Antiturst Law-Exemptions for Regulated Industries - Applicability of the Antitrust Laws to Stock Exchanges

Defendant, the New York Stock Exchange, directed its members to discontinue their direct private wire connections with plaintiffs who were non-member brokers. These private wire connections were utilized primarily for facilitating transactions in the over-the-counter market. Repeated requests by plaintiffs for reinstatement were ignored, and the defendant refused to apprise the plaintiffs of the reasons for its action. Plaintiffs then brought suit, seeking damages and injunctive relief pursuant to sections 4 and 16 of the Clayton Act. Maintaining that defendant\u27s conduct violated section 1 of the Sherman Act, plaintiffs moved for summary judgment. Held, motion granted.6 Defendant does not enjoy an exemption from the antitrust laws. The conduct of it and its members constituted a concerted refusal to deal, which is a per se violation of the Sherman Act. Silver v. New York Stock Exchange, 196 F. Supp. 209 (S.D.N.Y. 1961)

Negligence-\u3cem\u3eRes lpsa Loquitur\u3c/em\u3e-Application to Medical Malpractice Actions: 1951-196

Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself, has been the subject matter of extensive legal literature since its inception almost a century ago. It is now well settled that res ipsa loquitur is no more than an inference of negligence from circumstantial evidence. The doctrine is applicable if an act or occurrence is of the type that ordinarily would not take place without negligence, assuming the plaintiff has himself been passive, and if the instrumentality causing the harm is within the exclusive control of the defendant. The application of res ipsa loquitur to the medical malpractice area has introduced a number of problems, both legal and philosophical, resulting in a wide diversity of opinion as to whether the doctrine should be any more sparingly applied in medical negligence cases than it should in cases of exploding bottles, airplane crashes or similar unexpected events. It is often stated that expert medical testimony is a prerequisite to the establishment of a malpractice claim, except in the clearest of cases where it can be said that the result speaks for itself. Judicial reluctance to expand the number of cases in which expert testimony is not required has been the foremost obstacle to the invocation of the doctrine. The reasoning of the courts appears to be that, in a majority of cases of alleged malpractice, it is beyond the capability of a jury of laymen to decide whether a particular event is of the type that ordinarily would not take place had due care been exercised. Thus, a failure to fulfill the first requirement renders the doctrine unavailable. Whether or not such an approach is too formalistic is arguable. There are, however, valid arguments that can be suggested for permitting the use of res ipsa loquitur in the medical negligence field. First, although expert testimony would be desirable, it is often impossible to procure. The general reluctance of physicians to testify against one another is well known, although characterization of this as a conspiracy of silence is questionable. But regardless of the motivation for their unwillingness, it is clear that a plaintiff in a medical malpractice action operates under a serious handicap in obtaining expert medical witnesses. Second, in many cases of medical or surgical treatment the knowledge of the facts is peculiarly within the possession of the doctor. More often than not, the plaintiff was unconscious or totally ignorant of the procedures that were employed. Third, the confidence and trust reposed in the doctor by a patient demands that the former come forward with some explanation of what went wrong. Finally, it is maintained that the doctrine should not be any less available to a plaintiff merely because he happens to be suing a doctor, rather than a bottle manufacturer or an airline

Criminal Law-Involuntary Manslaughter- Presence as a Pre-Requisite to Liablity for Permitting an Incompetent to Drive an Automobile

Defendant gave his car keys to an intoxicated friend and permitted him to operate the vehicle while the defendant was at home in bed. As he was driving on the wrong side of the highway, the friend was involved in a head-on collision which resulted in the death of the drivers of both vehicles. Defendant was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and of the misdemeanor of allowing an intoxicated person to operate his automobile. On appeal, held, conviction of manslaughter reversed. Although one who permits an intoxicated person to drive his car is guilty of a misdemeanor, he cannot be held liable for involuntary manslaughter unless he is present at the time of the fatal event. People v. Marshall, 362 Mich. 170, 106 N.W.2d 842 (1961)

Nonlinear quantum error correction

We introduce a theory of quantum error correction (QEC) for a subclass of states within a larger Hilbert space. In the standard theory of QEC, the set of all encoded states is formed by an arbitrary linear combination of the codewords. However, this can be more general than required for a given quantum protocol which may only traverse a subclass of states within the Hilbert space. Here we propose the concept of nonlinear QEC (NLQEC), where the encoded states are not necessarily a linear combination of codewords. We introduce a sufficiency criterion for NLQEC with respect to the subclass of states. The new criterion gives a more relaxed condition for the formation of a QEC code, such that under the assumption that the states are within the subclass of states, the errors are correctable. This allows us, for instance, to effectively circumvent the no-go theorems regarding optical QEC for Gaussian states and channels, for which we present explicit examples

