Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. Burr: Defining Notification Requirements and Willfulness under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

In a recent decision, the United States Supreme Court resolved a critical dispute regarding the interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act ( FCRA ) and its notice requirement. In Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. Burr, the Court settled the definition of willful violation, a determination that will have enormous effects for insurance companies. Specifically, the Court held that willfulness not only includes knowing violations, but also includes a violation committed in reckless disregard of statutory obligations. While both of the insurance companies in Burr were technically victorious -- both were held not to have willfully violated the FCRA -- the Court\u27s interpretation of willfulness is more consumer-friendly. Still, Burr may have left the door open for insurance companies to avoid the notice requirement of the FCRA

Freedom to Defraud: Stoneridge, Primary Liability, and the Need to Properly Define Section 10(b)

In Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., the Supreme Court determined that primary liability under section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act does not extend to third-party actors engaged in sham transactions, even when such transactions have the purpose and effect of deceiving investors. The Court reasoned that there is no liability when an actor\u27s deceptive conduct is not communicated directly to investors. This Note argues that the Supreme Court misinterpreted section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 and that policy considerations weigh in favor of using securities fraud litigation to deter culpable actors. It argues both for the substantial participation standard and the revitalization of scheme liability in order to best comply with the language and policies of section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5

Pop III GRBs: an estimative of the event rate for future surveys

We discuss the theoretical event rate of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from the collapse of massive primordial stars. We construct a theoretical model to calculate the rate and detectability of these GRBs taking into account all important feedback and recent results from numerical simulations of pristine gas. We expect to observe a maximum of N $\lesssim$ 0.2 GRBs per year integrated over at z > 6 with \textit{Swift} and N $\lesssim$ 10 GRBs per year integrated over at z > 6 with EXIST.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, published in Proceedings of the Gamma-Ray Bursts 2012 Conference (GRB 2012

Decycling a graph by the removal of a matching: new algorithmic and structural aspects in some classes of graphs

A graph $G$ is {\em matching-decyclable} if it has a matching $M$ such that $G-M$ is acyclic. Deciding whether $G$ is matching-decyclable is an NP-complete problem even if $G$ is 2-connected, planar, and subcubic. In this work we present results on matching-decyclability in the following classes: Hamiltonian subcubic graphs, chordal graphs, and distance-hereditary graphs. In Hamiltonian subcubic graphs we show that deciding matching-decyclability is NP-complete even if there are exactly two vertices of degree two. For chordal and distance-hereditary graphs, we present characterizations of matching-decyclability that lead to $O(n)$-time recognition algorithms