Mitigating the Employer’s Exposure to Third Party Claims of a Hostile Work Environment

We are only beginning to understand the impact of sexual harassment in the workplace on third parties. With few precedent cases, potential third party plaintiffs face the extremely difficult task of providing evidence of quid pro quo or hostile work environment sexual harassment when substantiating their claims as victims of widespread sexual favoritism, unreasonable interference in their workplace, or an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment. However, as judicial decisions bring clarity to sexual harassment law, new theories provide promising options for potential plaintiffs, and courts increasingly recognize the viability of sexplus theory, the potential for third party sexual harassment claims grows. This Article reviews legislation and case law on sexual harassment, hostile work environments, and sexual favoritism, paying particular attention to their implications for harmed third parties. It aims to aid legal practitioners and employers alike by improving their understanding of third party hostile work environment claims, helping them identify how these claims may arise, and suggesting appropriate steps to mitigate the risks of potentially costly litigation. The Article then examines the expanding set of legal theories available to potential plaintiffs, including highlights of the emerging sex-plus theory. The Article next reviews the role of employers in safeguarding the work environment from sexual harassment—encompassing policy development, employee education, procedures for handling complaints, and internal investigations—with a special focus on approaches sanctioned under the current law. The Section argues that employers need to respond to the ongoing threats of sexual harassment with preventive measures, and recognize that some victims of sexual harassment can be found among the untargeted coworkers of the perpetrator. Hence, business policies and procedures need to consider such third parties to sexual harassment, and employers need to educate employees about their rights and employers’ responsibilities in helping to safeguard employees’ working environments

Supplier Tactics for Dealing with Financially Distressed Corporate Customers

The 2007 recession led to thousands of corporate bankruptcies. When a corporation declares bankruptcy, suppliers are forced to recover payments that are legally owed to them, and thus suffer severe economic losses. Suppliers can benefit from being proactive in their use of legal tools to increase the probability of collecting receivables from their customers. This article explains how bankruptcy can affect suppliers\u27 ability to obtain full payment for goods sold and details remedies available to suppliers under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act ( BAPCPA ). The author also provides tactics for how to improve the leverage of the supplier when dealing with financially distressed customers. Finally, the author discusses unsettled issues of importance to suppliers that remain after the enactment of BAPCPA

FlowerNet: a gene expression correlation metwork for anther and pollen development

Floral formation, in particular anther and pollen development, is a complex biological process with critical importance for seed set and for targeted plant breeding. Many key transcription factors regulating this process have been identified; however, their direct role remains largely unknown. Using publicly available gene expression data from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), focusing on those studies that analyze stamen-, pollen-, or flower-specific expression, we generated a network model of the global transcriptional interactions (FlowerNet). FlowerNet highlights clusters of genes that are transcriptionally coregulated and therefore likely to have interacting roles. Focusing on four clusters, and using a number of data sets not included in the generation of FlowerNet, we show that there is a close correlation in how the genes are expressed across a variety of conditions, including male-sterile mutants. This highlights the important role that FlowerNet can play in identifying new players in anther and pollen development. However, due to the use of general floral expression data in FlowerNet, it also has broad application in the characterization of genes associated with all aspects of floral development and reproduction. To aid the dissection of genes of interest, we have made FlowerNet available as a community resource (http://www.cpib.ac.uk/ anther). For this resource, we also have generated plots showing anther/flower expression from a variety of experiments: These are normalized together where possible to allow further dissection of the resource

Equipment for local hyperthermia therapy of cancer

Rapid improvements in hyperthermia apparatus are being achieved by industrial and university-based research groups that have already led to the marketing of a variety of commercial systems for heat therapy of malignancy. These tissue heating systems employ microwaves, capacitively or inductively coupled radiofrequency current, or high intensity ultrasound to produce controlled local heating of tumor tissues. No single system is superior to others in all applications; each has its limitations

Method and apparatus for monitoring an organ of a patient

An implanted device for an organ of a patient including a housing. The device includes a detector having electrodes that have a varying distance over time between them which produces a detector signal based on electrical signals derived from the organ. The device includes a signal processor disposed in the housing in communication with the detector which determines admittance from the detector signal based on the varying distance over time between the electrodes. The device includes a drive circuit disposed in the housing to cause the electrodes to generate emitted electrical signals. A method for monitoring a patient's organ.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste