LABOR LAW-APPLICABILITY OF THE LEA ACT TO ACTIVITIES OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF MUSICIANS

Defendant, acting as president of a local union of the American Federation of Musicians, requested a new contract with a broadcasting station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, including a provision that the licensee hire three extra musicians, raising to six the total number of musicians employed. When negotiations regarding this provision failed, defendant withdrew from the licensee\u27s services the three musicians (members of the A.F. of M.) already employed by it. An action was, then brought to prosecute defendant under the amendment to the Federal Communications Act, popularly known as the Lea Act, which prohibits the use of threats or force to compel a licensed broadcasting station to use more employees than it needs. After the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act, the cause was remanded for trial by the district court on the question whether the defendant had been guilty of a violation. Held, verdict of acquittal directed. There was no evidence that defendant knew that the licensee had no need for the extra musicians, and this fact must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Petrillo, (D.C. Ill.. 1948) 75 F. Supp. 176

LABOR LAW - IMPACT OF LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS ACT ON STATE REGULATION OF UNION SHOP CONTRACTS

The petitioning labor union made a contract with defendant employer, who was engaged solely in interstate commerce, providing that all employees were to be furnished by the union. If members could not be supplied, non-members might be hired but were required to join the union within two weeks from the date of employment. The defendant labor commissioner of the State of New Hampshire threatened to prosecute petitioner under a state statute, known as the Willey Act, which prohibited union security contracts except when ratified by two-thirds of the employees affected. Petitioner sought a declaratory judgment that the provisions of the state act were inapplicable to its agreement with defendant employer, having been superseded by the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947. Held, judgment for plaintiff. State regulation of union security agreements is excluded by the paramount character of Congressional entry into that field. International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Riley, (N.H. 1948) 59 A. (2d) 476

LABOR LAW-LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS ACT-JURISDICTION OF FEDERAL COURTS TO ENJOIN UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES

Following a breakdown in negotiations over contract extension, plaintiff union, the certified representative of defendant\u27s employees, sued in a federal district court, alleging that defendant was guilty of an unfair labor practice under the Labor-Management Relations Act in refusing to bargain in good faith. An injunction was sought requiring defendant to bargain with the union. The district court overruled motions\u27 to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and granted the relief requested. On appeal, held, reversed. The district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the suit. Amazon Cotton Mills Co. v. Textile Workers Union, (C.C.A. 4th, 1948) 167 F. (2d) 183

Electrically Switchable Photonic Molecule Laser

We have studied the coherent intercavity coupling of the evanescent fields of the whispering gallery modes of two terahertz quantum-cascade lasers implemented as microdisk cavities. The electrically pumped single-mode operating microcavities allow to electrically control the coherent mode coupling for proximity distances of the cavities up to 30-40 \mu\m. The optical emission of the strongest coupled photonic molecule can be perfectly switched by the electrical modulation of only one of the coupled microdisks. The threshold characteristics of the strongest coupled photonic molecule demonstrates the linear dependence of the gain of a quantum-cascade laser on the applied electric field.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

How to share underground reservoirs

Many resources, such as oil, gas, or water, are extracted from porous soils and their exploration is often shared among different companies or nations. We show that the effective shares can be obtained by invading the porous medium simultaneously with various fluids. Partitioning a volume in two parts requires one division surface while the simultaneous boundary between three parts consists of lines. We identify and characterize these lines, showing that they form a fractal set consisting of a single thread spanning the medium and a surrounding cloud of loops. While the spanning thread has fractal dimension ${1.55\pm0.03}$, the set of all lines has dimension ${1.69\pm0.02}$. The size distribution of the loops follows a power law and the evolution of the set of lines exhibits a tricritical point described by a crossover with a negative dimension at criticality

Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point

Strange metal behavior is ubiquitous in correlated materials, ranging from cuprate superconductors to bilayer graphene, and may arise from physics beyond the quantum fluctuations of a Landau order parameter. In quantum-critical heavy-fermion antiferromagnets, such physics may be realized as critical Kondo entanglement of spin and charge and probed with optical conductivity. We present terahertz time-domain transmission spectroscopy on molecular beam epitaxy–grown thin films of YbRh2Si2, a model strange-metal compound. We observed frequency over temperature scaling of the optical conductivity as a hallmark of beyond-Landau quantum criticality. Our discovery suggests that critical charge fluctuations play a central role in the strange metal behavior, elucidating one of the long-standing mysteries of correlated quantum matter.Financial support for this work was provided by the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant 227378), the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO W911NF-14-1-0496), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF W1243, P29279-N27, and P29296-N27), and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 824109 – EMP). X.L. and J.K. acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF MRSEC DMR-1720595) and the ARO (W911NF-17-1-0259). Q.S. acknowledges financial support from the NSF (DMR-1920740), the Robert A.Welch Foundation (C-1411), and the ARO (W911NF-14-1-0525), and hospitality of the University of California at Berkeley, the Aspen Center for Physics (NSF grant PHY-1607611), and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (via a Ulam Scholarship from the Center for Nonlinear Studies). This work has also been supported by an InterDisciplinary Excellence Award (IDEA) from Rice University (Q.S., E.R., J.K., S.P.)

Recombinant ADAMTS13 reduces abnormally up-regulated von Willebrand factor in plasma from patients with severe COVID-19

Thrombosis affecting the pulmonary and systemic vasculature is common during severe COVID-19 and causes adverse outcomes. Although thrombosis likely results from inflammatory activation of vascular cells, the mediators of thrombosis remain unconfirmed. In a cross-sectional cohort of 36 severe COVID-19 patients, we show that markedly increased plasma von Willebrand factor (VWF) levels were accompanied by a partial reduction in the VWF regulatory protease ADAMTS13. In all patients we find this VWF/ADAMTS13 imbalance to be associated with persistence of ultra-high-molecular-weight (UHMW) VWF multimers that are highly thrombogenic in some disease settings. Incubation of plasma samples from patients with severe COVID-19 with recombinant ADAMTS13 (rADAMTS13) substantially reduced the abnormally high VWF activity, reduced overall multimer size and depleted UHMW VWF multimers in a time and concentration dependent manner. Our data implicate disruption of normal VWF/ADAMTS13 homeostasis in the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 and indicate that this can be reversed ex vivo by correction of low plasma ADAMTS13 levels. These findings suggest a potential therapeutic role for rADAMTS13 in helping restore haemostatic balance in COVID-19 patients