resolution and noisy imagery, this approach produces a more accurate and stable motion estimate than existing methods using only two adjacent frames. In addition, our method is robust enough to tolerate imperfections in the spatial localization of text. Our results demonstrate that the mean offset pixel error of our tracker is as small as 1.1 pixels.


In recent years, migrant justice organizers in Canada have developed campaigns
aimed at building, legislating, and enforcing municipal commitments to alleviating
and resisting the harms done by federal immigration enforcement, and ensuring
migrant access to municipal services. As a result of these efforts, some cities, including
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Hamilton, have declared themselves "sanctuary
cities," and campaigns centered around this concept have emerged in other localities
across the country. In this article, the authors—who are themselves involved in sanctuary
city organizing—reflect on the concept, and offer a critical assessment of these
organizing efforts. We provide a brief history of these campaigns in Canada, discuss
the impact of these policies in cities where they have been adopted, reflect on the types
of politics that inform notions of sanctuary, hospitality, solidarity, and resistance, and
offer some lessons for moving forward.


How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the rituals and beliefs that have governed milk production and consumption since its use in the earliest societies. Covering the long span of human history, Milk reveals how developments in technology, public health, and nutritional science made this once-rare elixir a modern-day staple. The book looks at the religious meanings of milk, along with its association with pastoral life, which made it an object of mystery and suspicion during medieval times and the Renaissance. As early modern societies refined agricultural techniques, cow's milk became crucial to improving diets and economies, launching milk production and consumption into a more modern phase. Yet as business and science transformed the product in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commercial milk became not only a common and widely available commodity but also a source of uncertainty when used in place of human breast milk for infant feeding. Valenze also examines the dairy culture of the developing world, looking at the example of India, currently the world's largest milk producer. Ultimately, milk's surprising history teaches us how to think about our relationship to food in the present, as well as in the past. It reveals that although milk is a product of nature, it has always been an artefact of culture.


The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history -- with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille's reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.For Bataille, prehistory is universal history; it is the history of a human community prior to its fall into separation, into nations and races. The art of prehistory offers the earliest traces of nascent yet fully human consciousness -- of consciousness not yet fully separated from natural flora and fauna, or from the energetic forces of the universe. A play of identities, the art of prehistory is the art of a consciousness struggling against itself, of a human spirit struggling against brute animal physicality. Prehistory is the cradle of humanity, the birth of tragedy.Bataille reaches beyond disciplinary specializations to imagine a moment when thought was universal. Bataille's work provides a model for interdisciplinary inquiry in our own day, a universal imagination and thought for our own potential community. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture speaks to philosophers and historians of thought, to anthropologists interested in the history of their discipline and in new methodologies, to theologians and religious comparatists interested in the origins and nature of man's encounter with the sacred, and to art historians and aestheticians grappling with the place of prehistory in the canons of art.


Time-based (TB) prospective memory tasks require the estimation of time in passing - known as prospective timing. Prospective timing is said to depend on an attentionally-driven internal clock mechanism, and is thought to be unaffected by memory for interval information (for a review see, Block & Zakay, 1997). A prospective timing task that required a verbal estimate following the entire interval (Experiment 1) and a TB prospective memory task that required production of a target response during the interval (Experiment 2) were used to test an alternative view that memory does influence prospective timing. In both experiments, participants performed an ongoing task for 11.02 minutes while a varying number of songs were played in the background. Experiment 1 results revealed that participants' time estimates became longer the more songs they remembered from the interval, suggesting that memory for interval information influences prospective time estimates. In Experiment 2, participants who were asked to perform the TB prospective memory task without the aid of an external clock made their target responses earlier as the number of songs increased, indicating that estimates of elapsed time increased as more songs were experienced. For participants who had access to a clock, changes in clock-checking coincided with the occurrence of song boundaries, indicating that participants used both song information and clock information to estimate time. Finally, ongoing task performance and verbal reports in both experiments further substantiate a role for memory in prospective timing.


