Moving the Ball Forward in Consumer and Employment Dispute Resolution: What Can Planning, Talking, Listening and Breaking Bread Together Accomplish?

Article Extract: Mandatory pre-dispute arbitration has been a divisive issue for many years, particularly since the Supreme Court began enforcing the arbitration clauses that businesses and employers impose on consumers and employees, respectively, in contracts of adhesion. In 2009, the Dispute Resolution Section’s Council proposed to weigh in on this issue through the vehicle of an ABA House of Delegates resolution. The compromise position developed by the Section, expressing support for pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses provided they offer a meaningful opt-out, generated such a firestorm of opposition from both pro-arbitration and anti-arbitration advocates that the Council ultimately chose to abstain from expressing any position at all

The emergence of proton nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomics in the cardiovascular arena as viewed from a clinical perspective

The ability to phenotype metabolic profiles in serum has increased substantially in recent years with the advent of metabolomics. Metabolomics is the study of the metabolome, defined as those molecules with an atomic mass less than 1.5 kDa. There are two main metabolomics methods: mass spectrometry (MS) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy, each with its respective benefits and limitations. MS has greater sensitivity and so can detect many more metabolites. However, its cost (especially when heavy labelled internal standards are required for absolute quantitation) and quality control is sub-optimal for large cohorts. 1H NMR is less sensitive but sample preparation is generally faster and analysis times shorter, resulting in markedly lower analysis costs. 1H NMR is robust, reproducible and can provide absolute quantitation of many metabolites. Of particular relevance to cardio-metabolic disease is the ability of 1H NMR to provide detailed quantitative data on amino acids, fatty acids and other metabolites as well as lipoprotein subparticle concentrations and size. Early epidemiological studies suggest promise, however, this is an emerging field and more data is required before we can determine the clinical utility of these measures to improve disease prediction and treatment. This review describes the theoretical basis of 1H NMR; compares MS and 1H NMR and provides a tabular overview of recent 1H NMR-based research findings in the atherosclerosis field, describing the design and scope of studies conducted to date. 1H NMR metabolomics-CVD related research is emerging, however further large, robustly conducted prospective, genetic and intervention studies are needed to advance research on CVD risk prediction and to identify causal pathways amenable to intervention

Fitting and Interpreting Occupancy Models

We show that occupancy models are more difficult to fit than is generally appreciated because the estimating equations often have multiple solutions, including boundary estimates which produce fitted probabilities of zero or one. The estimates are unstable when the data are sparse, making them difficult to interpret, and, even in ideal situations, highly variable. As a consequence, making accurate inference is difficult. When abundance varies over sites (which is the general rule in ecology because we expect spatial variance in abundance) and detection depends on abundance, the standard analysis suffers bias (attenuation in detection, biased estimates of occupancy and potentially finding misleading relationships between occupancy and other covariates), asymmetric sampling distributions, and slow convergence of the sampling distributions to normality. The key result of this paper is that the biases are of similar magnitude to those obtained when we ignore non-detection entirely. The fact that abundance is subject to detection error and hence is not directly observable, means that we cannot tell when bias is present (or, equivalently, how large it is) and we cannot adjust for it. This implies that we cannot tell which fit is better: the fit from the occupancy model or the fit ignoring the possibility of detection error. Therefore trying to adjust occupancy models for non-detection can be as misleading as ignoring non-detection completely. Ignoring non-detection can actually be better than trying to adjust for it.Funding was received from the Australian Research Council to support this research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscrip

Ariel - Volume 5 Number 5

Editors Mark Dembert J. D. Kanofsky Entertainment Robert Breckenridge Joe Conti Gary Kaskey Photographer Scot Kastner Overseas Editor Mike Sinason Circulation Jay Amsterdam Humorist Jim McCann Staff Ken Jaffe Bob Sklaroff Janet Welsh Dave Jacoby Phil Nimoityn Frank Chervane

International Space Station Crew Quarters Ventilation and Acoustic Design Implementation

