In Tort Pursuit of Mass Media: Big Tobacco, Big Banks, and Their Big Secrets

This article examines potential civil liability under the multistate norms of tort and closely related areas in the common law of the United States for the mass media re-publisher of leaked corporate secrets. The examination employs two fact patterns derived from real cases: one, contemporary, an international bank\u27s grievance, never resolved on the merits in court, against the online publisher WikiLeaks; and second, conventional, a tobacco manufacturer\u27s grievance, feared but never filed, against the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes. The study assumes jurisdiction arguendo and examines liability theories in tortious interference; unfair-competition law; and conversion, trade-secret appropriation, and related theories of theft. The Article concludes that direct liability under any of these theories is unlikely, but that claims for associative liability might well succeed. In reaching these conclusions, the study analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the claims and the vulnerabilities of the defenses, including the freedom of speech. Ultimately, the Article demonstrates how nuanced questions of fact would prove dispositive of liability, such that the liability exposure of the media defendant increases in proportion to its entanglement with an unscrupulous source. The discernible risk of liability counsels against an absolutist stance on the freedom of information when media contemplate the republication of leaked corporate secrets

Symphonic Winds

Center for Performing Arts Sunday, March 6, 2005 3:00 p.m

The buckling of a swollen thin gel layer bound to a compliant substrate

Gels are used to design bilayered structures with high residual stresses. The swelling of a thin layer on a compliant substrate leads to compressive stresses. The post-buckling of this layer is investigated experimentally; the wavelengths and amplitudes of the resulting modes are measured. A simplified model with a self-avoiding rod on a Winkler foundation is in semi-quantitative agreement with experiments and reproduces the observed cusp-like folds.Comment: submitted to Journal of Applied Mechanic

First Documentation of the European Gut Fungus, \u3cem\u3eEphemerellomyces\u3c/em\u3e, and Other Insect Associated Endosymbionts in the Dry Creek Drainage, Boise, Idaho

Trichomycetes, a former class of obligate endosymbiotic fungi, are now recognized as an ecological group that inhabits the gut(s) of immature insects. Though the biodiversity and geographical distribution of trichomycetes are worldwide, our knowledge of the group in the Pacific Northwest is limited due to the few researchers conducting studies on them. Dry Creek drainage in Boise, Idaho was selected in the winter of 2009-10 as a potential site to find gut fungi. This initial survey provides the first account of Ephemerellomyces aquilonius, a species previously documented and studied only in Norway. Ephemerellomyces aquilonius (a monotypic genus) is a member of the Harpellales, an order of trichomycetes, and was dissected from the digestive tracts of mayflies (Ephemeroptera) collected from the creek. Amongst the various aquatic habitats surveyed and hosts recovered, gut fungi were also documented in stoneflies (Plecoptera) and black flies (Diptera: Simuliidae). Our investigation provides a significant new record of the very rare and unusual taxon, E. aquilonius, previously only known in Western Europe. The success of this brief survey demonstrates promise for further discoveries of gut fungi at this site, in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. This disjunct distribution bridges an enormous geographical divide, although the species actually may be more widespread than earlier anticipated. Future collections and research on specimens from Dry Creek, with sequence data to be generated in our laboratory will be eagerly awaited as we place this unusual species in our expanding molecular-based phylogenies. We highlight here the morphology of E. aquilonius and some of the other endosymbionts found there