Ashley v. Abbott Laboratories: Reconfiguring the Personal Jurisdiction Analysis in Mass Tort Litigation

The Supreme Court has struggled for over one hundred years to articulate a workable standard for determining whether a court may exercise personal jurisdiction, over a defendant without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite a substantial body of precedent, the Court has been unable to enunciate a consistent, intelligible test to govern personal jurisdiction. The Court\u27s pronouncements swing between two bases: the territoriality, sovereignty, and power concerns established by Pennoyer v. Neff, and the defendant-centered fairness analysis announced in International Shoe Co. v. Washington. As a result of this inconsistency, lower courts adhere to vastly different jurisdictional principles. Commentators have become increasingly vocal about the need to establish a clear, concise jurisdictional test that achieves the ultimate goals of coherence, fairness, and judicial economy. A recent decision of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York attempted to define such a jurisdictional standard in the context of DES litigation. Ashley v. Abbott Laboratories (In re DES Cases) proposed a two-part test designed to guide courts in their determination of personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants in DES litigation; the court suggested that the Ashley test might function equally well in other mass tort litigation. The Ashley test and the principles that underlie it signify a renewed commitment on the part of courts to seek congruous, effective jurisdictional standards. Ashley represents a laudable attempt to reconcile the disparate and often conflicting pronouncements of the Supreme Court in this confused area

Social Network: The Case of Major League Soccer and Facebook Likes

The rise of Major League Soccer in the United States has taken place during an influential spread of social media. This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the effects of several variables on the Facebook likes of individual Major League Soccer Facebook homepages. Variables from previous sport demand studies are re-analyzed and applied in this study to determine similarities and differences to Facebook likes . Results from the analysis indicate social media is affected differently than attendance rates. Facebook likes are most affected by population size, unemployment and Hispanic composition as well as player salary rather than wins or attendance

Guide for Quantifying Post-Treatment Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin

Invasive species and woodland encroachment have caused extensive changes in the fire regimes of sagebrush steppe over the past 150 years. Land managers and resource specialists of the Great Basin are increasingly required to implement vegetation treatments to maintain habitat, reduce fire risk and restore landscapes to a more desirable state. Often it is difficult to measure treatment effectiveness because gathering pre- and post-treatment data is time-consuming and costly. In two years of post-treatment sampling across six Great Basin states, researchers from the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment and Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) measured the vegetation response to prescribed fire, tree mastication and cutting, shrub mowing, and herbicide application. Treated plots were compared to untreated control plots. This Guide for Quantifying Post-treatment Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin assimilates the SageSTEP post-treatment vegetation and fuels data into an assessment tool that will help users better estimate post-treatment percent cover, stem density and fuel loadings. Designed similarly to the Natural Fuels Photo Series, produced by USDA Forest Service Fire and Environmental Research Applications (FERA) team, this Guide provides the necessary landscape-level inputs required by fire behavior and fire effects models and may also be used when building custom fuel beds. Through the use of photographs and tables with the range of values for each vegetation type, users should be able to quickly appraise sites by fuel stratum. When used in conjunction with the pre-treatment Guide for Quantifying Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin (Stebleton and Bunting 2009), this post-treatment Guide has the capability to aid users as they predict vegetation and fuel response to the various treatment applications, assess target conditions, set management objectives for restoration projects, choose treatments to meet objectives and determine treatment effectiveness

White coat hypertension is associated with increased small vessel disease in the brain

Objective: Small vessel disease, as measured by white matter hyperintensity (WMH) in the brain, is known to be associated with increased stroke risk and cognitive impairment. This study explored the relationship between WMH on computerised tomography (CT) and white coat hypertension/effect (WCH/E) in patients with recent transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or lacunar stroke (LS). Design and method: Ninety-six patients recruited for the ASIST trial (Arterial Stiffness in Lacunar Stroke and TIA) underwent measurement of clinic blood pressure (BP) and ambulatory BP monitoring (APBM) within two weeks of TIA or LS. Twenty-three patients had normotension (clinic BP / = 140/90mmHg and day-time ABPM < 135/85mmHg). Arterial stiffness was measured using carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) (Complior®, ALAM Medical) and carotid-ankle vascular index (CAVI) (VaSera VS-1500N®, Fukuda Denshi). CT images were scored for WMH using the four-point Fazekas visual rating scale. Patients were grouped into no-mild WMH (scores 0–1) or moderate-severe (scores 2–3) groups. The relationship between BP, vascular stiffness and WMH was explored with t-tests, chi-square and logistic regression accounting for known cardiovascular risk factors. Results: Forty-four percent of patients with WCH/E had moderate-severe WMH compared to 17% of normotensives (p = 0.047). The regression model with WMH as the dependent factor, and WCH/E and cardiovascular risk factors as independent factors showed WCH/E and either CAVI or PWV to be the only independent significant factor contributing to WMH (CAVI:p = 0.038, PWV:p = 0.043)