Who Then Should Judge? Developing the International Rule of Law under NAFTA Chapter 11

The only potentially unique aspect of NAFTA Chapter 11 is that the governments of two nations with developed economies agreed to enter into an investment protection treaty between themselves. The overwhelming majority of BITs to date have been North to South, between capital-exporting countries and capital-importing countries, and the private investors who actually have benefited from such treaties have been those from the North. Practically speaking, countries such as Canada and the United States simply have not had to worry that they would ever have to defend a claim in arbitration under a BIT. The cross-border investment flows between Canada and the United States, however, are astronomically higher than, for example, those between Cameroon and the United States, and it was inevitable, once NAFTA\u27s investment protection regime became operative, that Canada and the United States would be defending themselves before an international tribunal. Indeed, it is no coincidence that all of the Chapter 11 cases thus far commenced against the United States have been brought by Canadian nationals and all but one of the cases against Canada have been brought by US nationals. One may surmise that at least some of the distress felt by Canada and the United States over NAFTA Chapter 11 has been caused by the novel and disconcerting fact of having to live up to the same substantive and procedural guarantees that they have required of their BIT partners. Of course the fact that the NAFTA Parties are getting precisely what they bargained for does not necessarily answer the specific criticisms being leveled against Chapter 11. In analyzing the substance of this criticism, however, one should not lose sight of the reasons why the NAFTA Parties negotiated Chapter 11 in the first place. NAFTA Chapter 11 creates substantive investment protections that are enforceable in arbitration by the individuals directly impacted by any breach of such protections. In establishing this investment regime, the NAFTA Parties wanted to achieve three main objectives: (1) to tear down existing foreign investment barriers by eliminating arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions; (2) to build investor confidence throughout the region through the elaboration and enforcement of clear and fair rules; and (3) to depoliticize the resolution of investment disputes by eliminating the need for State- to-State adjudication. Any criticism of the Chapter 11 regime that fails to take account of these three factors is, literally, beside the point

Supranormal Expiratory Airflow after Bilateral Lung Transplantation is Associated with Improved Survival

RATIONALE: flow volume loops (FVL) in some bilateral lung transplant (BLT) and heart-lung transplant (HLT) patients suggest variable extrathoracic obstruction in the absence of identifiable causes. These FVLs usually have supranormal expiratory and normal inspiratory flow rates (SUPRA pattern). OBJECTIVES: characterize the relationship of the SUPRA pattern to predicted donor and recipient lung volumes, airway size, and survival. METHODS: we performed a retrospective review of adult BLT/HLT patients. We defined the SUPRA FVL pattern as: (1) mid-vital capacity expiratory to inspiratory flow ratio (Ve50:Vi50) \u3e 1.0, (2) absence of identifiable causes of extrathoracic obstruction, and (3) Ve50/FVC ≥ 1.5 s(-1). We calculated predicted total lung capacity (pTLC) ratio by dividing the donor pTLC by the recipient pTLC. We measured airway luminal areas on thoracic computer tomographic scans. We compared survival in patients with and without the SUPRA pattern. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: the SUPRA FVL pattern occurred in 56% of the 89 patients who qualified for the analysis. The pTLC ratio of SUPRA and non-SUPRA patients was 1.11 and 0.99, respectively (P = 0.004). A higher pTLC ratio was correlated with increased probability of the SUPRA pattern (P = 0.0072). Airway luminal areas were larger in SUPRA patients (P = 0.009). Survival was better in the SUPRA cohort (P = 0.009). CONCLUSIONS: the SUPRA FVL pattern was frequent in BLT/HLT patients. High expiratory flows in SUPRA patients could result from increased lung elastic recoil or reduced airway resistance, both of which could be caused by the pTLC mismatch. Improved survival in the SUPRA cohort suggests potential therapeutic approaches to improve outcomes in BLT/HLT patients

Indexing boolean expressions.

ABSTRACT We consider the problem of efficiently indexing Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) and Conjunctive Normal Form (CNF) Boolean expressions over a high-dimensional multi-valued attribute space. The goal is to rapidly find the set of Boolean expressions that evaluate to true for a given assignment of values to attributes. A solution to this problem has applications in online advertising (where a Boolean expression represents an advertiser's user targeting requirements, and an assignment of values to attributes represents the characteristics of a user visiting an online page) and in general any publish/subscribe system (where a Boolean expression represents a subscription, and an assignment of values to attributes represents an event). All existing solutions that we are aware of can only index a specialized sub-set of conjunctive and/or disjunctive expressions, and cannot efficiently handle general DNF and CNF expressions (including NOTs) over multi-valued attributes. In this paper, we present a novel solution based on the inverted list data structure that enables us to index arbitrarily complex DNF and CNF Boolean expressions over multi-valued attributes. An interesting aspect of our solution is that, by virtue of leveraging inverted lists traditionally used for ranked information retrieval, we can efficiently return the top-N matching Boolean expressions. This capability enables emerging applications such as ranked publish/subscribe system

Chasing Migration Genes: A Brain Expressed Sequence Tag Resource for Summer and Migratory Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus)

