The Vestiges of the Texas Employment At-Will Doctrine in the Wake of Progressive Law: The Employment Handbook Exception Comment.

Under a traditional approach of the at-will rule, if an employer hires an employee for an indefinite term then the employer may terminate the employee at will. Modification of the at-will rule has gained widespread support throughout the country. A majority of states now follow the progressive view, which allows the employment manual to become part of the labor contract, thereby obligating employers to abide by manual provisions. The progressive view maintains that an employee’s continued service after an employer issues a manual, constitutes ample consideration to make the document binding. Once a court recognizes the existence of independent consideration, an employee can show a binding contract was made by using unilateral, bilateral or estoppel contract principles. This progressive position is reformatory because it found the additional consideration the traditional approach believed to be lacking and has reevaluated its contract analysis accordingly. Texas courts currently reject the progressive view of the handbook exception for only one reason: adherence to precedent. However, the need for which the at-will rule was originally created has changed, and the general rule no longer provides a satisfactory resolution to current employment problems such as the handbook or public policy considerations. Upholding this outdated precedent may lead to inequitable decisions, as evidenced by decisions of jurisdictions which still follow the traditional interpretation of the employment at-will rule. Further, the Texas Supreme Court recognized the need to amend employment at-will theory by creating one narrow exception to the general rule. The situation in Texas is ripe for the handbook exception. All that remains now is for a case to arise where the courts may adopt the progressive view and establish new precedent

The Vestiges of the Texas Employment At-Will Doctrine in the Wake of Progressive Law: The Employment Handbook Exception Comment.

Under a traditional approach of the at-will rule, if an employer hires an employee for an indefinite term then the employer may terminate the employee at will. Modification of the at-will rule has gained widespread support throughout the country. A majority of states now follow the progressive view, which allows the employment manual to become part of the labor contract, thereby obligating employers to abide by manual provisions. The progressive view maintains that an employee’s continued service after an employer issues a manual, constitutes ample consideration to make the document binding. Once a court recognizes the existence of independent consideration, an employee can show a binding contract was made by using unilateral, bilateral or estoppel contract principles. This progressive position is reformatory because it found the additional consideration the traditional approach believed to be lacking and has reevaluated its contract analysis accordingly. Texas courts currently reject the progressive view of the handbook exception for only one reason: adherence to precedent. However, the need for which the at-will rule was originally created has changed, and the general rule no longer provides a satisfactory resolution to current employment problems such as the handbook or public policy considerations. Upholding this outdated precedent may lead to inequitable decisions, as evidenced by decisions of jurisdictions which still follow the traditional interpretation of the employment at-will rule. Further, the Texas Supreme Court recognized the need to amend employment at-will theory by creating one narrow exception to the general rule. The situation in Texas is ripe for the handbook exception. All that remains now is for a case to arise where the courts may adopt the progressive view and establish new precedent

Application of Microarray-Based Comparative Genomic Hybridization in Prenatal and Postnatal Settings: Three Case Reports

Microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) is a newly emerged molecular cytogenetic technique for rapid evaluation of the entire genome with sub-megabase resolution. It allows for the comprehensive investigation of thousands and millions of genomic loci at once and therefore enables the efficient detection of DNA copy number variations (a.k.a, cryptic genomic imbalances). The development and the clinical application of array CGH have revolutionized the diagnostic process in patients and has provided a clue to many unidentified or unexplained diseases which are suspected to have a genetic cause. In this paper, we present three clinical cases in both prenatal and postnatal settings. Among all, array CGH played a major discovery role to reveal the cryptic and/or complex nature of chromosome arrangements. By identifying the genetic causes responsible for the clinical observation in patients, array CGH has provided accurate diagnosis and appropriate clinical management in a timely and efficient manner