Measuring transmission and forces from observatory equipment vibration

We describe measurements of both the vibration forces imparted by various types of observatory equipment, and the transmission of these forces through the soil, foundations and telescope pier. These are key uncertainties both in understanding how to mitigate vibration at existing observatories and for developing a vibration budget in the design of future observatories such as the Thirty Meter Telescope. Typical vibration surveys have measured only the resulting motion (acceleration); however, this depends on both the source and the system being excited (for example, isolating equipment results in less force being transmitted, but greater motion of the equipment itself). Instead, here we (a) apply a known force input to the pier from a shaker and measure the response at different locations, and (b) use isolator properties combined with measured acceleration to infer the forces applied by various equipment directly. The soil foundation and pier transmission can then be combined with a finite element model based vibration transmission analysis to estimate the optical consequences. Estimates of plausible source levels supports the development of a vibration budget for TMT that allocates allowable forces to the sources of vibration; this is described in a companion paper

Efficacy and safety of lacosamide as first add-on or later adjunctive treatment for uncontrolled partial-onset seizures: A multicentre open-label trial

AbstractPurposeTo evaluate the efficacy and safety of lacosamide administered as either first add-on or later add-on antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy for patients with uncontrolled partial-onset seizures (POS).MethodsIn this open-label, multicentre trial, patients with POS initiated oral lacosamide (titrated to 400mg/day) either as add-on to first AED monotherapy, or as later add-on to 1–3 concomitant AEDs after ≥2 previous AEDs. The primary efficacy variable was the proportion of patients achieving seizure freedom for the first 12 weeks of the 24-week Maintenance Phase.Results456 patients received ≥1 dose of lacosamide (96 as first add-on, 360 as later add-on). In the first add-on cohort, 27/72 (37.5%) patients completed 12 weeks treatment and remained seizure-free; 18/68 (26.5%) remained seizure-free after 24 weeks. 64/91 (70.3%) patients achieved ≥50% reduction in seizure frequency during maintenance treatment. This was accompanied by a mean 7.1±16.00 point improvement from Baseline in the Quality of Life Inventory in Epilepsy (QOLIE-31-P) total score for 24-week completers, with improvement reported in all subscales. Most common treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were dizziness (31.3%) and headache (13.5%). In the later add-on cohort, 39/261 (14.9%) and 29/249 (11.6%) patients remained seizure-free after completing 12 and 24 weeks’ treatment, respectively. 178/353 (50.4%) patients achieved ≥50% reduction in seizure frequency during maintenance treatment. Mean change in QOLIE-31-P total score was 4.8±14.74 points among 24-week completers. Common TEAEs were dizziness (33.6%), somnolence (15.0%) and headache (11.4%).ConclusionsLacosamide initiated as first add-on treatment was efficacious and well tolerated in patients with uncontrolled POS

NFIRAOS First Facility AO System for the Thirty Meter Telescope

NFIRAOS, the Thirty Meter Telescope's first adaptive optics system is an order 60x60 Multi-Conjugate AO system with two deformable mirrors. Although most observing will use 6 laser guide stars, it also has an NGS-only mode. Uniquely, NFIRAOS is cooled to -30 C to reduce thermal background. NFIRAOS delivers a 2-arcminute beam to three client instruments, and relies on up to three IR WFSs in each instrument. We present recent work including: robust automated acquisition on these IR WFSs; trade-off studies for a common-size of deformable mirror; real-time computing architectures; simplified designs for high-order NGS-mode wavefront sensing; modest upgrade concepts for high-contrast imaging.Comment: ..submitted to SPIE 9148 Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation - Adaptive Optics Systems IV (2014

Managing knowledge to promote sustainability in Australian transport infrastructure projects

To deliver tangible sustainability outcomes, the infrastructure sector of the construction industry needs to build capacities for the creation, application and management of ever increasing knowledge. This paper intends to establish the importance and key issues of promoting sustainability through knowledge management (KM). It presents a new conceptual framework for managing sustainability knowledge to raise the awareness and direct future research in the field of transport infrastructure, one of the fast growing sectors in Australia. A holistic KM approach is adopted in this research to consider the potential to "deliver the right information to the right person at the right time" in the context of sustainable development of infrastructure. A questionnaire survey among practitioners across the nation confirmed the necessity and identified priority issues of managing knowledge for sustainability. During infrastructure development, KM can help build much needed industry consensus, develop capacity, communicate decisions, and promote specific measures for the pursuit of sustainability. Six essential elements of the KM approach and their priority issues informed the establishment of a conceptual KM framework. The transport infrastructure sector has come to realise that development must not come at the expense of environmental and social objectives. In practice however, it is facing extensive challenges to deliver what has been promised in the sustainability agenda. This research demonstrates the importance of managing sustainability knowledge, integration of various stakeholders, facilitation of plans and actions and delivery of tangible benefits in real projects, as a positive step towards meeting these challenges