The Many State Doctrines of Forum Non Conveniens

Forum non conveniens is not as ancient or monolithic as U.S. courts often assume. The doctrine, which permits judges to decline to hear cases they believe would more appropriately be heard in another sovereign’s courts, was only adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court for use in nonadmiralty cases in 1947; the doctrine’s “deep roots in the common law” are thought instead to have grown in the states. This Article tests that account by surveying the forum non conveniens doctrines of all fifty states and the District of Columbia. What we found should change how judges, practitioners, and scholars view the doctrine. First, forum non conveniens in the states does not have a “long history”—it is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Second, before the 1950s, no states permitted dismissal of claims brought against local defendants. Third, state experience with forum non conveniens has been and continues to be highly variable. Most states adopted a forum non conveniens doctrine only after the Supreme Court did; many initially rejected it, and half a dozen still prohibit its use in cases involving in-state plaintiffs or in-state causes of action. Idaho has yet to adopt the doctrine. In addition to these doctrinal lessons, the states’ experience with forum non conveniens provides a useful case study for examining what we term “procedural federalism,” meaning the interactions between state and federal institutions that affect procedural development. Procedural federalism reminds us that the procedure we have is not necessarily the “best” procedure we could conceive while simultaneously drawing our attention to pockets of divergence that may offer promising reforms. More broadly, it suggests a different approach to history than the one currently ascendant in federal courts and commentary. The iterative nature of procedural federalism makes clear that doctrines like forum non conveniens do not have perfect pasts, needing only to be rediscovered to be understood properly. Rather, procedural history is useful because it can help us understand how we ended up with the doctrines we have today, in order to better evaluate where we should go next

Factors affecting diet, habitat selection and breeding success of the African Crowned Eagle Stephanoaetus coronatus in a fragmented landscape

This study aimed to identify variables that affect habitat selection and nesting success of the African Crowned Eagle Stephanoaetus coronatus, the largest forest raptor, in north-eastern South Africa. A preference for nesting in the Northern Mistbelt Forest vegetation type was established and 82% of all nests were located in indigenous trees. Nest abandonment was less common when distances to the nearest neighbour were greater. The diet of this species was investigated by examination of prey remains beneath nests and verified by comparison with museum specimens. In total, 156 remains were found, representing a minimum of 75 prey individuals. The diet of African Crowned Eagles constituted almost entirely mammals (99%), which were predominantly antelopes (61%) and monkeys (25%). It was also found that the proportion of primates in the diet correlates with latitude: populations in equatorial latitudes have a higher proportion of primates in their diets, whereas further south antelopes are a much more common diet component

Dually investigated: the effect of a pressure headcollar on the behaviour, discomfort and stress of trained horses

The Dually™ is a control headcollar designed to improve equine behaviour during handling challenges by applying greater pressure than a standard headcollar. Previous research indicated it did not improve compliance in naïve horses but did result in higher Horse Grimace Scale scores (HGS) indicative of discomfort. However, subjects had not been trained to step forward to release the pressure applied by the headcollar. The current study aimed to determine the effect of training on behaviour and physiology of horses wearing the Dually™ headcollar during handling challenges. To this end, subjects received three training sessions prior to completing two handling tests in which they crossed distinct novel obstacles, one wearing a Dually™ with a line attached to the pressure mechanism and one attached to the standard ring as a control. Behaviour was coded by hypothesis blind researchers: time to cross the obstacle and proactive refusal (moving away from the obstacle) were recorded as indicators of compliance and the Horse Grimace Scale was used to measure discomfort caused by each configuration of the device. Infrared thermography of ocular temperature, heart rate variability (RMSSD and low/high frequency ratios (LF/HF)) and salivary cortisol were measured as indicators of arousal. Data from the previous study on Naïve horses was also included to compare responses to the Dually in Naïve and Trained horses. Training resulted in a decrease in RMSSD (p = 0.002) and an increase in LF/HF (p=0.012), compared to rest, indicating arousal. As per the original study, horses did not complete the tests more quickly in the Dually, compared to control (p=0.698). Trained horses from this study tended to be more proactive in the Dually compared to Controls (p=0.066) and significantly more so than Naïve horses from the previous study (p=0.002) suggesting that behaviour becomes less desirable during early Dually training. Yet, stress and HGS indicators were not higher in the Dually compared to Control during testing. Results suggest the Dually has a negative effect on behaviour but not on stress or discomfort during short handling challenges. Further research is warranted to determine the long-term effect of Dually experience on behaviour and welfare

Young, healthy males and females present cardiometabolic protection against the detrimental effects of a 7-day high-fat high-calorie diet

