The Prevailing Party Should Recover Counsel Fees

THE TIME HAS COME when our judicial system should make compensation to the prevailing party for expenses incurred in litigation a meaningful right, as opposed to a valueless gesture. In brief, this means that in the bulk of civil cases a successful party should no longer have to bear the full burden of his own counsel fees, and conversely those who take to our courts in vain should no longer be permitted to avoid the justice of substantial participation in the costs they have occasioned. To do this requires considerable alteration of the present cost structure applied by our rules as well as a change in our philosophy of compensation for loss

Magnetic field generation in fully convective rotating spheres

Magnetohydrodynamic simulations of fully convective, rotating spheres with volume heating near the center and cooling at the surface are presented. The dynamo-generated magnetic field saturates at equipartition field strength near the surface. In the interior, the field is dominated by small-scale structures, but outside the sphere by the global scale. Azimuthal averages of the field reveal a large-scale field of smaller amplitude also inside the star. The internal angular velocity shows some tendency to be constant along cylinders and is ``anti-solar'' (fastest at the poles and slowest at the equator).Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, to appear in the 10 Feb issue of Ap

Upstream Statin Therapy and Long-Term Recurrence of Atrial Fibrillation after Cardioversion: A Propensity-Matched Analysis

The relationship of statin therapy with recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) after cardioversion (CV) has been evaluated by several investigations, which provided conflicting results and particularly long-term data is scarce. We sought to examine whether upstream statin therapy is associated with long-term recurrence of AF after CV. This was a single-center registry study including consecutive AF patients (n = 454) undergoing CV. Cox regression models were performed to estimate AF recurrence comparing patients with and without statins. In addition, we performed a propensity score matched analysis with a 1:1 ratio. Statins were prescribed to 183 (40.3%) patients. After a median follow-up period of 373 (207–805) days, recurrence of AF was present in 150 (33.0%) patients. Patients receiving statins had a significantly lower rate of AF recurrence (log-rank p < 0.001). In univariate analysis, statin therapy was associated with a significantly reduced rate of AF recurrence (HR 0.333 (95% CI 0.225–0.493), p = 0.001), which remained significant after adjustment (HR 0.238 (95% CI 0.151–0.375), p < 0.001). After propensity score matching treatment with statins resulted in an absolute risk reduction of 27.5% for recurrent AF (21 (18.1%) vs. 53 (45.7%); p < 0.001). Statin therapy was associated with a reduced risk of long-term AF recurrence after successful cardioversion

Dense subgraph maintenance under streaming edge weight updates for real-time story identification

Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of social media. People around the globe author, everyday, millions of blog posts, social network status updates, etc. This rich stream of information can be used to identify, on an ongoing basis, emerging stories, and events that capture popular attention. Stories can be identified via groups of tightly coupled real-world entities, namely the people, locations, products, etc, that are involved in the story. The sheer scale and rapid evolution of the data involved necessitate highly efficient techniques for identifying important stories at every point of time. The main challenge in real-time story identification is the maintenance of dense subgraphs (corresponding to groups of tightly coupled entities) under streaming edge weight updates (resulting from a stream of user-generated content). This is the first work to study the efficient maintenance of dense subgraphs under such streaming edge weight updates. For a wide range of definitions of density, we derive theoretical results regarding the magnitude of change that a single edge weight update can cause. Based on these, we propose a novel algorithm, DynDens, which outperforms adaptations of existing techniques to this setting and yields meaningful, intuitive results. Our approach is validated by a thorough experimental evaluation on large-scale real and synthetic datasets

Exploiting Laboratory and Heliophysics Plasma Synergies

Recent advances in space-based heliospheric observations, laboratory experimentation, and plasma simulation codes are creating an exciting new cross-disciplinary opportunity for understanding fast energy release and transport mechanisms in heliophysics and laboratory plasma dynamics, which had not been previously accessible. This article provides an overview of some new observational, experimental, and computational assets, and discusses current and near-term activities towards exploitation of synergies involving those assets. This overview does not claim to be comprehensive, but instead covers mainly activities closely associated with the authors’ interests and reearch. Heliospheric observations reviewed include the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, the first instrument to provide remote sensing imagery observations with spatial continuity extending from the Sun to the Earth, and the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on the Japanese Hinode spacecraft that is measuring spectroscopically physical parameters of the solar atmosphere towards obtaining plasma temperatures, densities, and mass motions. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the upcoming Solar Orbiter with the Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) on-board will also be discussed. Laboratory plasma experiments surveyed include the line-tied magnetic reconnection experiments at University of Wisconsin (relevant to coronal heating magnetic flux tube observations and simulations), and a dynamo facility under construction there; the Space Plasma Simulation Chamber at the Naval Research Laboratory that currently produces plasmas scalable to ionospheric and magnetospheric conditions and in the future also will be suited to study the physics of the solar corona; the Versatile Toroidal Facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that provides direct experimental observation of reconnection dynamics; and the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment, which provides well-diagnosed data on three-dimensional (3D) null-point magnetic reconnection that is also applicable to solar active regions embedded in pre-existing coronal fields. New computer capabilities highlighted include: HYPERION, a fully compressible 3D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) code with radiation transport and thermal conduction; ORBIT-RF, a 4D Monte-Carlo code for the study of wave interactions with fast ions embedded in background MHD plasmas; the 3D implicit multi-fluid MHD spectral element code, HiFi; and, the 3D Hall MHD code VooDoo. Research synergies for these new tools are primarily in the areas of magnetic reconnection, plasma charged particle acceleration, plasma wave propagation and turbulence in a diverging magnetic field, plasma atomic processes, and magnetic dynamo behavior.United States. Office of Naval ResearchNaval Research Laboratory (U.S.