Getting to Yes in Specialized Courts: The Unique Role of ADR in Business Court Cases

The assumed compatibility between ADR and specialized courts is largely unexamined. Without being able to statistically validate the motivations and preferences of individual disputants in a manner to draw generalized conclusions, this article examines the relationship between ADR and specialized business courts by looking at how the two are structurally intertwined through existing procedural rules and implementation practices. Part I of this article describes the foundational structures and concepts behind both ADR and specialized business courts, as well as the similarities and differences between them. Part II explores the existing formal structural relationship between ADR and specialized courts by examining the procedural rules facilitating ADR in both the general trial court and the specialized business courts in twenty-two jurisdictions. Part III observes the relationship between ADR and specialized courts through a judicial survey instrument investigating the use of ADR in specialized business cases and a discussion of the survey results. Part IV makes general observations about the existing collaboration between these two tools, in addition to reviewing trends and proffering suggestions

A Real-Time Capable Software-Defined Receiver Using GPU for Adaptive Anti-Jam GPS Sensors

Due to their weak received signal power, Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are vulnerable to radio frequency interference. Adaptive beam and null steering of the gain pattern of a GPS antenna array can significantly increase the resistance of GPS sensors to signal interference and jamming. Since adaptive array processing requires intensive computational power, beamsteering GPS receivers were usually implemented using hardware such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). However, a software implementation using general-purpose processors is much more desirable because of its flexibility and cost effectiveness. This paper presents a GPS software-defined radio (SDR) with adaptive beamsteering capability for anti-jam applications. The GPS SDR design is based on an optimized desktop parallel processing architecture using a quad-core Central Processing Unit (CPU) coupled with a new generation Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) having massively parallel processors. This GPS SDR demonstrates sufficient computational capability to support a four-element antenna array and future GPS L5 signal processing in real time. After providing the details of our design and optimization schemes for future GPU-based GPS SDR developments, the jamming resistance of our GPS SDR under synthetic wideband jamming is presented. Since the GPS SDR uses commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and processors, it can be easily adopted in civil GPS applications requiring anti-jam capabilities

Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis due to Ochrobactrum anthropi: A Case Report

We report a case of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis from Ochrobactrum anthropi. O. anthropi is recognized as an emerging pathogen in immunocompromised patients. In contrast to most previously described cases, the patient reported here had no indwelling catheter. To our knowledge, no case of O. anthropi spontaneous bacterial peritonitis has been reported in the medical literature until now

Indistinguishability Obfuscation: From Approximate to Exact

We show general transformations from subexponentially-secure approximate indistinguishability obfuscation (IO) where the obfuscated circuit agrees with the original circuit on a 1/2+ϵ fraction of inputs on a certain samplable distribution, into exact indistinguishability obfuscation where the obfuscated circuit and the original circuit agree on all inputs. As a step towards our results, which is of independent interest, we also obtain an approximate-to-exact transformation for functional encryption. At the core of our techniques is a method for “fooling” the obfuscator into giving us the correct answer, while preserving the indistinguishability-based security. This is achieved based on various types of secure computation protocols that can be obtained from different standard assumptions. Put together with the recent results of Canetti, Kalai and Paneth (TCC 2015), Pass and Shelat (TCC 2016), and Mahmoody, Mohammed and Nemathaji (TCC 2016), we show how to convert indistinguishability obfuscation schemes in various ideal models into exact obfuscation schemes in the plain model.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant CNS-1350619)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant CNS-1414119

Effect of requiring a general practitioner at scenes of serious injury: A systematic review

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Straumann, G.S.H., Austvoll-Dahlgren, A.A., Holte, H. & Wisborg, T.W. (2018). Effect of requiring a general practitioner at scenes of serious injury: A systematic review. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 62(9), 1194-1199, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/aas.13174. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Background - In Norway, each municipality is responsible for providing first line emergency healthcare, and it is mandatory to have a primary care physician/general practitioner on call continuously. This mandate ensures that a physician can assist patients and ambulance personnel at the site of severe injuries or illnesses. The compulsory presence of the general practitioner at the scene could affect different parts of patient treatment, and it might save resources by obviating resources from secondary healthcare, like pre‐hospital anaesthesiologists and other specialized resources. This systematic review aimed to examine how survival, time spent at the scene, the choice of transport destination, assessment of urgency, the number of admissions, and the number of cancellations of specialized pre‐hospital resources were affected by the presence of a general practitioner at the scene of a suspected severe injury. Methods - We searched for published and planned systematic reviews and primary studies in the Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, OpenGrey, GreyLit and trial registries. The search was completed in December 2017. Two individuals independently screened the references and assessed the eligibility of all potentially relevant studies. Results - The search for systematic reviews and primary studies identified 5981 articles. However, no studies met the pre‐defined inclusion criteria. Conclusion - No studies met our inclusion criteria; consequently, it remains uncertain how the presence of a general practitioner at the injury scene might affect the selected outcomes

