Hard Cases Under the Convention on the International Sale of Goods: A Proposed Taxonomy of Interpretative Challenges

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Hard Cases Under the Convention on the International Sale of Goods: A Proposed Taxonomy of Interpretative Challenges

CISG was formally uniform at the time of its adoption. It used the same words in all of the jurisdictions adopting it. But uniform words are not enough to guarantee uniform application. For many commentators, in fact, the most significant impediment to the continued existence or efficacy of the CISG is the lack of uniform interpretive outcomes in hard CISG cases – cases where a CISG provision is vague either on its face or in its application. Without greater uniformity of interpretive outcomes, these commentators suggest, the CISG will, over time, fail to supply standard solutions to similar contracting problems and thus fail to supply the predictability that parties need. In this Article, Professor Allen Blair argues that these commentators start with an exaggerated expectation about the kind and degree of uniformity called for by the CISG and demanded by parties. Contrary to the standard conception of CISG interpretation, uniformity of interpretive outcomes is an improper goal with respect to CISG provisions cast as open-textured standards, and any effort to harden these standards into rigid rules could, in fact, undermine the efficiency goals of contracting parties

Panel No. 3: Contemporary and Critical Views of Arbitration

Given the pre-emptive effect of the FAA, do state laws of arbitration have any but a subservient function? How do regulatory agencies assess and can their regulations control the FAA? The panelists will explore controversies that are currently taking place in reinsurance arbitration; whether the Supreme Court\u27s invitation in Hall Street Associates to employ different standards of review evidences a skepticism of arbitration that threatens to undercut the uniform edifice of arbitration that the Supreme Court has, to date, constructed; and, finally, whether the New York arbitration convention support or dissent from the substantive rules of the FAA

Panel No. 3: Contemporary and Critical Views of Arbitration

Given the pre-emptive effect of the FAA, do state laws of arbitration have any but a subservient function? How do regulatory agencies assess and can their regulations control the FAA? The panelists will explore controversies that are currently taking place in reinsurance arbitration; whether the Supreme Court\u27s invitation in Hall Street Associates to employ different standards of review evidences a skepticism of arbitration that threatens to undercut the uniform edifice of arbitration that the Supreme Court has, to date, constructed; and, finally, whether the New York arbitration convention support or dissent from the substantive rules of the FAA

Electrophysiological effects of nicotinic and electrical stimulation of intrinsic cardiac ganglia in the absence of extrinsic autonomic nerves in the rabbit heart

BackgroundThe intrinsic cardiac nervous system is a rich network of cardiac nerves that converge to form distinct ganglia and extend across the heart and is capable of influencing cardiac function.ObjectiveThe goals of this study were to provide a complete picture of the neurotransmitter/neuromodulator profile of the rabbit intrinsic cardiac nervous system and to determine the influence of spatially divergent ganglia on cardiac electrophysiology.MethodsNicotinic or electrical stimulation was applied at discrete sites of the intrinsic cardiac nerve plexus in the Langendorff-perfused rabbit heart. Functional effects on sinus rate and atrioventricular conduction were measured. Immunohistochemistry for choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), tyrosine hydroxylase, and/or neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) was performed using whole mount preparations.ResultsStimulation within all ganglia produced either bradycardia, tachycardia, or a biphasic brady-tachycardia. Electrical stimulation of the right atrial and right neuronal cluster regions produced the largest chronotropic responses. Significant prolongation of atrioventricular conduction was predominant at the pulmonary vein-caudal vein region. Neurons immunoreactive (IR) only for ChAT, tyrosine hydroxylase, or nNOS were consistently located within the limits of the hilum and at the roots of the right cranial and right pulmonary veins. ChAT-IR neurons were most abundant (1946 ± 668 neurons). Neurons IR only for nNOS were distributed within ganglia.ConclusionStimulation of intrinsic ganglia, shown to be of phenotypic complexity but predominantly of cholinergic nature, indicates that clusters of neurons are capable of independent selective effects on cardiac electrophysiology, therefore providing a potential therapeutic target for the prevention and treatment of cardiac disease

