Why Technology Provides Compelling Reasons to Apply a Daubert Analysis to the Legal Standard of Care in Medical Malpractice Cases

Traditionally, courts have applied a customary practice standard in determining the legal standard of care in medical malpractice cases. Recently, a few courts have abandoned this dated standard and instead applied a Daubert analysis to the standard of care, which focuses on medical evidence that is scientifically based . In light of these recent holdings, this iBrief argues that with the increasing amounts of technologies improving evidence-based medicine, the customary practice standard is no longer a useful or appropriate test for determining the standard of care in medical malpractice cases. By applying a Daubert analysis to an expert’s testimony on the standard of care, the testimony becomes a scientifically based testimony rather than an expert’s notion of what is common practice in the medical profession

Marine Corps Cultural Similarities to Native Americans

According to the 4-field approach to anthropology, a people can be defined by its archaeology, culture, biology and linguistics (Hicks, 2013). Native Americans and Marines have striking similarities as a people when using this approach, especially in cultural and linguistic analysis

Blocking Former Sex Offenders from Online Social Networks: Is this a Due Process Violation?

Extremum seeking control (ESC) is a classical adaptive control method aimed at locating and tracking optimal operating conditions in complex non-linear plants. Early results on ESC were restricted to plants that could bedescribed by Wiener or Hammerstein models. However, recent results haveshown that ESC will possess a stationary solution close to the optimum also for more general dynamical systems, provided the gradient estimation and feedback is sufficiently slow relative to the process dynamics. This thesis addresses the uniqueness of this solution and the achievable rate of convergence.The motivation for the work stems from the need to optimize a complex biofilm reactor, the CANON process, which if operated near a narrow optimum may significantly lower the cost of ammonium removal in wastewater treatment. Simulations of ESC applied to the CANON process reveal that, depending on initial conditions and tuning parameters, the ESC loop may converge to stationary solutions far removed from the optimum and that multiple stationary solutions may exist. Analysis of a general model for the ESC loop shows that the stationary solutions are characterized either by a gain condition or a phase lag condition on the locally linearized system, the latter indicating that the ESC loop can act as a phase-lock loop. The phase lag condition is shown to be satisfied close to the optimum, but can be fulfilled also at operating points with no relation to the optimality criterion whatsoever and this serves to explain the observed solution multiplicity. Bifurcation theory is employed to further analyze the stationary solutions of the ESC loop and conditions for existence of saddle-node bifurcations are derived. A saddle node bifurcation implies a hard loss of stability and the existence of multiple stationary solutions. It is also demonstrated, using examples, that the ESC loop may undergo other types of bifurcations, including period doubling bifurcations into chaos. For the considered example, the resulting chaotic solution is significantly closer to optimum than the underlying nominal limit cycle. Previous results on ESC applied to general dynamic systems have relied on the use of asymptotic methods, such as singular perturbations and averaging. This has resulted in a three time-scale separation of the problem, in which the gradient estimation and control have been forced to be significantly slower than the open-loop process dynamics. For most processes, including the CANON process studied in this thesis, this renders ESC of little practical use and we therefore consider relaxing some of the restrictive assumptions. Inparticular, we allow for any gradient estimation rate and significantly faster gradient feedback as compared to previous studies. Using a linear parameter varying (LPV) description of the plant, quantitative expressions for the convergence rate in terms of the ESC tuning parameters and plant properties are derived.QC 20141106</p

