Writ of Mandamus

Mandamus (Latin "we command") is a judicial remedy in the form of an order from a superior court  to any government, subordinate court, corporation, or public authority, to do (or forbear from doing) some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do (or refrain from doing), and which is in the nature of public duty, and in certain cases one of a statutory duty. It cannot be issued to compel an authority to do something against statutory provision. For example, it cannot be used to force a lower court to reject or authorize applications that have been made, but if the court refuses to rule one way or the other then a mandamus can be used to order the court to rule on the applications.

Mandamus may be a command to do an administrative action or not to take a particular action, and it is supplemented by legal rights. In the American legal system it must be a judicially enforceable and legally protected right before one suffering a grievance can ask for a mandamus. A person can be said to be aggrieved only when he or she is denied a legal right by someone who has a legal duty to do something and abstains from doing it.

Legal Requirements

The applicant pleading for the writ of mandamus to be enforced should be able to show that he or she has a legal right to compel the respondent to do or refrain from doing the specific act. The duty sought to be enforced must have two qualities: It must be a duty of public nature and the duty must be imperative and should not be discretionary. Furthermore, mandamus will typically not be granted if adequate relief can be obtained by some other means, such as appeal.

Purpose

The purpose of mandamus is to remedy defects of justice. It lies in the cases where there is a specific right but no specific legal remedy for enforcing that right. Generally, it is not available in anticipation of any injury except when the petitioner is likely to be affected by an official act in contravention of a statutory duty or where an illegal or unconstitutional order is made. The grant of mandamus is therefore an equitable remedy; a matter for the discretion of the court, the exercise of which is governed by well-settled principles.

Mandamus, being a discretionary remedy, the application for that must be made in good faith and not for indirect purposes. Acquiescence cannot, however, bar the issue of mandamus. The petitioner must, of course, satisfy the Court that he or she has the legal right to the performance of the legal duty as distinct from mere discretion of authority. A mandamus is normally issued when an officer or an authority by compulsion of statute is required to perform a duty and that duty, despite demand in writing, has not been performed. In no other case will a writ of mandamus issue unless it be to quash an illegal order.

Types of Mandamus

There are three kinds of mandamus:

1. Alternative mandamus: A mandamus issued upon the first application for relief, commanding the defendant either to perform the act demanded or to appear before the court at a specified time to show cause for not performing it.
2. Peremptory mandamus: An absolute and unqualified command to the defendant to do the act in question. It is issued when the defendant defaults on, or fails to show sufficient cause in answer to, an alternative mandamus.
3. Continuing mandamus: A mandamus issued to a lower authority in general public interest asking the officer or the authority to perform its tasks expeditiously for an unstipulated period of time for preventing miscarriage of justice.

Mandamus in the United States

In the administrative law context in the United States, the requirement that mandamus can be used only to compel a ministerial act has largely been abandoned. By statute or by judicial expansion of the writ of mandamus in most of the U.S. states, acts of administrative agencies are now subject to judicial review for abuse of discretion. Judicial review of agencies of the United States federal government, for abuse of discretion, is authorized by the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act.

Federal courts

The authority of the United States district courts (trial courts) to issue mandamus has been expressly abrogated by Rule 81(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but relief in the nature of mandamus can be had by other remedies provided for in the Rules, where provided by statute, or by use of the District Court's equitable powers.

In the context of mandamus from a United States Court of Appeals to a United States District Court, the Supreme Court has ruled that the appellate courts have discretion to issue mandamus to control an abuse of discretion by the lower court in unusual circumstances, where there is a compelling reason not to wait for an appeal from a final judgment. This discretion is exercised very sparingly. It is exercised with somewhat greater frequency, although still sparingly, in the context of discovery disputes involving privileged materials, since a district court order erroneously forcing the disclosure of privileged material may never be remediable through a later appeal. In the case In Re Electronic Privacy Information Center (2013), privacy advocates sought a writ of mandamus directly from the Supreme Court to halt the National Security Agency's bulk phone record collection program. The Supreme Court denied the petition. More recently, the Supreme Court sided with the US Government and issued a writ of mandamus related to discovery in a court case involving the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.

