Driven to Failure: An Empirical Analysis of Driver’s License Suspension in North Carolina

A person’s interest in a driver’s license is “substantial,” and as the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, the suspension of a license by the state can result in “inconvenience and economic hardship suffered,” including because a license may be “essential in the pursuit of a livelihood.” However, forty-four U.S. states currently require indefinite suspension of driver’s licenses for non-driving-related reasons, such as failure to appear in court or pay fines for traffic infractions. There are no systematic, peer-reviewed analyses of individual-level or county-level data regarding such suspensions. This study describes North Carolina’s population of suspended drivers and assesses how driver’s license suspension statutes operate relative to geography, race, and poverty level. First, it analyzes four decades of active-suspension data in North Carolina and finds over 1,225,000 active suspensions for failures to appear or pay traffic fines, amounting to one in seven adult drivers in the state. Second, it compares these data to county-population data; county-level traffic-stop data, collected as required by statute in North Carolina; and county-level data on the volume and composition of traffic court dockets. This study reveals that driver’s license suspensions are not associated with either the volume of traffic stops or the size of the traffic court docket. In contrast, we find that black and Latinx people are overrepresented relative to the population. Linear mixed-level modeling regression analyses demonstrate that the population of white people below the poverty line and black people above the poverty line are most strongly associated with more suspensions. Finally, this Article explores implications of these results for efforts to reconsider the imposition of driver’s license suspensions for non-driving-related reasons. These patterns raise constitutional concerns and practical challenges for policy efforts to undo such large-scale suspension of driving privileges

NMR shim coil design utilising a rapid spherical harmonic calculation method

A rapid spherical harmonic calculation method is used for the design of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance shim coils. The aim is to design each shim such that it generates a field described purely by a single spherical harmonic. By applying simulated annealing techniques, coil arrangements are produced through the optimal positioning of current-carrying circular arc conductors of rectangular cross-section. This involves minimizing the undesirable harmonies in relation to a target harmonic. The design method is flexible enough to be applied for the production of coil arrangements that generate fields consisting significantly of either zonal or tesseral harmonics. Results are presented for several coil designs which generate tesseral harmonics of degree one

Bioavailability of orange juice (poly)phenols: the impact of short-term cessation of training by male endurance athletes

Background: Physical exercise has been reported to increase the bioavailability of citrus flavanones. Objective: To investigate the bioavailability of orange juice (OJ) (poly)phenols in endurance-trained men before and after cessation of training for 7 days. Design: Ten fit endurance-trained males, with a maximal oxygen consumption of 58.2 ± 5.3 mL/kg/min, followed a low (poly)phenol diet for 2 d before drinking 500 mL of OJ, containing 398 µmol of (poly)phenols of which 330 µmol were flavanones. After the volunteers stopped training for 7 days the feeding study was repeated. Urine samples were collected 12 h pre- and 24 h post-OJ orange consumption. Bioavailability was assessed by the quantitative analysis of urinary flavanone metabolites and (poly)phenol catabolites using HPLC-HR-MS. Results: While training, 0-24 h urinary excretion of flavanone metabolites, mainly hesperetin-3-O-glucuronide, hesperetin-3´-sulfate, naringenin-4´-O-glucuronide, naringenin-7-O-glucuronide, was equivalent to 4.2% of OJ flavanone intake. This increased significantly to 5.2% when OJ was consumed after the volunteers stopped training for 7 days. Overall, this trend, although not significant, was also observed with OJ-derived colonic catabolites which after supplementation in the trained state were excreted in amounts equivalent to 51% of intake compared to 59% after cessation of training. However, urinary excretion of three colonic catabolites of bacterial origin, most notably, 3-(3´-hydroxy-4´-methoxyphenyl)hydracrylic acid, did increase significantly when OJ was consumed post- compared to pre-cessation of training. Data were also obtained on inter-individual variations in flavanone bioavailability. Conclusion: A 7-day cessation of endurance training enhanced, rather than reduced, the bioavailability of OJ flavanones. The biological significance of these differences and, whether or not they extend to the bioavailability of other dietary (poly)phenols, remains to be determined. Hesperetin-3´-O-glucuronide and the colonic microbiota-derived catabolite 3-(3´-hydroxy-4´-methoxyphenyl)hydracrylic acid are key biomarkers of the consumption of hesperetin-O-glycoside-containing OJ and other citrus products

Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous

Perceived importance of components of asynchronous music in circuit training

This study examined regular exercisers’ perceptions of specific components of music during circuit training. Twenty-four men (38.8 years, s = 11.8 years) and 31 women (32.4 years, s = 9.6 years) completed two questionnaires immediately after a circuit training class. Participants rated the importance of 13 components of music (rhythm, melody, etc.) in relation to exercise enjoyment, and each completed the Affect Intensity Measure (Larsen, 1984) to measure emotional reactivity. Independent t tests were used to evaluate gender differences in perceptions of musical importance. Pearson correlations were computed to evaluate the relationships between affect intensity, age and importance of musical components. Consistent with previous research and theoretical predictions, rhythm response components (rhythm, tempo, beat) were rated as most important. Women rated the importance of melody significantly higher than did men, while men gave more importance to music associated with sport. Affect intensity was found to be positively and significantly related to the perceived importance of melody, lyrical content, musical style, personal associations and emotional content. Results suggest that exercise leaders need to be sensitive to personal factors when choosing music to accompany exercise. Qualitative research that focuses on the personal meaning of music is encouraged

Preoperative systemic inflammation predicts postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing curative resection for colorectal cancer

The presence of systemic inflammation before surgery, as evidenced by the glasgow prognostic score (mGPS), predicts poor long-term survival in colorectal cancer. The aim was to examine the relationship between the preoperative mGPS and the development of postoperative complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer. Patients (n=455) who underwent potentially curative resections between 2003 and 2007 were assessed consecutively, and details were recorded in a database. The majority of patients presented for elective surgery (85%) were over the age of 65 years (70%), were male (58%), were deprived (53%), and had TNM stage I/II disease (61%), had preoperative haemoglobin (56%), white cell count (87%) and mGPS 0 (58%) in the normal range. After surgery, 86 (19%) patients developed a postoperative complication; 70 (81%) of which were infectious complications. On multivariate analysis, peritoneal soiling (P<0.01), elevated preoperative white cell count (P<0.05) and mGPS (P<0.01) were independently associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. In elective patients, only the mGPS (OR=1.75, 95% CI=1.17-2.63, P=0.007) was significantly associated with increased risk of developing a postoperative infection. Preoperative elevated mGPS predicts increased postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for colorectal cancer

Minimax Current Density Coil Design

'Coil design' is an inverse problem in which arrangements of wire are designed to generate a prescribed magnetic field when energized with electric current. The design of gradient and shim coils for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are important examples of coil design. The magnetic fields that these coils generate are usually required to be both strong and accurate. Other electromagnetic properties of the coils, such as inductance, may be considered in the design process, which becomes an optimization problem. The maximum current density is additionally optimized in this work and the resultant coils are investigated for performance and practicality. Coils with minimax current density were found to exhibit maximally spread wires and may help disperse localized regions of Joule heating. They also produce the highest possible magnetic field strength per unit current for any given surface and wire size. Three different flavours of boundary element method that employ different basis functions (triangular elements with uniform current, cylindrical elements with sinusoidal current and conic section elements with sinusoidal-uniform current) were used with this approach to illustrate its generality.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. To appear in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physic

Identification of plasma and urinary metabolites and catabolites derived from orange juice (poly)phenols: analysis by high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry

Orange juice is a rich source of (poly)phenols, in particular, the flavanones hesperetin-7-O-rutinoside and naringenin-7-O-rutinoside. Following the acute consumption of 500 mL of orange juice containing 398 μmol of (poly)phenols by 12 volunteers, 0–24 h plasma and urine samples were analyzed by targeted high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry in order to identify flavanone metabolites and phenolic acid and aromatic catabolites. A total of 19 flavanone metabolites—comprising di-O-glucuronide, O-glucuronide, O-glucuronyl-sulfate, and sulfate derivatives of hesperetin, naringenin, and eriodictyol—and 65 microbial-derived phenolic catabolites, such as phenylpropanoid, phenylpropionic, phenylacetic, benzoic, and hydroxycarboxylic acids and benzenetriol and benzoylglycine derivatives, including free phenolics and phase II sulfate, glucuronide, and methyl metabolites, were identified or partially identified in plasma and/or urine samples. The data obtained provide a detailed evaluation of the fate of orange juice (poly)phenols as they pass through the gastrointestinal tract and are absorbed into the circulatory system prior to renal excretion. Potential pathways for these conversions are proposed