Conducting Informal Discovery of a Party\u27s Former Employees: Legal and Ethical Concerns and Constraints

This Article identifies and critiques existing sources of confusion in the law and proposes revised and alternative discovery procedures to provide equal access to information possessed by ex-employees, while simultaneously safeguarding the integrity of that information. Its primary emphasis is on federal jurisprudence, although important points of consensus and departure between state and federal law are noted, as appropriate. Part I explains the issues that arise in informal discovery, and the difficulties with clearly resolving those issues given the conflicting state of the law. Part II discusses application of the attorney-client privilege to communications between corporate counsel and former employees, concluding that the privilege should not shield the content of such communications from discovery by opposing counsel. Because the attorney-client privilege issue and the debate over ex parte contact both turn on whether a former employee is a party to the litigation, an exposition of the ethical concerns of ex parte contact follows in Part III, which concludes that ex parte contact by opposing counsel should be allowed. Part IV examines the applicability of the work product doctrine in shielding from discovery certain tangible materials related to the interview. This Article advocates absolute immunity from discovery for attorney notes and memoranda, and for collections of documents selected by counsel for discussion with former employees; limited discovery of signed witness statements generated pursuant to the interview; and fairly broad discovery of the content of counsel\u27s questions and statements during the interview. The proposed discovery guidelines in the Conclusion are offered with the ambitious, if not elusive, goal of reconciling the competing interests and policies that rouse litigants to battle when informal discovery is conducted of former employees, while simultaneously giving due regard to the pragmatic impact that new or revised rules may have on the litigants and the adversarial process. The overriding objective is to provide equal access by all parties to the information possessed by former employees, while at the same time providing mechanisms to deter, and if necessary to reveal, inappropriate manipulation of these potential witnesses by counsel

Untreated Municipal Solid Waste Incineration Ashes for Cement Replacement

This paper characterised the two different ashes, namely Boiler Ash (BOA) and Residue Ash (RA), collected from Qatar's Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI) plant through a range of detailed analyses (chemical, physical and morphological). The potential utilisation of these raw MSWI ashes as supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in cement-based composites has been investigated by replacement with 0%, 10%, 20%, and 30% by weight of cement. The effect of the replacement levels on workability, setting time, and strength was investigated. Test results showed that setting time increased and workability decreased with the increase of BOA content. On the contrary, RA substitution decreased the setting time and increased the workability. The highest compressive strength was obtained in RA-incorporated mortars at a 10% replacement ratio. Beyond the 10% replacement ratio, RA incorporation significantly reduced the strength. Due to BOA's high unburned carbon content, BOA substitutions reduced the strength of the mortars. However, the impact of the replacement ratio was not as strong as those in RA mortars. Considering setting time, workability, and compressive strength, BOA and RA's optimum percentage of cement replacement was 20% and 10%, respectively. Heavy metal and salt leaching from MSWI ash-incorporated mortars were evaluated by the monolithic tank test. Results indicated that most toxic metals and salts, except Ba and Cl-, were stabilised in the cement matrix

Durability and Microstructure of Cement Composites Containing Qatar's Municipal Wastes