State courts

In some state court systems, mandamus has evolved into a general procedure for discretionary appeals from non-final trial court decisions. In some U.S. states, such as the courts of California, the writ is now called mandate instead of mandamus, and may be issued by any level of the state court system to any lower court or to any government official. It is still common for Californians to bring "taxpayer actions" against public officials for wasting public funds through mismanagement of a government agency, where the relief sought is a writ of mandate compelling the official to stop wasting money and fulfill his duty to protect the public fisc. The writ of mandate is also used in California for interlocutory appeals. In this context, the party seeking the writ is treated on appeal like a plaintiff, the trial court becomes the defendant, and the opponent is designated as the "real party in interest."

In Virginia, the Supreme Court has "original jurisdiction" under the state constitution for mandamus involving the Virginia courts.

Elsewhere, including the Courts of New York, have replaced mandamus (as well as the other prerogative writs) with statutory procedures. In New York, this is known as an Article 78 review after the civil procedure law provision that created the relevant procedure. In still other states, such as Illinois, the state court of last resort has original jurisdiction in mandamus actions.

In North Carolina state courts, mandamus is authorized as one of the Extraordinary Writs, under Rule 22 of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure. The writ of mandamus may be issued in instances where, for instance, the lower court fails to timely issue a written order after rendition (thus precluding both the possibility of an appeal or enforcement of the rendition and leaving the litigants in limbo). The North Carolina Court of Appeals has spoken on the possible course of action in such situations, and confirmed that petitioning for a writ of mandamus is the only available route. McKyer v. McKyer, 202 N.C.App. 771 at *4 (2010) (unpublished) In McKyer, the lawyer who was unable to persuade the trial court judge to enter an order for about a year, tried to remedy the problem by asking the trial court judge to hold another hearing. Disapproving of the attempted resolution via a new hearing, the Court of Appeals, citing to the Supreme Court case In re T.H.T explained that a party seeking recourse where the trial court has not entered its orders timely should petition for writ of mandamus. Similarly, the writ may issue where the trial court fails or refuses to timely dispose with the litigants' business (for instance, if the judge refuses to hear a case). In North Carolina, as elsewhere, the writ is an action against the official, meaning that the petition must be styled "In RE Public Figure X" or "In RE Judge Y." Thus, a mandamus petition not only brings the strife of optically making the officer or judge the defendant, but also in theory requires the official / judge to respond "within ten days" "with supporting affidavits." Curiously, Rule 22(c) provides that "any party" may respond to the petition for writ. The North Carolina Court of Appeals has interpreted this to mean that where, for instance, one litigant demands that the judge enter a previously rendered order, the other litigant in the same case is free to respond instead of (or in addition to) the judge that presides over both of the litigants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandamus

Six Prerogative Writs

A prerogative writ is a writ (official order) directing the behavior of another arm of government, such as an agency, official, or other court. It was originally available only to the Crown under English law, and reflected the discretionary prerogative and extraordinary power of the monarch. The term may be considered antiquated, and the traditional six comprising writs may also be identified as an extraordinary writ or extraordinary remedy.

Six writs are traditionally classified as prerogative writs:

• certiorari, an order by a higher court directing a lower court to send the record in a given case for review;
• habeas corpus, a demand that a prisoner be taken before the court to determine whether there is lawful authority to detain the person;
• mandamus, an order issued by a higher court to compel or to direct a lower court or a government officer to perform mandatory duties correctly;
• prohibition, directing a subordinate to stop doing something the law prohibits;
• procedendo, to send a case from an appellate court to a lower court with an order to proceed to judgment;
• quo warranto, requiring a person to show by what authority they exercise a power.

Additionally, scire facias, one of the extraordinary writs, was once known as a prerogative writ.

