27,417 research outputs found
London, Libel Capital No Longer? The Draft Defamation Act 2011 and the Future of Libel Tourism
[Excerpt] âIn the past decade, London emerged as the forum of choice for âlibel touristsââstrategic, often foreign, plaintiffs who bring defamation actions in a jurisdiction with plaintiff-friendly libel laws, even if they and the defamatory material at issue lack a substantial connection with that jurisdiction. Englandâs defamation laws and procedures make it significantly easier for claimants to commence and prevail in libel actions than do the laws and procedures of many other countries, particularly the United States. As a result, English courts have entertained several high-profile defamation cases involving foreign parties who have only tenuous connections to England, such as disputes between a Saudi billionaire and a U.S. journalist; a Russian businessman and a U.S. magazine; and a French director and a U.S. publisher. Cases like these have cemented Londonâs reputation as the âlibel capital of the world.â
The establishment of that notorious title, reflecting the notion that England does not value free expression as highly as other countries, has helped ignite a movement to reform English libel laws and procedures. On March 15, 2011, the U.K. Ministry of Justice unveiled a draft bill entitled the Draft Defamation Act 2011, proposing a substantial overhaul of English libel laws as well as the procedures applied in libel actions. The Draft Act aims to combat the perception that England is a refuge for libel tourism by, among other reforms, requiring English courts to determine whether England is the most appropriate forum in which the action should be heard before exercising jurisdiction.
The Draft Defamation Act comes less than one year after the enactment of the Securing the Protection of Our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (âSPEECHâ) Act of 2010 in the United States. The SPEECH Act prohibits U.S. courts, both state and federal, from recognizing or enforcing defamation judgments rendered by a foreign court unless that court applied a standard that was as protective of free speech as a U.S. court would have applied. In the context of libel tourism, this means that a libel tourist cannot force a U.S. author or publisher to comply with a foreign judgment unless a U.S. court finds that the judgment comported with First Amendment principles.
This Note analyzes the efficacy of the Draft Defamation Act and its impact on the enforcement of English defamation judgments in U.S. courts. Specifically, it proposes that the Draft Actâs procedural clauses will effectively reduce the prevalence of libel tourism in England. Moreover, this Note argues that, in light of the Draft Actâs reforms as well as longstanding principles of international comity, U.S. courts should not narrowly construe the SPEECH Act to require exact congruence between U.S. and English defamation laws. Finally, this Note presents evidence suggesting that Englandâs problem of libel tourism could be supplanted by the new phenomenon of privacy tourism. Thus, in addition to modifying and enacting the Draft Defamation Act, English policymakers should consider reviewing and possibly reforming English privacy laws.
This Note proceeds in four sections. Section II provides a background to issues related to libel tourism, including its prevalence in England and the U.S. response to it. Section III reviews the Draft Defamation Actâs procedural clauses related to libel tourism. Section IV analyzes the Draft Actâs potential to eradicate libel tourism and its effect on U.S. courtsâ construction and application of the SPEECH Act. Section IV also proposes modifications to the Draft Act, including the adoption of a defamation-specific choice-of-law rule. Finally, Section V explores the interplay between English defamation and privacy laws, considering whether the Draft Actâs aim to eliminate libel tourism inadvertently opens the door to the development of privacy tourism
Selected Readings on Ethnicity, Family and Community
Selected Readings on Ethnicity, Family and Community; compiled by Mary E. Kelly, Central Missouri State University, and Thomas W. Sanchez, University of Nebraska- Lincoln
Learning to sample in Cartesian MRI
Despite its exceptional soft tissue contrast, Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(MRI) faces the challenge of long scanning times compared to other modalities
like X-ray radiography. Shortening scanning times is crucial in clinical
settings, as it increases patient comfort, decreases examination costs and
improves throughput. Recent advances in compressed sensing (CS) and deep
learning allow accelerated MRI acquisition by reconstructing high-quality
images from undersampled data. While reconstruction algorithms have received
most of the focus, designing acquisition trajectories to optimize
reconstruction quality remains an open question. This thesis explores two
approaches to address this gap in the context of Cartesian MRI. First, we
propose two algorithms, lazy LBCS and stochastic LBCS, that significantly
improve upon G\"ozc\"u et al.'s greedy learning-based CS (LBCS) approach. These
algorithms scale to large, clinically relevant scenarios like multi-coil 3D MR
and dynamic MRI, previously inaccessible to LBCS. Additionally, we demonstrate
that generative adversarial networks (GANs) can serve as a natural criterion
for adaptive sampling by leveraging variance in the measurement domain to guide
acquisition. Second, we delve into the underlying structures or assumptions
that enable mask design algorithms to perform well in practice. Our experiments
reveal that state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (RL) approaches, while
capable of adaptation and long-horizon planning, offer only marginal
improvements over stochastic LBCS, which is neither adaptive nor does long-term
planning. Altogether, our findings suggest that stochastic LBCS and similar
methods represent promising alternatives to deep RL. They shine in particular
by their scalability and computational efficiency and could be key in the
deployment of optimized acquisition trajectories in Cartesian MRI.Comment: PhD Thesis; 198 page
Two-component Bose gases with one-body and two-body couplings
We study the competition between one-body and two-body couplings in
weakly-interacting two-component Bose gases, in particular as regards field
correlations. We derive the meanfield theory for both ground state and
low-energy pair excitations in the general case where both one-body and
two-body couplings are position-dependent and the fluid is subjected to a
state-dependent trapping potential. General formulas for phase and density
correlations are also derived. Focusing on the case of homogeneous systems, we
discuss the pair-excitation spectrum and the corresponding excitation modes,
and use them to calculate correlation functions, including both quantum and
thermal fluctuation terms. We show that the relative phase of the two
components is imposed by that of the one-body coupling, while its fluctuations
are determined by the modulus of the one-body coupling and by the two-body
coupling. One-body coupling and repulsive two-body coupling cooperate to
suppress relative-phase fluctuations, while attractive two-body coupling tends
to enhance them. Further applications of the formalism presented here and
extensions of our work are also discussed.Comment: published versio
Innovations and Development in Urban Planning Scholarship and Research (Editorial)
