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Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and Private First Class Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning have something in common. Military officials unlawfully closed all or portions of their preliminary hearings to the public. When doing so, military officials exploited two unusual features of the military justice system, thereby denying the accused and the media of their respective Sixth Amendment and First Amendment rights to a public hearing. The first feature is that the military justice system does not include a standing trial-level court. If there is a problem at the preliminary hearing, the accused and media have nowhere to go for help. The accused and the media must file a writ petition with a military appellate court to vindicate their rights. This leads to the second feature: these courts routinely find that they do not have jurisdiction to hear these claims. And when these courts deny the writ petitions, the accused and the media are left without an effective remedy. Recognizing this, military officials now block access to these hearings by mischaracterizing these challenges as Freedom of Information Act requests. They then tell the accused and the media to seek relief using the rights provided under that law, knowing none will be coming anytime soon. Using the Bergdahl case as context, this Article describes this blocking maneuver. It then exposes the flawed reasoning that military appellate courts use when refusing to hear these constitutional claims. Finally, this Article offers legislative and regulatory fixes to ensure public access to these hearings. Now is the time for change. In the last three years, Congress and the President have made significant changes to the military justice system. These changes have come in large part because the public lost trust and confidence in the military justice system. Transparency fosters trust and confidence. The more the public knows about what is considered at a preliminary hearing, the more trust and confidence the public will have in t

Do certain people view acquaintance rape cases in ways that favor the man? The answer to that question is important. If certain people do, and those people form a disproportionately large percentage of the people in the institutions that process these cases, then those institutions may process these cases in ways that favor the man. In 2010, Dan Kahan published Culture, Cognition, and Consent, a study on how people evaluate a dorm room rape scenario. He found that those who endorsed a stratified, hierarchical social order were more likely to find that the man should not be found guilty of rape. If Kahan is right, radical change may be necessary. The institutions responsible for handling sexual assault complaints – law enforcement communities, the military, and university and college administrations – are stratified and hierarchical, and are likely over-populated by people who are attracted to hierarchical institutions and who hold hierarchical world views. These institutions may need to be overhauled – or even replaced. However, the study has a serious methodological flaw: it uses the Hierarchy-Egalitarianism Scale to measure those hierarchical world views, and as this article demonstrates, this scale has reliability and validity issues. This article then applies a different methodology to the underlying data and shows that patriarchy, not hierarchy, explains the differences in guilt perceptions. This more accurate understanding of Kahan’s data carries important policy implications. Rather than radical change, targeted training that addresses inaccurate rape beliefs may be enough to ensure accurate processing of these cases.

In response to the American military’s perceived inability to handle sexual assault cases, the Uniform Code of Military Justice is undergoing its most significant restructuring since its creation in 1950. Critics point to the high rates of sexual assault case attrition as a sign that the system is failing sexual assault victims. The theory is that commanders are predisposed to believe the offenders and to blame the victims. This bias then causes high levels of attrition as the commanders undervalue the cases and divert them from the legal process. This study tests that causal inference. It measures the attrition of sexual assault cases in the precise phase of the case processing that the commanders control—the decision to take action in the case. Using data received from the Army through the Freedom of Information Act, this study measures how commanders disposed of every founded sexual assault and sexual contact offense in the Army from 2008-2011. Further, this study tests the counterfactual—how commanders treated other similar cases: homicides, robberies, and assaults. This study reveals that commanders treat non-penetrative sexual assaults the same or more seriously than they treat simple assaults. Further, when commanders decide to take action on penetrative sexual assault cases, commanders send more of those cases to trial than they do with comparable crimes. However, commanders decide to take no action in penetrative sexual assault cases more frequently than they do with other comparable crimes. This study includes a secondary finding that commanders treat domestic violence cases more seriously than they treat other similar assault cases. The results of this study should inform the national debate on whether Congress should take the last, major step in restructuring the military justice system: removing commanders from the process. These results suggest that step may not be necessary because commanders do not appear to be introducing bias into the system.