Prerogative Writs in the United States

In the United States federal court system, the issuance of writs is authorized by U.S. Code, Title 28, Section 1651. The language of the statute was left deliberately vague in order to allow the courts flexibility in determining what writs are necessary "in aid of their jurisdiction". Use of writs at the trial court level has been greatly curtailed by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and its state court counterparts, which specify that there is "one form of action".

Nevertheless, the prudent litigator should familiarize himself or herself with the availability of writs in the jurisdiction in which he or she is admitted to practice.

The Supreme Court of the United States grants certiorari, while most state supreme courts grant review.

Mandamus has been replaced in the United States district courts and many state trial courts by injunction. In the federal system, it is generally available only to the federal courts of appeals, which issue writs of mandamus to lower courts and administrative hearing panels, while some state systems still allow trial courts to issue writs of mandamus or mandate directly to government officials.

Prohibition is also generally limited to appellate courts, who use it to prevent lower courts from exceeding their jurisdiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prerogative_writ

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Footnote by the Blog Author

Tomorrow’s post will deal with writs of mandamus specifically.

Better Solar Cells

Perovskite Solar Cells Leap
Towards Commercialization

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology – September 27, 2018 -- Solar energy has long been considered the most sustainable option for replacing our dependence on fossil fuels, but technologies for converting solar energy into electricity must be both efficient and inexpensive.

Scientists from the Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) believe they’ve found a winning formula in a new method to fabricate low-cost high-efficiency solar cells. Prof. Yabing Qi and his team from OIST in collaboration with Prof. Shengzhong Liu from Shaanxi Normal University, China, developed the cells using the materials and compounds that mimic the crystalline structure of the naturally occurring mineral perovskite. They describe their technique in a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

In what Prof. Qi refers to as “the golden triangle,” solar cell technologies need to fulfill three conditions to be worth commercializing: their conversion rate of sunlight into electricity must be high, they must be inexpensive to produce, and they must have a long lifespan. Today, most commercial solar cells are made from crystalline silicon, which has a relatively high efficiency of around 22%. Though silicon, the raw material for these solar cells, is abundant, processing it tends to be complex and shoots up the manufacturing costs, making the finished product expensive.

Perovskite offers a more affordable solution, Prof. Qi says. Perovskite was first used to make solar cells in 2009 by Prof. Tsutomu Miyasaka’s research team at Toin University of Yokohama, Japan, and since then it has been rapidly gaining importance. “Research on perovskite cells is very promising. In only nine years, the efficiency of these cells went from 3.8 % to 23.3%. Other technologies have taken over 30 years of research to reach the same level,” explains Prof. Qi. The fabrication method he and his research team have developed produces perovskite solar cells with an efficiency comparable to crystalline silicon cells, but it is potentially much cheaper than making silicon solar cells.

To make the new cells, the researchers coated transparent conductive substrates with perovskite films that absorb sunlight very efficiently. They used a gas-solid reaction-based technique in which the substrate is first coated with a layer of hydrogen lead triiodide incorporated with a small amount of chlorine ions and methylamine gas – allowing them to reproducibly make large uniform panels, each consisting of multiple solar cells.

In developing the method, the scientists realized that making the perovskite layer 1 micron thick increased the working life of the solar cell significantly. “The solar cells are almost unchanged after working for 800 hours,” says Dr. Zonghao Liu, a postdoctoral scholar in Prof. Qi’s research unit at OIST and the first author of the study. In addition, a thicker coating not only boosted the stability of the solar cells but also facilitated the fabrication processes, thereby lowering its production costs. “The thicker absorber layer ensures good reproducibility of solar cell fabrication, which is a key advantage for mass manufacturing in the realistic industrial-scale setting,” says Dr. Liu.

