1,351 research outputs found
A Day in the Life of Tort Law
What would one day\u27s worth of tort law look like? We usually receive our doses of the law in measures other than per diem: by the case, by the brief, by the article, or by the treatise. There is, of course, a unity in each of those units; each one collects only those authorities that bear upon certain focused aspects of the law. For example, an appellate brief or a law review article is often a compendium of cases dealing within a narrow topical range, cases drawn from a span of many different days, years, or even decades. One way to view the development of the common-law subjects, then, is to envision various lines or streams of cases, sometimes guided in their courses by statutory tributaries, flowing and joining into wide rivers: contract law, property law-- or tort law. But the law also grows by accretion. Each day, in courts across the nation, another layer is added to the law of torts. In some ways, as a construct, this is the antithesis of how we have learned to view the law. If a casebook is the order of the tort law, with two proximate cause cases from different eras neatly paired, then a single day represents the glorious chaos of tort: an auto accident in Pennsylvania, a products liability suit in Utah, a medical malpractice case in Connecticut. What might a one-day slice of American tort law reveal? I set out to find out. My quest would be artistic, not statistic. To construct the most accurate picture possible of one tort day would require a painstaking assembling of trial court records from thousands of local and county courthouses in all fifty states: a daunting task, and arguably not worth the mileage or postage. A more feasible approach is made possible by the ready availability of computerized searches in legal opinion databases. It is, of course, now possible to search for and compile all court opinions promulgated on a single, specific date, and to narrow the search further to a single area of law. Therefore, using the two best known computerized legal research services, I set out to discover one day\u27s worth of torts opinions, from the first light of dawn in Maine to the last rays on some Pacific coast courthouse
Transient deactivation of dorsal premotor cortex or parietal area 5 impairs feedback control of the limb in macaques
We can generate goal-directed motor corrections with surprising speed, but their neural basis is poorly understood. Here, we show that temporary cooling of dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) impaired both spatial accuracy and the speed of corrective responses, whereas cooling parietal area 5 (A5) impaired only spatial accuracy. Simulations based on optimal feedback control (OFC) models demonstrated that “deactivation” of the control policy (reduction in feedback gain) and state estimation (reduction in Kalman gain) caused impairments similar to that observed for PMd and A5 cooling, respectively. Furthermore, combined deactivation of both cortical regions led to additive impairments of individual deactivations, whereas reducing the amount of cooling to PMd led to impairments in response speed but not spatial accuracy, both also predicted by OFC models. These results provide causal support that frontoparietal circuits beyond primary somatosensory and motor cortices are involved in generating goal-directed motor corrections
Strings on conifolds from strong coupling dynamics, part I
A method to solve various aspects of the strong coupling expansion of the
superconformal field theory duals of AdS_5 x X geometries from first principles
is proposed. The main idea is that at strong coupling the configurations that
dominate the low energy dynamics of the field theory compactified on a three
sphere are given by certain non-trivial semi-classical configurations in the
moduli space of vacua.
We show that this approach is self-consistent and permits one to express most
of the dynamics in terms of an effective N=4 SYM dynamics. This has the
advantage that some degrees of freedom that move the configurations away from
moduli space can be treated perturbatively, unifying the essential low energy
dynamics of all of these theories. We show that with this formalism one can
compute the energies of strings in the BMN limit in the Klebanov-Witten theory
from field theory considerations, matching the functional form of results found
using AdS geometry. This paper also presents various other technical results
for the semiclassical treatment of superconformal field theories.Comment: 52 pages, JHEP3 styl
Further empirical evidence for the non-linearity of the period-luminosity relations as seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheids
(abridged) Recent studies, using OGLE data for LMC Cepheids in the optical,
strongly suggest that the period-luminosity (PL) relation for the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) Cepheids shows a break or non-linearity at a period of
10 days. In this paper we apply statistical tests, the chi-square test and the
F-test, to the Cepheid data from the MACHO project to test for a non-linearity
of the V- and R-band PL relations at 10 days, and extend these tests to the
near infrared (JHK-band) PL relations with 2MASS data. We correct the
extinction for these data by applying an extinction map towards the LMC. The
statistical test we use, the F-test, is able to take account of small numbers
of data points and the nature of that data on either side of the period cut at
10 days. With our data, the results we obtained imply that the VRJH-band PL
relations are non-linear around a period of 10 days, while the K-band PL
relation is (marginally) consistent with a single-line regression. The choice
of a period of 10 days, around which this non-linearity occurs, is consistent
with the results obtained when this "break" period is estimated from the data.
Long period Cepheids are supplemented from the literature to increase our
sample size. The photometry of these long period Cepheids is compared with our
data and no trend with period is found. Our main results remain unchanged when
we supplement our dataset with these long period Cepheids. By examining our
data at maximum light, we also suggest arguments why errors in reddening are
unlikely to be responsible for our results. The non-linearity of the mean
V-band PL relation as seen in both of the OGLE and MACHO data, using different
extinction maps, suggests that this non-linearity is real.Comment: 18 pages, 10 tables, 7 figures. MNRAS accepte
Erasmus Language students in a British University – a case study
Students’ assessment of their academic experience is actively sought by Higher Education institutions, as evidenced in the National Student Survey introduced in 2005. Erasmus students, despite their growing numbers, tend to be excluded from these satisfaction surveys, even though they, too, are primary customers of a University. This study aims to present results from bespoke questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with a sample of Erasmus students studying languages in a British University. These methods allow us insight into the experience of these students and their assessment as a primary customer, with a focus on language learning and teaching, university facilities and student support. It investigates to what extent these factors influence their levels of satisfaction and what costs of adaptation if any, they encounter. Although excellent levels of satisfaction were found, some costs affect their experience. They relate to difficulties in adapting to a learning methodology based on a low number of hours and independent learning and to a guidance and support system seen as too stifling. The results portray this cohort’s British University as a well-equipped and well-meaning but ultimately overbearing institution, which may indicate that minimising costs can eliminate some sources of dissatisfaction
Risk of Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Decreases With Height, Based on Consortium Analysis and Confirmed by Mendelian Randomization
Background & Aims
Risks for some cancers increase with height. We investigated the relationship between height and risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) and its precursor, Barrett's esophagus (BE).
Methods
We analyzed epidemiologic and genome-wide genomic data from individuals of European ancestry in the Barrett's and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Consortium, from 999 cases of EAC, 2061 cases of BE, and 2168 population controls. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for associations between height and risks of EAC and BE. We performed a Mendelian randomization analysis to estimate an unconfounded effect of height on EAC and BE using a genetic risk score derived from 243 genetic variants associated with height as an instrumental variable.
Results
Height was associated inversely with EAC (per 10-cm increase in height: OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.62–0.79 for men and OR, 0.57; 95% CI 0.40–0.80 for women) and BE (per 10-cm increase in height: OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.62–0.77 for men and OR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.48–0.77 for women). The risk estimates were consistent across strata of age, education level, smoking, gastroesophageal reflux symptoms, body mass index, and weight. Mendelian randomization analysis yielded results quantitatively similar to those from the conventional epidemiologic analysis.
Conclusions
Height is associated inversely with risks of EAC and BE. Results from the Mendelian randomization study showed that the inverse association observed did not result from confounding factors. Mechanistic studies of the effect of height on EAC and BE are warranted; height could have utility in clinical risk stratification
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