The Per Se Rule: Alive and Well and Living in Catalano

The antitrust plaintiff\u27s favorite rule of liability—the per se rule—has through the years served as the cornerstone of substantive analysis under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Recently, however, the Rule has been rumored to be undergoing hard times in the courts. Such a development, if true, would be of no mean significance to the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice. The scope and application of the per se rule to a given set of facts frequently is the focus of many of the cases with which the Division deals on a day to day basis. The propriety of characterizing a course of conduct as subject to per se liability often determines whether or not a case is appropriate for criminal prosecution. Moreover, even in the civil area, the scope of the per se rule becomes a key factor in structuring the government\u27s approach to litigation. After the change in membership of the Supreme Court during the days of Chief Justice Warren, and particularly after the Supreme Court\u27s opinions in Continental T. V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., and, more recently, Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting Systems, Inc., many antitrust conferences began predicting the imminent erosion and demise of the per se rule as a tool of antitrust analysis. Many lawyers around the country began, depending upon their perspective, either gleefully or despondently anticipating the ultimate narrowing and perhaps judicial repeal of the per se rule in all but the most extreme cases of anticompetitive purpose and effect. To paraphrase Mark Twain, these reports of death of the per se rule have been grossly exaggerated. Indeed, this fundamental tool of Sherman Act analysis continues to endure and even flourish

Unpacking Brazil’s leadership in the global biofuels arena: Brazilian ethanol diplomacy in Africa

Biofuels represent an opportunity for Brazil to exert global leadership by substantially scaling up the production, consumption, and international trade of bioethanol. Africa represents an ideal venue in which to do this, given its suitable agro-climatic conditions and extensive land area. Brazil has consequently sought to establish bilateral partnerships with African countries, as well as North-South-South trilateral partnerships involving the EU and US. However, empirically grounded assessments of how Brazil’s leadership aspirations have unfolded in practice through these partnerships are limited. In this article, we examine Brazil’s potential to exert global political leadership, by analyzing its policy-based, structural, and instrumental qualities in making bilateral and trilateral inroads regarding bioethanol production in Africa. Interviews in Brazil, Africa, and Europe suggest that both the bilateral and trilateral avenues have produced meager results. Lack of domestic strategy and vision, economic recession, and a fragmented alliance network have reduced Brazil’s capacity to achieve its ethanol diplomacy objectives

Vesiculation in magmas from Stromboli and implications for normal Strombolian activity and paroxysmal explosions in basaltic systems

We performed a series of X-ray tomographic experiments and lattice Boltzmann permeability simulations on pyroclastic products from explosive activity at Stromboli between December 2004 and May 2006. We reconstructed the 3-D textures of vesicles to investigate the relationship between the nature of vesiculation in the erupted products and the dynamics of gas transport in the shallow conduit in order to derive implications for the eruptive behaviour of basaltic volcanoes. Scoriae from normal Strombolian explosions display remarkably consistent vesicle volume distributions fit by power-laws with an exponent of 1 (±0.2). We ascribe the origin of such distributions to the combined effect of coalescence and continuous nucleation events in the steady-state, shallow magma system that supplies normal Strombolian activity. Volume distributions and textures of vesicles in pumice clasts from the 5 April 2003 and 15 March 2007 paroxysmal activity are markedly different from those in the scoriae. Besides a powerlaw function with a higher exponent, portions of these distributions can be also fit by an exponential function, suggesting the attempt of the system to reach near-equilibrium conditions. The investigated pumice clasts also lack the large, connecting vesicles responsible for the development of degassing pathways in the Stromboli magma that erupts the scoriae. This testifies to a decreased degassing efficiency of the magma associated with paroxysmal explosions and potential overpressure build-up at depth. By comparison with degassing experiments on basaltic melts, we derive a time constraint on the order of minutes to hours for the incubation of paroxysms at Stromboli

Wavefield extraction using multi-channel chirplet decomposition

International audienceIn acoustical and seismic fields, wavefield extraction has alwaysbeen a crucial issue to solve inverse problem. Depending on the experimentalconfiguration, conventional methods of wavefield decomposition might nolonger likely to hold. In this paper, an original approach is proposed based ona multichannel decomposition of the signal into a weighted sum of elementaryfunctions known as chirplets. Each chirplet is described by physical parametersand the collection of chirplets makes up a large adaptable dictionary,so that a chirplet corresponds unambiguously to one wave componen

Catalysis of proline isomerization and molecular chaperone activity in a tug-of-war

