Loosing the Shackles of No-Fault in Strict Liability: A Better Approach to Comparative Fault

Products liability law in America has crossed a new threshold. The current trend toward comparative fault in strict products actions moves with such force that it is only a question of time before it assumes majority status. The fundamental question of what comparative fault means to products liability law has yet to be answered. Of the courts that have ruled on comparative fault and strict liability, none have offered elaborate rationales for their position; those in favor maintain that equity demands comparative fault, while those against stress that fault and strict liability are incapable of comparison. As this Note shall suggest, both rationales serve only to confuse the law of products liability. As more states move to implement comparative principles in strict liability actions, there is a growing need for a consistent theory that rationally justifies the confluence of the two doctrines. This Note contends that such a theory is available, and that comparative fault can rationally comport with the essential meaning of strict liability, thus providing a coherent basis on which the two doctrines may function. This Note traces the current trend toward comparative fault in strict products actions. It begins by discussing briefly the background of defenses traditionally available to strict liability, and then turns to the actual treatment of comparative fault and strict liability by the courts, attempting to demonstrate how courts have so far failed to resolve adequately the problem of rationally merging the two doctrines. This Note then examines the widely divergent perceptions of strict liability and suggests an analysis of the doctrine, centered on the concept of defectiveness, which will obviate the conceptual pitfalls to which courts have so far been prone, and provide the needed symmetry for comparative fault and strict liability

Loosing the Shackles of No-Fault in Strict Liability: A Better Approach to Comparative Fault

Products liability law in America has crossed a new threshold. The current trend toward comparative fault in strict products actions moves with such force that it is only a question of time before it assumes majority status. The fundamental question of what comparative fault means to products liability law has yet to be answered. Of the courts that have ruled on comparative fault and strict liability, none have offered elaborate rationales for their position; those in favor maintain that equity demands comparative fault, while those against stress that fault and strict liability are incapable of comparison. As this Note shall suggest, both rationales serve only to confuse the law of products liability. As more states move to implement comparative principles in strict liability actions, there is a growing need for a consistent theory that rationally justifies the confluence of the two doctrines. This Note contends that such a theory is available, and that comparative fault can rationally comport with the essential meaning of strict liability, thus providing a coherent basis on which the two doctrines may function. This Note traces the current trend toward comparative fault in strict products actions. It begins by discussing briefly the background of defenses traditionally available to strict liability, and then turns to the actual treatment of comparative fault and strict liability by the courts, attempting to demonstrate how courts have so far failed to resolve adequately the problem of rationally merging the two doctrines. This Note then examines the widely divergent perceptions of strict liability and suggests an analysis of the doctrine, centered on the concept of defectiveness, which will obviate the conceptual pitfalls to which courts have so far been prone, and provide the needed symmetry for comparative fault and strict liability

Electoral Deliberation and Public Journalism

On a sunny Saturday in May 1999, citizens streamed into an auditorium on the University of Pennsylvania campus, wending their way around television trucks and a maze of wires. Inside, seated on a stage, were the five candidates for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia. The debate that was about to begin had produced some real buzz. This race to succeed the wildly popular Ed Rendell as mayor was generating tremendous interest and anxiety. Rendell had rescued the city from bankruptcy and near despair in the early 1990s, restoring a sense of forward civic momentum. Now, from the glass towers of Market Street to the row houses of Bustleton, a sense of urgency bubbled

Ancient Metal Production Sites from Southwest Georgia in Light of New Archaeological Evidence

The work describes archaeological finds unearthed and studied during a 4 year joint Georgian and British expedition (2010-2012) on the territory of southwestern Georgia. The study of early ironware is admitted to be among the most challenging areas of historical sciences. Broad scholarly interest in it is associated with the significant role of iron in early communities. The early use of iron has been confirmed in many advanced states of the Ancient East, but iron mining and processing (early groups of iron smelting workshops) has not so far been attested in these areas – at least to the extent to meet the local demand. The situation is different on the territory of western Georgia (historical Colchis), where Georgian specialists have discovered and studied a significant number of large-scale mining and metallurgical centers in the last 60 years. Recent findings add more evidence to the opinion that the eastern and south-eastern Black Sea area (historical Colchis) was the important region that produced ancient ironware. However, part of researchers question the early date of iron smelting workshops found in western Georgia (radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic dating). More specifically, they question the geophysical examination results of the 1970s-90s. The joint Georgian-British expedition aimed to specify the date of early iron production in Colchis, which required the application of up-to-date technological methods. In this, we were closely aided by our foreign partners. Besides, earlier findings were described with the help of modern equipment and were mapped. The works also allowed us to observe the transition from iron production to bronze production to make relevant conclusions in the future. 

Technological rejection in regions of early gold innovation revealed by geospatial analysis

In research on early invention and innovation, technological “firsts” receive enormous attention, but technological “lasts”—instances of abandonment and rejection—are arguably more informative about human technological behavior. Yet, cases of technological discontinuance are largely ignored in studies of early innovation, as the lack of robust datasets makes identification and analysis difficult. A large-scale geospatial analysis of more than 4500 gold objects from the Caucasus, an early center of gold innovation, shows a precipitous decline at 1500 BC in precisely the places with the earliest global evidence of gold mining (c. 3000 BC). Testing various causal models reveals that social factors, rather than resource limitations or demographic disruption, were the primary causes of this rejection. These results indicate that prior models of technological rejection and loss have underestimated the range of conditions in which they can occur, and provide empirical support for theories of innovation that reject notions about the linearity of technological progress