Law schools have misled prospective students for years about the value of legal education. In some cases, law school officials have engaged in outright deceit, knowingly spreading false information about their schools. More commonly, they have presented statistics — especially those concerning the employment outcomes of law graduates — in ways nearly guaranteed to confuse readers. These deceptions and sharp practices violate the norms of the legal profession, a profession that scrupulously regulates the advertising of legal services. The deceptions also violate ethical rules prohibiting lawyers from engaging in dishonesty, misrepresentation, and deceit.This article exposes how pitches aimed at prospective students, including the seemingly straightforward recitation of statistics on law school websites, still paint an unduly rosy picture of the legal employment market. Focusing on Rule 8.4(c) of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the article explains that law school officials have exposed themselves to professional discipline, which may offer a solution to the pervasive problem of misleading law school marketing.


This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of our highly acclaimed university textbook on the science of parapsychology. The objective of this book is to provide an introductory survey of parapsychologists' efforts to explore the authenticity and bases of anomalous, apparently paranormal phenomena. It outlines the origins of parapsychological research and critically reviews investigations of extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, poltergeist phenomena, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and the evaluation of parapsychology as a scientific enterprise.


The fundamental question of the ethics of belief is "What ought one to believe?" According to the traditional view of evidentialism, the strength of one's beliefs should be proportionate to the evidence. Conventional ways of defending and challenging evidentialism rely on the idea that what one ought to believe is a matter of what it is rational, prudent, ethical, or personally fulfilling to believe. Common to all these approaches is that they look outside of belief itself to determine what one ought to believe. In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief--that evidentialism is belief's own ethics. A key observation is that it is not merely that one ought not, but that one cannot, believe, for example, that the number of stars is even. The "cannot" represents a conceptual barrier, not just an inability. Therefore belief in defiance of one's evidence (or evidentialism) is impossible. Adler addresses such questions as irrational beliefs, reasonableness, control over beliefs, and whether justifying beliefs requires a foundation. Although he treats the ethics of belief as a central topic in epistemology, his ideas also bear on rationality, argument and pragmatics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and social cognitive psychology.


The static model of competition, which dominates modern antitrust analysis, has served antitrust law well. Nonetheless, as commentators have observed, the static model ignores the impact that competitive (or anti-competitive) activities undertaken today will have upon future market conditions. An increased focus upon dynamic competition surely has the potential to improve antitrust analysis and, thus, to benefit consumers. The practical value of proposals to increase the use of dynamic analysis must, however, be evaluated with an eye to the institutional limitations that antitrust agencies and courts face when engaged in predictive fact-finding. We explain and evaluate both the current state of dynamic antitrust analysis and some recent proposals that agencies and courts incorporate dynamic considerations more deeply into their analyses. We show antitrust analysis is not willfully ignorant of the limitations of static analysis; on the contrary, when reasonably confident predictions can be made, they are readily incorporated into the analysis. We also argue agencies and courts should view current proposals for a more dynamic approach with caution because the theories underpinning those proposals lie outside the agencies' expertise in industrial organization economics, do not consistently yield determinate results, and would place significant demands upon reviewing courts to question predictions based upon those theories. Considering the current state of economic theory and empirical knowledge, we conclude that competition agencies and courts have appropriately refrained from incorporating dynamic features into antitrust analysis to make predictions beyond what can be supported by a fact-intensive analysis.


Stutson, Caroline. Cats' Night Out . Jon Klassen.  Illus. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print. This is an immediately appealing and well designed book – a pleasing convergence of balanced palettes and retro details. Sophisticated and stylish little urban cats cavort throught an overview of twentieth century dance styles against the backdrop of an understatedly cool Gotham night. The minimal text is mindfully integrated into the page design and its counting rhyme cadence comes to an enjoyable visually unstructured, cartoonish climax. When I read Cats'… to myself I was concerned that it shared one short coming with other attractive children's books. Did the level of textual comprehension required, complexity of the popular culture references and the dark, low contrast palette cohere into a narrative and visual text that is holistically appropriate for a particular children's age group? It's discouraging when artful and ambitious books elude toddlers and preschool age audiences while seeming too simplistic to older children to offer sufficient engagement. Such books wash over children leaving them unmoved. Creating a beautiful picture book - which Cats' Night Out certainly is - is a great accomplishment. Creating a picture book that is beautiful and that is truly directed at and calibrated for children is even more challenging. I knew that Cats' Night Out would please discerning adults but, what little sartorialist cat-lover and junior aficionado of dance and monochromatic retro architecture would have an affinity for this book? Well, as it turns out, my four year old loves it and goes back through the book  to examine all the details and explain which shoes, clothes and colours are the best and ask me baffling questions about "polka dotted Swiss" (I had to look it up – it's a vintage fabric style). Very well done,  indeed. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Matilda Roche Matilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta's metadata but children's illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda's super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.


