Comment: Complex Federal Civil Litigation－Can Jury Trials Be Constitutionally Avoided?

The seventh amendment to the United States Constitution affords the right to a jury trial to parties to a common law action when the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars. In a select group of extremely lengthy cases involving complex factual and legal issues, however, several United States appellate and district courts have refused to permit trial by jury. This comment reviews and evaluates different theories that may be applied to preclude the granting of a jury trial. In addition, guidelines are proposed that may be utilized by a federal district court judge in determining whether a case is so complex and lengthy that a request for a jury trial should be denied

A Method for Measuring Variations in the Stellar Initial Mass Function

We present a method for investigating variations in the upper end of the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) by probing the production rate of ionizing photons in unresolved, compact star clusters with ages <~10 Myr and with different masses. We test this method by performing a pilot study on the young cluster population in the nearby galaxy NGC5194 (M51a), for which multi-wavelength observations from the Hubble Space Telescope are available. Our results indicate that the proposed method can probe the upper end of the IMF in galaxies located out to at least ~10 Mpc, i.e., a factor ~200 further away than possible by counting individual stars in young compact clusters. Our results for NGC5194 show no obvious dependence of the upper mass end of the IMF on the mass of the star cluster down to ~1000 M_sun, although more extensive analyses involving lower mass clusters and other galaxies are needed to confirm this conclusion.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, uses emulateapj. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (Letters

Preferences in management of high-risk prostate cancer among urologists in Europe: results of a web-based survey

Objective : To explore preferences in the management of patients with newly diagnosed high-risk prostate cancer (PCa) among urologists in Europe through a web-based survey. Materials and Methods : A web-based survey was conducted between 15 August and 15 September 2013 by members of the Prostate Cancer Working Group of the Young Academic Urologists Working Party of the European Association of Urology (EAU). A specific, 29-item multiple-choice questionnaire covering the whole spectrum of diagnosis, staging and treatment of high-risk PCa was e-mailed to all urologists included in the mailing list of EAU members. Europe was divided into four geographical regions: Central-Eastern Europe (CEE), Northern Europe (NE), Southern Europe (SE) and Western Europe (WE). Descriptive statistics were used. Differences among sample segments were obtained from a z-test compared with the total sample. Results : Of the 12 850 invited EAU members, 585 urologists practising in Europe completed the survey. High-risk PCa was defined as serum PSA >= 20 ng/mL or clinical stage >= T3 or biopsy Gleason score >= 8 by 67% of responders, without significant geographical variations. The preferred single-imaging examinations for staging were bone scan (74%, 81% in WE and 70% in SE; P = 0.02 for both), magnetic resonance imaging (53%, 72% in WE and 40% in SE; P = 0.02 and P = 0.01, respectively) and computed tomography (45%, 60% in SE and 23% in WE; P = 0.01 for both). Pre-treatment predictive tools were routinely used by 62% of the urologists, without significant geographical variations. The preferred treatment was radical prostatectomy as the initial step of a multipletreatment approach (60%, 40% in NE and 70% in CEE; P = 0.02 and P < 0.01, respectively), followed by external beam radiation therapy with androgen deprivation therapy (29%, 45% in NE and 20% in CEE; P = 0.01 and P = 0.02, respectively), and radical prostatectomy as monotherapy (4%, 7% in WE; P = 0.04). When surgery was performed, the open retropubic approach was the most popular (58%, 74% in CEE, 37% in NE; P < 0.01 for both). Pelvic lymph node dissection was performed by 96% of urologists, equally split between a standard and extended template. There was no consensus on the definition of disease recurrence after primary treatment, and much heterogeneity in the administration of adjuvant and salvage treatments. Conclusion : With the limitation of a low response rate, the present study is the first survey evaluating preferences in the management of high-risk PCa among urologists in Europe. [...

WZ Cygni: a Marginal Contact Binary in a Triple System?

We present new multiband CCD photometry for WZ Cyg made on 22 nights in two observing seasons of 2007 and 2008. Our light-curve synthesis indicates that the system is in poor thermal contact with a fill-out factor of 4.8% and a temperature difference of 1447 K. Including our 40 timing measurements, a total of 371 times of minimum light spanning more than 112 yr were used for a period study. Detailed analysis of the $O$--$C$ diagram showed that the orbital period has varied by a combination with an upward parabola and a sinusoid. The upward parabola means the continuous period increase and indicates that some stellar masses are thermally transferred from the less to the more massive primary star at a rate of about 5.80$\times10^{-8}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$. The sinusoidal variation with a period of 47.9 yr and a semi-amplitude of 0.008 d can be interpreted most likely as the light-travel-time effect due to the existence of a low-mass M-type tertiary companion with a projected mass of $M_3 \sin i_3$=0.26 M$_\odot$. We examined the evolutionary status of WZ Cyg from the absolute dimensions of the eclipsing pair. It belongs to the marginal contact binary systems before broken-contact phase, consisting of a massive primary star with spectral type of F4 and a secondary with the type K1.Comment: 20 pages, including 3 figures and 6 tables, accepted for publication in A