Catalysis of cis/trans isomerization of prolines is important for the activity and misfolding of intrinsically disordered proteins. Catalysis is achieved by peptidylprolyl isomerases, a superfamily of molecular chaperones. Here, we provide atomic insight into a tug-of-war between cis/trans isomerization and molecular chaperone activity. Catalysis of proline isomerization by cyclophilin A lowers the energy barrier for \u3b1-synuclein misfolding, while isomerase-binding to a separate, disease-associated protein region opposes aggregation. We further show that cis/trans isomerization outpowers the holding activity of cyclophilin A. Removal of the proline isomerization barrier through posttranslational truncation of \u3b1-synuclein reverses the action of the proline isomerase and turns it into a potent molecular chaperone that inhibits protein misfolding. The data reveal a conserved mechanism of dual functionality in cis/trans isomerases and define its molecular determinants acting on intrinsically disordered proteins

Land use, rangeland degradation and ecological changes in the southern Kalahari, Botswana

Dual-scale analyses assessing farm-scale patterns of ecological change and landscape-scale patterns of change in vegetation cover and animal distribution are presented from ecological transect studies away from waterpoints, regional remotely sensed analysis of vegetation cover and animal numbers across the southern Kalahari, Botswana. Bush encroachment is prevalent in semi-arid sites where Acacia mellifera Benth. is widespread in communal areas and private ranches, showing that land tenure changes over the last 40 years have not avoided rangeland degradation. Herbaceous cover is dominated in intensively grazed areas by the annual grass Schmidtia kalahariensis Stent and in moderately grazed areas by the perennial grass Eragrostis lehmanniana Nees. Nutritious perennial grass species including Eragrostis pallens Hack. Ex Schinz remain prevalent in Wildlife Management Areas. Other ecological changes include the invasion of the exotic Prosopis glandulosa Torr. and dense stands of Rhigozum trichotomum Kuntze. in the arid southwest. Regional patterns of wildlife species show that the expansion of cattleposts and fenced ranches has led to large areas of low wildlife conservation value even in areas where cattle production is not practiced. Findings show the need for integrated landscape-scale planning of land use if the ecological value and biodiversity of the southern Kalahari is to be retained

Challenging the challenge: handling data in the Gigabit/s range

The ALICE experiment at CERN will propose unprecedented requirements for event building and data recording. New technologies will be adopted as well as ad-hoc frameworks, from the acquisition of experimental data up to the transfer onto permanent media and its later access. These issues justify a careful, in-depth planning and preparation. The ALICE Data Challenge is a very important step of this development process where simulated detector data is moved from dummy data sources up to the recording media using processing elements and data-paths as realistic as possible. We will review herein the current status of past, present and future ALICE Data Challenges, with particular reference to the sessions held in 2002 when - for the first time - streams worth one week of ALICE data were recorded onto tape media at sustained rates exceeding 300 MB/s.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages, PDF. PSN MOGT00

Glucocorticoid pharmacogenetics in pediatric idiopathic nephrotic syndrome

Idiopathic nephrotic syndrome represents the most common type of primary glomerular disease in children: glucocorticoids (GCs) are the first-line therapy, even if considerable interindividual differences in thepir efficacy and side effects have been reported. Immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory effects of these drugs are mainly due to the GC-mediated transcription regulation of pro- and anti-inflammatory genes. This mechanism of action is the result of a complex multistep pathway that involves the glucocorticoid receptor and several other proteins, encoded by polymorphic genes. Aim of this review is to highlight the current knowledge on genetic variants that could affect GC response, particularly focusing on children with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome

European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM) on-site inspection forms for forensic pathology, anthropology, odontology, genetics, entomology and toxicology for forensic and medico-legal scene and corpse investigation: the Parma form

Further to a previous publication by the European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM) concerning on-site forensic and medico-legal scene and corpse investigation, this publication provides guidance for forensic medical specialists, pathologists and, where present, coroners’ activity at a scene of death inspection and to harmonize the procedures for a correct search, detection, collection, sampling and storage of all elements which may be useful as evidence, and ensure documentation of all these steps. This ECLM’s inspection form provides a checklist to be used on-site for the investigation of a corpse present at a crime or suspicious death scene. It permits the collection of all relevant data not only for the pathologist, but also for forensic anthropologists, odontologists, geneticists, entomologists and toxicologists, thus supporting a collaborative work approach. Detailed instructions for the completion of forms are provided