Clarett v. National Football League: Defining the Non-Statutory Labor Exception to Antitrust Law as it pertains to Restraints primarily focused in Labor Markets and Restraints primarily focused in Business Markets

[Excerpt] “Contemporary sports have seen an influx of young talent opting for a chance at playing in the big leagues earlier at the expense of obtaining higher education. Many dream of playing professional sports—dreams often prohibited by player eligibility rules. In situations where the restraints are not argued to have been protected by non-statutory labor exception, antitrust law has been seen to set its talons into eligibility rules. […] Federal antitrust law and national labor law set forth two conflicting policies that have created a periodic drama for sports fans concerned that their favorite sports will suffer a cataclysmic court room battle impairing the quality of the game. The Supreme Court interpreted federal antitrust and labor law to implicitly exclude antitrust liability for certain collective bargaining labor related activities under the non-statutory labor exception to antitrust law. This absence of explicit guidance has led to a split in the circuits where courts have formulated their own interpretations of these colliding national policies. In 1996, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., attempted to further clarify the scope of this exemption and ultimately held that national antitrust and labor policies favored the application of the exception when the alleged restraints were in labor markets defined by collective bargaining. In 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in Clarett v. National Football League4 that Brown reaffirmed the Second Circuit position that restraints resulting from the collective bargaining process and primarily impacting the labor market were subject to the non-statutory labor exception to antitrust law. […] This note will analyze the Second Circuit’s ruling and rationale in light of the relevant governing law and national policies between antitrust law and labor law. Part II will discuss the general trend of player-raised antitrust challenges to restraint cases in professional sports, setting the stage for an aspiring football player like Clarett to challenge the NFL Eligibility Rules. In Part III, this note will discuss the facts, procedural history and outcome of Clarett. Part IV will discuss the historical background under which Clarett was ruled. Part V will analyze how courts have distinguished between restraints created through the collective bargaining process which primarily impact the labor market as opposed to those that primarily impact business markets. In Part VI, this note will analyze Clarett’s interpretation of Brown in distinguishing labor and business markets, and discuss how the non-statutory labor exception should be applied to labor market restraints as compared to business market restraints. Finally, it will outline the legacy that Clarett provides for future player-raised challenges in similar situations.

IEA EBC Annex 57 ‘Evaluation of Embodied Energy and CO_2eq for Building Construction'

The current regulations to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from buildings have focused on operational energy consumption. Thus legislation excludes measurement and reduction of the embodied energy and embodied GHG emissions over the building life cycle. Embodied impacts are a significant and growing proportion and it is increasingly recognized that the focus on reducing operational energy consumption needs to be accompanied by a parallel focus on reducing embodied impacts. Over the last six years the Annex 57 has addressed this issue, with researchers from 15 countries working together to develop a detailed understanding of the multiple calculation methods and the interpretation of their results. Based on an analysis of 80 case studies, Annex 57 showed various inconsistencies in current methodological approaches, which inhibit comparisons of results and difficult development of robust reduction strategies. Reinterpreting the studies through an understanding of the methodological differences enabled the cases to be used to demonstrate a number of important strategies for the reduction of embodied impacts. Annex 57 has also produced clear recommendations for uniform definitions and templates which improve the description of system boundaries, completeness of inventory and quality of data, and consequently the transparency of embodied impact assessments

Characterisation of food fibres and their effect on starch digestion in an in-vitro system at physiological shear rates : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anatomy and Physiology at Massey University, New Zealand