Thermal modelling of Advanced LIGO test masses

High-reflectivity fused silica mirrors are at the epicentre of current advanced gravitational wave detectors. In these detectors, the mirrors interact with high power laser beams. As a result of finite absorption in the high reflectivity coatings the mirrors suffer from a variety of thermal effects that impact on the detectors performance. We propose a model of the Advanced LIGO mirrors that introduces an empirical term to account for the radiative heat transfer between the mirror and its surroundings. The mechanical mode frequency is used as a probe for the overall temperature of the mirror. The thermal transient after power build-up in the optical cavities is used to refine and test the model. The model provides a coating absorption estimate of 1.5 to 2.0 ppm and estimates that 0.3 to 1.3 ppm of the circulating light is scattered on to the ring heater.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Characterization of NMDAR-Independent Learning in the Hippocampus

It is currently thought that memory formation requires the activation of NMDA receptors (NMDARs) in the hippocampus. However, recent studies indicate that these receptors are not necessary for all forms of learning. The current experiments examine this issue using context fear conditioning in mice. First, we show that context fear can be acquired without NMDAR activation in previously trained animals. Mice trained in one environment (context A) are subsequently able to learn about a second environment (context B) in the presence of NMDAR antagonists. Second, we demonstrate that NMDAR-independent learning requires the hippocampus and is dependent on protein synthesis. However, unlike NMDAR-dependent learning, it is not contingent on the expression of activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc). Lastly, we present data that suggests NMDAR-independent learning is only observed when recently stimulated neurons are reactivated during conditioning. These data suggest that context fear conditioning modifies synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the hippocampus and allows subsequent learning to occur in the absence of NMDAR activation

Biology Enrichment in Native American Students

The goal of my Honors project was not simply to teach or explain a biological process, or to instruct students to memorize steps of pathway, but instead, I sought to portray the importance of biology in everyday life and to what degree biology infiltrates and encapsulates everything we are and do. For the purpose of my project, I coordinated with local high school biology instructors and created a gel electrophoresis instruction manual with laboratory demonstrations along with a PowerPoint presentation that I made available to them, to be delivered to local Native American high school students

Design and characterization of the POLARBEAR-2b and POLARBEAR-2c cosmic microwave background cryogenic receivers

The POLARBEAR-2/Simons Array Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization experiment is an upgrade and expansion of the existing POLARBEAR-1 (PB-1) experiment, located in the Atacama desert in Chile. Along with the CMB temperature and $E$-mode polarization anisotropies, PB-1 and the Simons Array study the CMB $B$-mode polarization anisotropies produced at large angular scales by inflationary gravitational waves, and at small angular scales by gravitational lensing. These measurements provide constraints on various cosmological and particle physics parameters, such as the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, and the sum of the neutrino masses. The Simons Array consists of three 3.5 m diameter telescopes with upgraded POLARBEAR-2 (PB-2) cryogenic receivers, named PB-2a, -2b, and -2c. PB-2a and -2b will observe the CMB over multiple bands centered at 95 GHz and 150 GHz, while PB-2c will observe at 220 GHz and 270 GHz, which will enable enhanced foreground separation and de-lensing. Each Simons Array receiver consists of two cryostats which share the same vacuum space: an optics tube containing the cold reimaging lenses and Lyot stop, infrared-blocking filters, and cryogenic half-wave plate; and a backend which contains the focal plane detector array, cold readout components, and millikelvin refrigerator. Each PB-2 focal plane array is comprised of 7,588 dual-polarization, multi-chroic, lenslet- and antenna-coupled, Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers which are cooled to 250 mK and read out using Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) through a digital frequency division multiplexing scheme with a multiplexing factor of 40. In this work we describe progress towards commissioning the PB-2b and -2c receivers including cryogenic design, characterization, and performance of both the PB-2b and -2c backend cryostats.Comment: 20 page

Fast Approximate Geodesics for Deep Generative Models

The length of the geodesic between two data points along a Riemannian manifold, induced by a deep generative model, yields a principled measure of similarity. Current approaches are limited to low-dimensional latent spaces, due to the computational complexity of solving a non-convex optimisation problem. We propose finding shortest paths in a finite graph of samples from the aggregate approximate posterior, that can be solved exactly, at greatly reduced runtime, and without a notable loss in quality. Our approach, therefore, is hence applicable to high-dimensional problems, e.g., in the visual domain. We validate our approach empirically on a series of experiments using variational autoencoders applied to image data, including the Chair, FashionMNIST, and human movement data sets.Comment: 28th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, 201