Legal Tolerance toward the Business Lie and the Puffery Defense: the Questionable Assumptions of Contract Law

American contract law is supposed to facilitate the efficiency and fairness of market transactions between parties. Does the increasing success of the puffery defense in false advertising and securities cases further the fairness of transactions between companies with major advertising budgets and consumers? This Article contends that it does not

Hyphal Orientation of Candida albicans Is Regulated by a Calcium-Dependent Mechanism

SummaryEukaryotic cells from fungal hyphae to neurites that grow by polarized extension must coordinate cell growth and cell orientation to enable them to exhibit growth tropisms and to respond to relevant environmental cues. Such cells generally maintain a tip-high Ca2+ cytoplasmic gradient, which is correlated with their ability to exhibit polarized tip growth and to respond to growth-directing extracellular signals [1–5]. In yeast and other fungi, the polarisome, exocyst, Arp2/3, and Spitzenkörper protein complexes collectively orchestrate tip growth and cell polarity, but it is not clear whether these molecular complexes also regulate cell orientation or whether they are influenced by cytoplasmic Ca2+ gradients. Hyphae of the human pathogenic fungus Candida albicans reorient their growth axis in response to underlying surface topography (thigmotropism) [6] and imposed electric fields (galvanotropism) [7]. The establishment and maintenance of directional growth in relation to these environmental cues was Ca2+ dependent. Tropisms were attenuated in media containing low Ca2+, or calcium-channel blockers, and in mutants where calcium channels or elements of the calcium signaling pathway were deleted. Therefore galvanotropism and thigmotropism may both be mediated by localized Ca2+ influx at sites of polarized growth via Ca2+ channels that are activated by appropriate environmental signals

Cutinase activity in supercritical and organic media: water activity, solvation and acid–base effects

We performed a comparative study on the activity of Fusarium solani pisi cutinase immobilized on zeolites NaA and NaY, in n-hexane, acetonitrile, supercritical ethane (sc-ethane) and sc-CO2, at two different water activity (aW) values set by salt hydrate pairs in situ and at acid–base conditions fixed with solid-state buffers of aqueous pKa between 4.3 and 10.6. The reaction studied was the transesterification of vinyl butyrate by (R,S)-2-phenyl-1-propanol. The transesterification activity of cutinase was highest and similar in sc-ethane and in n-hexane,about one order of magnitude lower in acetonitrile and even lower in sc-CO2. Activity coefficients (γ) generated for the two substrates indicated that they were better solvated in acetonitrile and thus less available for binding at the active site than in the other three solvents. γ data also suggested higher reaction rates in sc-ethane than in n-hexane, as observed, and provided evidence for a direct negative effect of sc-CO2 on enzyme activity. Manipulation of the acid–base conditions of the media did not afford any improvement of the initial rates of transesterification relative to the blanks (no added acid–base buffer, only salt hydrate pair), except in the case of cutinase immobilized on zeolite NaA in sc-ethane at aW = 0.7. The poor performance of the blank in this case and the great improvement observed in the presence of a basic buffer suggest a deleterious acidic effect in the medium which, an experiment without additives confirmed, was not due to the known acidic character of the salt hydrate pair used to set aW = 0.7. In acetonitrile, increasing aW was accompanied by a decrease in initial rates of transesterification, unlike in the other solvents. There was considerable hydrolysis in acetonitrile, where initial rates of hydrolysis increased about 20-fold from aW = 0.2 to 0.7. Hydrolysis was less pronounced in sc-ethane and in n-hexane, and only at aW = 0.7, and in sc-CO2 butyric acid was detected only at very long reaction times, in agreement with a generally low catalytic activity. Cutinase enantio-selectivity towards the alcohol substrate was low and unaffected by any manipulation of medium conditions.This work has been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) through the contracts PRAXIS/PBIO/14314/1998 and POCTI/35429/QUI/2000 and the grant PRAXIS XXI/BD/21615/99 (S. Garcia), and by FEDER.We thank Ricardo Baptista for help in the production of cutinase

The cosmic gravitational wave background in a cyclic universe

Inflation predicts a primordial gravitational wave spectrum that is slightly ``red,'' i.e., nearly scale-invariant with slowly increasing power at longer wavelengths. In this paper, we compute both the amplitude and spectral form of the primordial tensor spectrum predicted by cyclic/ekpyrotic models. The spectrum is blue and exponentially suppressed compared to inflation on long wavelengths. The strongest observational constraint emerges from the requirement that the energy density in gravitational waves should not exceed around 10 per cent of the energy density at the time of nucleosynthesis.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figuer

Association Between Raised Blood Pressure and Dysglycemia in Hong Kong Chinese

OBJECTIVE—To investigate the association between raised blood pressure and dysglycemia