Material removed from thesis for copyright reasons: Appendix 5 - Hardacre, A.K., Yap, S-Y., Lentle, R.G., Janssen, P.W.M., & Monro, J.A. (2014). The partitioning of water in aggregates of undigested and digested dietary particles, Food Chemistry, 142, 446-454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.07.063 Appendix 6 - Hardacre, A.K., Yap, S-Y., Lentle, R.G., & Monro, J.A. (2015). The effect of fibre and gelatinised starch type on amylolysis and apparent viscosity during in vitro digestion at a physiological shear rate, Carbohydrate Polymers, 123, 80-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2015.01.013 Appendix 7 - Hardacre, A.K., Lentle, R.G., Yap, S-Y., & Monro, J.A. (2016). Does viscosity or structure govern the rate at which starch granules are digested? Carbohydrate Polymers, 136, 667-675. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2015.08.060The fast pace of life promotes the excessive consumption of processed starchy food containing high levels of sugar, salt and oil; which can increase the prevalence of type II diabetes, colon and cardiovascular diseases. The addition of dietary fibres in the diet increases the viscosity of digesta, delays mixing in the gut, and promotes laxation. However, few studies attempt to quantify the possible physical and chemical effects of either soluble (food gums) and insoluble (largely cellulose) fibre in the diet. These effects may encompass the retention of water inside the fibre particles, between particles in the fibre mass and direct effects of the chemical nature of the fibre on the digestion process. In this study, the fractions of water held in the various partitions of insoluble particulate dietary fibres are quantified. The relationship between the volume fraction of soluble and insoluble dietary fibres in simulated digesta at physiological concentrations and the rheological properties of the suspension at physiological shear rates is determined. Furthermore, the impact of fibre and shear rates on the digestion of starch in-vitro at physiological shear rates was measured. This work provides the first quantitative assessment of the effects of the physical attributes of dietary fibre on the digestion of starch in-vitro, at physiological shear rates. In this work, four insoluble fibre types were used to construct aqueous suspensions containing solid volume fractions similar to those of pig digesta from the small intestine; these suspensions also were shown to have similar rheological properties to those of pig digesta at physiological shear rates. In addition, a soluble fibre (Guar gum) was used to construct solutions with viscosities comparable to those of the particulate suspensions. Gelatinised and partially gelatinised starch was added to these suspensions and its rate of digestion at 37°C under simulated small intestinal conditions was measured at shear rates covering the reported physiological range. Important results from this work include: - The proportion of water retained by a given volume of hydrated mass of large fibre particles (AllBran®) was double that of smaller particles (wheat fibre). For all of the solid particles used, the proportion of water sequestered by the intra-particulate voids was less than 4% of the volume of the particles, similar proportions were determined for indigestible particles recovered from the colon of pigs and from human faeces. - Food fibre systems containing less than 20% by volume (solid volume fraction, φ = 0.20) of insoluble dietary fibres showed Newtonian rheological properties and the viscosity of these suspensions could be predicted from φ by the Maron-Pierce model. Starch/fibre suspensions prepared with φ below 20% (φ = 0.68-0.98) had a similar viscosity to that of starch/guar suspension comprising 10% (w/v) starch and 0.4% (w/v) guar. During in-vitro digestion, the viscosity of the starch/fibre suspensions decreased logarithmically over the first 20 minutes during which about 30% of the starch was hydrolysed, this was followed by a prolonged period of slow digestion as the slowly digested starch (SDS) and resistant starch (RS) were hydrolysed. The rate of starch digestion was independent of the type of insoluble fibre and was not affected by suspension viscosities used providing shear rates could be maintained within physiological levels. For guar, rates of digestion were slowed probably due to non-competitive inhibition of the amylase by the guar. - When shear rates were below the physiological range (0.1 s-1) or gelatinisation was incomplete, the rate of digestion became linear over the first 20 minutes of digestion suggesting that the rate of digestion was limited by transport processes at low shear in viscous suspensions. - This study provides useful information regarding the limiting concentration of particles and hence viscosity of digesta in the gut if rates of digestion are to be maximised. Additionally, it is suggested that guar, even at low concentration may reduce glycemia by reducing rates of amylolysis

Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations for the depinning transition in Ising-type lattice models

With the developed "extended Monte Calro" (EMC) algorithm, we have studied the depinning transition in Ising-type lattice models by extensive numerical simulations, taking the random-field Ising model with a driving field and the driven bond-diluted Ising model as examples. In comparison with the usual Monte Carlo method, the EMC algorithm exhibits greater efficiency of the simulations. Based on the short-time dynamic scaling form, both the transition field and critical exponents of the depinning transition are determined accurately via the large-scale simulations with the lattice size up to L = 8 912, significantly refining the results in earlier literature. In the strong-disorder regime, a new universality class of the Ising-type lattice model is unveiled with the exponents {\beta} = 0.304(5), {\nu} = 1.32(3), z = 1.12(1), and {\zeta} = 0.90(1), quite different from that of the quenched Edwards-Wilkinson equation.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Sexual abuse risk in sport: Testing the ‘stage of imminent achievement’ hypothesis