We study the $2$-adic behavior of the number of domino tilings of a $2n \times 2n$ square as $n$ varies. It was previously known that this number was of the form $2^nf(n)^2$, where $f(n)$ is an odd, positive integer. We show that the function $f$ is uniformly continuous under the $2$-adic metric, and thus extends to a function on all of $Z$. The extension satisfies the functional equation $f(-1-n) = \pm f(n)$, where the sign is positive iff $n \equiv 0,3 \pmod{4}$.


European economic, social and territorial cohesion is one of the fundamental aims of the European Union (EU). It seeks to both reduce the effects of internal borders and enhance European integration. In order to facilitate territorial cohesion, the linkage of member states by means of efficient cross-border transport infrastructures and services is an important factor. Many cross-border transport challenges have historically existed in everyday life. They have hampered smooth passenger and freight flows within the EU.
Two EU policies, namely European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) and the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T), promote enhancing cross-border transport through cooperation in soft spaces. This dissertation seeks to explore the influence of these two EU policies on cross-border transport and further European integration.
Based on an analysis of European, national and cross-border policy and planning documents, surveys with TEN-T Corridor Coordinators and INTERREG Secretariats and a high number of elite interviews, the dissertation will investigate how the objectives of the two EU policies were formally implemented in both soft spaces and the EU member states as well as which practical implementations have taken place. Thereby, the initiated Europeanisation and European integration processes will be evaluated. The analysis is conducted in nine preliminary case studies and two in-depth case studies. The cases comprise cross-border regions funded by the ETC policy that are crossed by a TEN-T corridor. The in-depth analysis explores the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux+ and the Brandenburg-Lubuskie region. The cases are characterised by different initial situations.
The research determined that the two EU policies support cross-border transport on different levels and, further, that they need to be better intertwined in order to make effective use of their complementarities. Moreover, it became clear that the EU policies have a distinct influence on domestic policy and planning documents of different administrative levels and countries as well as on the practical implementation. The final implementation of the EU objectives and the cross-border transport initiatives was strongly influenced by the member states' initial situations – particularly, the regional and local transport needs. This dissertation concludes that the two EU policies cannot remove the entirety of the cross-border transport-related challenges. However, in addition to their financial investments in concrete projects, they promote the importance of cross-border transport and facilitate cooperation, learning and exchange processes. These are all of high relevance to cross-border transport development, driven by member states, as well as to further European integration.
The dissertation recommends that the transport planning competences of the EU in addition to the TEN-T network should not be enlarged in the future, but rather further transnational transport development tasks should be decentralised to transnational transport planning committees that are aware of regional needs and can coordinate a joint transport development strategy. The latter should be implemented with the support of additional EU funds for secondary and tertiary cross-border connections. Moreover, the potential complementarities of the transnational regions and transport corridors as well as the two EU policy fields should be made better use of by improving communication. This means that soft spaces, the TEN-T and ETC Policy as well as the domestic transport ministries and the domestic administrations that are responsible for the two EU policies need to intensify their cooperation. Furthermore, a focus of future ETC projects on topics that are of added value for the whole cross-border region or else that can be applied in different territorial contexts is recommended rather than investing in small-scale scattered expensive infrastructures and services that are only of benefit for a small part of the region. Additionally, the dissemination of project results should be enhanced so that the developed tools can be accessed by potential users and benefits become more visible to a wider society, despite the fact that they might not be measurable in numbers. In addition, the research points at another success factor for more concrete outputs: the frequent involvement of transport and spatial planners in transnational projects could increase the relation to planning practice. Besides that, advanced training regarding planning culture could reduce cooperation barriers.


Abstract.
 Kainella Walcott (trilobita, Early Ordovician) In Northwestern Argentina And Southern bolivia. Biostratigraphic Significance. The Tremadocian Kainella meridionalis Zone in the Central Andean Basin is is reassessed. This zone has been widely used for regional and intercontinental correlations, but such correlations mostly involved an extended interval that corresponds, in fact, to the whole range of the genus. Species of Kainella recorded in northwestern Argentina and southern Bolivia exhibit a relatively wide geographic distribution and a constrained stratigraphic range. On the basis of their record a succession of biozones is proposed, ranging from the basal Tremadocian to possibly the early middle Tremadocian. Three biozones are proposed on the basis of integrated information drawn from several localities, i.e., the K. andina, K. meridionalis, and K. teiichii zones. In addition, the Jujuyaspis keideli Subzone is here upgraded to the rank of zone. The definition of this succession of biozones is a significant progress in the establishment of a high resolution biostratigraphic framework based on trilobites, leading to more precise correlations in the future.


This pest survey card was prepared in the context of the EFSA mandate on plant pest surveillance (M2017-0137), upon request by the European Commission. The purpose of this document is to assist the Member States in planning annual survey activities of quarantine organisms using a statistically sound and risk-based pest survey approach, in line with the current international standards. The data requirements for such activity include the pest distribution, its host range, its biology, risk factors as well as available detection and identification methods. This document is part of a toolkit that consists of pest-specific documents, such as the pest survey cards and generic documents relevant for all pests to be surveyed, including, the general survey guidelines and statistical software such as RiBESS+. © European Food Safety Authority, 2019


The "retirement saving puzzle" is a phenomenon in which many households U.S. households have significant wealth late in life, contrary to the predictions of a simple life-cycle model. In this project, we examine cross-country differences in the saving behavior of retirees in order to weigh in on the discussion of the puzzle. First, we find that countries in our sample vary noticeably in terms of the extent of the puzzle: one group of countries, in South and Central Europe, look like the United States, while in Northern Europe, retirees spend down their wealth much more rapidly. Second, it appears that the rate of dissaving in retirement is correlated with the extent of public coverage of healthcare and long-term care, and these differences in saving happen predominantly through dissaving of financial assets, while housing assets are less affected. In a quantitative experiment using a life-cycle model of saving in retirement, we measure the role of out-of-pocket medical spending risk in accounting for differences in observed saving patterns among retirees in the United States and Sweden, considering housing and financial assets separately. The model predicts that this risk accounts, on average across age, for one-half of the difference in median net worth between United States and Sweden, and for about 70 percent of the difference in median financial assets. The role of risk diminishes with age, and is seen primarily in financial asset saving, while housing assets do not appear to respond to spending risk, suggesting that housing is not a precautionary asset.


The nowadays increasing number of fields where large quantities of data are collected generates an emergent demand for methods for extracting relevant information from huge databases. Amongst the various existing data mining models, decision trees are widely used since they represent a good trade-off between accuracy and interpretability. However, one of their main problems is that they are very instable, which complicates the process of the knowledge discovery because the users are disturbed by the different decision trees generated from almost the same input learning samples. In the current work, binary tree classifiers are analyzed and partially improved. The analysis of tree classifiers goes from their topology from the graph theory point of view to the creation of a new tree classification model by means of combining decision trees and soft comparison operators (Mlynski, 2003) with the purpose to not only overcome the well known instability problem of decision trees, but also in order to confer the ability of dealing with uncertainty. In order to study and compare the structural stability of tree classifiers, we propose an instability coefficient which is based on the notion of Lipschitz continuity and offer a metric to measure the proximity between decision trees. This thesis converges towards its main part with the presentation of our model ``Soft Operators Decision Tree\'\' (SODT). Mainly, we describe its construction, application and the consistency of the mathematical formulation behind this. Finally we show the results of the implementation of SODT and compare numerically the stability and accuracy of a SODT and a crisp DT. The numerical simulations support the stability hypothesis and a smaller tendency to overfitting the training data with SODT than with crisp DT is observed. A further aspect of this inclusion of soft operators is that we choose them in a way so that the resulting goodness function (used by this method) is differentiable and thus allows to calculate the best split points by means of gradient descent methods. The main drawback of SODT is the incorporation of the unpreciseness factor, which increases the complexity of the algorithm.