Urban planning is characterized by involving a wide range of experts from a variety of fields. Therefore, planning research draws upon each of these fields in how it interprets an examines the natural and built environment as elements of human settlement activities. As a small professional and academic discipline incorporating aspects of design, policy, law, social sciences, and engineering, it is understandable that research outcomes are published in a broad range of academic outlets. It is useful for us to reflect on our research intentions, processes, and outcomes, which is also referred to as âresearch about research,â with a focus on the scholarly products of urban planning academics. We can do this by examining our methodologies, subdomains, application of research to practice, research impact, and bibliometrics. The purpose of reflecting on our research helps us better understand research processes and the resulting body of urban planning research and scholarship as a whole
Primary Care Assessment and Interventions to Improve Physical Activity Among Insufficiently Active Adults Ages 18 Through 64 Years Old
A number of chronic and debilitating conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, anxiety, depression, pain, osteoporosis, and falls are known to be delayed, improved, or prevented by increasing physical activity (PA) levels. The numbers of those affected form a substantial portion of the US population. As of 2011, for example, 26 million adults in the U.S. were diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) alone. Another 79 million people had elevated blood glucose measurements putting them at risk for DM. Despite knowledge of the connection with chronic disease, PA levels are not consistently and quantitatively assessed during primary care office visits. Healthcare providers often believe lifestyle change intervention with sedentary adults is futile and encounter barriers to regular PA for many low-income, inner-city clients.
Barriers are potentially reduced through partnership with the YMCA (Y), which cooperates with local churches and community organizations to open sites that offer nutrition and exercise classes at no cost to participants. Healthcare providers at the Grand Valley State University Family Health Center (FHC) did not previously refer sedentary clients to the Y. Referral to the Y became an innovative part of an evidencebased intervention set.
Quality enhancements were put in place at the FHC, guided by a logic model to improve PA assessment and intervention. A policy was written that specifies the process to be used to evaluate and document clients\u27 PA levels and application of interventions for those clients who were assessed and found to have suboptimal habitual PA levels. Assessment uses the International Physical Activity Questionnaire self-report, short-form because it yields numeric and categorical results that allow tracking of progress and determination of the need for PA intervention. A low to moderate PA level result now triggers implementation of an evidence-based intervention set consisting of counseling, printed educational materials, and an offer of referral to Y community outreach programs. The electronic health record-embedded educational material was written to facilitate teaching and client self-review
Land Use and Growth Impacts from Highway Capacity Increases
This analysis examined the historical relationship between land use changes and the location of capacity increasing highway projects in the State of Oregon from 1970 to 1990. Aerial photography for 18 cities was used to delineate the extent of urban development in each time period. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to assemble the data. Using this data, a logit regression model tested the significance of geographic variables such as proximity to highway projects, land use zoning classification, city size, and other spatial characteristics. The analytical methods used in this study incorporated a set of commonly used techniques to assess highway impacts on urban development patterns. The results suggest that for the 18 selected cities, the spatial measures performed well in predicting the location of urban development from 1970 to 1990. In addition, the results of the logit regression model indicated that controlling for other location factors, urban development had not clustered along state high project corridors as was suspected
Distinguishing city and suburban movers: evidence from the American Housing Survey
Journal ArticleA significant amount of research has concentrated on the process of urban decentralization. Resulting patterns of urban development have far-reaching effects on land use, transportation, regional fiscal structure, public services and facilities, economic development, and social equity. Because planning processes are being developed to attempt to revitalize the urban core, it is important to know which households may be deciding to relocate to the central cities and why. A discriminant analysis is used to explore the similarities and differences among movers to central cities and suburban locations drawn from metropolitan samples of the 1989 through 1991 American Housing Surveys. The analysis compares the reasons for relocation, demographic differences, and metropolitan characteristics between central-city-to-suburb movers and suburb-to-central-city movers. The results indicate that these two groups are very similar in some respects and that some metropolitan-area characteristics may play a role in urban residential decentralization patterns
Transit access analysis of TANF recipients in Portland, Oregon
Journal ArticleLittle evidence exists regarding the relationship between transit service availability and the ability of welfare recipients to find stable employment. While policymakers continue to assert that increased public transit mobility can positively affect employment status, there is little empirical evidence to support this theory. It. is generally assumed that public transit can effectively link unemployed, carless persons with appropriate job locations. From these assumptions stems the common belief that if adequate transit were available, the likelihood of being employed would increase. Hence, the call for more transit services to assist moving welfare recipients to gainful employment. Current available evidence is anecdotal, while general patterns of transit access and labor participation remain relatively unexplored
Income Distribution, City Size, and the Role of Public Transportation
This article presents an income inequality analysis for all 1990 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The analysis is concerned with whether public transportation has a detectable influence on levels of urban income equality. Because public transportation systems are generally designed to link residences with employment locations, higher levels of transit service provision, all other factors being equal, should be associated with higher employment rates and more uniform distributions of economic gains. The research presented here was influenced by an analysis originally performed by Haworth, Long, and Rasmussen (1978). Along with there study, few analyses have tried to evaluate policies that affect income distribution. The results of this analysis provide a macroscopic view of the efficiency and effectiveness of urban transportation investments with respect to urban income inequality
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