Translating \u3ci\u3eUnocal\u3c/i\u3e: The Expanding Web of Liability for Business Entities Implicated in International Crimes

The Ninth Circuit ruled that a corporation could be held liable under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act for its complicity in a violation of international criminal law occurring outside the U.S. (Doe I v. Unocal Corp., 395 F.3d 932 (9th Cir. 2002)). Since then, litigants have filed increasing numbers of such cases. These cases raise two questions: (1) Is the United States the only country that provides judicial accountability for business entities involved in international crimes abroad? and (2) How are other countries translating the basic kinds of accountability that Unocal recognized into their own legal systems? This Article attempts to answer these questions by presenting the results of a comparative law survey involving sixteen countries that invited lawyers and legal scholars to examine questions relating to the status of international criminal law in each country. Their responses examine the incorporation into domestic penal codes of international criminal law from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and other international covenants; describe applicable concepts of third-party liability; and evaluate the status of corporate liability under domestic penal codes. The responses reveal other sources of criminal liability for illicit business conduct abroad, such as bribery of foreign officials, money laundering, and dealing in stolen property. Finally, they provide analyses of the laws and legal customs relating to the rights of victims to access civil courts in the various countries in search of compensation and other remedies. The responses present compelling evidence of the existence of what has been termed an emerging transnational web of liability for business entities implicated in international crimes. Since the sixteen countries in the survey represent both civil and common law traditions, parties and nonparties to the ICC, and a wide geographic range, we believe conclusions reached may be extrapolated more broadly

Differential Uptake of Gold Nanoparticles by 2 Species of Tadpole, the Wood Frog (Lithobates Sylvaticus) and the Bullfrog (Lithobates Catesbeianus)

Engineered nanoparticles are aquatic contaminants of emerging concern that exert ecotoxicological effects on a wide variety of organisms. We exposed cetyltrimethylammonium bromide–capped spherical gold nanoparticles to wood frog and bullfrog tadpoles with conspecifics and in combination with the other species continuously for 21 d, then measured uptake and localization of gold. Wood frog tadpoles alone and in combination with bullfrog tadpoles took up significantly more gold than bullfrogs. Bullfrog tadpoles in combination with wood frogs took up significantly more gold than controls. The rank order of weight-normalized gold uptake was wood frogs in combination \u3e wood frogs alone \u3e bullfrogs in combination \u3e bullfrogs alone \u3e controls. In all gold-exposed groups of tadpoles, gold was concentrated in the anterior region compared with the posterior region of the body. The concentration of gold nanoparticles in the anterior region of wood frogs both alone and in combination with bullfrogs was significantly higher than the corresponding posterior regions. We also measured depuration time of gold in wood frogs. After 21 d in a solution of gold nanoparticles, tadpoles lost \u3e83% of internalized gold when placed in gold-free water for 5 d. After 10 d in gold-free water, tadpoles lost 94% of their gold. After 15 d, gold concentrations were below the level of detection. Our finding of differential uptake between closely related species living in similar habitats with overlapping geographical distributions argues against generalizing toxicological effects of nanoparticles for a large group of organisms based on measurements in only one species

Should Higher Education respond to recent changes in the forensic science marketplace?

The evolution of forensic science within the United Kingdom over the past four decades has been rapid and dynamic. This has included policy responses to highly public miscarriages of justice, introduction of commercialisation and pioneering scientific developments such as DNA profiling. However even within this context, changes within forensic science over the last two years has been unprecedented; such as the closure of The Forensic Science Service; a Home Office review of Research and Development within forensic science; the challenges facing fingerprint identification as a result of The Fingerprint Inquiry (Scotland) and the embryonic development of a new professional body for the police force. Correspondingly, development of forensic science within Higher Education (HE) has been substantially transformed from a small number of Masters Courses in forensic science delivered by a small number of universities, to a plethora of undergraduate courses now available throughout the United Kingdom. This rapid expansion of forensic science courses has been openly criticised and debated and it is incumbent upon the university to not only focus on education but also to provide graduates with transferrable skills making them more employment ready. As a consequence HE establishments must be cognisant of and reactive to changes within any associated industry and respond to changes accordingly. However, have the universities delivering forensic science courses fully responded to these recent and unprecedented developments in the history of forensic science within the United Kingdom? This paper will consider the most recent changes to the forensic science marketplace and their ramifications for forensic science education within the HE sector. Challenges which have resulted from the changes will be highlighted and the educational impact on forensic science courses throughout the UK and their future will be evaluated in chronological order

