Marriage Fraud

This Article examines the astonishing array of doctrines used to determine what constitutes marriage fraud. It begins by locating the traditional nineteenth-century annulment-by-fraud doctrine within the realm of contract fraud, observing that in the family law context fraudulent marriages were voidable solely at the option of the injured party. The Article then explains how, in the twentieth century, a massive expansion of public benefits tied to marriage prompted new marriage fraud doctrines to develop in various areas of the law, shifting the concept of the injured party from the defrauded spouse to the public at large. It proposes a framework for understanding these new doctrines by demonstrating that courts apply different tests for finding fraud depending on the value of the benefit sought compared to the cost to the individual of using marriage to obtain it. Furthermore, the Article argues that marriage is an ineffective means for distributing public benefits that serve specific objectives; in other words, marriage is being asked to do too much work. As a possible response to this problem, the Article concludes that lawmakers could disaggregate the components of marriage to which they attach public benefits. This would improve the efficacy of public benefits distribution without entirely dismantling the institution of marriage or jeopardizing the stability that it may provide to societ

Salient Object Detection via Integrity Learning

Albeit current salient object detection (SOD) works have achieved fantastic progress, they are cast into the shade when it comes to the integrity of the predicted salient regions. We define the concept of integrity at both the micro and macro level. Specifically, at the micro level, the model should highlight all parts that belong to a certain salient object, while at the macro level, the model needs to discover all salient objects from the given image scene. To facilitate integrity learning for salient object detection, we design a novel Integrity Cognition Network (ICON), which explores three important components to learn strong integrity features. 1) Unlike the existing models that focus more on feature discriminability, we introduce a diverse feature aggregation (DFA) component to aggregate features with various receptive fields (i.e.,, kernel shape and context) and increase the feature diversity. Such diversity is the foundation for mining the integral salient objects. 2) Based on the DFA features, we introduce the integrity channel enhancement (ICE) component with the goal of enhancing feature channels that highlight the integral salient objects at the macro level, while suppressing the other distracting ones. 3) After extracting the enhanced features, the part-whole verification (PWV) method is employed to determine whether the part and whole object features have strong agreement. Such part-whole agreements can further improve the micro-level integrity for each salient object. To demonstrate the effectiveness of ICON, comprehensive experiments are conducted on seven challenging benchmarks, where promising results are achieved

Tri-p-tolyl­phosphine

In the title compound C21H21P, the P atom is situated on a crystallographic threefold rotatory-inversion axis, resulting in threefold rotation symmetry of the title compound. The dihedral angles between the symmetry-related benzene rings are 87.40 (18)°

Improved oral bioavailability of poorly water-soluble indirubin by a supersaturatable self-microemulsifying drug delivery system

Zhi-Qiang Chen, Ying Liu, Ji-Hui Zhao, Lan Wang, Nian-Ping FengSchool of Pharmacy, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, People's Republic of ChinaBackground: Indirubin, isolated from the leaves of the Chinese herb Isatis tinctoria L, is a protein kinase inhibitor and promising antitumor agent. However, the poor water solubility of indirubin has limited its application. In this study, a supersaturatable self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (S-SMEDDS) was developed to improve the oral bioavailability of indirubin.Methods: A prototype S-SMEDDS was designed using solubility studies and phase diagram construction. Precipitation inhibitors were selected from hydrophilic polymers according to their crystallization-inhibiting capacity through in vitro precipitation tests. In vitro release of indirubin from S-SMEDDS was examined to investigate its likely release behavior in vivo. The in vivo bioavailability of indirubin from S-SMEDDS and from SMEDDS was compared in rats.Results: The prototype formulation of S-SMEDDS comprised Maisine™ 35-1:Cremophor® EL:Transcutol® P (15:40:45, w/w/w). Polyvinylpyrrolidone K17, a hydrophilic polymer, was used as a precipitation inhibitor based on its better crystallization-inhibiting capacity compared with polyethylene glycol 4000 and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose. In vitro release analysis showed more rapid drug release from S-SMEDDS than from SMEDDS. In vivo bioavailability analysis in rats indicated that improved oral absorption was achieved and that the relative bioavailability of S-SMEDDS was 129.5% compared with SMEDDS.Conclusion: The novel S-SMEDDS developed in this study increased the dissolution rate and improved the oral bioavailability of indirubin in rats. The results suggest that S-SMEDDS is a superior means of oral delivery of indirubin.Keywords: supersaturatable self-microemulsifying drug delivery system, indirubin, bioavailability, oral drug delivery, hydrophilic polyme

