Patently Wrong: The U.S. Supreme Court Punts in the Case of LabCorp v. Metabolite

In June 2006, after having granted certiorari and hearing oral arguments, the United States Supreme Court dismissed the case of Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc. as having been improvidently granted a writ of certiorari. Dissenting from this extraordinary step was Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens and Souter. At issue in the case was a patent, the owners of which claimed that a physician\u27s use of any test to infer vitamin deficiency by raised blood serum levels of the chemical homocysteine infringed the patent. This Article argues that the Supreme Court was itself improvident in dismissing the case because the patent at issue claims ownership of a basic scientific fact, a phenomenon of nature, in violation of 35 U.S.C. § 101. Moreover, the lower courts\u27 construction of the term correlate was erroneous in that it was not determined according to the knowledge of biomedical investigators and practitioners skilled in that art. Finally, sound public policy arguments caution against granting such a patent. By failing to act, the Supreme Court essentially affirmed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit\u27s holding that a patent claiming a scientific fact can be valid, and that practicing physicians who merely think about that fact are liable for patent infringement

Aren\u27t You Lucky You Have Two Mamas? Redefining Parenthood in Light of Evolving Reproductive Technologies and Social Change

Advances in reproductive technologies and a greater social acceptance of same- sex relationships have resulted in increasing numbers of lesbian couples conceiving and raising families. But when these relationships fail, state courts are faced with the difficult problem of determining which partner constitutes a parent for purposes of support and visitation. This article provides a comparative analysis of the different approaches of various state courts to this vexing problem and suggests a model that states might adopt via a modification of the Uniform Parentage Act

Aren\u27t You Lucky You Have Two Mamas? Redefining Parenthood in Light of Evolving Reproductive Technologies and Social Change

Advances in reproductive technologies and a greater social acceptance of same- sex relationships have resulted in increasing numbers of lesbian couples conceiving and raising families. But when these relationships fail, state courts are faced with the difficult problem of determining which partner constitutes a parent for purposes of support and visitation. This article provides a comparative analysis of the different approaches of various state courts to this vexing problem and suggests a model that states might adopt via a modification of the Uniform Parentage Act

Central projections of the lateral line nerves in the shovelnose sturgeon

Primary projections of the anterior (ALLN) and posterior (PLLN) lateral line nerves were traced in the shovelnose sturgeon by means of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) histochemistry and silver degeneration. The trunk of the ALLN divides into dorsal and ventral roots as it enters the medulla. Fibers of the dorsal root form ascending and descending branches that terminate within the ipsilateral dorsal octavolateralis nucleus and the dorsal granular component of the lateral eminentia granularis. Fibers of the ventral root of the ALLN, as well as fibers of the PLLN, enter the medulla ventral to the dorsal root of the ALLN where some of the fibers terminate among the dendrites of the magnocellular octaval nucleus. The bulk of the fibers form ascending and descending branches that terminate within the ipsilateral medial octavolateralis nucleus. A portion of the ascending fibers continue more rostrally land terminate in the ipsilateral eminentia granularis and bilaterally in the cerebellar corpus. Some fibers of the descending rami of both the ALLN and PLLN extend beyond the caudal limit of the medial octavolateralis nucleus to terminate in the caudal octavolateralis nucleus. The HRP cases also revealed retrogradely filled large neurons whose axons course peripherally in the lateral line nerve and are likely efferent to the lateral line organs.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50022/1/902250114_ftp.pd

Self-assembly of polymers in confined geometrics.

Athermal, tethered chains are modeled with Density Functional (DFT) theory for both the explicit solvent and continuum solvent cases. The structure of DFT is shown to reduce to Self-Consistent-Field (SCF) theory in the incompressible limit where there is symmetry between solvent and monomer, and to Single-Chain-Mean-Field (SCMF) theory in the continuum solvent limit. We show that by careful selection of the reference and ideal systems in DFT theory, self-consistent numerical solutions can be obtained, thereby avoiding the single chain Monte Carlo simulation in SCMF theory. On long length scales, excellent agreement is seen between the simplified DFT theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations of both continuum solvents and explicit-molecule solvents. In order to describe the structure of the polymer and solvent near the surface it is necessary to include compressibility effects and the nonlocality of the field

Morphospecies and Taxonomic Species Comparison for Hymenoptera

The use of morphospecies as surrogates for taxonomic species has been proposed as an alternative to overcome the identification difficulties associated with many invertebrate studies, such as biodiversity surveys. Hymenoptera specimens were collected by beating and pitfall traps, and were separated into morphospecies by a non-specialist with no prior training, and later identified by an expert taxonomist. The number of Hymenoptera morphospecies and taxonomic species was 37 and 42, respectively, representing an underestimation error of 12%. Different families presented varying levels of difficulty, and although the species estimation provided by the use of morphospecies initially appeared to have a relatively minor error rate, this was actually an artefact. Splitting and lumping errors balanced each other out, wrongly suggesting that morphospecies were reasonable surrogates for taxonomic species in the Hymenoptera. The use of morphospecies should be adopted only for selected target groups, which have been assessed as reliable surrogates for taxonomic species beforehand, and some prior training to the non-specialist is likely to be of primary importance

Bodyweight Perceptions among Texas Women: The Effects of Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Citizenship Status

Despite previous work exploring linkages between religious participation and health, little research has looked at the role of religion in affecting bodyweight perceptions. Using the theoretical model developed by Levin et al. (Sociol Q 36(1):157–173, 1995) on the multidimensionality of religious participation, we develop several hypotheses and test them by using data from the 2004 Survey of Texas Adults. We estimate multinomial logistic regression models to determine the relative risk of women perceiving themselves as overweight. Results indicate that religious attendance lowers risk of women perceiving themselves as very overweight. Citizenship status was an important factor for Latinas, with noncitizens being less likely to see themselves as overweight. We also test interaction effects between religion and race. Religious attendance and prayer have a moderating effect among Latina non-citizens so that among these women, attendance and prayer intensify perceptions of feeling less overweight when compared to their white counterparts. Among African American women, the effect of increased church attendance leads to perceptions of being overweight. Prayer is also a correlate of overweight perceptions but only among African American women. We close with a discussion that highlights key implications from our findings, note study limitations, and several promising avenues for future research

Report on ASC project degradation of organic materials.

Using molecular dynamics simulations, a constitutive model for the chemical aging of polymer networks was developed. This model incorporates the effects on the stress from the chemical crosslinks and the physical entanglements. The independent network hypothesis has been modified to account for the stress transfer between networks due to crosslinking and scission in strained states. This model was implemented in the finite element code Adagio and validated through comparison with experiment. Stress relaxation data was used to deduce crosslinking history and the resulting history was used to predict permanent set. The permanent set predictions agree quantitatively with experiment