Cohabiting with Property in Washington: Washington\u27s Committed Intimate Relationship Doctrine

Washington has followed a community property system since at least 1869—twenty years prior to statehood. However, Washington rejected the doctrine of common law marriage quite early in 1892. For over one hundred years, in order to receive the advantages of the community property laws, a Washington couple has needed to have their relationship blessed with a ceremonial marriage or have a valid common law marriage in another state. Accompanying these requirements for the formal establishment of a community property regime was the so-called Creasman Presumption, which provided that property acquired by a man and a woman not married to each other, but living together as husband and wife, is not community property, and, in the absence of some trust relation, belongs to the one in whose name the legal title to the property stands. There were, nonetheless, some common law property work-arounds. Over the years, the Washington Supreme Court has identified a number of legal bases for dividing property that do not depend on legal title, including tracing, partnership, resulting and constructive trust, cotenancy, and contract

June Helm (1924–2004)

une Helm, an anthropologist who worked for 50 years studying the culture and ethnohistory of Dene in the Mackenzie River drainage, has passed away at the age of 79. In declining health for many weeks, she died peacefully in her sleep on 5 February 2004, at home in the company of her husband, Pierce King. In 1945 June married Richard S. "Scotty" MacNeish, a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology, .... In 1949, Helm and MacNeish moved to Ottawa, Canada. While June worked as a sessional lecturer at Carleton University (1949-1959), MacNeish was employed as an archaeologist with the National Museums of Canada. During MacNeish's archaeological fieldwork in the Northwest Territories in the summer of 1950, he learned of a teaching opportunity in the community of Jean Marie River. In 1951, June and her research partner, Teresa Carterette, went to the community as volunteer English teachers, launching a 50-year career in the North. June's work in Jean Marie River (1951-52) formed the basis for her dissertation at the University of Chicago, which granted her a Ph.D. in 1958. She and Scotty MacNeish divorced amicably the same year. ... Over the next three decades, June made many trips north (in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959-60, 1967-72, 1974, 1976, and 1979). During these years, she undertook ethnographic research and field excursions along the Yukon and Northwest Territories western Arctic coast, at Jean Marie River, Fort Good Hope, Deline, Fort Simpson, Lac La Martre, and Rae. In 1959, Nancy O. Lurie joined June for five months of fieldwork in Lac La Martre, beginning a 25-year focus on Dogrib ethnography and a research partnership that produced several influential and important articles, books, and reports. Helm and Lurie remained close friends, keeping in regular contact and visiting often throughout Helm's life. ... June became one of North America's most eminent anthropologists, holding a tenured position at the University of Iowa from 1960 to 1999. In March 1989, she suffered a serious stroke, resulting in partial paralysis on her right side. Despite this handicap, she maintained regular office hours at the university until her retirement in December 1999. ... June's numerous publications have made a significant contribution to Dene ethnography and ethnohistory. Her 11 books and monographs and over 40 chapters and articles, most focused on the Dene of the Mackenzie drainage, have left an important record of historical and ethnographic documentation. ...Over the last four years, June worked to organize her photographs, audiotapes, field notes, letters, and other documents for donation to the Northwest Territories Archives. Just a few months ago, a large shipment of her material arrived. As an expression of her deep respect and fondness for the people of the North, she felt it important that her research materials be returned to the North. In conjunction with her efforts to return the caribou skin lodge these donations constitute a major contribution to the preservation of Dene historical and ethnographic documentation. They will continue to gain in importance as future generations of young Dene find value in them

Not So Common (Law) Marriage: Notes from a Blue State

One of the continuing challenges for American marital property law in the twenty-first century, broadly understood, is what to do about property disputes between domestic partners who are not married. More precisely, the challenge is determining what to do when there are property disputes between unmarried intimate partners, whether heterosexual or homosexual. From what I can tell, this is as much of a challenge in Texas as it is in the rest of the country. In the northwest corner of the country, we have a set of attitudes that, like many social and cultural norms, have found their way into our common law. These northwestern attitudes might not be so common, or at least so commonly understood, in Texas. Thus, the purpose of this article is to describe how my Blue State of Washington handles property disputes between domestic partners, as well as to discuss what Texas might be able to take from a Blue State approach

The ReSIST Resilience Knowledge Base

We describe a prototype knowledge base that uses semantic web technologies to provide a service for querying a large and expanding collection of public data about resilience, dependability and security. We report progress and identify opportunities to support resilience-explicit computing by developing metadata-based descriptions of resilience mechanisms that can be used to support design time and, potentially, run-time decision making

A marker of biological ageing predicts adult risk preference in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

Why are some individuals more prone to gamble than others? Animals often show preferences between 2 foraging options with the same mean reward but different degrees of variability in the reward, and such risk preferences vary between individuals. Previous attempts to explain variation in risk preference have focused on energy budgets, but with limited empirical support. Here, we consider whether biological ageing, which affects mortality and residual reproductive value, predicts risk preference. We studied a cohort of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in which we had previously measured developmental erythrocyte telomere attrition, an established integrative biomarker of biological ageing. We measured the adult birds’ preferences when choosing between a fixed amount of food and a variable amount with an equal mean. After controlling for change in body weight during the experiment (a proxy for energy budget), we found that birds that had undergone greater developmental telomere attrition were more risk averse as adults than were those whose telomeres had shortened less as nestlings. Developmental telomere attrition was a better predictor of adult risk preference than either juvenile telomere length or early-life food supply and begging effort. Our longitudinal study thus demonstrates that biological ageing, as measured via developmental telomere attrition, is an important source of lasting differences in adult risk preferences

An observational study on the open-system endotracheal suctioning practices of critical care nurses

Aim and objectives. The purpose of this study was to investigate open system endotracheal suctioning (ETS) practices of critical care nurses. Specific objectives were to examine nurses' practices prior to, during and post-ETS and to compare nurses' ETS practices with current research recommendations.. Background. ETS is a potentially harmful procedure that, if performed inappropriately or incorrectly, might result in life-threatening complications for patients. The literature suggests that critical care nurses vary in their suctioning practices; however, the evidence is predominantly based on retrospective studies that fail to address how ETS is practiced on a daily basis.. Design and method. In March 2005, a structured observational study was conducted using a piloted 20-item observational schedule on two adult intensive-care units to determine how critical care nurses (n = 45) perform ETS in their daily practice and to establish whether the current best practice recommendations for ETS are being adhered to.. Results. The findings indicate that participants varied in their ETS practices; did not adhere to best practice suctioning recommendations; and consequently provided lower-quality ETS treatment than expected. Significant discrepancies were observed in the participants' respiratory assessment techniques, hyperoxygenation and infection control practices, patient reassurance and the level of negative pressure used to clear secretions.. Conclusion. The findings suggest that critical care nurses do not adhere to best practice recommendations when performing ETS. The results of this study offer an Irish/European perspective on critical care nurses' daily suctioning practices.. Relevance to clinical practice. As a matter of urgency, institutional policies and guidelines, which are based on current best practice recommendations, need to be developed and/or reviewed and teaching interventions developed to improve nurses' ETS practices, particularly in regard to auscultation skills, hyperoxygenation practices, suctioning pressures and infection control measures.