The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action holds out the promise of progress towards a climate treaty that includes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limitations commitments by all major emitting countries, including developing as well as developed countries. But as the UNFCCC process still faces significant obstacles, it needs to be supplemented, supported and furthered by concerted domestic and international efforts to build from the bottom up, a network of more limited and targeted regulatory and financial arrangements that would promote transnational cooperation, coordination and quantitative progress in reducing net GHG emissions. This paper focuses on specific transnational arrangements that are regulatory in character, involving standards, protocols, and other norms for products and production and process methods, for investments, financing, and trade, for generating and transmitting information, and other activities relevant to achieving GHG reductions. These transnational programs would focus to a considerable extent on achieving economic or environmental objectives other than climate protection, but in doing so would stimulate behavioral changes and instigate institutional arrangements that produce GHG reductions as a co-benefit. These regimes would involve not only major emitting countries but also firms, sub-national jurisdictions, civil society organizations (CSOs) and international organizations. These latter actors are not part of the UNFCCC process (other than as observers), but often already have significant economic and other non-climate incentives to undertake actions that will reduce GHG, or would readily respond to the deployment of such incentives. The strategy is to complement the universalist state-centered UNFCC process with a suite of concerted initiatives for regulatory and financial cooperation and coordination in specific fields involving non-state as well as state actors, focused on the most promising targets of opportunity for near-term emissions reductions.


Studies have shown that runoff and spray-drift are important sources of nonpoint-source pesticide pollution of surface waters. Owing to this, public concern over the presence of pesticides in surface and ground water has resulted in intensive scientific efforts to find economical, yet environmentally sound solutions to the problem. The primary objective of this research was to assess the effectiveness of vegetated aquatic systems in providing buffering between natural aquatic ecosystems and agricultural landscape following insecticide associated runoff and spray-drift events. The first set of studies were implemented using vegetated agricultural ditches, one in Mississippi, USA, using pyrethroids (bifenthrin, lambda-cyhalothrin) under simulated runoff conditions and the other in the Western Cape, South Africa using the organophosphate insecticide, azinphos-methyl (AZP), under natural runoff and spray-drift conditions. The second set of studies were implemented using constructed wetlands, one in the Western Cape using AZP under natural spray-drift conditions and the other in Mississippi, USA using the organophosphate MeP under simulated runoff conditions. Results from the Mississippi-ditch study indicated that ditch lengths of less than 300 m would be sufficient to mitigate bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin. In addition, data from mass balance calculations determined that the ditch plants were the major sink (generally > 90%) and/or sorption site for the rapid dissipation of the above pyrethroids from the water column. Similarly, results from the ditch study in South Africa showed that a 180 m vegetated system was effective in mitigating AZP after natural spray drift and low flow runoff events. Analytical results from the first wetland study show that the vegetated wetland was more effective than the non-vegetated wetland in reducing loadings of MeP. Mass balance calculations indicated approximately 90% of MeP mass was associated with the plant compartment. Ninety-six hours after the contamination, a significant negative acute effect of contamination on abundances was found in 8 out of the 15 macroinvertebrate species in both wetland systems. Even with these toxic effects, the overall reaction of macroinvertebrates clearly demonstrated that the impact of MeP in the vegetated wetland was considerably lower than in the non-vegetated wetland. Results from the constructed wetland study in South Africa revealed that concentrations of AZP at the inlet of the 134 m wetland system were reduced by 90% at the outlet. Overall, results from all of the studies in this thesis indicate that the presence of the plant compartment was essential for the effective mitigation of insecticide contamination introduced after both simulated and natural runoff or spray-drift events. Finally, both the vegetated agricultural drainage ditch and vegetated constructed wetland systems studied would be effective in mitigating pesticide loadings introduced from either runoff or spray-drift, in turn lowering or eliminating potential pesticide associated toxic effects in receiving aquatic ecosystems. Data produced in this research provide important information to reduce insecticide risk in exposure assessment scenarios. It should be noted that incorporating these types of best management practices (BMPs) will decrease the risk of acute toxicity, but chronic exposure may still be an apparent overall risk.