A Review of \u3cem\u3eTorts and Compensation: Personal Accountability and Social Responsibility for Injury\u3c/em\u3e

I will review my selection of Dobbs and Hayden\u27s Torts And Compensation, Personal Accountability And Social Responsibility For Injury (hereinafter the Dobbs casebook ) for use in my year-long first-year torts class. My review will focus on the third edition and will note changes made in the fourth edition, which came out recently. My hope is to tell you a little about the Dobbs casebook and a little about why I thought it would suit my incoming first-year students and my style of teaching. When selecting a casebook I have four main concerns: What is the coverage? Does the casebook employ the traditional case method, a problem approach, or some combination? What is the balance struck by the authors between exploring policy and explaining black letter law? Is the casebook student- and faculty-friendly? The short answers to these questions are that the Dobbs casebook\u27s coverage focuses on personal injury, it uses predominately the traditional case method, it stresses black letter law over policy, and it is extremely student- and faculty-friendly

An Active Learning Approach to Teaching Tough Topics in Law School

The classic image of the Law School classroom is Professor Kingsfield\u27s at the podium using the Socratic Method to interrogate quivering law students. This article advocates the incorporation of new methods: we argue that an integrated and interactive approach to teaching and learning legal topics is beneficial for law students and law professors alike. Although the article focuses on personal jurisdiction, the lessons here can apply to a tough topic in any course. The article begins by explaining why personal jurisdiction is difficult, as well as theory and data on traditional studying versus how to promote optimal learning. The article then explains how the authors have effectively enhanced student learning with a two-pronged approach of providing key context to personal jurisdiction, combined with an active learning approach that involves interactive learning of PJ before, during and after class. This process includes a variety of tools including videos, guided reading of PJ cases with key questions, interactive quizzes with explanations before and after class, as well as clicker questions during class. The article concludes that one or more of these methods could be successfully incorporated into any class with a tough topic by faculty with varying teaching and technology preferences.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2016/1022/thumbnail.jp

Kynurenine Pathway Metabolism is Involved in the Maintenance of the Intracellular NAD+ Concentration in Human Primary Astrocytes

Efficient synthesis of NAD+ is critical to maintaining cell viability in all organs of the body. However, little is known of the pathway(s) by which cells of the central nervous system produce NAD+. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship, between tryptophan degradation via the kynurenine pathway (KP) and de novo NAD+ synthesis in human astrocytes, a major cell type within the brain. In this study we observed that inhibition of single enzymes of the KP resulted in significant decreases in NAD+ levels in astroglial cells after a 24 hr period. We also observed that astrocytes cultured in media deficient in tryptophan, nicotinic acid and nicotinamide resulted in a 50% decrease in NAD+ levels after 24 hrs. This decrease in NAD+ was partially restored by supplementation of the culture media with either tryptophan or kynurenine, or nicotinic acid or with supply of the salvage pathway precursor nicotinamide