Psychological interventions for distress in adults undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Objectives: To investigate the characteristics, methodology, quality, and efficacy of psychological interventions for distress in adult patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Methods: A systematic review of relevant studies was conducted using six databases with supplementary hand searching. Included studies employed an experimental or quasiexperimental design, interventions included at least one psychological component, and outcomes involved psychological distress in affective terms. Data were abstracted and study quality was assessed using Cochrane Foundation criteria amended to include confounder and common factors control. Data were examined and synthesised using a narrative approach and meta-analysis. Results: Eleven articles for nine interventions met the inclusion criteria out of 11741 abstracts. The studies varied in quality, general, intervention, and methodological characteristics while findings were mixed. Interventions tended to show better efficacy when incorporating a major psychological component involving cognitive behavioural or emotional processing methods with substantial interventionist input. However, this was also associated with methodological limitations and threats to internal validity such as poor confounder and common factors control. A meta-analysis yielded a small but significant pooled effect size estimate in favour of interventions with inconsequential heterogeneity. Risk of bias remained a concern. Conclusions: Psychological interventions may provide some benefit in alleviating distress in HSCT but conclusions remain tentative in light of methodological limitations and risk of bias. Further research is needed to evidence the individual contribution of intervention components and mechanism of change together with improving intervention efficiency and methodological quality

VLDL Hydrolysis by Hepatic Lipase Regulates PPARδ Transcriptional Responses

PPARs (α,γ,δ) are a family of ligand-activated transcription factors that regulate energy balance, including lipid metabolism. Despite these critical functions, the integration between specific pathways of lipid metabolism and distinct PPAR responses remains obscure. Previous work has revealed that lipolytic pathways can activate PPARs. Whether hepatic lipase (HL), an enzyme that regulates VLDL and HDL catabolism, participates in PPAR responses is unknown.Using PPAR ligand binding domain transactivation assays, we found that HL interacted with triglyceride-rich VLDL (>HDL≫LDL, IDL) to activate PPARδ preferentially over PPARα or PPARγ, an effect dependent on HL catalytic activity. In cell free ligand displacement assays, VLDL hydrolysis by HL activated PPARδ in a VLDL-concentration dependent manner. Extended further, VLDL stimulation of HL-expressing HUVECs and FAO hepatoma cells increased mRNA expression of canonical PPARδ target genes, including adipocyte differentiation related protein (ADRP), angiopoietin like protein 4 and pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase-4. HL/VLDL regulated ADRP through a PPRE in the promoter region of this gene. In vivo, adenoviral-mediated hepatic HL expression in C57BL/6 mice increased hepatic ADRP mRNA levels by 30%. In ob/ob mice, a model with higher triglycerides than C57BL/6 mice, HL overexpression increased ADRP expression by 70%, demonstrating the importance of triglyceride substrate for HL-mediated PPARδ activation. Global metabolite profiling identified HL/VLDL released fatty acids including oleic acid and palmitoleic acid that were capable of recapitulating PPARδ activation and ADRP gene regulation in vitro.These data define a novel pathway involving HL hydrolysis of VLDL that activates PPARδ through generation of specific monounsaturated fatty acids. These data also demonstrate how integrating cell biology with metabolomic approaches provides insight into specific lipid mediators and pathways of lipid metabolism that regulate transcription

LizarMong: Excellent Key Encapsulation Mechanism based on RLWE and RLWR

The RLWE family algorithms submitted to the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization process have each merit in terms of security, correctness, performance, and bandwidth. However, there is no splendid algorithm in all respects. Besides, various recent studies have been published that affect security and correctness, such as side-channel attacks and error dependencies. To date, though, no algorithm has fully considered all the aspects. We propose a novel Key Encapsulation Mechanism scheme called LizarMong, which is based on RLizard. LizarMong combines the merit of each algorithm and state-of-the-art studies. As a result, it achieves up to 85% smaller bandwidth and 3.3 times faster performance compared to RLizard. Compared to the NIST\u27s candidate algorithms with a similar security, the bandwidth is about 5-42% smaller, and the performance is about 1.2-4.1 times faster. Also, our scheme resists the known side-channel attacks

Overview of systematic reviews. Effective home support in dementia care: Components and impacts, Stage 1, psychosocial interventions for dementia.

Aim: To synthesise evidence to identify the components of effective psychosocial interventions in dementia care to inform clinical practice, policy and research. Background: With population ageing dementia represents a significant care challenge with 60% of people with dementia living at home. Design: Overview of systematic reviews with narrative summary. Data sources: Electronic searches of published systematic reviews in English using Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, DARE, EPPI-Centre, between September 2013 - April 2014. Review methods: Systematic reviews were appraised against Cochrane Collaboration levels of effectiveness. Components of psychosocial interventions were identified with their theoretical rationale. Findings were explored with a Patient, Public and Carer Involvement group. Results: 36 systematic reviews were included. From interventions, 14 components were identified, nine for people with dementia and five for carers, mostly undertaken in nursing/care homes. For people with dementia, there was evidence of effectiveness for cognitive stimulation and cognitive training; but less evidence for sensory stimulation, reminiscence, staff education, behavioural therapy and ADL training. For carers, there was evidence of effectiveness for education and training, psychotherapy and counselling. Conclusion: There was a lack of definitive evidence of effectiveness for most psychosocial interventions. Further studies with stronger methodology or replication of existing studies would strengthen the evidence base. Few interventions were undertaken with people with dementia and their carers living at home. Further work will investigate the extent to which components identified here are present in models of home support for people with dementia and carers and their effectiveness