Bulk Sales Laws: A Study in Statutory Interpretation

This article is the second of a series which proposes to deal with several aspects of bulk sales legislation. The first paper, entitled Bulk Sales Laws; A Study in Economic Adjustment appeared in the November, 1928 issue of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. That discussion considered three phases of the bulk sales problem: (1) the inability of the American statutory successors of 13 Elizabeth to meet the legal needs of the creditor class when a defrauding merchant sold out in bulk his stock of unpaid for goods to a bona fide purchaser for value;(2) the campaign waged by the National Association of Credit Men to place bulk sales laws on the statute books of the forty-eight states; (3) the unfavorable attitude of at least five state supreme courts toward bulk sales laws which resulted (a) in these statutes being declared unconstitutional in the states in question and (b) in certain changes being made in the unconstitutional statutes in order to meet the objections raised by the courts. This paper proposes to take up the story where the earlier one left off. It will consider, first, the reaction of certain outstanding credit men of the present generation to these statutes, some of which have been inforce in their respective states for more than thirty years, and, second, the reaction of the courts in interpreting and applying certain provisions of these statutes. In other words, just as the former article treated the past history of bulk sales laws, so this one will consider the present status of such laws from the viewpoint of both credit men and courts. Whatever personal reactions the authors may have toward these laws and the construction placed upon them, and whatever suggestions they may have in the direction of statutory changes will be reserved for a later paper. This later paper also will cover certain phases of statutory interpretation not considered herein

The bacterial community associated with adult vine weevil (Otiorhynchus sulcatus) in UK populations growing on strawberry is dominated by Candidatus Nardonella

Otiorhynchus sulcatus (Fabricius) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), commonly known as black vine weevil or simply vine weevil, is an important pest of soft fruit and ornamental crops. This species is endemic to temperate areas of Europe but has spread to many other areas over the last century, including North America and Australasia. The ability of vine weevils to adapt to such different environments is difficult to reconcile with the parthenogenetic reproduction strategy, which is likely to underpin a low genetic diversity. It is therefore tempting to hypothesize that weevil adaptation to different environments is mediated, at least partly, by the microbial communities inhabiting these insects. As a first step towards testing this hypothesis we characterized the composition of the bacterial microbiota in weevils from populations feeding on strawberry plants across four geographically separate locations in the UK. We performed 16S rRNA gene Illumina amplicon sequencing, generating 2 882 853 high‐quality reads. Ecological indices, namely Chao1 and Shannon, revealed that the populations used for this study harboured a low diversity and an uneven bacterial microbiota. Furthermore, β‐diversity analysis failed to identify a clear association between microbiota composition and location. Notably, a single operational taxonomic unit phylogenetically related to Candidatus Nardonella accounted for 81% of the total sequencing reads for all tested insects. Our results indicate that vine weevil bacterial microbiota resembles that of other insects as it has low diversity and it is dominated by few taxa. A prediction of this observation is that location per se may not be a determinant of the microbiota inhabiting weevil populations. Rather, other or additional selective pressures, such as the plant species used as a food source, ultimately shape the weevil bacterial microbiota. Our results will serve as a reference framework to investigate other or additional hypotheses aimed at elucidating vine weevil adaptation to its environment

A rapid phenotype change in the pathogen Perkinsus marinus was associated with a historically significant marine disease emergence in the eastern oyster

The protozoan parasite Perkinsus marinus, which causes dermo disease in Crassostrea virginica, is one of the most ecologically important and economically destructive marine pathogens. The rapid and persistent intensification of dermo in the USA in the 1980s has long been enigmatic. Attributed originally to the effects of multi-year drought, climatic factors fail to fully explain the geographic extent of dermo’s intensification or the persistence of its intensified activity. Here we show that emergence of a unique, hypervirulent P. marinus phenotype was associated with the increase in prevalence and intensity of this disease and associated mortality. Retrospective histopathology of 8355 archival oysters from 1960 to 2018 spanning Chesapeake Bay, South Carolina, and New Jersey revealed that a new parasite phenotype emerged between 1983 and 1990, concurrent with major historical dermo disease outbreaks. Phenotypic changes included a shortening of the parasite’s life cycle and a tropism shift from deeper connective tissues to digestive epithelia. The changes are likely adaptive with regard to the reduced oyster abundance and longevity faced by P. marinus after rapid establishment of exotic pathogen Haplosporidium nelsoni in 1959. Our findings, we hypothesize, illustrate a novel ecosystem response to a marine parasite invasion: an increase in virulence in a native parasite