Unlike typical litigants, pro se prisoners are unable to deliver filings to court or to have an attorney do so on their behalf. Such prisoners are forced to rely on their prisons' mailing systems to ...file documents, which often results in those documents reaching the court after the applicable deadlines. Accordingly, the Supreme Court created a "prison mailbox rule" in Houston v. Lack, under which some filings by prisoners are considered filed when they are given to prison officials for mailing, rather than when they reach the court.
Defining the exact reach of that prison mailbox rule has created considerable discord among lower courts, especially in light of the Court's subsequent holding in Fex v. Michigan and its adoption of formal procedural rules governing the timing of prisoners' court filings. This Comment tackles three different issues left unresolved by the Supreme Court. Focusing particularly on the Court's instructions about when courts should apply a prison mailbox rule, this Comment provides a solution to each of those three issues and then combines those answers into a simple, easy-to-apply framework. The proposed framework provides a step-by-step process for determining whether a prison mailbox rule applies to a particular type of filing by a particular litigant, bringing some much-needed clarity and uniformity to the debate surrounding Houston.
Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is an attenuated Mycobacterium bovis strain used as a vaccine to prevent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) infection. Its ability to potentiate the immune response ...induced by other vaccines and to promote nonspecific immunomodulatory effects has been described. These effects can be triggered by epigenetic reprogramming and metabolic shifts on innate immune cells, a phenomenon known as trained immunity. The induction of trained immunity may contribute to explain why BCG vaccination effectively decreases disease symptoms caused by pathogens different from M. tb. This article explains the importance of BCG immunization and the possible mechanisms associated with the induction of trained immunity, which might be used as a strategy for rapid activation of the immune system against unrelated pathogens.
Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has been the most widely used vaccine globally to induce immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb). This vaccine is an important prophylactic measure to reduce the progression of tuberculous pulmonary disease. BCG is administered, in most cases, during the first days of life and has led to a decrease in neonatal tuberculosis deaths.BCG can promote immunity against other non-tuberculosis mycobacteria, such as Mycobacterium leprae, Mycobacterium ulcerans, Mycobacterium avium, Mycobacteriumintracellulare, and Mycobacterium abscessus. BCG can also contribute to the control of opportunistic pathogens.BCG can induce the expansion of T cells that recognize epitopes against other bacteria (different than M. tb) and viruses e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although the underlying mechanism for cross-protection is not yet fully understood, it is thought to rely on epigenetic changes and metabolic modifications on immune cells.New data have suggested an association between decreased mortality rates due to SARS-CoV-2 infection with a high rate of BCG vaccination, suggesting that this vaccine might potentially generate cross-protective immunity against this virus, which remains to be robustly tested.
The World Health Organization recently began developing a "pandemic treaty" in response to the perceived failures of the global COVID-19 response. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which ...obligates members to certain global standards in tobacco control, is an example of a global public health agreement that may be used as a model for the pandemic treaty. Several challenges related to the convention, many from the tobacco industry itself, must be addressed if it is to be used as a prototype for a pandemic agreement. These include harm reduction policies, private-sector involvement, and its impact in low- and middle-income countries. A pandemic treaty may encounter similar challenges faced by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, particularly from industry groups with financial interests related to infectious disease control and prevention. Addressing challenges at the outset may facilitate the development and implementation of a more robust international instrument.
In this study, the impact of pH on the production of ZnO nanostructured thin films using chemical bath deposition was investigated for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of solar cells. The ZnO ...films were directly deposited onto glass substrates at various pH levels during the synthesis process. The results indicate that the crystallinity and overall quality of the material were not affected by the pH solution, as observed through X-ray diffraction patterns. However, scanning electron microscopy revealed that surface morphology improved with increasing pH values, leading to changes in the size of the nanoflowers between pH 9 and 11 values. Furthermore, the ZnO nanostructured thin films synthesized at pH levels of 9, 10, and 11 were utilized in the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells. The ZnO films synthesized at pH 11 exhibited superior characteristics in short-circuit current density and open-circuit photo-voltage compared with those produced at lower pH values.
SARS‐CoV‐2 has emerged as a human pathogen, causing clinical signs, from fever to pneumonia—COVID‐19—but may remain mild or asymptomatic. To understand the continuing spread of the virus, to detect ...those who are and were infected, and to follow the immune response longitudinally, reliable and robust assays for SARS‐CoV‐2 detection and immunological monitoring are needed. We quantified IgM, IgG, and IgA antibodies recognizing the SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor‐binding domain (RBD) or the Spike (S) protein over a period of 6 months following COVID‐19 onset. We report the detailed setup to monitor the humoral immune response from over 300 COVID‐19 hospital patients and healthcare workers, 2500 University staff, and 198 post‐COVID‐19 volunteers. Anti‐SARS‐CoV‐2 antibody responses follow a classic pattern with a rapid increase within the first three weeks after symptoms. Although titres reduce subsequently, the ability to detect anti‐SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibodies remained robust with confirmed neutralization activity for up to 6 months in a large proportion of previously virus‐positive screened subjects. Our work provides detailed information for the assays used, facilitating further and longitudinal analysis of protective immunity to SARS‐CoV‐2. Importantly, it highlights a continued level of circulating neutralising antibodies in most people with confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2.
The setup of a versatile COVID19 serology ELISA system is described, allowing Yes/No screening with a two‐step method that reduces false‐positives. Accurate antibody titer screening indicates a classic pattern of antibody production, peaking at 3 weeks post‐infection and remaining detectable for at least 6 months in 90% of the subjects tested. The antibody response does not correlate with age, but with severity of disease, and show an initial higher response in men.
Hydrogen-Induced Cracking (HIC) is a primary failure mechanism of pipeline-welded joints in the absence of external loading in the oil and gas exploration industries. Three different cooling rates ...after austenitization were used to simulate in the laboratory different regions of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) formed when welding an API X80 pipeline steel specially designed to enhance the HIC resistance. The samples were characterized with regard to microstructure and crystallography as well as HIC resistance. The HIC resistance test used NACE TM0284-2011 methodology. The microstructure and its homogeneity varied as a function of cooling rates. Samples containing inclusions and segregation zone from the segregation bands of specimens showed reduced HIC resistance, while specimens containing only acicular ferrite and granular bainite coupled with the absence of segregation zone showed significant improvement in HIC resistance. The best HIC resistance results came from samples presenting fine acicular ferrite consisting of fine interlocking plates, with divergent crystallographic orientations, preventing the formation of localized strain distribution inside the grain and at grain boundaries. It was also found that a large proportion of medium-angle boundaries prevent microcrack initiation and the transgranular mode of crack propagation.
Out of an interest in generating a dialogue at the intersections of archives, human rights, and ontology, this article explores the questions of being and agency through human rights archives. ...Committed to an interdisciplinary approach that locates an interrogation of the constitutively human at the heart of the formation of human rights archives, this article moreover foregrounds the categorical contingency of subjectivity even in ostensibly liberated and communal archival spaces. Focused on the excesses of the “human” or “inhuman” as a necessary disruption in the normative and delimited nature of definitions of being, it aims also to challenge presumptions of belonging and to highlight the visceral impact of violence on material and discursive conceptualizations of the self both within and outside human rights archives.
Although much published work assumes that independent community archives have an important impact on communities, little research has been done to assess this impact empirically. This article begins ...to fill this gap by reporting the results of a series of qualitative interviews with academic members of one ethnic community regarding their responses to one community archives. More specifically, this article reports on interviews conducted with South Asian American educators regarding their responses to the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), an independent, nonprofit, community-based organization that operates the websites www.saada.org and www.firstdaysproject.org. The article reports on several emergent themes: the absence of or difficulty in accessing historical materials related to South Asian Americans before the emergence of SAADA; the affective and ontological impacts of discovering SAADA for the first time; the affective impact of SAADA on respondents' South Asian American students; and SAADA's ability to promote feelings of inclusion both within the South Asian American ethnic community and in the larger society. Together, these responses suggest the ways in which one community archives counters the symbolic annihilation of the community it serves and instead produces feelings of what the authors term "representational belonging." The article concludes by exploring the epistemological, ontological, and social levels of representational belonging.
In this letter, the viability of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for widen the overall measurement range of optical sensors, based on interferometric arrangements, is demonstrated. Moreover, it is ...proven that by using ensembles of ANN regressions the traditional <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">2\pi </tex-math></inline-formula> ambiguity of interferometric sensors can be overcome. Here, a simple temperature sensor was implemented and from measured spectra a dataset of features was formed. For this sensor, the measurement range was increased by a factor of 2 and the achieved mean absolute error was <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">0.17{^{\circ }}\text{C} </tex-math></inline-formula>. Finally, it is shown that based on numerical results it can be expected that by using these types of ensembles the measurement range and the precision of predictions can be further enhanced.
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