Initial conditions for globular clusters and assembly of the old globular cluster population of the Milky Way

Comparing N-body calculations that include primordial residual-gas expulsion with the observed properties of 20 Galactic globular clusters (GCs) for which the stellar mass function (MF) has been measured, we constrain the time-scale over which the gas of their embedded counterparts must have been removed, the star formation efficiency the progenitor cloud must have had and the strength of the tidal-field the clusters must have formed in. The three parameters determine the expansion and mass-loss during residual-gas expulsion. After applying corrections for stellar and dynamical evolution we find birth cluster masses, sizes and densities for the GC sample and the same quantities for the progenitor gas clouds. The pre-cluster cloud core masses were between 10^5-10^7 Msun and half-mass radii were typically below 1 pc and reach down to 0.2 pc. We show that the low-mass present day MF slope, initial half-mass radius and initial density of clusters correlates with cluster metallicity, unmasking metallicity as an important parameter driving cluster formation and the gas expulsion process. This work predicts that PD low-concentration clusters should have a higher binary fraction than PD high-concentration clusters. Since the oldest GCs are early residuals from the formation of the Milky Way (MW) and the derived initial conditions probe the environment in which the clusters formed, we use the results as a new tool to study the formation of the inner GC system of the Galaxy. We achieve time-resolved insight into the evolution of the pre-MW gas cloud on short time-scales (a few hundred Myr) via cluster metallicities. The results are shown to be consistent with a contracting and self-gravitating cloud in which fluctuations in the pre-MW potential grow with time. An initially relatively smooth tidal-field evolved into a grainy potential within a dynamical time-scale of the collapsing cloud.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS; former version was not the accepted version, but from an earlier stag

Constraints on coronal turbulence models from source sizes of noise storms at 327 MHz

We seek to reconcile observations of small source sizes in the solar corona at 327 MHz with predictions of scattering models that incorporate refractive index effects, inner scale effects and a spherically diverging wavefront. We use an empirical prescription for the turbulence amplitude $C_{N}^{2}(R)$ based on VLBI observations by Spangler and coworkers of compact radio sources against the solar wind for heliocentric distances $R \approx$ 10--50 $R_{\odot}$. We use the Coles & Harmon model for the inner scale $l_{i}(R)$, that is presumed to arise from cyclotron damping. In view of the prevalent uncertainty in the power law index that characterizes solar wind turbulence at various heliocentric distances, we retain this index as a free parameter. We find that the inclusion of spherical divergence effects suppresses the predicted source size substantially. We also find that inner scale effects significantly reduce the predicted source size. An important general finding for solar sources is that the calculations substantially underpredict the observed source size. Three possible, non-exclusive, interpretations of this general result are proposed. First and simplest, future observations with better angular resolution will detect much smaller sources. Consistent with this, previous observations of small sources in the corona at metric wavelengths are limited by the instrument resolution. Second, the spatially-varying level of turbulence $C_{N}^{2}(R)$ is much larger in the inner corona than predicted by straightforward extrapolation Sunwards of the empirical prescription, which was based on observations between 10--50 $R_{\odot}$. Either the functional form or the constant of proportionality could be different. Third, perhaps the inner scale is smaller than the model, leading to increased scattering.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics). Figures 5, 8 and 9 revised. Conclusions unchange

Pattern speed of main spiral arms in NGC 2997: Estimate based on very young stellar complexes

Deep JHK-Brg photometry of the southern arm of the grand-design spiral galaxy NGC 2997 was obtained by ISAAC/VLT. All sources in the field brighter than K=19 mag were located. Color-color diagrams were used to identify young stellar complexes among the extended sources. Ages can be estimated for the youngest complexes and correlated with azimuthal distances from the spiral arms defined by the K-band intensity variation. The extended sources with Mk <-12 mag display a diffuse appearance and are more concentrated inside the arm region than fainter ones, which are compact and uniformly distributed in the disk. The NIR colors of the bright diffuse objects are consistent with them being young starforming complexes with ages <10 Myr and reddened by up to 8 mag of visual extinction. They show a color gradient as a function of their azimuthal distance from the spiral arms. Interpreting this gradient as an age variation, the pattern speed Op = 16 km/s/kpc of the main spiral was derived assuming circular motion. The alignment and color gradient of the bright, diffuse complexes strongly support a density wave scenario for NGC 2997. Only the brightest complexes with Mk <-12 mag show a well aligned structure along the arm, suggesting that a strong compression in the gas due to the spiral potential is required to form these most massive aggregates, while smaller starforming regions are formed more randomly in the disk. The sharp transition between the two groups at Mk = -12 mag may be associated with expulsion of gas when the first supernovae explode in the complex.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication as A&A Lette