The International Space Station (ISS) United States Operational Segment has four permanent rack sized ISS Crew Quarters (CQs) providing a private crew member space. The CQs use Node 2 cabin air for ventilation/thermal cooling, as opposed to conditioned ducted air-from the ISS Common Cabin Air Assembly (CCAA) or the ISS fluid cooling loop. Consequently, CQ can only increase the air flow rate to reduce the temperature delta between the cabin and the CQ interior. However, increasing airflow causes increased acoustic noise so efficient airflow distribution is an important design parameter. The CQ utilized a two fan push-pull configuration to ensure fresh air at the crew member's head position and reduce acoustic exposure. The CQ ventilation ducts are conduits to the louder Node 2 cabin aisle way which required significant acoustic mitigation controls. The CQ interior needs to be below noise criteria curve 40 (NC-40). The design implementation of the CQ ventilation system and acoustic mitigation are very inter-related and require consideration of crew comfort balanced with use of interior habitable volume, accommodation of fan failures, and possible crew uses that impact ventilation and acoustic performance. Each CQ required 13% of its total volume and approximately 6% of its total mass to reduce acoustic noise. This paper illustrates the types of model analysis, assumptions, vehicle interactions, and trade-offs required for CQ ventilation and acoustics. Additionally, on-orbit ventilation system performance and initial crew feedback is presented. This approach is applicable to any private enclosed space that the crew will occupy

Polls and the political process: the use of opinion polls by political parties and mass media organizations in European post‐communist societies (1990–95)

Opinion polling occupies a significant role within the political process of most liberal-capitalist societies, where it is used by governments, parties and the mass media alike. This paper examines the extent to which polls are used for the same purposes in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular, for bringing political elites and citizens together. It argues that these political elites are more concerned with using opinion polls for gaining competitive advantage over their rivals and for reaffirming their political power, than for devolving political power to citizens and improving the general processes of democratization

Challenges of dosimetry of ultra-short pulsed very high energy electron beams

Very high energy electrons (VHEE) in the range from 100–250 MeV have the potential of becoming an alternative modality in radiotherapy because of their improved dosimetric properties compared with 6-20 MV photons generated by clinical linear accelerators (LINACs). VHEE beams have characteristics unlike any other beams currently used for radiotherapy: femtosecond to picosecond duration electron bunches, which leads to very high dose per pulse, and energies that exceed that currently used in clinical applications. Dosimetry with conventional online detectors, such as ionization chambers or diodes, is a challenge due to non-negligible ion recombination effects taking place in the sensitive volumes of these detectors. FLUKA and Geant4 Monet Carlo (MC) codes have been employed to study the temporal and spectral evolution of ultrashort VHEE beams in a water phantom. These results are complemented by ion recombination measurements employing an IBA CC04 ionization chamber for a 165 MeV VHEE beam. For comparison, ion recombination has also been measured using the same chamber with a conventional 20 MeV electron beam. This work demonstrates that the IBA CC04 ionization chamber exhibits significant ion recombination and is therefore not suitable for dosimetry of ultrashort pulsed VHEE beams applying conventional correction factors. Further study is required to investigate the applicability of ion chambers in VHEE dosimetry

CD44 mediates stem cell mobilization to damaged lung its novel transcriptional targets, Cortactin and Survivin

Beyond their role in bone and lung homeostasis, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are becoming popular in cell therapy. Various insults may disrupt the repair mechanisms involving MSCs. One such insult is smoking, which is a major risk factor for osteoporosis and respiratory diseases. Upon cigarette smoke-induced damage, a series of reparatory mechanisms ensue; one such mechanism involves Glycosaminoglycans (GAG). One of these GAGs, namely hyaluronic acid (HA), serves as a potential therapeutic target in lung injury. However, much of its mechanisms of action through its major receptor CD44 remains unexplored. Our previous studies have identified and functionally validated that both cortactin (CTTN: marker of motility) and Survivin (BIRC5: required for cell survival) act as novel HA/CD44-downstream transcriptional targets underpinning cell motility. Here, human MSCs were treated with "" smoke to investigate the effects of cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) on these HA-CD44 novel signaling pathways. Our results show that CSC decreased the expression of both CD44 and its downstream targets CTTN and BIRC5 in MSCs, and that HA reversed these effects. Interestingly, CSC inhibited migration and invasion of MSCs upon CD44-targeted RNAi treatment. This shows the importance of CD44-HA/CTTN and CD44-HA/BIRC5 signaling pathways in MSC motility, and further suggests that these signaling pathways may provide a novel mechanism implicated in migration of MSCs during repair of lung tissue injury. These findings suggest that one should use caution before utilizing MSC from donors with history of smoking, and further pave the way towards the development of targeted therapeutic approaches against CD44-associated diseases