Severance -- A Means of Minimizing the Role of Burden and Expense in Determining the Outcome of Litigation

This article is divided into two main parts. First, it is assumed that the controlling question is how severance affects the likely outcome of litigation by altering the normal incidence of expense and burden. Then the article examines the question of whether there are overriding considerations (particularly the need for tempering by reference to the entire controversy) which require that severance be withheld even if dictated by considerations of economy

The Economic Structure of Renegotiation and Dispute Resolution in the WTO/GATT System

The treaty creating the WTO replaced the GATT dispute resolution system, which contained no formal sanctions for breach of agreement as a practical matter, with a system that results in centrally authorized sanctions against recalcitrant violators of WTO trade agreements. We examine the important features of the new system, and argue that the institutionalization of a sanctioning mechanism was not motivated by a perceived need to increase the penalty for violations, but rather by a need to decrease the penalty. In particular, the GATT system relied on unilateral retaliation and reputation to police the bargain, and toward its end unilateral retaliation became excessive, interfering with opportunities for efficient breach. The WTO mechanism for arbitrating the magnitude of proposed sanctions is the major innovation under WTO law, and ensures that sanctions are not set too high

The Regulation of Subsidies Affecting International Trade

We will begin by examining the basic contours of the present GATT regulation of subsidies. We will then consider the theory of comparative advantage underlying the GATT regime and introduce the complications of externalities and the governmental process designed to take account of them. Finally, we will make some tentative suggestions for changes in rules and institutions that might serve to improve the present state of affairs

Reductions in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory mortality following the national Irish smoking ban: Interrupted time-series analysis

Copyright @ 2013 Stallings-Smith et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Previous studies have shown decreases in cardiovascular mortality following the implementation of comprehensive smoking bans. It is not known whether cerebrovascular or respiratory mortality decreases post-ban. On March 29, 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to implement a national workplace smoking ban. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of this policy on all-cause and cause-specific, non-trauma mortality. Methods: A time-series epidemiologic assessment was conducted, utilizing Poisson regression to examine weekly age and gender-standardized rates for 215,878 non-trauma deaths in the Irish population, ages ≥35 years. The study period was from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2007, with a post-ban follow-up of 3.75 years. All models were adjusted for time trend, season, influenza, and smoking prevalence. Results: Following ban implementation, an immediate 13% decrease in all-cause mortality (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.76-0.99), a 26% reduction in ischemic heart disease (IHD) (RR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.63-0.88), a 32% reduction in stroke (RR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.54-0.85), and a 38% reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (RR: 0.62; 95% CI: 0.46-0.83) mortality was observed. Post-ban reductions in IHD, stroke, and COPD mortalities were seen in ages ≥65 years, but not in ages 35-64 years. COPD mortality reductions were found only in females (RR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.32-0.70). Post-ban annual trend reductions were not detected for any smoking-related causes of death. Unadjusted estimates indicate that 3,726 (95% CI: 2,305-4,629) smoking-related deaths were likely prevented post-ban. Mortality decreases were primarily due to reductions in passive smoking. Conclusions: The national Irish smoking ban was associated with immediate reductions in early mortality. Importantly, post-ban risk differences did not change with a longer follow-up period. This study corroborates previous evidence for cardiovascular causes, and is the first to demonstrate reductions in cerebrovascular and respiratory causes

De novo assembly of the cattle reference genome with single-molecule sequencing.

BackgroundMajor advances in selection progress for cattle have been made following the introduction of genomic tools over the past 10-12 years. These tools depend upon the Bos taurus reference genome (UMD3.1.1), which was created using now-outdated technologies and is hindered by a variety of deficiencies and inaccuracies.ResultsWe present the new reference genome for cattle, ARS-UCD1.2, based on the same animal as the original to facilitate transfer and interpretation of results obtained from the earlier version, but applying a combination of modern technologies in a de novo assembly to increase continuity, accuracy, and completeness. The assembly includes 2.7 Gb and is >250× more continuous than the original assembly, with contig N50 >25 Mb and L50 of 32. We also greatly expanded supporting RNA-based data for annotation that identifies 30,396 total genes (21,039 protein coding). The new reference assembly is accessible in annotated form for public use.ConclusionsWe demonstrate that improved continuity of assembled sequence warrants the adoption of ARS-UCD1.2 as the new cattle reference genome and that increased assembly accuracy will benefit future research on this species

A wide deep infrared look at the Pleiades with UKIDSS: new constraints on the substellar binary fraction and the low mass IMF

We present the results of a deep wide-field near-infrared survey of 12 square degrees of the Pleiades conducted as part of the UKIDSS Deep Infrared Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Galactic Cluster Survey (GCS). We have extracted over 340 high probability proper motion members down to 0.03 solar masses using a combination of UKIDSS photometry and proper motion measurements obtained by cross-correlating the GCS with data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the Isaac Newton (INT) and the Canada-France-Hawai'i (CFHT) telescopes. Additionally, we have unearthed 73 new candidate brown dwarf members on the basis of five band UKIDSS photometry alone. We have identified 23 substellar multiple system candidates out of 63 candidate brown dwarfs from the (Y-K,Y) and (J-K,J) colour-magnitude diagrams, yielding a binary frequency of 28-44% in the 0.075-0.030 Msun mass range. Our estimate is three times larger than the binary fractions reported from high-resolution imaging surveys of field ultracool dwarfs and Pleiades brown dwarfs. However, it is marginally consistent with our earlier ``peculiar'' photometric binary fraction of 50+/-10% presented in Pinfield et al. (2003), in good agreement with the 32-45% binary fraction derived from the recent Monte-Carlo simulations of Maxted & Jeffries (2005) and compatible with the 26+/-10% frequency recently estimated by Basri & Reiners (2006). A tentative estimate of the mass ratios from photometry alone seems to support the hypothesis that binary brown dwarfs tend to reside in near equal-mass ratio systems. (abridged)Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 6 tables, 1 electronic table, 6 appendices with tables, accepted to MNRA