Unconscionability Found: A Look at Pre-Dispute Mandatory Arbitration Agreements 10 Years after Doctor\u27s Associates, Inc. v. Casarotto

This Article first explores the Supreme Court\u27s initially reluctant application of the FAA\u27s contract approach to enforceability of arbitration agreements which lasted well into the early 1980s. It then examines federal preemption of state law and the evolution of the arbitration contract as we know it today. Finally, it looks at the application of defenses that exist “at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract” as applied over the past ten years following the Court\u27s decision in Doctor\u27s Associates, Inc. v. Casarotto. This author examines a decade of decisional law and finds a new doctrine of arbitration jurisprudence developing under the FAA that is sensitive to the unique concerns raised by adhesion arbitration agreements. Whether the courts are inappropriately stretching the unconscionability defense is matter of speculation

Detecting coevolution without phylogenetic trees? Tree-ignorant metrics of coevolution perform as well as tree-aware metrics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Identifying coevolving positions in protein sequences has myriad applications, ranging from understanding and predicting the structure of single molecules to generating proteome-wide predictions of interactions. Algorithms for detecting coevolving positions can be classified into two categories: tree-aware, which incorporate knowledge of phylogeny, and tree-ignorant, which do not. Tree-ignorant methods are frequently orders of magnitude faster, but are widely held to be insufficiently accurate because of a confounding of shared ancestry with coevolution. We conjectured that by using a null distribution that appropriately controls for the shared-ancestry signal, tree-ignorant methods would exhibit equivalent statistical power to tree-aware methods. Using a novel t-test transformation of coevolution metrics, we systematically compared four tree-aware and five tree-ignorant coevolution algorithms, applying them to myoglobin and myosin. We further considered the influence of sequence recoding using reduced-state amino acid alphabets, a common tactic employed in coevolutionary analyses to improve both statistical and computational performance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Consistent with our conjecture, the transformed tree-ignorant metrics (particularly Mutual Information) often outperformed the tree-aware metrics. Our examination of the effect of recoding suggested that charge-based alphabets were generally superior for identifying the stabilizing interactions in alpha helices. Performance was not always improved by recoding however, indicating that the choice of alphabet is critical.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest that t-test transformation of tree-ignorant metrics can be sufficient to control for patterns arising from shared ancestry.</p

Target-D: a stratified individually randomized controlled trial of the diamond clinical prediction tool to triage and target treatment for depressive symptoms in general practice: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BackgroundDepression is a highly prevalent and costly disorder. Effective treatments are available but are not always delivered to the right person at the right time, with both under- and over-treatment a problem. Up to half the patients presenting to general practice report symptoms of depression, but general practitioners have no systematic way of efficiently identifying level of need and allocating treatment accordingly. Therefore, our team developed a new clinical prediction tool (CPT) to assist with this task. The CPT predicts depressive symptom severity in three months' time and based on these scores classifies individuals into three groups (minimal/mild, moderate, severe), then provides a matched treatment recommendation. This study aims to test whether using the CPT reduces depressive symptoms at three months compared with usual care.MethodsThe Target-D study is an individually randomized controlled trial. Participants will be 1320 general practice patients with depressive symptoms who will be approached in the practice waiting room by a research assistant and invited to complete eligibility screening on an iPad. Eligible patients will provide informed consent and complete the CPT on a purpose-built website. A computer-generated allocation sequence stratified by practice and depressive symptom severity group, will randomly assign participants to intervention (treatment recommendation matched to predicted depressive symptom severity group) or comparison (usual care plus Target-D attention control) arms. Follow-up assessments will be completed online at three and 12 months. The primary outcome is depressive symptom severity at three months. Secondary outcomes include anxiety, mental health self-efficacy, quality of life, and cost-effectiveness. Intention-to-treat analyses will test for differences in outcome means between study arms overall and by depressive symptom severity group.DiscussionTo our knowledge, this is the first depressive symptom stratification tool designed for primary care which takes a prognosis-based approach to provide a tailored treatment recommendation. If shown to be effective, this tool could be used to assist general practitioners to implement stepped mental-healthcare models and contribute to a more efficient and effective mental health system.Trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR 12616000537459 ). Retrospectively registered on 27 April 2016. See Additional file 1 for trial registration data

RATS-Kepler - a deep high-cadence survey of the Kepler field

We outline the purpose, strategy and first results of a deep, high-cadence, photometric survey of the Kepler field using the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma and the MDM 1.3 m Telescope on Kitt Peak. Our goal was to identify sources located in the Kepler field of view which are variable on a time-scale of a few minutes to 1 h. The astrophysically most-interesting sources would then have been candidates for observation using Kepler using 1 min sampling. Our survey covered &tilde;42 per cent of the Kepler field of view, and we have obtained light curves for 7.1 &times; 105 objects in the range 13 &lt; g &lt; 20. We have discovered more than 100 variable sources which have passed our two stage identification process. As a service to the wider community, we make our data products and cleaned CCD images available to download. We obtained Kepler data of 18 sources which we found to be variable using our survey, and we give an overview of the currently available data here. These sources include a pulsating DA white dwarf, 11 delta Sct stars which have dominant pulsation periods in the range 24 min to 2.35 h, three contact binaries, and a cataclysmic variable (V363 Lyr). One of the delta Sct stars is in a contact binary.</p

Reflections on the Doctoral Consortium

This paper provides a reflective commentary on the British HCI Doctoral Consortium from the perspective of the Organising Committee. We discuss the approach to holding a Human Computer Interaction Doctoral Consortium in July 2020 and the outcomes. We reflect on our lived experience pre, during and post event, flagging issues and perspectives that emerged from the day, and possible implications for doctoral consortiums and training for HCI

Status and promise of particle interferometry in heavy-ion collisions

After five years of running at RHIC, and on the eve of the LHC heavy-ion program, we highlight the status of femtoscopic measurements. We emphasize the role interferometry plays in addressing fundamental questions about the state of matter created in such collisions, and present an enumerated list of measurements, analyses and calculations that are needed to advance the field in the coming years

Measuring Job Crafting Across Cultures: Lessons Learned From Comparing a German and an Australian Sample

Job crafting refers to the act of employees actively altering work aspects to better suit their values and interests. Slemp and Vella-Brodrick (2013) proposed a Job Crafting Questionnaire (JCQ) in English consisting of three facets: task crafting, cognitive crafting, and relational crafting. This is in line with the original conceptualization of job crafting by Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001). However, there has not yet been an evaluated German translation of this measure. Therefore, this paper aims at evaluating the psychometric properties of scores from a German translation of the JCQ, using the original Australian dataset and a German sample of 482 employees. Our findings showed first evidence for the reliability and validity of the scores. We also extend prior research and include creative self-efficacy in the nomological network of job crafting. Importantly, strong factorial measurement invariance was demonstrated, allowing for comparisons between the job crafting scores of German- and English-speaking samples. Based on this example, we highlight the importance of enriching measurement invariance tests by including other key constructs. Our results suggest that the German JCQ is an acceptable tool for measuring job crafting, as originally conceptualized by Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001)