Editorial: hepatocellular carcinoma – a rare complication of hepatic venous outflow tract obstruction

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111131/1/apt13198.pd

Due Process Alignment in Mass Restructurings

Mass tort defendants have recently begun exiting multidistrict litigation by filing for bankruptcy. This new strategy ushers defendants into a far more hospitable forum that offers accelerated resolution of all state and federal claims held by both current and future victims. Bankruptcy\u27s structural, procedural, and substantive benefits also provide defendants with unique optionality. Bankruptcy\u27s resolution promise is alluring, but the process relies on a very large assumption: that future victims can be compelled to relinquish property rights in their cause of action against the corporate defendant and others without consent or notice. Bankruptcy builds an entire resolution structure on the premise that the U.S. Bankruptcy Code\u27s untested interest-representation scheme satisfies due process strictures. This Essay questions that assumption and identifies two compromised pillars that could render bankruptcy\u27s mass tort framework unconstitutional. First, the process for selecting the fiduciary that represents future victims\u27 interests and irrevocably binds them to the agreed settlement is fundamentally broken. Second, the process by which bankruptcy courts estimate the value of thousands of mass tort claims places too much pressure on a jurist unfamiliar with personal injury claims. These compromised pillars raise the risk that the victims\u27 settlement trust will be underfunded and will fail prematurely. In this outcome, future victims would have no recourse but to argue that the restructuring process did not satisfy due process and the entire settlement should be unwound This Essay proposes that the risk of a prematurely insolvent victim\u27s trust can be reduced considerably by bolstering these two pillars. Our proposal seeks to (1) rebuild the future claimants\u27 representative role in order to ensure that future victims\u27 interests are effectively represented and (2) recalibrate the claim estimation process by facilitating coordination between the bankruptcy court and nonbankruptcy federal and state courts

A window into the neutron star: Modelling the cooling of accretion heated neutron star crusts

In accreting neutron star X-ray transients, the neutron star crust can be substantially heated out of thermal equilibrium with the core during an accretion outburst. The observed subsequent cooling in quiescence (when accretion has halted) offers a unique opportunity to study the structure and thermal properties of the crust. Initially crust cooling modelling studies focussed on transient X-ray binaries with prolonged accretion outbursts (> 1 year) such that the crust would be significantly heated for the cooling to be detectable. Here we present the results of applying a theoretical model to the observed cooling curve after a short accretion outburst of only ~10 weeks. In our study we use the 2010 outburst of the transiently accreting 11 Hz X-ray pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5. Observationally it was found that the crust in this source was still hot more than 4 years after the end of its short accretion outburst. From our modelling we found that such a long-lived hot crust implies some unusual crustal properties such as a very low thermal conductivity (> 10 times lower than determined for the other crust cooling sources). In addition, we present our preliminary results of the modelling of the ongoing cooling of the neutron star in MXB 1659-298. This transient X-ray source went back into quiescence in March 2017 after an accretion phase of ~1.8 years. We compare our predictions for the cooling curve after this outburst with the cooling curve of the same source obtained after its previous outburst which ended in 2001.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of "IAUS 337: Pulsar Astrophysics - The Next 50 Years" eds: P. Weltevrede, B.B.P. Perera, L. Levin Preston & S. Sanida

Underlying symmetries of realistic interactions and the nuclear many-body problem

The present study brings forward important information, within the framework of spectral distribution theory, about the types of forces that dominate three realistic interactions, CD-Bonn, CDBonn+ 3terms and GXPF1, in nuclei and their ability to account for many-particle effects such as the formation of correlated nucleon pairs and enhanced quadrupole collective modes. Like-particle and proton-neutron isovector pairing correlations are described microscopically by a model interaction with Sp(4) dynamical symmetry, which is extended to include an additional quadrupole-quadrupole interaction. The analysis of the results for the 1f7/2 level shows that both CD-Bonn+3terms and GXPF1 exhibit a well-developed pairing character compared to CD-Bonn, while the latter appears to build up more (less) rotational isovector T = 1 (isoscalar T = 0) collective features. Furthermore, the three realistic interactions are in general found to correlate strongly with the pairing+quadrupole model interaction, especially for the highest possible isospin group of states where the model interaction can be used to provide a reasonable description of the corresponding energy spectra.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Emerging stronger? Assessing the outcomes of Habitat for Humanity’s housing reconstruction programmes following the Indian Ocean tsunami