Behaviour of Magnetic Tubes in Neutron Star's Interior

It is found from Maxwell's equations that the magnetic field lines are good analogues of relativistic strings. It is shown that the super-conducting current in the neutron star's interior causes local rotation of magnetic flux tubes carrying quantized flux.Comment: 6 pages, no figure

Prognostic Significance of Elevated Cardiac Troponin-T Levels in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Patients

Background: Elevated levels of biochemical markers of myocardial necrosis have been associated with worsened outcomes in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), but there are few prospective data on this relationship. We investigated elevated cardiac troponin T (cTnT) levels and their relationship with outcome in patients with ARDS. Methods A prospective cohort study of patients with ARDS was conducted at a tertiary-care academic medical center. Patients had blood taken within 48 hours of ARDS onset and assayed for cTnT. Patients were followed for the outcomes of 60-day mortality, number of organ failures, and days free of mechanical ventilation. Echocardiographic and electrocardiographic (ECG) data were analyzed for signs of myocardial ischemia, infarction, or other myocardial dysfunction. Results: 177 patients were enrolled, 70 of whom died (40%). 119 patients had detectable cTnT levels (67%). Median cTnT level was 0.03 ng/mL, IQR 0–0.10 ng/mL, and levels were higher among non-survivors (P = .008). Increasing cTnT level was significantly associated with increasing mortality (P = .008). The association between increasing cTnT level and mortality remained significant after adjustment in a multivariate model (HRadj = 1.45, 95% CI 1.17–1.81, P = .001). Elevated cTnT level was also associated with increased number of organ failures (P = .002), decreased number of days free of mechanical ventilation (P = .03), echocardiographic wall motion abnormalities (P = 0.001), and severity of tricuspid regurgitation (P = .04). There was no association between ECG findings of myocardial ischemia or infarction and elevated cTnT. Conclusions: Elevated cTnT levels are common in patients with ARDS, and are associated with worsened clinical outcomes and certain echocardiographic abnormalities. No association was seen between cTnT levels and ECG evidence of coronary ischemia

Detection of fast radio transients with multiple stations: a case study using the Very Long Baseline Array

Recent investigations reveal an important new class of transient radio phenomena that occur on sub-millisecond timescales. Often transient surveys' data volumes are too large to archive exhaustively. Instead, an on-line automatic system must excise impulsive interference and detect candidate events in real-time. This work presents a case study using data from multiple geographically distributed stations to perform simultaneous interference excision and transient detection. We present several algorithms that incorporate dedispersed data from multiple sites, and report experiments with a commensal real-time transient detection system on the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). We test the system using observations of pulsar B0329+54. The multiple-station algorithms enhanced sensitivity for detection of individual pulses. These strategies could improve detection performance for a future generation of geographically distributed arrays such as the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and the Square Kilometre Array.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for Ap

Protocol for a randomized controlled trial examining multilevel prediction of response to behavioral activation and exposure-based therapy for generalized anxiety disorder.

