Reopening the Discussion of the Loss of Opportunity Doctrine in New Hampshire: A Look at Decisions Made in Light of Current Times

[Excerpt] “A close family member is diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and now only has a fifteen percent chance of survival. She soon dies. Prior to her diagnosis, she had routine screenings every two years, but her previous doctor failed to detect the then existing cancer when she would have had a fifty percent chance of survival. In New Hampshire, from a legal standpoint, there has been no wrong. This legal concept of negligent medical care that causes a patient to have a lower percentage of survival, or a less favorable outcome, is referred to as the “loss of opportunity” or “loss of chance doctrine.” Generally, acceptance of the loss of opportunity doctrine has been limited to medical malpractice cases. Some courts and scholars have considered extending the loss of opportunity doctrine to other contexts, such as to legal malpractice, or to those who fail to contact emergency help, but with little success. In restricting loss of chance exclusively to medical malpractice in Massachusetts, the state supreme court identified four reasons why the loss of chance doctrine is “particularly well suited” for medical malpractice cases: (1) the high reliability of expert evidence; (2) the expectation that the doctor will “take every reasonable measure” to ensure a favorable outcome; (3) the nature of a patient seeking medical care (i.e., patients have pre-existing conditions) can make proving the causation element impossible; and (4) the doctor is in a better position to prevent the harm of his or her own negligence. For these reasons, the court joined other courts throughout the country in limiting the loss of chance doctrine to medical malpractice cases. The focus of this note is to suggest that New Hampshire take a second look at the loss of opportunity doctrine. While some drawbacks to adopting the doctrine exist, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In coming to this conclusion, among other things, this note considers the reasons offered by the N.H. Legislature in abrogating the N.H. Supreme Court’s decision to adopt the loss of opportunity doctrine. However, contrary to what the legislature suggested, the doctrine does not appear to increase litigation or insurance premium rates. Therefore, this note implores the N.H. Legislature to re-evaluate its decision.

Jets and Parton Energy Loss at RHIC: Experimental Status

Experimental evidence from RHIC indicates that matter having an energy density far in excess of the value required for the creation of a deconfined phase is produced in ultrarelativistic Au+Au collisions at a center of mass energy of 200 GeV. This matter thermalizes rapidly, is strongly interacting, and displays hydrodynamic properties akin to a fluid with very low viscosity. Studies of the interaction of hard scattered partons with this matter provide an important probe of its properties. In fact, studies of the suppression of high-p_T hadrons have been one of the key arguments used by the RHIC experiments that the matter created is something fundamentally new and exciting. I review the current experimental picture that has emerged from the data collected at RHIC, with an emphasis on the effort to extract quantitative measurements from the suppression of high-p_T hadrons.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, proceedings of talk given at ISMD200

21st century change in sea-level pressure investigated in North Pacific Ocean.

Mean changes in the climatology of 21st century annual variance of the sea-level pressure field in the North Pacific Ocean were investigated from all climate models that were used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). In several specific areas, a statistically significant increase in the annual variance of sea-level pressure was simulated for the 21st century in three emission scenarios; however, the magnitude of change did not follow the forcing The results indicate increased low-pressure activity for the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, Alaska, Gulf of Alaska, Canadian Rocky Mountains, and the west coast of the U.S. A separate study investigated the potential correlation between the magnitude of change predicted by individual models and the models\u27 equilibrium climate sensitivity value. Statistically significant, positively correlated regions from each emission scenario over the eastern portions of the North Pacific Ocean were found. The results indicated that, in the regions of Alaska, the Gulf of Alaska, the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and the west coast of the U.S., the magnitude of change in the annual variance of sea-level pressure could be predicted by the model\u27s sensitivity to CO2 forcing. The sensitivity and robustness of the results from each study were examined using two different multimodel groups

The PHENIX Muon Trigger Upgrade

The PHENIX muon trigger upgrade adds Level-1 trigger detectors to existing forward muon spectrometers and will enhance the ability of the experiment to pursue a rich program of spin physics in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s)=500GeV. The additional muon trigger detectors and Level-1 trigger electronics will allow the experiment to select high momentum muons from the decay of W-bosons and reject both beam-associated and low-momentum collision background, enabling the study of quark and antiquark polarization in the proton. The muon trigger upgrade will add momentum and timing information to the present muon Level-1 trigger, which only makes use of tracking in the PHENIX muon identifier (MuID) panels. Signals from three new resistive plate chambers (RPC's) and re-instrumented planes in the existing muon tracking (MuTr) chambers will provide momentum and timing information for the new Level-1 trigger. An RPC timing resolution of ~2ns will permit rejection of beam related backgrounds.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; contribution to proceedings of Spin 200

Emerging Constitutional Norms: Continuous Judicial Amendment of the Constitution—The Proportionality Test as a Moving Target

The so-called proportionality test of modifications to the Canadian Constitution are discussed. The Constitution is, at times, described as a moving target for change

Opportunity of a Lifetime 2.0: Multigenerational Family Philanthropy

More than ever before, giving families are working to involve multiple generations in their philanthropy.According to the National Center for Family Philanthropy's Trends in Family Philanthropy Study, nearly 3 in 5 U.S. family foundations engage younger family members in the foundation — and more than 40 percent say they expect to add to or increase the number of younger-generation family members on their boards in the near future.This issue brief was written with this emergent trend in mind and to help families understand how to best involve multiple generations in their work.In it, you'll find information about:why you should involve the entire family in your giving,strategies for incorporating younger generations into your foundation's work,common challenges and expert approaches,tips for on boarding new generations into your foundation, andsuggestions for next generation family members who are getting involved in their families' philanthropy.As the title of this paper suggests, this passages paper is the second edition of "Opportunity of a Lifetime." The original paper, "Opportunity of a Lifetime: Young Adults in Family Philanthropy," written by Alison Goldberg (herself a Gen X family philanthropist) was published in 2002. A lot has changed in 15 years, so we decided to take another look at the best practices, technology, benefits, challenges, and opportunities for next generation engagement. This paper builds on and updates the work of the original to offer new voices and insights

Shared inputs, entrainment, and desynchrony in elliptic bursters: from slow passage to discontinuous circle maps

What input signals will lead to synchrony vs. desynchrony in a group of biological oscillators? This question connects with both classical dynamical systems analyses of entrainment and phase locking and with emerging studies of stimulation patterns for controlling neural network activity. Here, we focus on the response of a population of uncoupled, elliptically bursting neurons to a common pulsatile input. We extend a phase reduction from the literature to capture inputs of varied strength, leading to a circle map with discontinuities of various orders. In a combined analytical and numerical approach, we apply our results to both a normal form model for elliptic bursting and to a biophysically-based neuron model from the basal ganglia. We find that, depending on the period and amplitude of inputs, the response can either appear chaotic (with provably positive Lyaponov exponent for the associated circle maps), or periodic with a broad range of phase-locked periods. Throughout, we discuss the critical underlying mechanisms, including slow-passage effects through Hopf bifurcation, the role and origin of discontinuities, and the impact of noiseComment: 17 figures, 40 page