The big challenge Prof. Qi and his team now face is in increasing the size of their newly designed solar cell from the 0.1 mm2 sized prototype to large commercial-sized panels that can be several feet long. This is where the industry can help. “There exists a large gap between the findings in lab and reality, and the industry is not always ready to cover this entire gap by itself. So, the researchers need to take one more necessary step beyond their labs and meet the industry half-way,” says Prof. Qi.

To take that step, Prof. Qi and team received a generous grant from OIST’s Technology Development and Innovation Center, under their Proof-of-Concept Program. With that funding, the team has built a working model of their new perovskite solar modules consisting of multiple solar cells on 5cm × 5cm substrates, with an active area of 12 cm2- much bigger than their experimental prototype but smaller than what is required for commercial purposes. Although the process of upscaling has reduced the efficiency of the cells from 20% to 15%, the researchers are optimistic that they will be able to improve the way they work in the coming years and successfully commercialize their use.

https://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2018/9/27/perovskite-solar-cells-leap-toward-commercialization

Patterns in Evolution

Well Established Theories on Patterns
in Evolution Might Be Wrong

Uppsala University – September 27, 2018 -- How do the large-scale patterns we observe in evolution arise? A new paper in the journal Evolution by researchers at Uppsala University and University of Leeds argues that many of them are a type of statistical artefact caused by our unavoidably recent viewpoint looking back into the past. As a result, it might not be possible to draw any conclusions about what caused the enormous changes in diversity we see through time.

The diversity of life through time shows some striking patterns. For example, the animals appear in the fossil record about 550 million years ago, in an enormous burst of diversification called the "Cambrian Explosion". Many groups of organisms appear to originate like this, but later on in their evolutionary history, their rates of diversification and morphological change seem to slow down. These sorts of patterns can be seen both in the fossil record, and also in reconstructions of past diversity by looking at the relationships between living organisms, and they have given rise to a great deal of debate.

Do organisms have more evolutionary flexibility when they first evolve? Or do ecosystems get "filled up" as more species evolve, giving fewer opportunities for further diversification later on? In their new paper, Graham Budd and Richard Mann make the provocative argument that these patterns may be largely illusory, and that we would still expect to see them even if rates of evolutionary change stay the same on average through time.

Biologists and palaeontologists use statistical models called "birth-death models" to model how random events of speciation and extinction give rise to patterns of diversity. Just as one can roll a dice five times and get five sixes or none, the outcomes of these random models are very variable. These statistical fluctuations are particularly important at the origin of a group, when there are only a few species. It turns out that the only groups that survive this early period are those that happen to diversify quickly - all the others go extinct. As is it exactly those groups that go on to be the large successful groups we see living today, and that fill most of the fossil record, it follows that they are likely to show this rapid pattern of diversification at their origin - but only because they are a biased subset of all groups. Later in their history, when such groups are diverse, statistical fluctuations have much less effect, and therefore their rate of evolution appears to slows down to the background average.

As a result, the patterns we discover by analyzing such groups are not general features of evolution as a whole, but rather represent a remarkable bias that emerges by only studying groups we already know were successful. This bias, called "the push of the past", has indeed been known about theoretically for about 25 years, but it has been almost completely ignored, probably because it was assumed to be negligible in size. However, Budd and Mann show that the effect is very large, and can in fact account for much of the variation we see in past diversity, especially when we combine it with the effects of the great "mass extinctions" such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Because the resulting patterns are an inevitable feature of the sorts of groups available for us to study, Budd and Mann argue, it follows that we cannot perceive any particular cause of them: they simply arise from statistical fluctuation.

The push of the past is an example of a much more general type of pattern called "survivorship bias" which can be seen in many other areas of life, for example in business start-ups and finance and the study of history. In all these cases, failure to recognize the bias can lead to highly misleading conclusions. Budd and Mann argue that the history of life itself is not immune to such effects, and that many traditional explanations for why diversity changes through time may need to be reconsidered - a viewpoint that is bound to prove controversial.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/uu-wet092718.php

Yerevan, Capital of Armenia

Yerevan (sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia as well as one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country. It has been the capital since 1918, the thirteenth in the history of Armenia, and the seventh located in or around the Ararat plain. The city also serves as the seat of the Araratian Pontifical Diocese; the largest diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and one of the oldest dioceses in the world.