Qatar produces more than 2.5 million tons of municipal waste per year with an average waste generation rate of 1.8 kg/day/capita which is one of the highest rates in the world. The rapid growth of municipal solid waste has become one of the serious environmental problem that Qatar is facing with. Qatar's municipal waste is composed of organic and recyclables materials. Municipal solid waste incineration has been performed in Qatar since 2011. By incineration of wastes, not only the volume and weight of wastes are reduced but also energy is generated. Prior to incineration of municipal wastes, recyclables are separated from the waste and the remaining waste is incinerated at a minimum temperature of 850oC. Bottom ash and fly ash are produced as a result of incineration process. These by-products may contain heavy metals and pose a thread to the environment hence needs treatment and/or special disposal. Approximately 60 tonnes of fly ash is generated daily from municipal waste incineration in Qatar and this ash called as municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) fly ash. This MSWI fly ash is stabilised with cement and then disposed into special landfill. However, cementitious property of MSWI fly ash due to similar mineralogical composition with cement and its finer particle size may favor its potential utilisation in cement based materials. As aforementioned before, 40% of municipal waste of Qatar is composed of recyclables of which 14% is plastic. The major portion of plastic wastes, about 90% of total, are composed of light density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) wastes. Therefore, there is a huge potential for recycling of PE wastes in Qatar considering the shortage of raw materials i.e. natural aggregate for construction industry. The scarcity of available land for disposal of municipal wastes and limited natural resources of raw materials for construction industry has opened new research areas for proper disposal and recycling of municipal wastes. Therefore, in this research work, municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) fly ash and municipal polymeric wastes were used as secondary raw materials for the preparation of cement based composites. MSWI fly ash was utilised as partial replacement of cement by 10% by weight. Polyetyhlene wastes in granular form were utilised as partial replacement of natural aggregate by 10% by volume. Portland cement, silica fume (10% by weight) and MSWI FA (10% by weight) at constant rates were used as binder in all cement-based composites. Three different cement based composites were fabricated by partial substition of natural aggregate with LDPE and HDPE wastes at 0 and 10% by volume. The mixture without PE waste substitution was called as the reference mixture, with LDPE waste was called as Mix 1 and with HDPE waste was called as Mix 2. Besides mechanical performance, durability of fabricated cement composites containing municipal wastes was investigated to determine if their utilisation has positive contribution or adverse impact. The durability properties were examined by performing drying shrinkage and expansion under sulfate exposure tests. Scanning electron microscopy coupled with EDX were used to determine the degradation products of sulfate exposure. In terms of mechanical strength, samples containing PE wastes showed lower strength at early ages due to weaker bonding between LDPE/HDPE and the cement matrix. At later ages, strength improvement was observed and comparable strength values for Mix 1 and Mix 2 were measured with respect to the reference. The effect of utilisation of municipal wastes on the dimensional stability of cement composites was evaluated by measuring the variation of length change at 4, 11, 18, 25, 126 and 168 days of air drying. This test showed that incorporation of PE wastes (Mix 1 and Mix 2) reduced the drying shrinkage and provided better dimensional stability compared to the reference. Sulfate attack is known as one of the most deleterious effects on cement based composites due to the formation of expansive degradation products. To investigate the sulfate resistance of fabricated composites, the length change at 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 13 weeks, 15 weeks, 4 months and 6 months of sulfate exposure was measured. Both the reference and samples containing PE wastes did not show any visual deterioration except a white and soft layer formed on top of all samples. The length change indicated that composites containing PE wastes experienced reduction in expansion compared to the reference and hence considered as more durable for external sulfate attack. More voids and pores were present in PE incorporated samples, therefore sulfate degradation products probably filled these pores and resulted in lower expansion compared to the reference. There was no significant difference between the mechanical performance and durability of cement composites containing LDPE and HDPE. The microstructure and composition of sulfate degradation products were investigated by SEM-EDX. The decalcification of the C-S-H phase were detected in each sample. Gypsum, calcite and thaumasite were identified as the major deterioration related products, while ettringite was found at trace level. This laboratory study showed that MSWI fly ash and PE wastes can be utilised together to produce durable cement based materials with a lower carbon footprint.qscienc

Sensing Temperature and Stress Distributions on Rock Samples under Mechanical Loading

In the exploration of planetary materials using robotic probes, one of the key priorities is to establish fundamental level understandings on the mechanical response of materials under different levels of loading. In this context, though a number of strength characterisation tools are applied in the space industry, whole-field visualization of stress and temperature distribution on rock samples and their potential relevance to fracture under external loading is not yet well exploited. In this work, we apply two types of tomography namely (i) IR tomography and (ii) PSAT tomography to understand the variation of temperature and shear stress distribution respectively anywhere on the samples at point scale. Sandstone is used as a simulant material here. Potential links between the tomography measures and the fracture strength of the sandstone are revealed in this work

