Presumption of Due Care by Decedent: An Anomaly Destroyed

In the recent case of Hutton v. Martin, the plaintiff sued the defendant for wrongful death arising from an automobile collision. The factual issue was whether plaintiff\u27s decedent was contributorily negligent by driving on the wrong side of the road at the time of the accident. There were no eye-witnesses to the accident except the defendant Martin. The trial judge gave the jury the following instruction: You are instructed that when a person is injured and dies as a result of a collision, a presumption arises that the person killed was at the time exercising due care and that he did all that the situation then and there presented to him required him to do to save himself from injury, when there is no credible evidence to the contrary On appeal, it was held that giving this instruction is reversible error

Evidence—Impeachment of Witnesses—Showing of General Reputation for Unchastity

D, charged with carnal knowledge of a 17-year-old girl, attempted to impeach the credibility of the prosecutrix by offering testimony of two witnesses to the effect that her general reputation in the community for morality was bad. The trial court excluded this evidence, and D was convicted. On appeal, Held: Affirmed. Evidence of general reputation for immorality is totally inadmissible for the purpose of impeaching the credibility of a witness. State v. Wolf, 40 Wn. 2d 648, 245 P. 2d 1009 (1952)

Instabilities in the wake of an inclined prolate spheroid

We investigate the instabilities, bifurcations and transition in the wake behind a 45-degree inclined 6:1 prolate spheroid, through a series of direct numerical simulations (DNS) over a wide range of Reynolds numbers (Re) from 10 to 3000. We provide a detailed picture of how the originally symmetric and steady laminar wake at low Re gradually looses its symmetry and turns unsteady as Re is gradually increased. Several fascinating flow features have first been revealed and subsequently analysed, e.g. an asymmetric time-averaged flow field, a surprisingly strong side force etc. As the wake partially becomes turbulent, we investigate a dominating coherent wake structure, namely a helical vortex tube, inside of which a helical symmetry alteration scenario was recovered in the intermediate wake, together with self-similarity in the far wake.Comment: Book chapter in "Computational Modeling of Bifurcations and Instabilities in Fluid Dynamics (A. Gelfgat ed.)", Springe

Effects of Variation in Flow on Distributions of Northern Squawfish in the Columbia River below McNary Dam

The movements of 23 northern squawfish Ptychocheilus oregonensis were monitored by radiotelemetry below a Columbia River hydroelectric dam during the out-migration of juvenile anadromous salmonids in 1984 and 1985. The work was done as part of a study to relate predator abundances and distribution to juvenile salmonid mortalities associated with dams. Northern squawfish remained in protected shoreline areas in spring and early summer, when discharge rates were high, but moved close to the dam and the juvenile bypass outflow area in mid to late summer, when discharge rates were low. Trends in northern squawfish movements were similar during abrupt changes in discharge rate. During short-term closures of the spillway, when flow patterns were abruptly changed, four of five northern squawfish moved out of the protected areas and into the main river channel. Surface water velocities at 81 locations occupied by radio-tagged northern squawfish in June to August 1985 ranged from 0 to 70 cm/s (mean, 24.5 cm/s). No preference within this range was evident, but the fish seemingly avoided areas of high current velocity, because they did not move into a substantial portion of the tailrace where water velocities exceeded 100 cm/s. Modification of structures to maintain high water velocities around bypass outflow areas should reduce potential predation on juvenile salmonids by northern squawfish