North American monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) undergo a spectacular fall migration. In contrast to summer butterflies, migrants are juvenile hormone (JH) deficient, which leads to reproductive diapause and increased longevity. Migrants also utilize time-compensated sun compass orientation to help them navigate to their overwintering grounds. Here, we describe a brain expressed sequence tag (EST) resource to identify genes involved in migratory behaviors. A brain EST library was constructed from summer and migrating butterflies. Of 9,484 unique sequences, 6068 had positive hits with the non-redundant protein database; the EST database likely represents ∼52% of the gene-encoding potential of the monarch genome. The brain transcriptome was cataloged using Gene Ontology and compared to Drosophila. Monarch genes were well represented, including those implicated in behavior. Three genes involved in increased JH activity (allatotropin, juvenile hormone acid methyltransfersase, and takeout) were upregulated in summer butterflies, compared to migrants. The locomotion-relevant turtle gene was marginally upregulated in migrants, while the foraging and single-minded genes were not differentially regulated. Many of the genes important for the monarch circadian clock mechanism (involved in sun compass orientation) were in the EST resource, including the newly identified cryptochrome 2. The EST database also revealed a novel Na+/K+ ATPase allele predicted to be more resistant to the toxic effects of milkweed than that reported previously. Potential genetic markers were identified from 3,486 EST contigs and included 1599 double-hit single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 98 microsatellite polymorphisms. These data provide a template of the brain transcriptome for the monarch butterfly. Our “snap-shot” analysis of the differential regulation of candidate genes between summer and migratory butterflies suggests that unbiased, comprehensive transcriptional profiling will inform the molecular basis of migration. The identified SNPs and microsatellite polymorphisms can be used as genetic markers to address questions of population and subspecies structure

One-Year Analysis of the Prospective Multicenter SENTRY Clinical Trial: Safety and Effectiveness of the Novate Sentry Bioconvertible Inferior Vena Cava Filter

Purpose To prospectively assess the Sentry bioconvertible inferior vena cava (IVC) filter in patients requiring temporary protection against pulmonary embolism (PE). Materials and Methods At 23 sites, 129 patients with documented deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or PE, or at temporary risk of developing DVT or PE, unable to use anticoagulation were enrolled. The primary end point was clinical success, including successful filter deployment, freedom from new symptomatic PE through 60 days before filter bioconversion, and 6-month freedom from filter-related complications. Patients were monitored by means of radiography, computerized tomography (CT), and CT venography to assess filtering configuration through 60 days, filter bioconversion, and incidence of PE and filter-related complications through 12 months. Results Clinical success was achieved in 111 of 114 evaluable patients (97.4%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 92.5%–99.1%). The rate of freedom from new symptomatic PE through 60 days was 100% (n = 129, 95% CI 97.1%–100.0%), and there were no cases of PE through 12 months for either therapeutic or prophylactic indications. Two patients (1.6%) developed symptomatic caval thrombosis during the first month; neither experienced recurrence after successful interventions. There was no filter tilting, migration, embolization, fracture, or caval perforation by the filter, and no filter-related death through 12 months. Filter bioconversion was successful for 95.7% (110/115) at 6 months and for 96.4% (106/110) at 12 months. Conclusions The Sentry IVC filter provided safe and effective protection against PE, with a high rate of intended bioconversion and a low rate of device-related complications, through 12 months of imaging-intense follow-up

The subleading eikonal in supergravity theories

In this paper we study the subleading contributions to eikonal scattering in (super)gravity theories with particular emphasis on the role of both elastic and inelastic scattering processes. For concreteness we focus on the scattering of various massless particles off a stack of D$p$-branes in type II supergravity in the limit of large impact parameter $b$. We analyse the relevant field theory Feynman diagrams which naturally give rise to both elastic and inelastic processes. We show that in the case analysed the leading and subleading eikonal only depend on elastic processes, while inelastic processes are captured by a pre-factor multiplying the exponentiated leading and subleading eikonal phase. In addition to the traditional Feynman diagram computations mentioned above, we also present a novel method for computing the amplitudes contributing to the leading and subleading eikonal phases, which, in the large $b$ limit, only involves knowledge of the onshell three and four-point vertices. The two methods are shown to give the same results. Furthermore we derive these results in yet another way, by computing various one-point amplitudes which allow us to extract the classical solution of the gravitational back reaction of the target D$p$-branes. Finally we show how our expressions for the leading and subleading eikonal agree with the calculation of the metric and corresponding deflection angle for massless states moving along geodesics in the relevant curved geometry.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figure

National Computational Infrastructure for Lattice Gauge Theory SciDAC-2 Closeout Report

Under its SciDAC-1 and SciDAC-2 grants, the USQCD Collaboration developed software and algorithmic infrastructure for the numerical study of lattice gauge theories

Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health

The rapid development of genomic sequencing technologies has decreased the cost of genetic analysis to the extent that it seems plausible that genome-scale sequencing could have widespread availability in pediatric care. Genomic sequencing provides a powerful diagnostic modality for patients who manifest symptoms of monogenic disease and an opportunity to detect health conditions before their development. However, many technical, clinical, ethical, and societal challenges should be addressed before such technology is widely deployed in pediatric practice. This article provides an overview of the Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health Consortium, which is investigating the application of genome-scale sequencing in newborns for both diagnosis and screening