The Supreme Court As Risk Manager: An Analysis of Skinner

Examining a recent case in which the U.S. Supreme Court approved the collection of blood and urine samples from railroad employees, the authors conclude that, in attempting to improve railroad safety, both majority and minority opinions reflected undue emphasis on technical issues and inadequate attention to the intangible social values underlying traditional Constitutional rights to privacy

Martian geomorphology and its relation to subsurface volatiles

Martian volatile inventory, planetary climatic and atmospheric evolution, and the interpretation of various remote sensing data were discussed. A number of morphologies that were cited as potential indicators of subsurface volatiles were reviewed. Rampart craters and terrain softening were the focus of more in-depth discussion because of the popular attention they have received and the fact that their areal distributions are by far the most extensive of all the proposed indicators

Physiological Effects of Chronic Copper Exposure to Rainbow Trout (\u3cem\u3eOncorhynchus Mykiss\u3c/em\u3e) in Hard and Soft Water: Evaluation of Chronic Indicators

Effects of chronic copper exposure on a suite of indicators were examined: acute toxicity, acclimation, growth, sprint performance, whole-body electrolytes, tissue residues, and gill copper binding characteristics. Juvenile rainbow trout were exposed for 30 d to waterborne copper in hard water (hardness = 120 μg/L as CaCO3, pH = 8.0, Cu = 20 and 60 μg/L) and soft water (hardness = 20 μg/L as CaCO3, pH = 7.2, Cu = 1 and 2 μg/L). Significant acclimation to the metal occurred only in fish exposed to 60 mg/L, as seen by an approx. twofold increase in 96-h LC50 (153 vs 91 μg Cu/L). Chronic copper exposure had little or no effect on survival, growth, or swimming performance in either water hardness, nor was there any initial whole-body electrolyte loss (Na+ and Cl-). The present data suggest that the availability of food (3% wet body weight/day, distributed as three 1% meals) prevented growth inhibition and initial ion losses that usually result from Cu exposure. Elevated metal burdens in the gills and livers of exposed fish were measures of chronic copper exposure but not of effect. Initial gill binding experiments revealed the necessity of using radiolabeled Cu (64Cu) to detect newly accumulated Cu against gill background levels. Using this method, we verified the presence of saturable Cu-binding sites in the gills of juvenile rainbow trout and were able to make estimates of copperbinding affinity (log Kgill=Cu) and capacity (Bmax). Furthermore, we showed that both chronic exposure to Cu and to low water calcium had important effects on the Cu-binding characteristics of the gills

The Pitfalls of International Commercial Arbitration

The purpose of this Article is to examine the pitfalls of international arbitration on a broad scale. These pitfalls can be roughly grouped into two categories: (1) those endemic to the process of dispute resolution by a private extra-judicial tribunal which derives its power from the agreement of the parties, 2 including difficulties unforeseen in the drafting of the agreement that add delay, complications, and expense to the proceedings; and (2) those related to using the rules of a particular institution. Ideally, planning and skillful drafting can eliminate both types of pitfalls and preserve the advantages of arbitration over other available national judicial forums. The pitfalls inherent in institutional arbitration can be eliminated either by drafting provisions for ad hoc arbitration or by drafting complementary provisions to the rules of a chosen arbitral institution. Although the two categories of pitfalls are related, this Article will treat them separately. The initial focus will be on the choice of either ad hoc or institutional arbitration. This Article will consider supplementing by contract the rules of three of the major arbitral institutions: the American Arbitration Association (AAA), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), and the UNCITRAL rules. The most useful comparisons of the three bodies of rules converge at several points: the method of submission to the institution; the selection of arbitrators; the costs of the proceedings; the availability of provisional relief and antifrustration devices; the principles of procedure; the principles for determining applicable law; the form and substance of the award; and the enforceability of the award

Assignment Of Grades And Student Performance In A Hybrid Operations Management Course: What Works And Ideas For Improvements

The production and operations management class offered at California State University, Fresno underwent a transformation from being a four-unit, face-to-face course to a hybrid course.  This hybrid course, which is required for all students in the Craig School of Business, includes two units of face-to-face instruction each week, with some coverage of conceptual material as well as review and practice of the mathematical material presented online.   There are also two units of online streaming lecture instruction created and delivered by the course coordinator covering primarily quantitative material with some coverage of conceptual material for some chapters.  This second component translates into about ten hours of online related activities during the week for the students, requiring a large amount of self-discipline as they study and learn complex mathematical concepts applied to production management.  Students are expected to work through this material and complete corresponding quantitative worksheets prior to coming to class.  This paper compares the proportions of assigned grades of 116 students in four sections of the hybrid production and operations management class in the fall of 2006 to the proportions of assigned grades of 76 students in three sections of the course conducted in the spring of 2001, one of the last semesters that it was taught entirely in the classroom.  Changes that have taken place in the delivery of the course will be described, as well as suggestions for making the instructor’s delivery of the course more effective in the future.  Fisher’s exact test and chi-square analysis will be performed to determine if there was a significant change in the proportions of assigned grades between the face-to-face format and the hybrid course.  One item of particular interest is the proportion of assigned grades on the comprehensive, final exam, the content of which was virtually the same in 2001 as in 2006.  Thus, it provides a consistent measure of the students’ overall understanding of both conceptual and mathematical material at the end of the semester.&nbsp

