Civil RICO: A Call for a Uniform Statute of Limitations

RICO is a statute, originally developed to thwart organized crime. When read broadly, the statute, however, has been applied to non-organized crime activities. Thus, courts have now started applying four substantive requirements for use of the RICO statute: (1) requiring that the plaintiff must allege that the defendant has connection to organized crime, (2) limiting standing to a particular type of injury, (3) requiring the plaintiff to allege an enterprise distinct from the pattern of racketeering or from the defendant, and (4) permitting only civil RICO claims in instances where the defendant has been previously convicted of the predicate acts alleged in the civil complaint. Along with these requirements, a second area of confusion, which has arisen from the federal RICO statute is the lack of an express statute of limitations. This Note argues that instead of using the method of applying the statute of limitations for an analogous cause of action (the Supreme Court\u27s general method when no express statute of limitations is offered), Congress should step in and create an express statute of limitations for the civil RICO statute. Utilizing the general Supreme Court method for determining the statute of limitations is against the purpose and history of the civil RICO statute. In light of the potential unfairness with the current limitations scheme and the federal nature of the RICO statute, it makes sense for Congress to enact an express limitations scheme, creating predictability in RICO cases

Numerical Method for Shock Front Hugoniot States

We describe a Continuous Hugoniot Method for the efficient simulation of shock wave fronts. This approach achieves significantly improved efficiency when the generation of a tightly spaced collection of individual steady-state shock front states is desired, and allows for the study of shocks as a function of a continuous shock strength parameter, $v_p$. This is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to map the Hugoniot continuously. We apply the method to shock waves in Lennard-Jonesium along the $$ direction. We obtain very good agreement with prior simulations, as well as our own benchmark comparison runs.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, from Shock Compression of Condensed Matter 200

Coating thickness and coverage effects on the forces between silica nanoparticles in water

The structure and interactions of coated silica nanoparticles have been studied in water using molecular dynamics simulations. For 5 nm diameter amorphous silica nanoparticles we studied the effects of varying the chain length and grafting density of polyethylene oxide (PEO) on the nanoparticle coating's shape and on nanoparticle-nanoparticle effective forces. For short ligands of length $n=6$ and $n=20$ repeat units, the coatings are radially symmetric while for longer chains ($n=100$) the coatings are highly anisotropic. This anisotropy appears to be governed primarily by chain length, with coverage playing a secondary role. For the largest chain lengths considered, the strongly anisotropic shape makes fitting to a simple radial force model impossible. For shorter ligands, where the coatings are isotropic, we found that the force between pairs of nanoparticles is purely repulsive and can be fit to the form $(R/2r_\text{core}-1)^{-b}$ where $R$ is the separation between the center of the nanoparticles, $r_\text{core}$ is the radius of the silica core, and $b$ is measured to be between 2.3 and 4.1.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

Effective antibiotic conservation by emergency antimicrobial stewardship during a drug shortage

We present the first description of an antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) used to successfully manage a multi-antimicrobial drug shortage. Without resorting to formulary restriction, meropenem utilization decreased by 69% and piperacillin-tazobactam by 73%. During the shortage period, hospital mortality decreased (P=.03), while hospital length of stay remained unchanged.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2017;38:356–359</jats:p

Forces between functionalized silica nanoparticles in solution

To prevent the flocculation and phase separation of nanoparticles in solution, nanoparticles are often functionalized with short chain surfactants. Here we present fully-atomistic molecular dynamics simulations which characterize how these functional coatings affect the interactions between nanoparticles and with the surrounding solvent. For 5 nm diameter silica nanoparticles coated with poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) oligomers in water, we determined the hydrodynamic drag on two approaching nanoparticles moving through solvent and on a single nanoparticle as it approaches a planar surface. In most circumstances, acroscale fluid theory accurately predicts the drag on these nano-scale particles. Good agreement is seen with Brenner's analytical solutions for wall separations larger than the soft nanoparticle radius. For two approaching coated nanoparticles, the solvent-mediated (velocity-independent) and lubrication (velocity-dependent) forces are purely repulsive and do not exhibit force oscillations that are typical of uncoated rigid spheres.Comment: 4 pages, 3 fig