Strength and durability of composite concretes using municipal wastes

The influence of different types of polyethylene (PE) substitutions as partial aggregate replacement of micro-steel fiber reinforced self-consolidating concrete (SCC) incorporating incinerator fly ash was investigated. The study focuses on the workability and hardened properties including mechanical, permeability properties, sulfate resistance and microstructure. Regardless of the polyethylene type, PE substitutions slightly decreased the compressive and flexural strength of SSC initially, however, the difference was compensated at later ages. SEM analysis of the interfacial transition zone showed that there was chemical interaction between PE and the matrix. Although PE substitutions increased the permeable porosity and sorptivity, it significantly improved the sulfate resistance of SCC. The influence of PE shape and size on workability and strength was found to be more important than its type. When considering the disposal of PE wastes and saving embodied energy, consuming recycled PE as partial aggregate replacement was more advantageous over virgin PE aggregate replaced concrete

The effects of smiling or crying facial expressions on grip strength, measured with a hand dynamometer and the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test

The effects of smiling or crying facial expressions on grip strength and the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test were evaluated in this study. Ten right-handed basketball players (age group 18-28) were included in the study. Grip strength was measured,with a Riester hand dynamometer and the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test successively, after the players had looked at the drawing of a "crying face" for 5 seconds from a distance of 40 cm. at the eye level. Immediately afterwards they were shown the drawing of a "smiling face" and were asked to grip with the same condition. Once all 10 players carried out this experiment, the order in which the drawings were shown was reversed. We then proceeded to measure the same variables, using the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test. The statistics obtained thereby were subjected to Pearsons correlation coefficient and paired t-test. Using a hand dynamometer and the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test, it was found that, in both tests, the "smiling face" drawing (first crying, then smiling face: with hand dynamometer, it increased from 8.34 +/- 0.97 kg to 9.18 +/- 0.9 kg; t=5.39,p=0.0001) increased the grip strength of the basketball players, and the "crying face" drawing (first smiling face, then crying face: with hand dynamometer it decreased from 9.35 +/- 0.90 kg to 8.51 +/- 0.96 kg; t=9.81, p=0.0001) decreased the grip strength. Exposure to the smiling face drawing increased the grip strength, and exposure to the crying face. decreased it, in every subject tested in this group. Similar effects were observed with the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test (first crying, then smiling: it increased from -2.80 +/- 1.13 to 2.20 +/- 1.32; t=33.54, p=0.0001; first smiling then crying: it decreased from 2.40 +/- 1.34 to -2.20 +/- 1.62; t=15.06, p=0.0001)

Hypertension in the elderly

WOS: 000418482900009PubMed ID: 28976377Hypertension (HT) is a common problem in elderly persons (age >65 years), reaching a prevalence as high as 60 to 80%. Isolated systolic HT mostly occurs in older patients. Treatment of HT in all patients, independent of age, consists of lifestyle modifications and antihypertensive therapy. Randomized trials have provided clear evidence of benefit from treating HT in elderly patients, including those over the age of 80 years. Drug therapy should be started in elderly hypertensive patients if lifestyle changes are insufficient and in the absence of a hypertensive emergency or urgency, blood pressure reduction should always be gradual. A long-acting dihydropyridine or a thiazide diuretic is generally preferred because of increased blood pressure-lowering efficacy in this population. Goal blood pressure recommendation for most hypertensive elderly is to attain a systolic pressure below 140 mmHg

The future of the application of the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test in sports psychology

The Bi-Digital O-Ring Test, originally developed by Dr. Omura, utilizes changes in the degree of strength of voluntary movements of muscles of the fingers under a definite muscle tonus, making Bi-Digital O-Rings, as an indicator of pathology in the body. Research in Sports Psychology can use the classical measurement methods and Bi-Digital O-Ring Test method comparatively and thus produce new findings regarding the reliability and certainty of the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test test. It seems probable that by using the non-invasive Bi-Digital O-Ring Test test, it is possible to measure enzymes, hormones and neuro-transmitters instantaneously and assess a sports person's actual psychological and physiological performance, and thereby help them reach their peak performance levels during both exercise and competitions