The “Legal” Marijuana Industry’s Challenge for Business Entity Law

In recent years, many states have legalized the use and sale of marijuana for medical or even recreational purposes. This has led to the booming growth of a “legal” marijuana industry. Businesses openly growing and selling marijuana products to the consuming public face some unusual legal hurdles. Significantly, although the sale of marijuana may be legal at the state level, it is still illegal under federal law. This Article explores the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws from a business entity law perspective. For example, managers owe a fiduciary duty of good faith to their businesses and equity holders. One of the ways in which managers can violate this duty is by causing their business to intentionally violate the law. This is a problem for the marijuana industry because its managers constantly and intentionally violate federal law and therefore violate their fiduciary duties by growing and selling marijuana. This Article concludes that the industry’s ability to attract professional stakeholders is harmed by marijuana business stakeholders’ inability to take advantage of key business law protections, such as limited liability. This Article proposes a state law exception that allows marijuana businesses to operate normally under state business entity law, with normal business entity law protections, despite their continuing violation of federal law

The Moral Responsibility of the Corporate Lawyer

Lawyers traditionally claim that they are not morally accountable for the goals or activities of their clients that are within the bounds of the law. This essay explores this concept of non-accountability in the context of corporate transactional representation. We argue that corporate lawyers, whose practice is forward looking, undertaken on behalf of corporate clients who have legally impaired ability to engage in independent moral reasoning, and who function in a world of relatively minimal legal oversight (i.e. whose work is furthest from the model of the adversary system) cannot persuasively claim that they are not morally responsible for the work on behalf of their corporate clients. This conclusion is, in fact, heartening if it encourages corporate transactional attorneys to focus more deeply on the value of their work to society

Smartphone-sourced data visualization in mental health

BACKGROUND: While smartphone digital phenotyping smartphone apps today can collect vast amounts of information on participants, less is known about how this data can be shared back with participants. Effective data visualization is critical to ensuring applications of digital signals are more informed, ethical, and impactful. But little is known about how sharing of this data, especially at different levels from raw data to analyzed data, impacts patients’ perceptions. METHODS: We compared five different visualizations strategies, each a graph, generated from data created by the open source mindLAMP app, that reflected different ways to share data from simple amount of data captured to more complex clinical correlations. All graphs were shown to 28 participants during individual video interviews, and the graphs usability was measured via the System Usability Scale (SUS). Additionally, participants were asked about their comfort sharing different kinds of data, administered the Digital Working Alliance Inventory (D-WAI), and if they would want to use these visualizations with care providers. RESULTS: Of the five graphs shown to participants, the graph visualizing change in survey responses over the course of a week, received the highest usability score, with the graph showing multiple metrics changing over a week receiving the lowest usability score. Participants were significantly more likely to be willing to share geolocation data after viewing the graphs, and 25 of 28 participants agreed that they would like to use these graphs to communicate with their clinician. CONCLUSIONS: Data visualization can help participants and patients understand digitally-sourced data and increase trust in how they are sampled and used to create visualizations. As data sourced from digital technology becomes more complex, simple visualizations may fail to capture their multiple dimensions and new interactive data visualizations may be necessary to help realize their full value

Spectral aerosol extinction (SpEx): a new instrument for in situ ambient aerosol extinction measurements across the UV/visible wavelength range

We introduce a new instrument for the measurement of in situ ambient aerosol extinction over the 300– 700 nm wavelength range, the spectral aerosol extinction (SpEx) instrument. This measurement capability is envisioned to complement existing in situ instrumentation, allowing for simultaneous measurement of the evolution of aerosol optical, chemical, and physical characteristics in the ambient environment. In this work, a detailed description of the instrument is provided along with characterization tests performed in the laboratory. Measured spectra of NO2 and polystyrene latex spheres (PSLs) agreed well with theoretical calculations. Good agreement was also found with simultaneous aerosol extinction measurements at 450, 530, and 630 nm using CAPS PMex instruments in a series of 22 tests including nonabsorbing compounds, dusts, soot, and black and brown carbon analogs. SpEx measurements are expected to help identify the presence of ambient brown carbon due to its 300 nm lower wavelength limit compared to measurements limited to longer UV and visible wavelengths. Extinction spectra obtained with SpEx contain more information than can be conveyed by a simple power law fit (typically represented by Ångström exponents). Planned future improvements aim to lower detection limits and ruggedize the instrument for mobile operation