Perceived Benefits of a Designated Smoking Area Policy on a College Campus: Views of Smokers and Non-smokers

Designated smoking areas are meant to: (1) limit secondhand smoke exposure to non-smokers, and (2) reduce cigarettes consumption by smokers. One year after the implementation of a designated smoking area protocol on a college campus, students were intercepted and asked to complete a short Likert survey designed to assess its perceived benefits. Analysis of the data showed that both smokers and non-smokers consider a reduction in the number of cigarettes consumed by smokers to be an unlikely outcome, which is consistent with research conducted in a variety of setting showing that designated smoking areas typically do not lead to less smoking by smokers. However, whereas the non-smokers agreed that the policy resulted in lowering exposure to second-hand smoke, smokers were unwilling to endorse a statement indicating that this occurred. This suggests that it may be unrealistic to assume that appeals to empathy (i.e. pointing out the negative impact of second hand smoke) when promoting the benefits of a designated smoking area will result in an automatic buy-in

Perceived Benefits of a Designated Smoking Area Policy on a College Campus: Views of Smokers and Non-smokers

Designated smoking areas are meant to: (1) limit secondhand smoke exposure to non-smokers, and (2) reduce cigarettes consumption by smokers.  One year after the implementation of a designated smoking area protocol on a college campus, students were intercepted and asked to complete a short Likert survey designed to assess its perceived benefits.  Analysis of the data showed that both smokers and non-smokers consider a reduction in the number of cigarettes consumed by smokers to be an unlikely outcome, which is consistent with research conducted in a variety of setting showing that designated smoking areas typically do not lead to less smoking by smokers.  However, whereas the non-smokers agreed that the policy resulted in lowering exposure to second-hand smoke, smokers were unwilling to endorse a statement indicating that this occurred. This suggests that it may be unrealistic to assume that appeals to empathy (i.e. pointing out the negative impact of second hand smoke) when promoting the benefits of a designated smoking area  will  result in an automatic buy-in

Delivering Quality Motivational Interviewing Training: A Survey of MI Trainers

The MI community places an emphasis on attempting to understand the training process. Yet little is known about what MI trainers perceive as the important variables in training MI. A mixed method survey of 92 members of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers was used to elicit important variables to consider in providing quality MI training. Based on results, it appears that MI trainers are familiar with Miller and Moyers’ (2006) eight stages of learning MI and used them to develop trainings. However, the respondents reported that they do not use these stages to evaluate trainings. Moreover, the respondents emphasized the importance of trainee and trainer variables in organizing trainings. They also provided varied opinions regarding the important ingredients in developing MI competency. The authors discuss the need for further empirical exploration of the important training ingredients and the eight stages model. Finally, the need for exploration of how these ingredients help trainees develop competency and future focus on the integration of best practices in adult learning is discussed

Monoids, Embedding Functors and Quantum Groups

We show that the left regular representation \pi_l of a discrete quantum group (A,\Delta) has the absorbing property and forms a monoid (\pi_l,\tilde{m},\tilde{\eta}) in the representation category Rep(A,\Delta). Next we show that an absorbing monoid in an abstract tensor *-category C gives rise to an embedding functor E:C->Vect_C, and we identify conditions on the monoid, satisfied by (\pi_l,\tilde{m},\tilde{\eta}), implying that E is *-preserving. As is well-known, from an embedding functor E: C->\mathrm{Hilb} the generalized Tannaka theorem produces a discrete quantum group (A,\Delta) such that C is equivalent to Rep_f(A,\Delta). Thus, for a C^*-tensor category C with conjugates and irreducible unit the following are equivalent: (1) C is equivalent to the representation category of a discrete quantum group (A,\Delta), (2) C admits an absorbing monoid, (3) there exists a *-preserving embedding functor E: C->\mathrm{Hilb}.Comment: Final version, to appear in Int. Journ. Math. (Added some references and Subsection 1.2.) Latex2e, 21 page