Towards a spatial archaeology of crafting landscapes

Discussions of spatial relationships are persistent features of research on the organization of craft production. Despite the centrality of spatial issues, the correspondence between spatial patterning and economic organization remains relatively under-theorized, especially around questions of power and control. Drawing from the literature on craft ecology, specialization and landscape archaeology, I develop an approach that considers spatial scales of patterning, the power projection of elites and institutions and the articulation between elements of the crafting landscape. This approach recognizes the complex sets of factors affecting spatial patterning and ultimately produces a more robust understanding of how ancient economic systems were organized. These ideas are explored through a case study on Late Bronze and Early Iron Age metal production in the Caucasus, clarifying the organizational logics of the metal economy and highlighting how this industry differed in significant ways from other contemporary metal-producing regions in the ancient Near East.National Science Foundation (BSC-1338893), the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Harvard Universit

Archaeomaterials, innovation, and technological change

The field of archaeomaterials research has enormous potential to shed light on past innovation processes. However, this potential has been only partially recognized outside its immediate practitioners, despite the fact that innovation and technology change are topics of enduring interest in archaeology and the broader social sciences. This review explores the relationship between archaeomaterials research and the interdisciplinary study of innovation, and maps out a path toward greater integration of materials analysis into these discussions. To foster this integration, this review has three aims. First, I sketch the theoretical landscape of approaches to the study of innovation in archaeology and neighboring disciplines. I trace how theoretical traditions like evolutionary archaeology have influenced archaeomaterials approaches to questions of technological change while also highlighting cases where work by archaeomaterials researchers anticipated trends in the anthropology of technology. Next, I distill a series of core concerns that crosscut these different theoretical perspectives. Finally, I describe examples where archaeomaterials research has deepened scholarly understanding of innovation processes and addressed these core questions. The future of archaeomaterials research lies in engagement with these broader discussions and effective communication of the contributions that materials analysis can make to building a comparative understanding of innovation processes

Direct evidence for the co-manufacturing of early iron and copper-alloy artifacts in the Caucasus

Models for iron innovation in Eurasia are predicated on understanding the relationship between the bronze and iron industries. In eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus, and Iran, the absence of scientific analyses of metallurgical debris has obscured the relative chronology, spatial organization, and economic context of early iron and contemporary copper-alloy industries. Survey and excavation at Mtsvane Gora, a fortified hilltop site close to major polymetallic ore sources in the Lesser Caucasus range, recovered metallurgical debris dating to the 8th-6th centuries BC. Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy and wavelength dispersive spectrometry revealed evidence for both iron and copper-alloy metallurgy, including smithing and alloying. Metal particles trapped within clear iron smithing slags were contaminated with copper, arsenic, and tin, suggesting that iron and copper-alloy working took place in the same hearths. The discovery of a small fragment of unprocessed material consisting of pyrite and jarosite, minerals typical of major nearby polymetallic ore deposits, links the secondary smithing and alloying at Mtsvane Gora with nearby mining activities, though the nature of those connections remains unclear. While the earliest iron in the region probably predates the Mtsvane Gora assemblage, the remains date to a period when iron use was still expanding, and they are at present the earliest analytically confirmed, radiocarbon-dated iron metallurgical debris in the Caucasus. The remains are therefore significant for understanding the spread of iron innovation eastward from Anatolia and the Levant. When considered in light of evidence from other Near Eastern sites, the results support a model for innovation in which early iron manufacturing was at least partially integrated with the copper-alloy metallurgical economy

Obsidian exchange networks and highland-lowland interaction in the Lesser Caucasus Borderlands

Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in the Near East, but relatively few have focused on obsidian exchange after the Early Bronze Age. Here, we present a multi-technique analysis of an assemblage of 111 obsidian artifacts from excavated Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (LBA-EIA; c. 15th-6th c BCE) contexts at Mtsvane Gora, southern Georgia. Because the site is situated in the lowland Kura Valley and the nearest obsidian sources are in the highlands to the south and west, obsidian provenance can serve as a proxy for mapping highland-lowland interactions. Chemical compositions analyzed via portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), electron microprobe analysis (EMPA), and laser ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), were compared with existing geological datasets of chemical analyses to identify the source of all but one of the artifacts analyzed. The results show that Chikiani, a source in the highlands of southern Georgia, was the geological origin of >90% of the objects analyzed. While acknowledging that obsidian exchange is just one aspect of highland-lowland interaction, this finding implies that Mtsvane Gora’s connections with the adjacent highlands were skewed towards greater engagement with some highland areas relative to others. More generally, the research suggests that geographic adjacency of highlands and lowlands does not necessarily mean that they were highly interconnected.Fieldwork at Mtsvane Gora was funded by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus, the Rust Family Foundation, a Spatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations (SPARC) Grant, the Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Harvard Department of Anthropology. The authors would like to thank Project ARKK team members for their support during fieldwork. Paul Albert is supported by a UKRI FLF (MR/S035478) Note: guessed MRC by grant number but this could be overarching UKRI as it is a Future Leaders Fellowships award. Paul Albert is not a CU researcher

Mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias.

This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joa.2015.11.003Blood circulation is the result of the beating of the heart, which provides the mechanical force to pump oxygenated blood to, and deoxygenated blood away from, the peripheral tissues. This depends critically on the preceding electrical activation. Disruptions in the orderly pattern of this propagating cardiac excitation wave can lead to arrhythmias. Understanding of the mechanisms underlying their generation and maintenance requires knowledge of the ionic contributions to the cardiac action potential, which is discussed in the first part of this review. A brief outline of the different classification systems for arrhythmogenesis is then provided, followed by a detailed discussion for each mechanism in turn, highlighting recent advances in this area.The author received a BBSRC Doctoral CASE Studentship at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, in conjunction with Xention Discovery, for his PhD studies