The Dormant Second Amendment: Exploring the Rise, Fall, and Potential Resurrection of Independent State Militias

The term “militia” is polarizing, misunderstood, misapplied, and generally difficult for modern Americans to digest. That is not surprising, given the depth and breadth of American militia history and militias’ substantial evolution over four centuries. Historically, militia simply refers to a broad-based civic duty to protect one’s fellow citizens from internal and external dangers and is not limited to activities involving firearms. Reestablishing militia’s true meaning and purpose—and reinvigorating independent state militias in the United States to effect that purpose—has the potential to address states’ emerging financial and security gaps and to produce multiple other significant benefits, including recalibrating federalism. This article suggests a method for how best to reinvigorate independent state militias, addresses the major critique against doing so, and initiates a real discussion about the future of state militias—an issue conspicuously underdeveloped in scholarship today

The Implications of Naturalness in Effective Field Theory on the Masses of Resonances

Many years ago Weinberg formulated a definition of ``naturalness'' for effective theories: if an effective theory is to make sense, coefficients must not change too much when the cutoff scale is changed by a factor of order 1. As an example, we consider simple field theories in which an $O(N)$ symmetry spontaneously breaks to $O(N-1)$. We show that in these theories Weinberg's criterion for a natural effective theory may be applied directly to the $S$-matrix; it implies that the scale of new physics, beyond the Goldstone bosons, may not be too large: there is always a particle or a cut of mass below or about $4 \pi f / \sqrt{N}$. We discuss the range of convergence of the expansion of the chiral Lagrangian. It appears to be impossible to construct an underlying theory of the type considered here that fails to satisfy Weinberg's criterion.Comment: 25 pages including figures in pictex. text uses harvmac. BUHEP-93-14, HUTP-93/A01

AN ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF FARMERS' DEMAND FOR COMMODITY CREDIT CORPORATION LOANS

Agricultural Finance,

Agency Theory Issues in the Food Processing Industry

The objective is to identify significant determinants of performance for food processing firms over the 1992 to 2003 time period, focusing particularly on the issue of family control. Variables measuring firm effects such as asset size, governance, income distribution, and risk are used to explain return on equity. This study builds upon previous research by including a measure of income distribution in the food processing industry. Governance variables are found to be significant determinants of return on equity. The results found no evidence of agency problems in family-controlled firms during this time period.agribusiness, institutional economics, organizational economics, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Production Economics, D23, G34, Q13, Q14,

Mapping the National Disability Policy Landscape

This report was undertaken as part of the Moving Ahead project, a research study that aimed to examine the role of factors that contribute to the successful transfer of residents with intellectual disabilities from congregated to community-based living arrangements in two regional areas in Ireland. The study was undertaken by a team of researchers from Ireland and the UK, led by Trinity College Dublin

Moving Ahead: Factors contributing to successful transition of people with intellectual disabilities from congregated to community-based residential options in two regions in Ireland

This report details the findings of a research project entitled Moving Ahead. The project aimed to examine factors that contribute to the successful transfer of people with intellectual disabilities from congregated to community-based living in two regional areas in Ireland. It was undertaken by a team of researchers from Ireland and the UK, led by Dr. Christine Lineha

New insights into the evolutionary history of geminiviruses derived through the discovery of divergent viruses isolated from wild plants

During a large scale "non a priori" survey in 2010 of South African plant-infecting single stranded DNA viruses, a highly divergent geminivirus genome was isolated from an uncultivated spurge, Euphorbia caput-medusae. In addition to being infectious in E. caputmedusae, the cloned viral genome was also infectious in the cultivated hosts, tomato and Nicotiana benthamiana. The virus, named Euphorbia caput-medusae Latent virus (EcmLV) due to the absence of infection symptoms displayed by its natural host, caused severe symptoms in both of the cultivated plant species. The genome organization of EcmLV is unique amongst geminiviruses and it likely expresses at least two proteins without any detectable homologues within public sequence databases. Although clearly a geminivirus, EcmLV is so divergent that we propose its placement within a new genus that we have tentatively named Capulavirus. Using the most divergent set of geminivirus genomes ever assembled, we detect strong evidence that recombination has likely been a primary process in the genus-level diversification of geminiviruses. We demonstrate how this insight, taken together with phylogenetic analyses of predicted coat protein and replication associated protein (Rep) amino acid sequences indicate that the most recent common ancestor of the geminiviruses was likely a dicot-infecting virus that, like modern day mastreviruses and becurtoviruses, expressed its Rep from a spliced complementary strand transcript. (Résumé d'auteur

Molecular characterization of Euphorbia caput-medusae stunt virus: Evidence for the existence of a new genus within the family Geminiviridae

Studies focusing on phytoviruses isolated from the wild are rare. Nevertheless, even if those studies remain scarce, it is increasingly accepted that viruses coming from wild plants might play a role on disease emergence and in the functioning of ecosystems. Geminivirus are a major cause of disease on plants of agronomic interest. We hypothesize that strengthening our knowledge of the geminivirus diversity coming from the wild could help reconstructing the evolutionary history of the Geminiviridae family but also could help us understanding and predicting future epidemics. Over the past two decades, rolling circle amplification (RCA) has been more and more employed for the detection of small circular single-stranded DNA viruses, including geminivirus coming from the wild 1. We have used this method for detecting the presence of ssDNA from 236 plants collected in the South African fynbos. We have obtained amplified DNAs from 36% of the plants (85 out of 236 plants). Using classical cloning and sequencing methods, we have obtained ten sequences of which one was identified as a plant virus. This viral sequence corresponds to a new geminivirus, which infects a wild spurge (Euphorbia caput-medusae). This geminivirus is highly divergent from the current known members of the family Geminiviridae and is likely to represent a new previously unknown genus of this agriculturally highly relevant family of viruses. The virus, which we have named Euphorbia caput-medusae stunt virus (EcmSV) is not obviously a recombinant of viruses in the known geminivirus genera, has features most similar to viruses in the genus Mastrevirus (the presence of a repA gene and the production transcripts that are almost certainly spliced), but it also has unique features among geminiviruses (potential product of spliced V2-V3 ORFs). Besides EcmSV providing new information on the evolutionary history of geminiviruses, its discovery stresses the need to better assess viral diversity at the interface between wild and cultivated areas (by in situ sampling) and to study viruses isolated from wild hosts for their potential to infect crop species and vice-versa (by in vitro experimentation). 1. Varsani,A. et al. A highly divergent South African geminivirus species (Texte intégral

Living Arrangement Options for People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Scoping Review

This is one of a pair of reports prepared for the Moving Ahead Project. Its partner policy review, Mapping the National Intellectual Disability Landscape (Linehan et al., 2014), outlines current disability services, practices and policies in Ireland. This rapid scoping review provides a brief overview of national and international research exploring living arrangement options for people with intellectual disabilities