Transient response of near-wellbore supercharging during filter cake growth

Supercharging in the vicinity of a borehole is an important factor that affects formation damage and drilling safety, and the filter cake growth process has a significant impact on supercharging in the vicinity of the borehole. However, existing models that predict pore pressure distribution overlook dynamic filter cake growth. Thus, an analytical supercharging model was developed that considers time-dependent filter cake effects, and this model was verified using a two-dimensional numerical model. The influences of filter cake, formation, and filtrate properties on supercharging were investigated systematically. The results indicate that time-dependent filter cake effects have significant influence on supercharging. Supercharging increases in the early stage but decreases over time because of the dynamic growth of filter cake, and the supercharging magnitude decreases along the radial direction. Because of filter cake growth, the magnitude of supercharging falls quickly across the filter cake, and the decreased magnitude of pore pressure caused by the filter cake increases. Supercharging in low-permeability formations is more obvious and the faster rate of filter cake growth, a lower filtrate viscosity and faster reduction rate of filter cake permeability can help to weaken supercharging. The order of importance of influencing factors on supercharging is overbalance pressure > formation permeability > formation porosity ≈ filtrate viscosity > filter cake permeability attenuation coefficient > initial filter cake permeability control ratio > filter cake growth coefficient > filter cake porosity. To alleviate supercharging in the vicinity of the borehole, adopting drilling fluids that allow a filter cake to form quickly, optimizing drilling fluid with a lower filtrate viscosity, keeping a smaller overbalance pressure, and precise operation at the rig site are suggested for low-permeability formations during drilling

Effects of knee loading on obesity‐related nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in an ovariectomized mouse model with high fat diet

Aim Hormonal and nutritional disorders are the main causes of obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, especially in the elderly and postmenopausal women. Although physical activity may alleviate these disorders, the elderly may often have difficulty in conducting physical exercise. The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of knee loading, a new form of physical stimulation, on the symptom of obesity and fatty liver. Methods Using ovariectomized mice with high fat diet, we evaluated the effect of knee loading that applies gentle cyclic loads to the knee. Female C57BL/6 mice were divided into five groups: control (SCD), high fat diet (HF), HF with loading (HF+L), HF with ovariectomy (HF+OVX), and HF+OVX with loading (HF+OVX+L). Except for SCD, mice underwent sham operation or ovariectomy and maintained on high fat diet. After 6 weeks, the mice in HF+L and HF+OVX+L were treated with 6‐week knee loading. Results Compared to the obesity groups (HF and HF+OVX), knee loading significantly decreased a gain in body weight, liver weight, and white adipose tissue (all P<0.01). It also reduced the lipid level in the serum (P<0.01) and histological severity of hepatic steatosis (P<0.01). Furthermore, knee loading downregulated biomarkers related to the endoplasmic reticulum stress (GRP78, p‐eIF2α and ATF4) and altered biomarkers in autophagy (LC3 and p62). Conclusions Knee loading suppressed obesity‐associated metabolic alterations and hepatic steatosis, the effect with knee loading might be associated with suppression of the ER stress and promotion of autophagy

Shape and structure controlling of calcium oxalate crystals by a combination of additives in the process of biomineralization

The origin of complex hierarchical superstructures of biomaterials and their unique self-assembly mechanisms of formation are important in biological systems and have attracted considerable attention. In the present study, we investigated the morphological changes of calcium oxalate (CaO(x)) crystals induced by additives including chiral aspartic acid, sodium citrate, Mg(2+), casein and combinations of these molecules. The morphology and structure of CaO(x) were identified with the use of various techniques. The morphogenesis of CaO(x) crystals were significantly affected by chiral aspartic acid, sodium citrate or Mg(2+). However, they only formed calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM). It was observed that the chiral aspartic acid, sodium citrate and casein adhered to the surface of the crystals. The adherence of Mg(2+) to crystals was not evident. Casein significantly affected the formation of COM and calcium oxalate dihydrate (COD). The ratio of different CaO(x) crystal forms is associated with the casein concentration. In combination with Mg(2+) or citrate ions, casein showed improved formation of COD. The present study mimics biomineralization with a simple chemical approach and provides insight into the complicated system of CaO(x) biomineralization as well as facilitates the understanding of urinary stone treatment