                                        Yerevan with Mount Ararat dominating the skyline

The history of Yerevan dates back to the 8th century BC, with the founding of the fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC by king Argishti I at the western extreme of the Ararat plain. Erebuni was "designed as a great administrative and religious centre, a fully royal capital." By the late ancient Armenian Kingdom, new capital cities were established and Yerevan declined in importance. Under Iranian and Russian rule, it was the center of the Erivan Khanate from 1736 to 1828 and the Erivan Governorate from 1850 to 1917, respectively. After World War I, Yerevan became the capital of the First Republic of Armenia as thousands of survivors of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire arrived in the area. The city expanded rapidly during the 20th century as Armenia became part of the Soviet Union. In a few decades, Yerevan was transformed from a provincial town within the Russian Empire to Armenia's principal cultural, artistic, and industrial center, as well as becoming the seat of national government.

With the growth of the Armenian economy, Yerevan has undergone major transformation. Much construction has been done throughout the city since the early 2000s, and retail outlets such as restaurants, shops, and street cafés, which were rare during Soviet times, have multiplied. As of 2011, the population of Yerevan was 1,060,138, just over 35% of the Republic of Armenia's total population. According to the official estimate of 2016, the current population of the city is 1,073,700. Yerevan was named the 2012 World Book Capital by UNESCO. Yerevan is an associate member of Eurocities.

Of the notable landmarks of Yerevan, Erebuni Fortress is considered to be the birthplace of the city, the Katoghike Tsiranavor church is the oldest surviving church of Yerevan and Saint Gregory Cathedral is the largest Armenian cathedral in the world, Tsitsernakaberd is the official memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, and several opera houses, theatres, museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions. Yerevan Opera Theatre is the main spectacle hall of the Armenian capital, the National Gallery of Armenia is the largest art museum in the Republic of Armenia and shares a building with the History Museum of Armenia, and the Matenadaran repository contains one of the largest depositories of ancient books and manuscripts in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerevan

Software for Mars Landings

Program users can tinker with landing and path planning scenarios to identify optimal landing sites for Mars rovers.
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office

September 26, 2018 -- Selecting a landing site for a rover headed to Mars is a lengthy process that normally involves large committees of scientists and engineers. These committees typically spend several years weighing a mission’s science objectives against a vehicle’s engineering constraints, to identify sites that are both scientifically interesting and safe to land on.

For instance, a mission’s science team may want to explore certain geological sites for signs of water, life, and habitability. But engineers may find that those sites are too steep for a vehicle to land safely, or the locations may not receive enough sunlight to power the vehicle’s solar panels once it has landed. Finding a suitable landing site therefore involves piecing together information collected over the years by past Mars missions. These data, though growing with each mission, are patchy and incomplete.

Now researchers at MIT have developed a software tool for computer-aided discovery that could help mission planners make these decisions. It automatically produces maps of favorable landing sites, using the available data on Mars’ geology and terrain, as well as a list of scientific priorities and engineering constraints that a user can specify.

As an example, a user can stipulate that a rover should land in a site where it can explore certain geological targets, such as open-basin lakes. At the same time, the landing site should not exceed a certain slope, otherwise the vehicle would topple over while attempting to land. The program then generates a “favorability map” of landing sites that meet both constraints. These locations can shift and change as a user adds additional specifications.

The program can also lay out possible paths that a rover can take from a given landing site to certain geological features. For instance, if a user specifies that a rover should explore sedimentary rock exposures, the program produces paths to any such nearby structures and calculates the time that it would take to reach them.

Victor Pankratius, principal research scientist in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, says mission planners can use the program to quickly and efficiently consider different landing and exploratory scenarios.

“This is never going to replace the actual committee, but it can make things much more efficient, because you can play with different scenarios while you’re talking,” Pankratius says.

The team’s study was published online on Aug. 31 by Earth and Space Science and is part of the journal’s Sept. 8 online issue.

New sites

Pankratius and postdoc Guillaume Rongier, in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, created the program to identify favorable landing sites for a conceptual mission similar to NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which is engineered to land in horizontal, even, dust-free areas and aims to explore an ancient, potentially habitable, site with magmatic outcrops.

They found the program identified many landing sites for the rover that have been considered in the past, and it highlighted other promising landing sites that were rarely proposed. “We see there are sites we could explore with existing rover technologies, that landing site committees may want to reconsider,” Pankratius says.

The program could also be used to explore engineering requirements for future generations of Mars rovers. “Assuming you can land on steeper curves, or drive faster, then we can derive which new regions you can explore,” Pankratius says.

A fuzzy landing

The software relies partly on “fuzzy logic,” a mathematical logic scheme that groups things not in a binary fashion like Boolean logic, such as yes/no, true/false, or safe/unsafe, but in a more fluid, probability-based fashion.

“Traditionally this idea comes from mathematics, where instead of saying an element belongs to a set, yes or no, fuzzy logic says it belongs with a certain probability,” thus reflecting incomplete or imprecise information, Pankratius explains.

In the context of finding a suitable landing site, the program calculates the probability that a rover can climb a certain slope, with the probability decreasing as the a location becomes more steep.

“With fuzzy logic we can expresses this probability spatially — how bad is it if I’m this steep, versus this steep,” Pankratius says. “It’s is a way to deal with imprecision, in a way.”

Using algorithms related to fuzzy logic, the team creates raw, or initial, favorability maps of possible landing sites over the entire planet. These maps are gridded into individual cells, each representing about 3 square kilometers on the surface of Mars. The program calculates, for each cell, the probability that it is a favorable landing site, and generates a map that is color-graded to represent probabilities between 0 and 1. Darker cells represent sites with a near-zero probability of being a favorable landing site, while lighter locations have a higher chance of a safe landing with interesting scientific prospects.

Once they generate a raw map of possible landing sites, the researchers take into account various uncertainties in the landing location, such as changes in trajectory and potential navigation errors during descent. Considering these uncertainties, the program then generates landing ellipses, or circular targets where a rover is likely to land to maximize safety and scientific exploration.

The program also uses an algorithm known as fast marching to chart out paths that a rover can take over a given terrain once it’s landed. Fast marching is typically used to calculate the propagation of a front, such as how fast a front of wind reaches a shore if traveling at a given speed. For the first time, Pankratius and Rongier applied fast marching to compute a rover’s travel time as it travels from a starting point to a geological structure of interest.

“If you are somewhere on Mars and you get this processed map, you can ask, ‘From here, how fast can I go to any point in my surroundings? And this algorithm will tell you,” Pankratius says.

The algorithm can also map out routes to avoid certain obstacles that may slow down a rover’s trip, and chart out probabilities of hitting certain types of geological structures in a landing area.

“It’s more difficult for a rover to drive through dust, so it’ll go at a slower pace, and dust isn’t necessarily everywhere, just in patches,” Rongier says. “The algorithm will consider such obstacles when mapping out the fastest traverse paths.”

The team says operators of current rovers on the Martian surface can use the software program to direct the vehicles more efficiently to sites of scientific interest. In the future, Pankratius envisions this technique or something similar to be integrated into increasingly autonomous rovers that don’t require humans to operate the vehicles all the time from Earth.

“One day, if we have fully autonomous rovers, they can factor in all these things to know where they can go, and be able to adapt to unforeseen situations,” Pankratius says. “You want autonomy, otherwise it can take a long time to communicate back and forth when you have to make critical decisions quickly.”

