Note and Comment

The Renvoi Theory Repudiated as a Test for Determining the Negotiability of a Note - A recent case decided by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma (Bell v. Riggs, 127 Pac. 427) involving, among others, a question as to what law governs the negotiability of a note made in one State and payable in another, though of little intrinsic value so far as that point is concerned, is of some interest because the attorney for the holder of the note made a curious attempt to adapt the renvoi theory to his case. The term renvoi is used as a convenient descriptive term denoting that when the transaction involves a conflict of laws, the judge of the forum shall take into account not the particular law of the situs to which the le.x fori refers the transaction, but the rules of private international law prevailing in that country, without regard to the particular law which may be deemed to control in the end. For example, suppose a citizen of New York, formerly a resident of that State, dies domiciled in Italy having personal property in New York, and suppose that a question arises in the New York courts with respect to. the distribution of the property. By the law of the forum, the rule has been adopted that the law of the domicile of the deceased at the time of his death shall govern the distribution of his personal estate. Hence distribution must be determined by the Italian law. But what is meant by Italian law

Assessing Survival and Grading the Severity of Complications in Octogenarians Undergoing Pulmonary Lobectomy.

Introduction. Octogenarians are at increased risk for complications after lung resection. With alternatives such as radiation, understanding the risks of surgery and associated survival are valuable. Data grading the severity of complications and long-term survival in this population is lacking. We reviewed our experience with lobectomy in octogenarians, grading complications using a validated thoracic morbidity and mortality schema. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed consecutive patients aged ≥80 undergoing lobectomy between 2004 and 2012. Demographics, clinical/pathologic stage, complications, recurrence, and mortality were collected. Complications were graded by the Seely thoracic morbidity and mortality model. Results. 45 patients (mean age 82.2 years) were analyzed. The majority of patients (28/45, 62%) were clinical stage IA/IB. 62% (28/45) of patients experienced a complication. Only 15.6% (7/45) were considered significantly morbid (≥ grade IIIB) per the Seely model. Perioperative mortality was 2% and half of patients were living at a follow-up of 53 months. Overall five-year survival was 52%. Conclusions. In carefully selected octogenarians, lobectomy carries a 15.6% rate of significantly morbid complications with encouraging overall survival. These data provide the basis for a more complete discussion with patients regarding lobectomy for lung cancer

Authentic Literacy in the Classroom: America and Middle East Connections

Authentic Literacy in the classroom Authentic literacy in the classroom is becoming a more common practice amongst educators. Research has indicated that activities which center around real-world experiences can increase student motivation, literacy learning, and instill a purpose for learning rather than instruction which is centered around isolated activities with no real purpose or relevance to their real lives. Middle Eastern culture and relevant literature were used in this study as a focus on implications of authentic lessons to foster connections between American students and the Middle East, increase student motivation, and track changes in previously held biases. The results of this study suggest that authentic literacy can be used to support literacy processes, increase student motivation, and shift student thinking towards a more tolerant and open-minded view of societies in general. Authentic Literacy in the Classroom: America and Middle Eastern connections A common complaint or challenge that is faced with school teachers and authentic literacy is the lack of time allowed between the standardized tests and core curriculum, lack of support from administration (in order to permit students participation in authentic activities), and most commonly-teachers do not know how to implement it in the classroom and make it part of their daily instruction. According to Purcell-Gates, Duke, and Martinea

Anomalous magnetic splitting of the Kondo resonance

The splitting of the Kondo resonance in the density of states of an Anderson impurity in finite magnetic field is calculated from the exact Bethe-ansatz solution. The result gives an estimate of the electron spectral function for nonzero magnetic field and Kondo temperature, with consequences for transport experiments on quantum dots in the Kondo regime. The strong correlations of the Kondo ground state cause a significant low-temperature reduction of the peak splitting. Explicit formulae are found for the shift and broadening of the Kondo peaks. A likely cause of the problems of large-N approaches to spin-1/2 impurities at finite magnetic field is suggested.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figures; published versio

A new non-Fermi liquid fixed point

We study a new exchange interaction in which the conduction electrons with pseudo spin $S_c=3/2$ interact with the impurity spin $S_I=1/2$. Due to the overscreening of the impurity spin by higher conduction electron spin, a new non-trivial intermediate coupling strength fixed point is realized. Using the numerical renormalization group (NRG), we show that the low-energy spectra are described by a non-Fermi liquid excitation spectrum. A conformal field theory analysis is compared with NRG results and excellent agreement is obtained. Using the double fusion rule to generate the operator spectrum with the conformal theory, we find that the specific heat coefficient and magnetic susceptibility will diverge as $T^{-2/3}$, that the scaling dimension of an applied magnetic field is $5/6$, and that exchange anisotropy is always relevant. We discuss the possible relevance of our work to two-level system Kondo materials and dilute cerium alloys, and we point out a paradox in understanding the Bethe-Ansatz solutions to the multichannel Kondo model.Comment: Revised. 20 page

Conserving Diagrammatic Approximations for Quantum Impurity Models: NCA and CTMA

Self-consistent diagrammatic approximations to the Anderson or Kondo impurity model, using an exact pseudoparticle representation of the impurity states, are reviewed. We first discuss the infrared exponents of the pseudoparticle propagators as indicators of Fermi liquid behavior through their dependence on the impurity occupation and on magnetic field. Then we discuss the Non-Crossing Approximation (NCA), identifying its strengths, but also its fundamental shortcomings. Physical arguments as well as a perturbative renormalization group analysis suggest that an infinite parquet-type resummation of two-particle vertex diagrams, the Conserving T-Matrix Approximation (CTMA) will cure the deficiencies of NCA. We review results on the pseudoparticle spectral functions, the spin susceptibility and the impurity electron spectral function, supporting that the CTMA provides qualitatively correct results, both in the high-temperature regime and in the strong coupling Fermi liquid regime at low temperatures.Comment: 10 pages, invited article, to appear in a special edition of JPSJ "Kondo Effect - 40 Years after the Discovery", published version, some minor typos correcte

Pedestrian Approach to the Two-Channel Kondo Model

We reformulate the two-channel Kondo model to explicitly remove the unscattered charge degrees of freedom. This procedure permits us to move the non-Fermi liquid fixed point to infinite coupling where we can apply a perturbative strong-coupling expansion. The fixed point Hamiltonian involves a three-body Majorana zero mode whose scattering effects give rise to marginal self-energies. The compactified model is the N=3 member of a family of "O(N)" Kondo models that can be solved by semiclassical methods in the large $N$ limit. For odd $N$, {\em fermionic} "Kink" fluctuations about the $N=\infty$ mean-field theory generate a fermionic $N$-body bound-state which asymptotically decouples at low energies. For N=3, our semi-classical methods fully recover the non-Fermi liquid physics of the original two channel model. Using the same methods, we find that the corresponding O(3) Kondo lattice model develops a spin-gap and a gapless band of coherently propagating three-body bound-states. Its strong-coupling limit offers a rather interesting realization of marginal Fermi liquid behavior.Comment: 17 pages, Revtex 3.0. Replaced with fully compiled postscript file