Purpose: High-fat, high-calorie (HFHC) diets have been used as a model to investigate lipid-induced insulin resistance. Short-term HFHC diets reduce insulin sensitivity in young healthy males, but to date, no study has directly compared males and females to elucidate sex-specific differences in the effects of a HFHC diet on functional metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes. Methods: Eleven males (24 ± 4 years; BMI 23 ± 2 kg.m−2; V̇O2 peak 62.3 ± 8.7 ml.min−1.kg−1FFM) were matched to 10 females (25 ± 4 years; BMI 23 ± 2 kg.m−2; V̇O2 peak 58.2 ± 8.2 ml.min−1.kg−1FFM). Insulin sensitivity, measured via oral glucose tolerance test, metabolic flexibility, arterial stiffness, body composition and blood lipids and liver enzymes were measured before and after 7 days of a high-fat (65% energy) high-calorie (+ 50% kcal) diet. Results: The HFHC diet did not change measures of insulin sensitivity, metabolic flexibility or arterial stiffness in either sex. There was a trend towards increased total body fat mass (kg) after the HFHC diet (+ 1.8% and + 2.3% for males and females, respectively; P = 0.056). In contrast to females, males had a significant increase in trunk to leg fat mass ratio (+ 5.1%; P = 0.005). Conclusion: Lean, healthy young males and females appear to be protected from the negative cardio-metabolic effects of a 7-day HFHC diet. Future research should use a prolonged positive energy balance achieved via increased energy intake and reduced energy expenditure to exacerbate negative metabolic and cardiovascular functional outcomes to determine whether sex-specific differences exist under more metabolically challenging conditions

Robust ecological analysis of camera trap data labelled by a machine learning model

1. Ecological data are collected over vast geographic areas using digital sensors such as camera traps and bioacoustic recorders. Camera traps have become the standard method for surveying many terrestrial mammals and birds, but camera trap arrays often generate millions of images that are time‐consuming to label. This causes significant latency between data collection and subsequent inference, which impedes conservation at a time of ecological crisis. Machine learning algorithms have been developed to improve the speed of labelling camera trap data, but it is uncertain how the outputs of these models can be used in ecological analyses without secondary validation by a human. 2. Here, we present our approach to developing, testing and applying a machine learning model to camera trap data for the purpose of achieving fully automated ecological analyses. As a case‐study, we built a model to classify 26 Central African forest mammal and bird species (or groups). The model generalizes to new spatially and temporally independent data (n = 227 camera stations, n = 23,868 images), and outperforms humans in several respects (e.g. detecting ‘invisible’ animals). We demonstrate how ecologists can evaluate a machine learning model's precision and accuracy in an ecological context by comparing species richness, activity patterns (n = 4 species tested) and occupancy (n = 4 species tested) derived from machine learning labels with the same estimates derived from expert labels. 3. Results show that fully automated species labels can be equivalent to expert labels when calculating species richness, activity patterns (n = 4 species tested) and estimating occupancy (n = 3 of 4 species tested) in a large, completely out‐of‐sample test dataset. Simple thresholding using the Softmax values (i.e. excluding ‘uncertain’ labels) improved the model's performance when calculating activity patterns and estimating occupancy but did not improve estimates of species richness. 4. We conclude that, with adequate testing and evaluation in an ecological context, a machine learning model can generate labels for direct use in ecological analyses without the need for manual validation. We provide the user‐community with a multi‐platform, multi‐language graphical user interface that can be used to run our model offline.Additional co-authors: Cisquet Kiebou Opepa, Ross T. Pitman, Hugh S. Robinso

The New Multipolarity in Transnational Litigation: Foreign Courts, Foreign Judgments, and Foreign Law

Conventional wisdom suggests that the transnational litigation system is essentially unipolar, or perhaps bipolar, with the United States and the United Kingdom acting as the leading providers of courts and law for transnational disputes. Our overarching conjecture is that this unipolar (or bipolar) era – if it ever existed at all – has passed, and that transnational litigation is entering an era of ever increasing multipolarity. If this intuition is correct, then it will be increasingly important for U.S. judges and lawyers to be comfortable handling a wide range of conflict-of-laws problems, and prepared to consult closely with their colleagues abroad. In this Article – based on our remarks at the International Law Weekend-West Conference held at Southwestern Law School in February 2011 – we develop three aspects of this conjecture, corresponding to three dimensions of the new multipolarity in transnational litigation. In Part I, we discuss the growing relative importance of non-U.S. forums for transnational litigation. In Part II, we highlight the potential proliferation of foreign judgments brought to the United States for recognition or enforcement. And in Part III, we consider the pervasiveness of foreign law issues that are likely to confront U.S. judges and lawyers, and the accompanying challenges of making determinations of foreign law in the wake of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Bodum USA, Inc. v. La Cafetière, Inc