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) built, rehabilitated or repaired homes for 25,000 families in four countries in the five years following the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. As part of a broader organizational and learning review in 2009-2010, HFH commissioned Arup International Development to carry out an assessment of its post-tsunami housing reconstruction programmes in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. The purpose of this assessment was to investigate the extent to which HFH’s tsunami-response housing reconstruction programmes had contributed to the development of sustainable communities and livelihoods. Arup International Development undertook the assessment using the ASPIRE tool they had developed with Engineers Against Poverty. Basing their assessment on programme documentation and key informant interviews, household questionnaires and workshops with communities in each country, they completed one assessment for each country and a fifth assessment covering all four countries. This enabled comparison of both the impact of these four programmes and how the outcomes varied as a result of varying approaches and contextual issues. / The assessment found that HFH’s programme had made a significant contribution to the development of sustainable communities and livelihoods. The provision of high quality core homes had reduced household vulnerability and increased the standard of living, while HFH’s participatory process had increased community cohesion and developed positive relationships between communities and a range of external actors. There were also areas for improvement such as: the incorporation of hazard assessment, settlement planning and infrastructure at settlement level; greater community participation in decision-making regarding settlement planning, house design and the choice of appropriate construction techniques and technologies; greater focus on livelihood support and diversification both during construction and after completion of the housing programme; and complementing HFH’s experience in housing construction with the specialist expertise of other actors to maximize the impact of its work

Very hard states in neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries

We report on unusually very hard spectral states in three confirmed neutron-star low-mass X-ray binaries (1RXS J180408.9-342058, EXO 1745-248, and IGR J18245-2452) at a luminosity between ~ 10^{36-37} erg s^{-1}. When fitting the Swift X-ray spectra (0.5 - 10 keV) in those states with an absorbed power-law model, we found photon indices of \Gamma ~ 1, significantly lower than the \Gamma = 1.5 - 2.0 typically seen when such systems are in their so called hard state. For individual sources very hard spectra were already previously identified but here we show for the first time that likely our sources were in a distinct spectral state (i.e., different from the hard state) when they exhibited such very hard spectra. It is unclear how such very hard spectra can be formed; if the emission mechanism is similar to that operating in their hard states (i.e., up-scattering of soft photons due to hot electrons) then the electrons should have higher temperatures or a higher optical depth in the very hard state compared to those observed in the hard state. By using our obtained \Gamma as a tracer for the spectral evolution with luminosity, we have compared our results with those obtained by Wijnands et al. (2015). We confirm their general results in that also our sample of sources follow the same track as the other neutron star systems, although we do not find that the accreting millisecond pulsars are systematically harder than the non-pulsating systems.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Particle decay branching ratios for states of astrophysical importance in 19Ne

We have measured proton and alpha-particle branching ratios of excited states in 19Ne formed using the 19F(3He,t) reaction at a beam energy of 25 MeV. These ratios have a large impact on the astrophysical reaction rates of 15O(alpha,gamma), 18F(p,gamma) and 18F(p,alpha), which are of interest in understanding energy generation in x-ray bursts and in interpreting anticipated gamma-ray observations of novae. We detect decay protons and alpha-particles using a silicon detector array in coincidence with tritons measured in the focal plane detector of our Enge split-pole spectrograph. The silicon array consists of five strip detectors of the type used in the Louvain-Edinburgh Detector Array, subtending angles from 130 degrees to 165 degrees with approximately 14% lab efficiency. The correlation angular distributions give additional confidence in some prior spin-parity assignments that were based on gamma branchings. We measure Gamma_p/Gamma=0.387+-0.016 for the 665 keV proton resonance, which agrees well with the direct measurement of Bardayan et al.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Prepared using RevTex 4 and BibTex. Further minor revisions, incl. fig. 1 font size increase, 1 table removal, and minor changes to the tex