Lawrence v. Florida: Applications for Post-Conviction Relief Are

On February 20, 2007 , the Supreme Court announced its decision in Lawrence v. Florida, seeking to address confusion surrounding the tolling of a one-year statute of limitations applicable to federal habeas corpus petitions

He Said, She Said: A Feminist Approach to Teaching the Twentieth-Century Novel in the Twenty-First Century

The question of women\u27s relationship to the literary canon is still pertinent today and is particularly significant for those of us who are both guided by feminist pedagogy and constrained by departmental limitations. How do we give an overview of the novel without either diminishing the importance of certain male novelists or eliminating female writers altogether? The author suggest that a thematic approach in which pairs of texts make explicit two different gender perspectives is useful. This approach underscores the notion that gender informs writing as well as reading and, equally significant, introduces feminist theory as a tool for literary analysis

Annie Ernaux\u27s Passion Simple and Se Perdre: Proust\u27s \u27Amour-Maladie\u27 Revisited and Revised

At first blush it may seem that Marcel Proust and Annie Ernaux have little in common. The author a A la recherche du temps perdu depends extensively on metaphor and serpentine sentences which culminate in a three-thousand-page work while the more contemporary writer rejects prolixity and imagery and produces dramatically briefer texts. [excerpt

Texas: Round 1 - State-Level Field network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 23, 2010, Texas has reviewed and debated the different policy directives of the legislation. In 2011, Texas decided against administering a state-run health insurance exchange and opted in to a federally run exchange. This decision occurred prior to the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of ACA provisions. In 2013, after the 2012 Supreme Court decision allowed states to decide whether to expand Medicaid, Texas chose not to expand Medicaid eligibility and enrollment

Certification schemes and the governance of land : enforcing standards or enabling scrutiny?

Given the challenges of upholding human rights in countries where land grabbing has been most acute, attention has turned to alternative regulatory mechanisms by which better land governance might be brought about. This essay considers one such approach: certification schemes. These encourage agricultural producers to adopt sustainability standards which are then monitored by third-party auditors. Used by the European Union to help govern its biofuel market, they now also have an important mandatory dimension. However, through a study of Bonsucro and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, we find both flaws in their standards and shortcomings in their ability to discipline the companies they are financially dependent upon. In sum, we suggest that the real value of these roundtable certification schemes might lie less in their ability to enforce standards than their (partially realised) role in enabling scrutiny, providing new possibilities for corporate accountability in transnational commodity chains

Ranking Risk Inequities

Comparing recent data on age-adjusted death rates for blacks and whites, the authors attempt to clarify how ranking risks based on degree of inequity might differ from ranking them according to frequency of health impairments in the overall population. They also identify problems in choosing a method for ranking causes of death that incorporates both frequency and equity and suggest that agreement will be difficult to reach

Substrate Induced Denitrification over or under Estimates Shifts in Soil N2/N2O Ratios

Funding: Funding was provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, BBSRC UK (http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk). Grant number BB/H013431/1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Public and Private Expenditures on Health in the Presence of Inequality and Endogenous Mortality: A Political Economy Perspective

In this paper we study an overlapping-generations model in which agents� mortality risks, and consequently impatience, are endogenously determined by private and public investment in health care. The proportion of revenues allocated for public health care is also endogenous, determined as the outcome of a voting process. Higher substitutability between public and private health is associated with a �crowding-out� effect which leads to lower public expenditures on health care in the political equilibrium. This in turn impacts on mortality risks and impatience leading to a greater persistence in inequality and long run distributions of wealth that are bimodal.health; inequality; political economy; income distribution dynamics

Biofilm-forming capability of highly virulent, multidrug-resistant Candida auris

The emerging multidrug-resistant yeast pathogen Candida auris has attracted considerable attention as a source of healthcare–associated infections. We report that this highly virulent yeast has the capacity to form antifungal resistant biofilms sensitive to the disinfectant chlorhexidine in vitro

Are income-related differences in active travel associated with physical environmental characteristics? A multi-level ecological approach

Background: Rates of active travel vary by socio-economic position, with higher rates generally observed among less affluent populations. Aspects of both social and built environments have been shown to affect active travel, but little research has explored the influence of physical environmental characteristics, and less has examined whether physical environment affects socio-economic inequality in active travel. This study explored income-related differences in active travel in relation to multiple physical environmental characteristics including air pollution, climate and levels of green space, in urban areas across England. We hypothesised that any gradient in the relationship between income and active travel would be least pronounced in the least physically environmentally-deprived areas where higher income populations may be more likely to choose active transport as a means of travel.<p></p> Methods: Adults aged 16+ living in urban areas (n = 20,146) were selected from the 2002 and 2003 waves of the UK National Travel Survey. The mode of all short non-recreational trips undertaken by the sample was identified (n = 205,673). Three-level binary logistic regression models were used to explore how associations between the trip being active (by bike/walking) and three income groups, varied by level of multiple physical environmental deprivation.<p></p> Results: Likelihood of making an active trip among the lowest income group appeared unaffected by physical environmental deprivation; 15.4% of their non-recreational trips were active in both the least and most environmentally-deprived areas. The income-related gradient in making active trips remained steep in the least environmentally-deprived areas because those in the highest income groups were markedly less likely to choose active travel when physical environment was ‘good’, compared to those on the lowest incomes (OR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.89).<p></p> Conclusions: The socio-economic gradient in active travel seems independent of physical environmental characteristics. Whilst more affluent populations enjoy advantages on some health outcomes, they will still benefit from increasing their levels of physical activity through active travel. Benefits of active travel to the whole community would include reduced vehicle emissions, reduced carbon consumption, the preservation or enhancement of infrastructure and the presentation of a ‘normalised’ behaviour