Detection methods for non-Gaussian gravitational wave stochastic backgrounds

We address the issue of finding an optimal detection method for a discontinuous or intermittent gravitational wave stochastic background. Such a signal might sound something like popcorn popping. We derive an appropriate version of the maximum likelihood detection statistic, and compare its performance to that of the standard cross-correlation statistic both analytically and with Monte Carlo simulations. The maximum likelihood statistic performs better than the cross-correlation statistic when the background is sufficiently non-Gaussian. For both ground and space based detectors, this results in a gain factor, ranging roughly from 1 to 3, in the minimum gravitational-wave energy density necessary for detection, depending on the duty cycle of the background. Our analysis is exploratory, as we assume that the time structure of the events cannot be resolved, and we assume white, Gaussian noise in two collocated, aligned detectors. Before this detection method can be used in practice with real detector data, further work is required to generalize our analysis to accommodate separated, misaligned detectors with realistic, colored, non-Gaussian noise.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, submitted to physical review D, added revisions in response to reviewers comment

On line power spectra identification and whitening for the noise in interferometric gravitational wave detectors

In this paper we address both to the problem of identifying the noise Power Spectral Density of interferometric detectors by parametric techniques and to the problem of the whitening procedure of the sequence of data. We will concentrate the study on a Power Spectral Density like the one of the Italian-French detector VIRGO and we show that with a reasonable finite number of parameters we succeed in modeling a spectrum like the theoretical one of VIRGO, reproducing all its features. We propose also the use of adaptive techniques to identify and to whiten on line the data of interferometric detectors. We analyze the behavior of the adaptive techniques in the field of stochastic gradient and in the Least Squares ones.Comment: 28 pages, 21 figures, uses iopart.cls accepted for pubblication on Classical and Quantum Gravit

Random Packings of Frictionless Particles

We study random packings of frictionless particles at T=0. The packing fraction where the pressure becomes nonzero is the same as the jamming threshold, where the static shear modulus becomes nonzero. The distribution of threshold packing fractions narrows and its peak approaches random close-packing as the system size increases. For packing fractions within the peak, there is no self-averaging, leading to exponential decay of the interparticle force distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A dusty X-ray absorber in the Perseus Cluster ?

We have analyzed 0.35-7.5 keV X-ray spectra of the center of the Perseus cluster collected using the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT) on the Astro-1 mission. These spectra are particularly useful for examining the nature of the X-ray absorber in cooling flows because of BBXRT's sensitivity between 0.35 and 1.0 keV. We confirm that there is X-ray absorption above that expected from gas in our own galaxy. Further, the absorbing medium is deficient in helium. However, the energy of the K-edge of oxygen is consistent with neutral material (at the redshift of the cluster) and is not consistent with any ionized state of oxygen. It is not possible to completely ionize helium and have oxygen neutral so the apparent helium deficiency cannot be due to ionization. We propose that the X-ray absorption is due to dust grains that have condensed out of a medium in which helium remains ionized. This model satisfies all the observational constraints but is difficult to understand theoretically.Comment: 15 pages including 6 figures. Uses aaspp4 and psfig style

Galactic and Extragalactic Samples of Supernova Remnants: How They Are Identified and What They Tell Us

Supernova remnants (SNRs) arise from the interaction between the ejecta of a supernova (SN) explosion and the surrounding circumstellar and interstellar medium. Some SNRs, mostly nearby SNRs, can be studied in great detail. However, to understand SNRs as a whole, large samples of SNRs must be assembled and studied. Here, we describe the radio, optical, and X-ray techniques which have been used to identify and characterize almost 300 Galactic SNRs and more than 1200 extragalactic SNRs. We then discuss which types of SNRs are being found and which are not. We examine the degree to which the luminosity functions, surface-brightness distributions and multi-wavelength comparisons of the samples can be interpreted to determine the class properties of SNRs and describe efforts to establish the type of SN explosion associated with a SNR. We conclude that in order to better understand the class properties of SNRs, it is more important to study (and obtain additional data on) the SNRs in galaxies with extant samples at multiple wavelength bands than it is to obtain samples of SNRs in other galaxiesComment: Final 2016 draft of a chapter in "Handbook of Supernovae" edited by Athem W. Alsabti and Paul Murdin. Final version available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20794-0_90-