Nitric oxide (NO) signaling regulates various physiological processes in both animals and plants. In animals, NO synthesis is mainly catalyzed by NO synthase (NOS) enzymes. Although NOS-like activities that are sensitive to mammalian NOS inhibitors have been detected in plant extracts, few bona fide plant NOS enzymes have been identified. We searched the data set produced by the 1000 Plants (1KP) international consortium for the presence of transcripts encoding NOS-like proteins in over 1000 species of land plants and algae. We also searched for genes encoding NOS-like enzymes in 24 publicly available algal genomes. We identified no typical NOS sequences in 1087 sequenced transcriptomes of land plants. In contrast, we identified NOS-like sequences in 15 of the 265 algal species analyzed. Even if the presence of NOS enzymes assembled from multipolypeptides in plants cannot be conclusively discarded, the emerging data suggest that, instead of generating NO with evolutionarily conserved NOS enzymes, land plants have evolved finely regulated nitrate assimilation and reduction processes to synthesize NO through a mechanism different than that in animals.

Background: The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter gene superfamily is ubiquitous among extant organisms and prominently represented in plants. ABC transporters act to transport compounds across cellular membranes and are involved in a diverse range of biological processes. Thus, the applicability to biotechnology is vast, including cancer resistance in humans, drug resistance among vertebrates, and herbicide and other xenobiotic resistance in plants. In addition, plants appear to harbor the highest diversity of ABC transporter genes compared with any other group of organisms. This study applied transcriptome analysis to survey the kingdom-wide ABC transporter diversity in plants and suggest biotechnology applications of this diversity. Results: We utilized sequence similarity-based informatics techniques to infer the identity of ABC transporter gene candidates from 1295 phylogenetically-diverse plant transcriptomes. A total of 97,149 putative (approximately 25 % were full-length) ABC transporter gene members were identified; each RNA-Seq library (plant sample) had 88 +/- 30 gene members. As expected, simpler organisms, such as algae, had fewer unique members than vascular land plants. Differences were also noted in the richness of certain ABC transporter subfamilies. Land plants had more unique ABCB, ABCC, and ABCG transporter gene members on average (p < 0.005), and green algae, red algae, and bryophytes had significantly more ABCF transporter gene members (p < 0.005). Ferns had significantly fewer ABCA transporter gene members than all other plant groups (p < 0.005). Conclusions: We present a transcriptomic overview of ABC transporter gene members across all major plant groups. An increase in the number of gene family members present in the ABCB, ABCC, and ABCD transporter subfamilies may indicate an expansion of the ABC transporter superfamily among green land plants, which include all crop species. The striking difference between the number of ABCA subfamil

Retroviruses have been foundational in cancer research since early studies identified protooncogenes as targets for insertional mutagenesis. Integration of murine gamma-retroviruses into the host genome favours promoters and enhancers and entails interaction of viral integrase with host BET/bromodomain factors. We report that this integration pattern is conserved in feline leukaemia virus (FeLV), a gamma-retrovirus that infects many human cell types. Analysis of FeLV insertion sites in the MCF-7 mammary carcinoma cell line revealed strong bias towards active chromatin marks with no evidence of significant post-integration growth selection. The most prominent FeLV integration targets had little overlap with the most abundantly expressed transcripts, but were strongly enriched for annotated cancer genes. A meta-analysis based on several gamma-retrovirus integration profiling (GRIP) studies in human cells (CD34+, K562, HepG2) revealed a similar cancer gene bias but also remarkable cell-type specificity, with prominent exceptions including a universal integration hotspot at the long non-coding RNA MALAT1. Comparison of GRIP targets with databases of super-enhancers from the same cell lines showed that these have only limited overlap and that GRIP provides unique insights into the upstream drivers of cell growth. These observations elucidate the oncogenic potency of the gamma-retroviruses and support the wider application of GRIP to identify the genes and growth regulatory circuits that drive distinct cancer types., Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics

In response to the American military's perceived inability to handle sexual assault cases, many members of Congress have lost confidence in those who run the military justice system. Critics say that those who run the military justice system are sexist and perceive sexual assault cases differently than the public does. This article is the first to empirically test that assertion. Further, this is the first study to focus on the military population that matters – those who actually run the military justice system. This study finds that this narrow military population endorses two constructs that are associated with the acceptance of inaccurate rape schemas – traditional gender role beliefs and conservatism – to a much higher degree than the general population. Regression models based on these findings predict that in a test rape case, 54% of the general public would find the man guilty while only 41% of this narrow military population would. This suggests that at the macro-level, those who run the military justice system may be honestly committed to resourcing the fight against sexual assault and to finding a solution to the problem. But at the micro-level, when looking at a particular case, they have an unconscious cognitive process that interferes with their ability to accurately solve it.