BACKGROUND:Only 40-60% of patients with generalized anxiety disorder experience long-lasting improvement with gold standard psychosocial interventions. Identifying neurobehavioral factors that predict treatment success might provide specific targets for more individualized interventions, fostering more optimal outcomes and bringing us closer to the goal of "personalized medicine." Research suggests that reward and threat processing (approach/avoidance behavior) and cognitive control may be important for understanding anxiety and comorbid depressive disorders and may have relevance to treatment outcomes. This study was designed to determine whether approach-avoidance behaviors and associated neural responses moderate treatment response to exposure-based versus behavioral activation therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. METHODS/DESIGN:We are conducting a randomized controlled trial involving two 10-week group-based interventions: exposure-based therapy or behavioral activation therapy. These interventions focus on specific and unique aspects of threat and reward processing, respectively. Prior to and after treatment, participants are interviewed and undergo behavioral, biomarker, and neuroimaging assessments, with a focus on approach and avoidance processing and decision-making. Primary analyses will use mixed models to examine whether hypothesized approach, avoidance, and conflict arbitration behaviors and associated neural responses at baseline moderate symptom change with treatment, as assessed using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 item scale. Exploratory analyses will examine additional potential treatment moderators and use data reduction and machine learning methods. DISCUSSION:This protocol provides a framework for how studies may be designed to move the field toward neuroscience-informed and personalized psychosocial treatments. The results of this trial will have implications for approach-avoidance processing in generalized anxiety disorder, relationships between levels of analysis (i.e., behavioral, neural), and predictors of behavioral therapy outcome. TRIAL REGISTRATION:The study was retrospectively registered within 21 days of first participant enrollment in accordance with FDAAA 801 with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02807480. Registered on June 21, 2016, before results

Analysing Astronomy Algorithms for GPUs and Beyond

Astronomy depends on ever increasing computing power. Processor clock-rates have plateaued, and increased performance is now appearing in the form of additional processor cores on a single chip. This poses significant challenges to the astronomy software community. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), now capable of general-purpose computation, exemplify both the difficult learning-curve and the significant speedups exhibited by massively-parallel hardware architectures. We present a generalised approach to tackling this paradigm shift, based on the analysis of algorithms. We describe a small collection of foundation algorithms relevant to astronomy and explain how they may be used to ease the transition to massively-parallel computing architectures. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to four well-known astronomy problems: Hogbom CLEAN, inverse ray-shooting for gravitational lensing, pulsar dedispersion and volume rendering. Algorithms with well-defined memory access patterns and high arithmetic intensity stand to receive the greatest performance boost from massively-parallel architectures, while those that involve a significant amount of decision-making may struggle to take advantage of the available processing power.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Adiponectin Gene Polymorphisms and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Susceptibility and Mortality

Rationale: Adiponectin is an anti-inflammatory adipokine that is the most abundant gene product of adipose tissue. Lower levels have been observed in obesity, insulin resistance, and in critical illness. However, elevated levels early in acute respiratory failure have been associated with mortality. Polymorphisms in adiponectin-related genes (ADIPOQ, ADIPOR1, ADIPOR2) have been examined for relationships with obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and to circulating adipokine levels, but many gaps in knowledge remain. The current study aims to assess the association between potentially functional polymorphisms in adiponectin-related genes with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) risk and mortality. Methods: Consecutive patients with risk factors for ARDS admitted to the ICU were enrolled and followed prospectively for development of ARDS. ARDS cases were followed through day 60 for all-cause mortality. 2067 patients were successfully genotyped using the Illumina CVD BeadChip high-density platform. Of these, 567 patients developed ARDS. Forty-four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on ADIPOQ, ADIPOR1 and ADIPOR2 were successfully genotyped. Of these, 9 SNPs were hypothesized to be functional based on their location (promoter, exon, or 3′ untranslated region). These 9 SNPs were analyzed for association with ARDS case status and mortality among ARDS cases. Results: After multivariable analysis and adjustment for multiple comparisons, no SNPs were significantly associated with ARDS case status. Among ARDS cases, homozygotes for the minor allele of rs2082940 (ADIPOQ) had increased mortality (hazard ratio 2.61, 95% confidence interval 1.36–5.00, p = 0.0039) after adjustment for significant covariates. The significance of this association persisted after adjustment for multiple comparisons (FDR_q = 0.029). Conclusions: A common and potentially functional polymorphism in ADIPOQ may impact survival in ARDS. Further studies are required to replicate these results and to correlate genotype with circulating adiponectin levels