Probing Lorentz and CPT violation with space-based experiments

Space-based experiments offer sensitivity to numerous unmeasured effects involving Lorentz and CPT violation. We provide a classification of clock sensitivities and present explicit expressions for time variations arising in such experiments from nonzero coefficients in the Lorentz- and CPT-violating Standard-Model Extension.Comment: 15 page

A review of the ecological value of Cusuco National Park an urgent call forconservation action in a highly threatened Mesoamerican cloud forest

Cloud forests are amongst the most biologically unique, yet threatened, ecosystems in Mesoamerica. We summarize the ecological value and conservation status of a well-studied cloud forest site: Cusuco National Park (CNP), a 23,440 ha protected area in the Merendón mountains, northwest Honduras. We show CNP to have exceptional biodiversity; of 966 taxa identified to a species-level to date, 362 (37.5%) are Mesoamerican endemics, 67 are red-listed by the IUCN, and at least 49 are micro-endemics known only from the Merendón range. CNP also provides key ecosystem services including provision of drinking water and downstream flood mitigation, as well as carbon sequestration, with an estimated stock of 3.5 million megagrams of carbon in 2000. Despite its ecological importance, CNP faces multiple environmental threats and associated stresses, including deforestation (1,759 ha since 2000 equating to 7% of total forest area), poaching (7% loss of mammal relative abundance per year), amphibian declines due to chytridiomycosis (70% of species threatened or near-threatened), and climate change (a mean 2.6 °C increase in temperature and 112 mm decrease in rainfall by 2100). Despite conservation actions, including community ranger patrols, captive-breeding programmes, and ecotourism initiatives, environmental degradation of CNP continues. Further action is urgently required, including reinforcement and expansion of ranger programmes, greater stakeholder engagement, community education programmes, development of alternative livelihood projects, and legislative enforcement and prosecution. Without a thorough and rapid response to understand and mitigate illegal activities, the extirpation and extinction of species and the loss of vital ecosystem services are inevitable in the coming decades

Large-eddy simulation of low-frequency unsteadiness in a turbulent shock-induced separation bubble

The need for better understanding of the low-frequency unsteadiness observed in shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions has been driving research in this area for several decades. We present here a large-eddy simulation investigation of the interaction between an impinging oblique shock and a Mach 2.3 turbulent boundary layer. Contrary to past large-eddy simulation investigations on shock/turbulent boundary layer interactions, we have used an inflow technique which does not introduce any energetically significant low frequencies into the domain, hence avoiding possible interference with the shock/boundary layer interaction system. The large-eddy simulation has been run for much longer times than previous computational studies making a Fourier analysis of the low frequency possible. The broadband and energetic low-frequency component found in the interaction is in excellent agreement with the experimental findings. Furthermore, a linear stability analysis of the mean flow was performed and a stationary unstable global mode was found. The long-run large-eddy simulation data were analyzed and a phase change in the wall pressure fluctuations was related to the global-mode structure, leading to a possible driving mechanism for the observed low-frequency motions

The lancet weight determines wheal diameter in response to skin prick testing with histamine

BACKGROUND:Skin prick test (SPT) is a common test for diagnosing immunoglobulin E-mediated allergies. In clinical routine, technicalities, human errors or patient-related biases, occasionally results in suboptimal diagnosis of sensitization. OBJECTIVE:Although not previously assessed qualitatively, lancet weight is hypothesized to be important when performing SPT to minimize the frequency of false positives, false negatives, and unwanted discomfort. METHODS:Accurate weight-controlled SPT was performed on the volar forearms and backs of 20 healthy subjects. Four predetermined lancet weights were applied (25 g, 85 g, 135 g and 265 g) using two positive control histamine solutions (1 mg/mL and 10 mg/mL) and one negative control (saline). A total of 400 SPTs were conducted. The outcome parameters were: wheal size, neurogenic inflammation (measured by superficial blood perfusion), frequency of bleeding, and the lancet provoked pain response. RESULTS:The mean wheal diameter increased significantly as higher weights were applied to the SPT lancet, e.g. from 3.2 ± 0.28 mm at 25 g to 5.4 ± 1.7 mm at 265 g (p<0.01). Similarly, the frequency of bleeding, the provoked pain, and the neurogenic inflammatory response increased significantly. At 265 g saline evoked two wheal responses (/160 pricks) below 3 mm. CONCLUSION AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE:The applied weight of the lancet during the SPT-procedure is an important factor. Higher lancet weights precipitate significantly larger wheal reactions with potential diagnostic implications. This warrants additional research of the optimal lancet weight in relation to SPT-guidelines to improve the specificity and sensitivity of the procedure