The Active Management of Impending Cephalopelvic Disproportion in Nulliparous Women at Term: A Case Series

Background. The Active Management of Risk in Pregnancy at Term (AMOR-IPAT) protocol has been associated in several studies with significant reductions of group cesarean delivery rate. Present within each of these studies were nulliparous women with risk factors for cephalopelvic disproportion. Risk factors for cephalopelvic disproportion in nulliparous women are especially important because they represent the precursors for the most common indication for primary cesarean delivery. Cases. Three examples of exposure of urban nulliparous women to the AMOR-IPAT protocol are presented. Each woman's risk factor profile for Cephalopelvic Disproportion (CPD) was used to estimate her Upper Limit of Optimal Time of Vaginal Delivery for CPD (UL-OTDcpd). Labor management and clinical outcomes for each case are presented. A simple table summarizing induction rates and birth outcome rates of exposed versus nonexposed nulliparous women is also presented. Conclusion. Because the mode of delivery of the first birth substantially impacts birth options in later pregnancies, the impact of AMOR-IPAT on nulliparous patients is particularly important. Determining the UL-OTDcpd in nulliparous patients, and carefully inducing each patient who has not entered labor by her UL-OTDcpd, may be an effective way of lowering rates of cesarean delivery in nulliparous women

Prevalent low-grade dysplasia: the strongest predictor of malignant progression in Barrett's columnar-lined oesophagus

No abstract

Source motion mitigation for adaptive matched field processing

Application of adaptive matched field processing to the problem of detecting quiet targets in shallow water is complicated by source motion, both the motion of the target and the motion of discrete interferers. Target motion causes spreading of the target peak, thereby reducing output signal power. Interferer motion increases the dimensionality of the interference subspace, reducing adaptive interference suppression. This paper presents three techniques that mitigate source motion problems in adaptive matched field processing. The first involves rank reduction, which enables adaptive weight computation over short observation intervals where motion effects are less pronounced. The other two techniques specifically compensate for source motion. Explicit target motion compensation reduces target motion mismatch by focusing snapshots according to a target velocity hypothesis. And time-varying interference filtering places time-varying nulls on moving interferers not otherwise suppressed by adaptive weights. The three techniques are applied to volumetric array data from the Santa Barbara Channel Experiment and are shown to improve output signal-to-background-plus-noise ratio by more than 3 dB over the standard minimum-variance, distortionless response adaptive beam-former. Application of the techniques in some cases proves to be the difference between detecting and not detecting the target

Sleep-dependent consolidation in children with comprehension and vocabulary weaknesses: it'll be alright on the night?

BACKGROUND: Vocabulary is crucial for an array of life outcomes and is frequently impaired in developmental disorders. Notably, 'poor comprehenders' (children with reading comprehension deficits but intact word reading) often have vocabulary deficits, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Prior research suggests intact encoding but difficulties consolidating new word knowledge. We test the hypothesis that poor comprehenders' sleep-associated vocabulary consolidation is compromised by their impoverished lexical-semantic knowledge. METHODS: Memory for new words was tracked across wake and sleep to assess encoding and consolidation in 8-to-12-year-old good and poor comprehenders. Each child participated in two sets of sessions, one beginning in the morning (AM-encoding) and the other in the evening (PM-encoding). In each case, they were taught 12 words and were trained on a spatial memory task. Memory was assessed immediately, 12- and 24-hr later via stem-completion, picture-naming, and definition tasks to probe different aspects of word knowledge. Long-term retention was assessed 1-2 months later. RESULTS: Recall of word-forms improved over sleep and postsleep wake, as measured in both stem-completion and picture-naming tasks. Counter to hypotheses, deficits for poor comprehenders were not observed in consolidation but instead were seen across measures and throughout testing, suggesting a deficit from encoding. Variability in vocabulary knowledge across the whole sample predicted sleep-associated consolidation, but only when words were learned early in the day and not when sleep followed soon after learning. CONCLUSIONS: Poor comprehenders showed weaker memory for new words than good comprehenders, but sleep-associated consolidation benefits were comparable between groups. Sleeping soon after learning had long-lasting benefits for memory and may be especially beneficial for children with weaker vocabulary. These results provide new insights into the breadth of poor comprehenders' vocabulary weaknesses, and ways in which learning might be better timed to remediate vocabulary difficulties