Righting a Financial Wrong: Debt Settlement Services, Private Student Lenders, and Auto Lenders Use Forced Arbitration to Escape Accountability When They Harm Consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB, or "the Bureau") in December 2013 released preliminary results of a study called for in the 2010 Dodd -- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on financial services businesses' use of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts. Such terms, or forced arbitration, call for disputes to be settled before a private arbitrator instead of in a court of law, and usually prohibit consumers from pursuing cases as a class. The data from the first report covered several aspects of forced arbitration. For example, it confirmed a high prevalence of arbitration clauses in the terms of service of credit cards, checking accounts, and prepaid cards. Additionally, according to the report, nearly all of the arbitration clauses contained terms denying their customers the ability to participate in class actions.Based on an examination of the data from the American Arbitration Association (AAA), the chief provider of consumer arbitrations, the Bureau determined that few consumers go to arbitration to resolve disputes with financial institutions.In making these and other determinations, the Bureau examined information involving four major financial services and products: credit cards, checking accounts, prepaid cards and payday loans. Other consumer financial services sectors under the CFPB's jurisdiction similarly use forced arbitration clauses and prohibit class actions. Notably, the debt settlement and auto loan sectors recently have fallen under considerable scrutiny by the Bureau and other state and federal officials for engaging in questionable practices. A review of materials involving these sectors shows that businesses within them have used forced arbitration to avoid having to respond to allegations and, in many instances, escaped accountability for actual wrongdoing. Meanwhile, users of their products and services who have suffered financial injuries from predatory and deceptive practices have been denied adequate legal remedies. Another sector that makes widespread use of forced arbitration clauses is the private student loan industry. The agency recently released findings from its investigation into the private student loan market, which documented the impact of the high-cost loans. In 2012, Public Citizen also issued a report on the industry. It concluded that unsavory conduct by the private student loan industry combined with restrictive terms in borrowers' promissory notes that require disputes to be resolved in private arbitration were not conducive to fair lending.The Bureau can make these industry sectors answerable for some of their shady practices by restoring consumers' ability to enforce their rights on their own. The Bureau has the authority to write a rule to require the regulated consumer financial services industry to eliminate predispute binding mandatory (or forced) arbitration from consumer transactions involving all products under its jurisdiction

“Brave New World”: The New Q, Masculinity, and the Craig Era Bond Films

This article examines the significance of the new Q in Skyfall (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2012) and Spectre (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2015). It explores some of the ways that the new take on Q in the Craig era has not only adapted the dynamic between Bond and the MI6 gadget-master by turning him into a young tech geek, but also speaks volumes about masculinity and the Bond franchise

Types and forgetfulness in categorical linguistics and quantum mechanics

The role of types in categorical models of meaning is investigated. A general scheme for how typed models of meaning may be used to compare sentences, regardless of their grammatical structure is described, and a toy example is used as an illustration. Taking as a starting point the question of whether the evaluation of such a type system 'loses information', we consider the parametrized typing associated with connectives from this viewpoint. The answer to this question implies that, within full categorical models of meaning, the objects associated with types must exhibit a simple but subtle categorical property known as self-similarity. We investigate the category theory behind this, with explicit reference to typed systems, and their monoidal closed structure. We then demonstrate close connections between such self-similar structures and dagger Frobenius algebras. In particular, we demonstrate that the categorical structures implied by the polymorphically typed connectives give rise to a (lax unitless) form of the special forms of Frobenius algebras known as classical structures, used heavily in abstract categorical approaches to quantum mechanics.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figure

Badly approximable numbers over imaginary quadratic fields

We recall the notion of nearest integer continued fractions over the Euclidean imaginary quadratic fields $K$ and characterize the "badly approximable" numbers, ($z$ such that there is a $C(z)>0$ with $|z-p/q|\geq C/|q|^2$ for all $p/q\in K$), by boundedness of the partial quotients in the continued fraction expansion of $z$. Applying this algorithm to "tagged" indefinite integral binary Hermitian forms demonstrates the existence of entire circles in $\mathbb{C}$ whose points are badly approximable over $K$, with effective constants. By other methods (the Dani correspondence), we prove the existence of circles of badly approximable numbers over any imaginary quadratic field, with loss of effectivity. Among these badly approximable numbers are algebraic numbers of every even degree over $\mathbb{Q}$, which we characterize. All of the examples we consider are associated with cocompact Fuchsian subgroups of the Bianchi groups $SL_2(\mathcal{O})$, where $\mathcal{O}$ is the ring of integers in an imaginary quadratic field.Comment: v3: Improved exposition (hopefully), especially in the second half of the pape