Evolution of brown carbon in wildfire plumes

Particulate brown carbon (BrC) in the atmosphere absorbs light at subvisible wavelengths and has poorly constrained but potentially large climate forcing impacts. BrC from biomass burning has virtually unknown lifecycle and atmospheric stability. Here, BrC emitted from intense wildfires was measured in plumes transported over 2 days from two main fires, during the 2013 NASA SEAC4RS mission. Concurrent measurements of organic aerosol (OA) and black carbon (BC) mass concentration, BC coating thickness, absorption Ångström exponent, and OA oxidation state reveal that the initial BrC emitted from the fires was largely unstable. Using back trajectories to estimate the transport time indicates that BrC aerosol light absorption decayed in the plumes with a half-life of 9 to 15 h, measured over day and night. Although most BrC was lost within a day, possibly through chemical loss and/or evaporation, the remaining persistent fraction likely determines the background BrC levels most relevant for climate forcing

Incidence of primary hepatitis C infection and risk factors for transmission in an Australian prisoner cohort

Background. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is common in prisoner populations, particularly those with a history of injecting drug use (IDU). Previous studies of HCV incidence have been based on small case numbers and have not distinguished risk event

Magneto-acoustic waves in a gravitationally stratified magnetized plasma: eigen-solutions and their applications to the solar atmosphere

Magneto-acoustic gravity (MAG) waves have been studied intensively in the context of astrophysical plasmas. There are three popular choices of analytic modeling using a Cartesian coordinate system: a magnetic field parallel, perpendicular, or at an angle to the gravitational field. Here, we study a gravitationally stratified plasma embedded in a parallel, so called vertical, magnetic field. We find a governing equation for the auxiliary quantity Θ = p 1/ρ 0, and find solutions in terms of hypergeometric functions. With the convenient relationship between Θ and the vertical velocity component, v z , we derive the solution for v z . We show that the four linearly independent functions for v z can also be cast as single hypergeometric functions, rather than the Frobenius series derived by Leroy & Schwartz. We are then able to analyze a case of approximation for a one-layer solution, taking the small wavelength limit. Motivated by solar atmospheric applications, we finally commence study of the eigenmodes of perturbations for a two-layer model using our solutions, solving the dispersion relation numerically. We show that, for a transition between a photospheric and chromospheric plasma embedded in a vertical magnetic field, modes exist that are between the observationally widely investigated three and five minute oscillation periods, interpreted as solar global oscillations in the lower solar atmosphere. It is also shown that, when the density contrast between the layers is large (e.g., applied to photosphere/chromosphere-corona), the global eigenmodes are practically a superposition of the same as in each of the separate one-layer systems

Period and Cohort Changes in Americans’ Support for Marijuana Legalization: Convergence and Divergence across Social Groups

We cast fresh light on how and why Americans’ views on marijuana legalization shifted between 1973 and 2014. Results from age-period-cohort models show a strong negative effect of age and relatively high levels of support for legalization among baby boom cohorts. Despite the baby boom effect, the large increase in support for marijuana legalization is predominantly a broad, period-based change in the population. Additional analyses demonstrate that differences in support for legalization by education, region, and religion decline, that differences by political party increase, and that differences between whites and African Americans reverse direction. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings and by identifying promising directions for future research on this topic

The Worst of Both Worlds: The Wild West of the “Legal” Marijuana Industry

As states have legalized marijuana, they have created a booming industry that operates in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Abuse Act. Like the tobacco and alcohol industries, this new legal marijuana industry has the potential to do great harm to American consumers and communities if it is not disciplined and restrained in how it sells and develops its products. Unfortunately the federal government has not yet stepped in to regulate the industry and state governments have imposed only limited controls. In addition, because of the increased threat of criminal and civil liability hanging over the industry, it has been largely shut out from attracting professional stakeholders including banks, venture capital firms, and professional managers which could help impose market discipline. In order to achieve the policy goals behind legalization of marijuana it is important that states do everything they can in the short term to regulate this industry so that it develops in a responsible manner. One of the things states can do is promote the integration of professional stakeholders into this industry. This essay explores what it means to be a “professional” in the marijuana industry and how more professionals could help mitigate some of the harm this industry poses to the public