Managing Uncertain Causation in Toxic Exposure Cases

Under Articles 2 (right to life) and Article 8 (right to private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg Court) decides cases involving personal health injuries allegedly caused by toxic exposures. Thus far no one has conducted a systematic inquiry on how the Strasbourg Court deals with uncertain causation inherent in toxic exposure cases. This paper provides an analytic framework for examining situations involving uncertain causal links under the Strasbourg system and evaluates the Strasbourg Court’s approach to uncertain causation and scientific evidence. It argues that the Strasbourg Court decides these cases based on certain proxies that describe some non-causal aspects of the case. By doing so, the Strasbourg Court can adjudge toxic exposure claims without evaluating scientific proof of causal links, which approach entails several drawbacks. The paper surveys the innovative legal tools US courts employ in toxic tort litigation to assess probabilistic scientific evidence and uncertain causation. It concludes with proposals for the Strasbourg Court to borrow certain techniques from toxic tort case law, which would help the Strasbourg Court adopt a more consistent approach to uncertain causation

Breach of Treaties in the Ancient Near East

The history of the breach of treaties can be traced back to the ancient Near East. The relative abundance and diversity of contemporary sources attest that the breaking of treaty obligations must have been a rather persistent problem, and that such occurrences were regarded as events of utmost importance throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The study strives to demonstrate how peoples of old may have perceived and reacted to the breach of treaties on the basis of carefully selected writings—the Legend of Etana, the Indictment of Madduwatta, the Indictment of Mita, the plague prayers of Mursili and the Old Testament—that provide, beyond the exposition of actual or alleged facts, a deeper insight into the psychological and procedural aspects of the subject

Mathematical Modeling and Optimal Control of Alternative Pest Management for Alfalfa Agroecosystems

This project develops mathematical models and computer simulations for cost-effective and environmentally-safe strategies to minimize plant damage from pests with optimal biodiversity levels. The desired goals are to identify tradeoffs between costs, impacts, and outcomes using the enemies hypothesis and polyculture in farming. A mathematical model including twelve size- and time-dependent parameters was created using a system of non-linear differential equations. It was shown to accurately fit results from open-field experiments and thus predict outcomes for scenarios not covered by these experiments. The focus is on the application to alfalfa agroecosystems where field experiments and data were conducted and provided by Dr. Cory Straub of Ursinus College. Alfalfa is Pennsylvania\u27s second-most important crop and the most cultivated forage legume in the world. Predator and plant diversity can control potato leafhopper (PLH) damage to the host-plant alfalfa. The pest damage is costly and chemical pesticides are unsafe. Ultimately, the framework provides polyculture planting strategies for farmers that are cost-effective and environmentally-safe to minimize the alfalfa damage while maximizing farmer profits. After the validation and sensitivity analysis of the model, the project focused on designing control strategies. Steady state solutions were determined and a sensitivity analysis established the relative importance of each parameter to reduce the plant damage. Optimal control theory led to designing practical strategies regarding diversity levels to minimize the plant damage while preserving plant nutritional efficacy and minimizing production costs. More specifically, Bang-Bang controls were investigated using switching functions to produce practical discontinuous functionals for the control parameters. Tools used include non-linear systems of differential equations, Hamiltonians, adjoints, Pontryagin\u27s Maximum Principle, and computer simulations