ABCG subfamily (version 2019.4) in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology Database

This family of 'half-transporters' act as homo- or heterodimers; particularly ABCG5 and ABCG8 are thought to be obligate heterodimers. The ABCG5/ABCG heterodimer sterol transporter structure has been determined [4], suggesting an extensive intracellular nucleotide binding domain linked to the transmembrane domains by a fold in the primary sequence. The functional ABCG2 transporter appears to be a homodimer with structural similarities to the ABCG5/ABCG8 heterodimer [7]

ABCG subfamily in GtoPdb v.2023.1

This family of 'half-transporters' act as homo- or heterodimers; particularly ABCG5 and ABCG8 are thought to be obligate heterodimers. The ABCG5/ABCG heterodimer sterol transporter structure has been determined [6], suggesting an extensive intracellular nucleotide binding domain linked to the transmembrane domains by a fold in the primary sequence. The functional ABCG2 transporter appears to be a homodimer with structural similarities to the ABCG5/ABCG8 heterodimer [10, 1]

Legal Fictions

Many judges faced with the task of rendering difficult decisions have a habit of pretending things that they know to be false. In so doing they employ legal fiction. Generally, a legal fiction is a false assumption of fact made by a court as the basis for resolving a legal issue. One of its purposes is to reconcile a specific legal result with an established legal rule. Legal fictions are thought to provide a mechanism for preserving the rule while ensuring a just outcome. By feigning the facts, the rule is said to remain intact. Historically, the fiction has achieved a certain duality. It is thought to be a humiliation to legal reasoning while, at the same time, indispensable to justice.;This study of legal fictions is an attempt to answer plaguing questions in the debate about an old judicial practice. To what extent are legal fictions necessary? What is their proper function? What are the dangers associated with their use? The answer to these questions is gleaned from four separate investigations of the fiction, each taken from a different perspective. The first is an overview of the historical debate that has been generated by the use of legal fictions. It provides an essential distinction between the judicial device known as a legal fiction and other so-called fictions that form the infrastructure of our legal system. The second investigation provides a contemporary account of legal fictions through a critical examination of Fuller\u27s study of them. This investigation reveals certain shortcomings in Fuller\u27s theoretical account. Consequently, in the third investigation, a contemporary case study is provided. The development of a particular legal fiction is traced from its ancient origins in Roman law to its present use in the Canadian courts in an attempt to understand how the fiction actually operates in practice. In the final investigation, a philosophical examination of the background conditions underlying the use of legal fictions illustrates how reasoning through the device of fiction differs from usual methods of judicial reasoning. This is achieved by contemplating nonfiction in the law on Searle\u27s model of institutional facts

The Myth of Racial Superiority in Sports

Sports hold a special place in the hearts of many Americans. Indeed, athletic competition has come to define and shape our understanding in many ways of what it means to be American. There is, however, a dark side to sports and that is the racial tension that often consumes our understanding of athletic competition and the equality of athletic prowess and personal ability. Seemingly innocuous, sports bring to the forefront racial sentiments about innate superiority, that certain types of people are better athletes simply by the nature of their being born. In his book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk about It, John Entine posits that innate genetic differences amongst peoples leads to certain racial groups excelling at particular sporting events. It is the intent of this paper, through a close examination of Entine’s theoretical arguments, to demonstrate that science and genetic experimentation have proven that natural biological variation amongst and between peoples cannot be used to validate claims of innate racial superiority in athletic competition

Spirits in a Material World: Intelligent Agents as Intermediaries in Electronic Commerce

The article provides an in-depth analysis of the contract issues peculiar to automated electronic commerce. The aim of the study is to provide a critical evaluation of the various solutions that might be adopted by a legislature seeking to cure formal defects in agreements that are negotiated and entered into by software programs, independent of human review. The author begins with an examination of the current state of the technology that automates electronic commerce, offering some speculation as to its future development. He then outlines the barriers to automated electronic commerce inherent in traditional contract doctrine. He argues against the proposal to cure doctrinal difficulties by deeming electronic devices to be legal persons and investigates the merit of the legislative approaches adopted by UNCITRAL, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws (U.S.), and the Uniform Law Conference of Canada. He ends by advocating an alternative approach, based on the law of agency

Pre-Natal Fictions and Post-Partum Actions

The author examines the theory of liability for pre-natal injuries adopted by Canadian courts. This theory has recently been adopted by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal in an unprecedented decision that allows an infant to sue its own mother for alleged negligent conduct that occurred prior to the child\u27s birth. The author argues that, despite contrary claims, the present theory of liability relies on the judicial use of a legal fiction. He maintains that this fiction has been stretched beyond its theoretical limits and concludes that courts are no longer justified in adopting the present theory of liability in cases where a child sues its own mother. He ends by suggesting that courts must undertake a deeper analysis of the issues relevant to a determination of the properscope of recovery for pre-natal injuries

The Death of the AI Author

Much of the recent literature on AI and authorship asks whether an increasing sophistication and independence of generative code should cause us to rethink embedded assumptions about the meaning of authorship. It is often suggested that recognizing the authored — and so copyrightable — nature of AI-generated works may require a less profound doctrinal leap than has historically been assumed. In this essay, we argue that the threshold for authorship does not depend on the evolution or state of the art in AI or robotics. Rather, the very notion of AI-authorship rests on a category mistake: it is an error about the ontology of authorship. Building on the established critique of the romantic author, we contend that the death of the romantic author also and equally entails the death of the AI author. Claims of AI authorship depend on a romanticized conception of both authorship and AI, and simply do not make sense in terms of the realities of the world in which the problem exists. Those realities should push us past bare doctrinal or utilitarian considerations about what an author must do. Instead, they demand an ontological consideration of what an author must be. Drawing on insights from literary and political theory, we offer an account of authorship that is fundamentally relational: authorship is a dialogic and communicative act that is inherently social, with the cultivation of selfhood and social relations being the entire point of the practice. This discussion reorientates debates about copyright’s subsistence in AI-generated works; but it also transcends copyright law, going to the normative core of how law should — and should not — think about robots and AI, and their role in human relations