Use of Mediation in Employment Discrimination Cases, The

This Article will address the issues noted above. Part II discusses the realities for employers and employees created by the increased filing of employment discrimination claims. Part III encapsulates the procedural movement of a claim through the EEOC. Part IV summarizes the mediation process and notes why mediation is one of the methods used to deal with these claims. Part V highlights the pros and cons associated with the mediation of employment discrimination claims. Part VI discusses the inherent tensions between the goals of mediation and the goals of the anti-discrimination laws, as well as the inherent tensions that naturally flow from added government regulation on our capitalist economic structure. Part VII sets out alternative solutions other than mediation to deal with employment discrimination cases. Finally, Part VIII concludes this Article by stating that although mediation should not be used for employment discrimination cases, the fact that it is, and will continue to be used, should be accepted by parties and practices and should be adjusted accordingly

Use of Mediation in Employment Discrimination Cases, The

This Article will address the issues noted above. Part II discusses the realities for employers and employees created by the increased filing of employment discrimination claims. Part III encapsulates the procedural movement of a claim through the EEOC. Part IV summarizes the mediation process and notes why mediation is one of the methods used to deal with these claims. Part V highlights the pros and cons associated with the mediation of employment discrimination claims. Part VI discusses the inherent tensions between the goals of mediation and the goals of the anti-discrimination laws, as well as the inherent tensions that naturally flow from added government regulation on our capitalist economic structure. Part VII sets out alternative solutions other than mediation to deal with employment discrimination cases. Finally, Part VIII concludes this Article by stating that although mediation should not be used for employment discrimination cases, the fact that it is, and will continue to be used, should be accepted by parties and practices and should be adjusted accordingly

A Critical Analysis of the Proposed National Patent Board

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Time-Weighted Average SPME Analysis for in Planta Determination of CVOCs

The Potential of Phytoscreening for Plume Delineation at Contaminated Sites Has Promoted Interest in Innovative, Sensitive Contaminant Sampling Techniques. Solid-Phase Microextraction (SPME) Methods Have Been Developed, Offering Quick, Undemanding, Noninvasive Sampling Without the Use of Solvents. in This Study, Time-Weighted Average SPME (TWA-SPME) Sampling Was Evaluated for in Planta Quantification of Chlorinated Solvents. TWA-SPME Was Found to Have Increased Sensitivity over Headspace and Equilibrium SPME Sampling. using a Variety of Chlorinated Solvents and a Polydimethylsiloxane/carboxen (PDMS/CAR) SPME Fiber, Most Compounds Exhibited Near Linear or Linear Uptake over the Sampling Period. Smaller, Less Hydrophobic Compounds Exhibited More Nonlinearity Than Larger, More Hydrophobic Molecules. using a Specifically Designed in Planta Sampler, Field Sampling Was Conducted at a Site Contaminated with Chlorinated Solvents. Sampling with TWA-SPME Produced Instrument Responses Ranging from 5 to over 200 Times Higher Than Headspace Tree Core Sampling. This Work Demonstrates that TWA-SPME Can Be Used for in Planta Detection of a Broad Range of Chlorinated Solvents and Methods Can Likely Be Applied to Other Volatile and Semivolatile Organic Compounds. © 2012 American Chemical Society

A Search for Hierarchical Triples using Kepler Eclipse Timing

We present the first results of a Kepler survey of 41 eclipsing binaries that we undertook to search for third star companions. Such tertiaries will periodically alter the eclipse timings through light travel time and dynamical effects. We discuss the prevalence of starspots and pulsation among these binaries and how these phenomena influence the eclipse times. There is no evidence of short period companions (P < 700 d) among this sample, but we do find evidence for long term timing variations in 14 targets (34%). We argue that this finding is consistent with the presence of tertiary companions among a significant fraction of the targets, especially if many have orbits measured in decades. This result supports the idea that the formation of close binaries involves the deposition of angular momentum into the orbital motion of a third star.Comment: AJ, in press, 104 pages, 2 figure sets plus 1 regular figur

X Her and TX Psc: Two cases of ISM interaction with stellar winds observed by Herschel

