Edict v. Dicta: Rolling Back Rights in the Second Circuit Under the Clearly Established Clause of the AEDPA Amended Habeas Statute

This article, through a close critical analysis of two recent habeas corpus decisions by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, shows how appellate courts, under § 2254 of the AEDPA amended habeas statute, are methodically erasing venerable and well-considered federal habeas precedents that formerly protected state defendants\u27 rights. In the process of examining these Second Circuit decisions\u27 impact on two discrete areas of criminal trial procedure, the article exposes the way in which habeas review under the AEDPA too often becomes a formalistic yet un-disciplined exercise that turns away from the crucial question that should be at the heart of the habeas inquiry--whether or not the defendant was accorded a fair trial under our nation\u27s Constitution

Hemojuvelin-Neogenin Interaction Is Required for Bone Morphogenic Protein-4-induced Hepcidin Expression

Hemojuvelin (HJV) is a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-linked protein and binds both bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) and neogenin. Cellular HJV acts as a BMP co-receptor to enhance the transcription of hepcidin, a key iron regulatory hormone secreted predominantly by liver hepatocytes. In this study we characterized the role of neogenin in HJV-regulated hepcidin expression. Both HJV and neogenin were expressed in liver hepatocytes. Knockdown of neogenin decreased BMP4-induced hepcidin mRNA levels by 16-fold in HJV-expressing HepG2 cells but only by about 2-fold in cells transfected with either empty vector or G99V mutant HJV that does not bind BMPs. Further studies indicated that disruption of the HJV-neogenin interaction is responsible for a marked suppression of hepcidin expression. Moreover, in vivo studies showed that hepatic hepcidin mRNA could be significantly suppressed by blocking the interaction of HJV with full-length neogenin with a soluble fragment of neogenin in mice. Together, these results suggest that the HJV-neogenin interaction is required for the BMP-mediated induction of hepcidin expression when HJV is expressed. Combined with our previous studies, our results support that hepatic neogenin possesses two functions, mediation of cellular HJV release, and stimulation of HJV-enhanced hepcidin expression

A Selective Culture System for Generating Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase-Positive Lymphoid Cells In Vitro. V. Detection of Stage-Specific Pro-B-Cell Stimulating Activity in Medium Conditioned by Mouse Bone Marrow Stromal Cells

The selective in vitro generation of rat, mouse, and human terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-positive (TdT+ lymphoid cells in our long-term xenogeneic bone marrow (BM) culture system is characterized by physical interaction between the developing lymphocytes and mouse BM-adherent stromal cells and macrophages. In the present study, experiments in which micropor)us membrane culture inserts were inoculated with rat BM cells demonstrated that although the generation of primitive B-lineage lymphoid cells requires the presence of a mouse BM feeder layer, cognitive recognition events are not necessary. Similarly, cell-free (and serum-free) medium conditioned with mouse BM (but not thymus or spleen) adherent cells and stromal-cell lines therefrom supported the proliferation of early rat lymphoid cells in a dose-dependent manner. Double immunofluorescence for incorporated bromo-deoxyuridine (BrdU) and early B-lineage markers of rat BM lymphoid cells maintained in culture inserts or conditioned medium (CM), and studies of their in vitro and in vivo developmental potentials, indicated that the lymphoproliferative response resulted from the selective stimulation of lymphoid stem and/or progenitor cells. The most primitive of these target cells had a HIS24+ HIS50- TdT- cμ- sIg-, pre-pro-B-cell phenotype. Whereas this subset normally constitutes less than 2% of B-lineage BM cells in vivo, it comprises more than 25% of total lymphoid cells in vitro. In addition, the number of TdT+ cells, predominantly of the early pro-B-cell phenotype (HIS24+ HIS50- TdT- cμ- sIg-), was increased approximately tenfold above input levels. Based on these and previous findings, a schematic model is proposed for the developmental pathway of early B-lineage cells in rat BM from the level of the committed (possibly common) lymphoid stem cell to that of the pre-B-cell

Structural competition in second language production : towards a constraint-satisfaction model

Second language (L2) learners often show inconsistent production of some aspects of L2 grammar. One view, primarily based on data from L2 article production, suggests that grammatical patterns licensed by learners’ native language (L1) and those licensed by their L2 compete for selection, leading to variability in the production of L2 functional morphology. In this study, we show that the idea of structural competition has broader applicability, in correctly predicting certain asymmetries in the production of both the definite article the and plural marking –s by Thai learners of English. At the same time, we recognize that learners’ growing sensitivity to structural regularities in the L2 might be an additional contributing factor, and therefore make a novel proposal for how the L1–L2 structural competition model and the sensitivity-to-L2-structural regularities account could be integrated and their respective contributions studied under the constraint-satisfaction model of language processing. We argue that this approach is particularly suited to studying bilingual processing as it provides a natural framework for explaining how highly disparate factors, including partially activated options from both languages, interact during processing

Salience in Second Language Acquisition: Physical Form, Learner Attention, and Instructional Focus

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139842/1/fpsyg-07-01284.pd