The team is also looking into applications of the techniques in geothermal site exploration on Earth in collaboration with the MIT Earth Resources Lab in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

“It’s a very similar problem,” Pankratius says. “Instead of saying ‘Is this a good site, yes or no?’ you can say, ‘Show me a map of all the areas that would likely be viable for geothermal exploration.’”

As data improve, both for Mars and for geothermal structures on Earth, he says that that data can be fed into the existing program to provide more accurate analyses.

“The program is incrementally enhanceable,” he says.

This research was funded, in part, by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/software-finds-best-mars-landing-0926

Sinus Infections

Sinusitis, also known as a sinus infection or rhinosinusitis, is inflammation of the sinuses resulting in symptoms. Common symptoms include thick nasal mucus, a plugged nose, and pain in the face. Other signs and symptoms may include, headaches, poor sense of smell, sore throat, and cough. The cough is often worse at night. Serious complications are rare. It is defined as acute rhinosinusitis (ARS) if it lasts less than 4 weeks, and as chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) if it lasts for more than 12 weeks.

Sinusitis can be caused by infection, allergies, air pollution, or structural problems in the nose. Most cases are caused by a viral infection. A bacterial infection may be present if symptoms last more than ten days or if a person worsens after starting to improve. Recurrent episodes are more likely in people with asthma, cystic fibrosis, and poor immune function. X-rays are not typically needed unless complications are suspected. In chronic cases confirmatory testing is recommended by either direct visualization or computed tomography.

Some cases may be prevented by hand washing, avoiding smoking, and immunization. Pain killers such as naproxen, nasal steroids, and nasal irrigation may be used to help with symptoms. Recommended initial treatment for ARS is watchful waiting. If symptoms do not improve in 7–10 days or get worse, then an antibiotic may be used or changed. In those in whom antibiotics are used, either amoxicillin or amoxicillin/clavulanate is recommended first line. Surgery may occasionally be used in people with chronic disease.

Sinusitis is a common condition. It affects between about 10% and 30% of people each year in the United States and Europe. Women are more often affected than men. Chronic sinusitis affects approximately 12.5% of people. Treatment of sinusitis in the United States results in more than US$11 billion in costs. The unnecessary and ineffective treatment of viral sinusitis with antibiotics is common.

Signs and Symptoms

Headache/facial pain or pressure of a dull, constant, or aching sort over the affected sinuses is common with both acute and chronic stages of sinusitis. This pain is typically localized to the involved sinus and may worsen when the affected person bends over or when lying down. Pain often starts on one side of the head and progresses to both sides. Acute sinusitis may be accompanied by thick nasal discharge that is usually green in color and may contain pus (purulent) and/or blood. Often a localized headache or toothache is present, and it is these symptoms that distinguish a sinus-related headache from other types of headaches, such as tension and migraine headaches. Another way to distinguish between toothache and sinusitis is that the pain in sinusitis is usually worsened by tilting the head forwards and with valsalva maneuvers.

Infection of the eye socket is possible, which may result in the loss of sight and is accompanied by fever and severe illness. Another possible complication is the infection of the bones (osteomyelitis) of the forehead and other facial bones – Pott's puffy tumor.

Sinus infections can also cause middle ear problems due to the congestion of the nasal passages. This can be demonstrated by dizziness, "a pressurized or heavy head", or vibrating sensations in the head. Post-nasal drip is also a symptom of chronic rhinosinusitis.

Halitosis (bad breath) is often stated to be a symptom of chronic rhinosinusitis; however, gold standard breath analysis techniques have not been applied. Theoretically, there are several possible mechanisms of both objective and subjective halitosis that may be involved.

A 2004 study suggested that up to 90% of "sinus headaches" are actually migraines. The confusion occurs in part because migraine involves activation of the trigeminal nerves, which innervate both the sinus region and the meninges surrounding the brain. As a result, it is difficult to accurately determine the site from which the pain originates. People with migraines do not typically have the thick nasal discharge that is a common symptom of a sinus infection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinusitis