Obtaining Personal Jurisdiction over Alien Corporations--A Survey of U.S. Practice

With the increase in international trade, civil litigation between persons of different nationalities has become increasingly important. Today alien and foreign corporations are being brought before American courts to defend actions arising out of products liability, contract, and tort. There is considerable authority holding alien and foreign corporations amenable to jurisdiction on the basis of a single act or business transaction. The states themselves are affecting international trade since state law is chosen to determine the amenability of alien and foreign corporations to suit in diversity actions in federal court. This survey presents a cross-section of recent cases and attempts to distinguish the treatment given alien corporations from the treatment given foreign corporations. While a variety of actions is represented, the majority of the cases deal with products liability. Generally, these cases concern an alien corporation\u27s contacts with a particular state, although some courts might look to contacts with the United States as a whole in determining whether to assume jurisdiction in some types of cases. Recurrent considerations which appear throughout include: (1) whether the corporation has availed itself of the privilege of conducting business within the forum state; (2) whether the corporation knew its product was destined for the forum state; (3) whether the assumption of jurisdiction would violate traditional notions of fair play; (4) whether the plaintiff could realistically bring suit in the alien forum; (5) whether the alien corporation set its product in the normal stream of commerce; and (6) whether an American corporation is an alter ego of the alien corporation. While these considerations are largely derived from the major cases in which suit was brought against foreign corporations in a particular state, the courts balance the same considerations and apply the same standards to alien corporations in determining whether jurisdiction is proper. However, it has been advocated that a different standard should be applied in cases where alien corporations are involved

Run Scenarios for the Linear Collider

Scenarios are developed for runs at a Linear Collider, in the case that there is a rich program of new physics.Comment: 12 pages, 10 tables, Latex; Snowmass 2001 plenary repor

Exploring the Relationship Between Schizophrenia and Cardiovascular Disease:A Genetic Correlation and Multivariable Mendelian Randomization Study

Individuals with schizophrenia have a reduced life-expectancy compared to the general population, largely due to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Clinical and epidemiological studies have been unable to unravel the nature of this relationship. We obtained summary-data of genome-wide-association studies of schizophrenia (N = 130 644), heart failure (N = 977 323), coronary artery disease (N = 332 477), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (N = 757 601), heart rate variability (N = 46 952), QT interval (N = 103 331), early repolarization and dilated cardiomyopathy ECG patterns (N = 63 700). We computed genetic correlations and conducted bi-directional Mendelian randomization (MR) to assess causality. With multivariable MR, we investigated whether causal effects were mediated by smoking, body mass index, physical activity, lipid levels, or type 2 diabetes. Genetic correlations between schizophrenia and CVD were close to zero (−0.02–0.04). There was evidence that liability to schizophrenia causally increases heart failure risk. This effect remained consistent with multivariable MR. There was also evidence that liability to schizophrenia increases early repolarization pattern, largely mediated by BMI and lipids. Finally, there was evidence that liability to schizophrenia increases heart rate variability, a direction of effect contrasting clinical studies. There was weak evidence that higher systolic blood pressure increases schizophrenia risk. Our finding that liability to schizophrenia increases heart failure is consistent with the notion that schizophrenia involves a systemic dysregulation of the body with detrimental effects on the heart. To decrease cardiovascular mortality among individuals with schizophrenia, priority should lie with optimal treatment in early stages of psychosis

Prediction of Drug-Target Interactions and Drug Repositioning via Network-Based Inference

Drug-target interaction (DTI) is the basis of drug discovery and design. It is time consuming and costly to determine DTI experimentally. Hence, it is necessary to develop computational methods for the prediction of potential DTI. Based on complex network theory, three supervised inference methods were developed here to predict DTI and used for drug repositioning, namely drug-based similarity inference (DBSI), target-based similarity inference (TBSI) and network-based inference (NBI). Among them, NBI performed best on four benchmark data sets. Then a drug-target network was created with NBI based on 12,483 FDA-approved and experimental drug-target binary links, and some new DTIs were further predicted. In vitro assays confirmed that five old drugs, namely montelukast, diclofenac, simvastatin, ketoconazole, and itraconazole, showed polypharmacological features on estrogen receptors or dipeptidyl peptidase-IV with half maximal inhibitory or effective concentration ranged from 0.2 to 10 µM. Moreover, simvastatin and ketoconazole showed potent antiproliferative activities on human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line in MTT assays. The results indicated that these methods could be powerful tools in prediction of DTIs and drug repositioning

Dealing with Cross-Sectoral Uncertainty: A Case Study on Governing Uncertainty for Infrastructures in Transition

The interdependencies between infrastructures are growing. Engineering decision making that earlier was largely confined to a specific sector now requires more and more understanding of how systems interact: a system-of-systems perspective. The article analyzes the effect of that added complexity in a single case study in de Zuid-As, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and relates the findings to the literature on engineering decision making and project management in complex projects. The article concludes that cross-sectoral engineering decision making has an additional level of complexity that requires governance of uncertainty. Despite this challenge being a well-known challenge among infrastructure operators, it is still not recognized for its importance, and it seems to be a neglected element in collaboration. Key is an open approach in the early stages that goes beyond classic cooperative decision making in engineering and project management environments