The Revolving Door of Justice: Arbitration Agreements that Expand Court Review of an Award

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Judicial Enforcement of Predispute Arbitration Agreements: Back to the Future

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Police pay-contested and contestable

This paper provides an analysis of developments in the determination of police pay. It reveals the contested nature of public sector pay setting where the government of the day is given to short-term economic goals over and above any long-term approach to resolving staffing issues in the essential public services. In the case of the police, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) has traditionally used both industrial and political methods to put pressure on key government decision-makers. Developments reveal increasingly fraught relations between the police and the government, with the 2008 pay dispute in particular remarking a key point of deterioration in this set of relations. Once it became clear after the 2010 general election that the government would ignore industrial pressure then the PFEW felt driven to increase the activities of its political arm. This ultimately backfired with Plebgate leaving them naked in the negotiating chambe

Genome Sequence of Fusobacterium nucleatum Subspecies Polymorphum — a Genetically Tractable Fusobacterium

Fusobacterium nucleatum is a prominent member of the oral microbiota and is a common cause of human infection. F. nucleatum includes five subspecies: polymorphum, nucleatum, vincentii, fusiforme, and animalis. F. nucleatum subsp. polymorphum ATCC 10953 has been well characterized phenotypically and, in contrast to previously sequenced strains, is amenable to gene transfer. We sequenced and annotated the 2,429,698 bp genome of F. nucleatum subsp. polymorphum ATCC 10953. Plasmid pFN3 from the strain was also sequenced and analyzed. When compared to the other two available fusobacterial genomes (F. nucleatum subsp. nucleatum, and F. nucleatum subsp. vincentii) 627 open reading frames unique to F. nucleatum subsp. polymorphum ATCC 10953 were identified. A large percentage of these mapped within one of 28 regions or islands containing five or more genes. Seventeen percent of the clustered proteins that demonstrated similarity were most similar to proteins from the clostridia, with others being most similar to proteins from other gram-positive organisms such as Bacillus and Streptococcus. A ten kilobase region homologous to the Salmonella typhimurium propanediol utilization locus was identified, as was a prophage and integrated conjugal plasmid. The genome contains five composite ribozyme/transposons, similar to the CdISt IStrons described in Clostridium difficile. IStrons are not present in the other fusobacterial genomes. These findings indicate that F. nucleatum subsp. polymorphum is proficient at horizontal gene transfer and that exchange with the Firmicutes, particularly the Clostridia, is common