The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars X Her and TX Psc have been imaged at 70 and 160 microns with the PACS instrument onboard the Herschel satellite, as part of the large MESS (Mass loss of Evolved StarS) Guaranteed Time Key Program. The images reveal an axisymmetric extended structure with its axis oriented along the space motion of the stars. This extended structure is very likely to be shaped by the interaction of the wind ejected by the AGB star with the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM). As predicted by numerical simulations, the detailed structure of the wind-ISM interface depends upon the relative velocity between star+wind and the ISM, which is large for these two stars (108 and 55 km/s for X Her and TX Psc, respectively). In both cases, there is a compact blob upstream whose origin is not fully elucidated, but that could be the signature of some instability in the wind-ISM shock. Deconvolved images of X Her and TX Psc reveal several discrete structures along the outermost filaments, which could be Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices. Finally, TX Psc is surrounded by an almost circular ring (the signature of the termination shock?) that contrasts with the outer, more structured filaments. A similar inner circular structure seems to be present in X Her as well, albeit less clearly.Comment: 11 pages, Astronomy & Astrophysics, in pres

Multimessenger astronomy with pulsar timing and X-ray observations of massive black hole binaries

We demonstrate that very massive (>10^8\msun), cosmologically nearby (z<1) black hole binaries (MBHBs), which are primary targets for ongoing and upcoming pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), are particularly appealing multimessenger carriers. According to current models for massive black hole formation and evolution, the planned Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will collect gravitational wave signals from thousands of such massive systems, being able to individually resolve and locate in the sky several of them (maybe up to a hundred). By employing a standard model for the evolution of MBHBs in circumbinary discs, with the aid of dedicated numerical simulations, we characterize the gas-binary interplay, identifying possible electromagnetic signatures of the PTA sources. We concentrate our investigation on two particularly promising scenarios in the high energy domain, namely, the detection of X-ray periodic variability and of double broad K\alpha iron lines. Up to several hundreds of periodic X-ray sources with a flux >10^-13 erg s^-1 cm^-2 will be in the reach of upcoming X-ray observatories. Double relativistic K\alpha lines may be observable in a handful of low redshift (z<0.3) sources by proposed deep X-ray probes, such as Athena. (Abridged)Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS, minor revision of the reference lis

The Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Memory for Positively and Negatively Valenced Stimuli

A core component of mindfulness is non-judgmental observation of internal and external stimuli. The present study investigated the effect of mindfulness on memory for emotional stimuli. Participants were exposed to a brief mindfulness intervention and subsequently performed a verbal learning test consisting of positive, neutral, and negative words. Control participants received no intervention and directly performed the verbal learning test. After 20 min, participants recalled as many words as possible. Participants in the mindfulness condition remembered a significantly lower proportion of negative words compared to control participants. No differences between both groups were observed for the proportion of remembered positive words. These findings suggest that memory processes may be a potential mechanism underlying the link between mindfulness and subjective well-being

Rapamycin Response in Tumorigenic and Non-Tumorigenic Hepatic Cell Lines

The mTOR inhibitor rapamycin has anti-tumor activity across a variety of human cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma. However, resistance to its growth inhibitory effects is common. We hypothesized that hepatic cell lines with varying rapamycin responsiveness would show common characteristics accounting for resistance to the drug.We profiled a total of 13 cell lines for rapamycin-induced growth inhibition. The non-tumorigenic rat liver epithelial cell line WB-F344 was highly sensitive while the tumorigenic WB311 cell line, originally derived from the WB-F344 line, was highly resistant. The other 11 cell lines showed a wide range of sensitivities. Rapamycin induced inhibition of cyclin E-dependent kinase activity in some cell lines, but the ability to do so did not correlate with sensitivity. Inhibition of cyclin E-dependent kinase activity was related to incorporation of p27(Kip1) into cyclin E-containing complexes in some but not all cell lines. Similarly, sensitivity of global protein synthesis to rapamycin did not correlate with its anti-proliferative effect. However, rapamycin potently inhibited phosphorylation of two key substrates, ribosomal protein S6 and 4E-BP1, in all cases, indicating that the locus of rapamycin resistance was downstream from inhibition of mTOR Complex 1. Microarray analysis did not disclose a unifying mechanism for rapamycin resistance, although the glycolytic pathway was downregulated in all four cell lines studied.We conclude that the mechanisms of rapamycin resistance in hepatic cells involve alterations of signaling downstream from mTOR and that the mechanisms are highly heterogeneous, thus predicting that maintaining or promoting sensitivity will be highly challenging