Ave Defamation, Atque Vale Libel and Slander

Two recent decisions by the Maryland Court of Appeals have brought about substantial changes in the law of libel and slander. The author considers the consequences of these decisions, welcoming the abolition of certain distinctions between written and spoken defamation as well as the adoption of new rules pertaining to recoverable damages. The author, however, expresses reservations as to pronouncements in the decisions that purport to impose new burdens on the plaintiff to establish liability

Ave Defamation, Atque Vale Libel and Slander

Two recent decisions by the Maryland Court of Appeals have brought about substantial changes in the law of libel and slander. The author considers the consequences of these decisions, welcoming the abolition of certain distinctions between written and spoken defamation as well as the adoption of new rules pertaining to recoverable damages. The author, however, expresses reservations as to pronouncements in the decisions that purport to impose new burdens on the plaintiff to establish liability

Photoelasticity of crystalline and amorphous silica from first principles

Based on density-functional perturbation theory we have computed from first principles the photoelastic tensor of few crystalline phases of silica at normal conditions and high pressure (quartz, $\alpha$-cristobalite, $\beta$-cristobalite) and of models of amorphous silica (containig up to 162 atoms), obtained by quenching from the melt in combined classical and Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulations. The computational framework has also been checked on the photoelastic tensor of crystalline silicon and MgO as prototypes of covalent and ionic systems. The agreement with available experimental data is good. A phenomenological model suitable to describe the photoelastic properties of different silica polymorphs is devised by fitting on the ab-initio data.Comment: ten figure