Reading Vico for the School of Law

In his oration On the Study Methods of Our Time, Giambattista Vico conceived of the jurist as a person well schooled in law and in rhetoric, able to perform as an orator and a statesman. This ideal contrasts markedly with the modern conception of the lawyer as primarily a rule-technician and a judge. Studying the educational program unfolded by Vico, it becomes apparent that the arts and sciences of oratory, law and philosophy for him converge in the role model of the prudent legislator. This role model has become virtually meaningless in the culture of modem law through an emphasis on the idea of sociolegal positivism which carries the conviction that jurists are functioning as social engineers, especially when they are judges. From Vico we can learn that it is worthwhile to attempt to restore the internal connection between rhetoric and jurisprudence. This could lead to a reform of the law school curriculum. It will be possible to design modern equivalents of the topical method, deriving from the rhetorical tradition. Vico encourages a free use of the resources of the poetic imagination. And a curriculum on these lines warns against confusing all the other arts of language (such as the art of legislation) with the art of interpretation

Jurisprudence for Global Law?

In developing a jurisprudence for global law, we have to move beyond the paradigms of the Western legal tradition. A crucial issue is how legal professionals will be able to deal with complex interdependencies involving cultural notions from a non-western legal tradition. A dialogue is then called for, as the example of Amartya Sen’s analysis of the Indian concepts of niti (somewhat like organizational propriety) and nyaya (somewhat like living law) demonstrates. Accordingly, global legal scholarship must not only become post-national, inter-disciplinary and empirical (as Pierre Larouche argues elsewhere in this issue) but it must also concern itself with cultural issues of justice and injustice

A novel penalty-based reduced order modelling method for dynamic analysis of joint structures

This work proposes a new reduced order modelling method to improve the computational efficiency for the dynamic simulation of a jointed structures with localized contact friction non-linearities. We reformulate the traditional equation of motion for a joint structure by linearising the non-linear system on the contact interface and augmenting the linearised system by introducing an internal non-linear penalty variable. The internal variable is used to compensate the possible non-linear effects from the contact interface. Three types of reduced basis are selected for the Galerkin projection, namely, the vibration modes (VMs) of the linearised system, static modes (SMs) and also the trial vector derivatives (TVDs) vectors. Using these reduced basis, it would allow the size of the internal variable to change correspondingly with the number of active non-linear DOFs. The size of the new reduced order model therefore can be automatically updated depending on the contact condition during the simulations. This would reduce significantly the model size when most of the contact nodes are in a stuck condition, which is actually often the case when a jointed structure vibrates. A case study using a 2D joint beam model is carried out to demonstrate the concept of the proposed method. The initial results from this case study is then compared to the state of the art reduced order modeling

Survival after Locoregional Recurrence or Second Primary Breast Cancer: Impact of the Disease-Free Interval

The association between the disease-free interval (DFI) and survival after a locoregional recurrence (LRR) or second primary (SP) breast cancer remains uncertain. The objective of this study is to clarify this association to obtain more information on expected prognosis. Women first diagnosed with early breast cancer between 2003–2006 were selected from the Netherlands Cancer Registry. LRRs and SP tumours within five years of first diagnosis were examined. The five-year period was subsequently divided into three equal intervals. Prognostic significance of the DFI on survival after a LRR or SP tumour was determined using Kaplan-Meier estimates and multivariable Cox regression analysis. Follow-up was complete until January 1, 2014. A total of 37,278 women was included in the analysis. LRRs or SP tumours were diagnosed in 890 (2,4%) and 897 (2,4%) respectively. Longer DFI was strongly and independently related to an improved survival after a LRR (long versus short: HR 0.65, 95% CI 0.48–0.88; medium versus short HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.65–1.01). Other factors related to improved survival after LRR were younger age (<70 years) and surgical removal of the recurrence. No significant association was found between DFI and survival after SP tumours. This is the first study to explore the association between the DFI and survival after recurrence in a nationwide population-based cancer registry. The DFI before a LRR is an independent prognostic factor for survival, with a longer DFI predicting better prognosi

The stochastic collocation Monte Carlo sampler: highly efficient sampling from ‘expensive’ distributions

[Abstract]: In this article, we propose an efficient approach for inverting computationally expensive cumulative distribution functions. A collocation method, called the Stochastic Collocation Monte Carlo sampler (SCMC sampler), within a polynomial chaos expansion framework, allows us the generation of any number of Monte Carlo samples based on only a few inversions of the original distribution plus independent samples from a standard normal variable. We will show that with this path-independent collocation approach the exact simulation of the Heston stochastic volatility model, as proposed in Broadie and Kaya [Oper. Res., 2006, 54, 217–231], can be performed efficiently and accurately. We also show how to efficiently generate samples from the squared Bessel process and perform the exact simulation of the SABR model