The purpose of this study was to assess the hypothetical model outlined by Brackenridge and Kirby in IRSS in 1997 (32(4): 407-418) which suggested that athlete susceptibility to grooming and sexual abuse in sport coincides with a defined stage of athletic development just prior to peak success: this period they called the ‘stage of imminent achievement’ (SIA). The model was assessed by investigating 83 cases of criminally-defined child sexual abuse within the sport context that had been reported in the print media over a period of 15 years. SIA-related hypotheses were examined in relation to athlete performance level, sex and early- and late-specialisation sport types. The majority of cases of child abuse in the sample occurred below the SIA for both males and females and with sexually abused males being three times more likely to be aged below the SIA than their female athlete victim counterparts. Age below the SIA thus appears to be a stronger predictor of the timing of sexual abuse among male athletes than females: this suggests that much more research is needed on both age and gender differences in sport-related sexual victimisation. Several limitations of the data are discussed. It is recommended that the SIA be reconceived as both a relational and a developmental construct and examined more closely in relation to the increased dependence of the athlete on their coach just as they approach a performance goal

Planning for Development using Social Impact

Economic development activities change the physical and social environments in which individuals live. For planners, it is important to anticipate the types of changes that might occur, and to put measures in place that mitigate negative impacts and promote positive impacts on people and communities. Social Impact Assessment (SIA) was introduced as a tool for understanding the social impacts of development. There are three factors, however, that limit the use of SIA in developing countries. First, the original SIA tool was designed in a developed country, and as such the list of indicators developed may not suitable for local conditions. Second, there is no specific theoretical underpinning of the SIA tool, and thus no link between the SIA tool and particular theories of social behaviour. Third, there is no particular link between what SIA measures, and what should be done to mitigate the effects of development activities. The purpose of this paper is to address these three issues and in doing so, provide a SIA tool that can be applied usefully and practically in a developing country. The theoretical basis of SIA used in the paper is Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The tool, which was developed using ANT, principles consists of five stages of analysis: identification of principal actors (human and non-human) and the changes due to development; exploration of the ownership of resources (capital) that enables principle actors to change; identification of change agents attached to the capital of principal actors; tracing which interests of actors are aligned to deal with the development; and an analysis of the social change platform (mobilization of actors) based on connections of all principal actors with other actors. Each of these stages provides the basis for determining what should be assessed in SIA, how to structure the assessment, and how to interpret the results of a SIA.Social Impact Assessment (SIA), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), development impact, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Public Economics,

Two-dimensional Phononic Crystals with Acoustic-Band Negative Refraction

A two-dimensional phononic crystal (PC) can exhibit longitudinal-mode negative energy refraction on its lowest (acoustical) frequency pass band. The effective elastodynamic properties of a typical PC are calculated and it is observed that the components of the effective density tensor can achieve negative values at certain low frequencies on the acoustical branches for the longitudinal-mode pass-band, and that negative refraction may be accompanied by either positive or negative effective density. Furthermore, such a PC has a high anisotropy ratio at certain low frequencies, offering potential for application to acoustic cloaking where effective material anisotropy is essential.Comment: in Proceedings of the ASME 2016 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, Stowe, VT (2016

Sustainability Impact Assessment of World Trade Negotiations: Current Practice and Lessons for Further Development

Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) is an increasingly accepted form of strategic impact assessment, and has recently been adopted, for example, as the preferred method of ex ante policy assessment in the European Community. A methodology for SIA for application to international trade policy measures was developed by IDPM in 1999, and since then has been used in conducting an ongoing SIA study of the WTO trade negotiations agenda. This paper will review the past four years' experience in carrying out SIA of trade policy, and will identify the main difficulties and challenges that have arisen in its application. The main lessons for the further development of the methodology will then be discussed.International Relations/Trade,