The extracellular matrix of scaly green flagellates consists of small organic scales consisting of polysaccharides and scale-associated proteins (SAPs). Molecular phylogenies have shown that these organisms represent the ancestral stock of flagellates from which all green plants (Viridiplantae) evolved. The molecular characterization of four different SAPs is presented. Three SAPs are type-2 membrane proteins with an arginine/alanine-rich short cytoplasmic tail and an extracellular domain that is most likely of bacterial origin. The fourth protein is a filamin-like protein. In addition, we report the presence of proteins similar to the integrin-associated proteins a-actinin (in transcriptomes of glaucophytes and some viridiplants), LIM-domain proteins, and integrin-associated kinase in transcriptomes of viridiplants, glaucophytes, and rhodophytes. Wepropose that themembrane proteins identified are the predicted linkers between scales and the cytoskeleton. These proteins are present in many green algae but are apparently absent from embryophytes. These proteins represent a new protein family we have termed gralins for green algal integrins. Gralins are absent from embryophytes. A model for the evolution of the cell surface proteins in Plantae is discussed.

The American military is in a well-publicized struggle to address its sexual assault problem. Critics say that those in the military who run the military justice system have a bias against the victims in these cases, where that bias is likely related to some form of sexism.This article explores that problem and offers a social psychology explanation that supports the critics' position. This article explains the cognitive process that people use to solve these legal problems and then highlights a serious flaw in that process – the use of inaccurate rape schemas. This article focuses on two potential groups that tend to process rape problems using these schemas and uses data from to other studies to show that those two groups are overrepresented in the military. This article also shows that these inaccurate rape schemas are further amplified in the military context. From that, it appears that the critics appear to be right. Those in the military who are responsible for solving the rape problem have a cognitive blind spot which prevents them from seeing the problem for what it is.

Optogenetic tools enable examination of how specific cell types contribute to brain circuit functions. A long-standing question is whether it is possible to independently activate two distinct neural populations in mammalian brain tissue. Such a capability would enable the study of how different synapses or pathways interact to encode information in the brain. Here we describe two channelrhodopsins, Chronos and Chrimson, discovered through sequencing and physiological characterization of opsins from over 100 species of alga. Chrimson's excitation spectrum is red shifted by 45 nm relative to previous channelrhodopsins and can enable experiments in which red light is preferred. We show minimal visual system-mediated behavioral interference when using Chrimson in neurobehavioral studies in Drosophila melanogaster. Chronos has faster kinetics than previous channelrhodopsins yet is effectively more light sensitive. Together these two reagents enable two-color activation of neural spiking and downstream synaptic transmission in independent neural populations without detectable cross-talk in mouse brain slice.

Optogenetic tools enable examination of how specific cell types contribute to brain circuit functions. A long-standing question is whether it is possible to independently activate two distinct neural populations in mammalian brain tissue. Such a capability would enable the study of how different synapses or pathways interact to encode information in the brain. Here we describe two channelrhodopsins, Chronos and Chrimson, discovered through sequencing and physiological characterization of opsins from over 100 species of alga. Chrimson's excitation spectrum is red shifted by 45 nm relative to previous channelrhodopsins and can enable experiments in which red light is preferred. We show minimal visual system–mediated behavioral interference when using the variant CsChrimson in neurobehavioral studies in Drosophila melanogaster. Chronos has faster kinetics than previous channelrhodopsins yet is effectively more light sensitive. Together these two reagents enable two-color activation of neural spiking and downstream synaptic transmission in independent neural populations without detectable cross-talk in mouse brain slice., Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Alberta. Alberta Innovation and Advanced Education, Alberta Innovates--Technology Futures, United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA Living Foundries, Contract HR0011-12-C-0068), National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Biophotonics Program), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH grant 5R01EY014074-18), United States. Dept. of Defense (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF Harvard/MIT Joint grants in Basic Neuroscience, CBET 1053233), National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF Harvard/MIT Joint grants in Basic Neuroscience, EFRI 0835878), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1DP2OD002002), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1R01NS067199), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1R01DA029639), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1R01GM104948), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1RC1MH088182), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH 1R01NS075421), Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Human Frontier Science Program, New York Stem Cell Foundation, Institution of Engineering and Technology, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology