Preemption and Medical Devices: The Courts Run Amok

Perhaps the most dramatic indication that the courts have shifted attitudes on health and safety matters comes from recent cases relating to medical devices and preemption. In this Article, we review the law relating to preemption, the Cipollone decision, the preemption provisions of the MDA, the regulations issued by the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) relating to preemption, and the impact of Cipollone on court interpretations of the MDA. Based on our review of the intended preemptive effect of the MDA, we conclude that it is unlikely that either Congress or the FDA intended for the MDA to preempt state tort claims. Moreover, even if preemption were justified for some tort claims-a proposition we reject-the courts have extended the rationale in Cipollone far beyond anything that the Supreme Court intended in its ruling. In short, we maintain that the courts have run amok in their rulings on preemption

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: a Primer

This Article is a primer for attorneys to use when advising their clients on how to address sexual harassment in the workplace. We will begin by describing the scope and severity of the sexual harassment problem. Then we will examine the recently strengthened federal law governing sexual harassment in the workplace. Finally, we will suggest policies and procedures for establishing and implementing a sexual harassment policy

Good Faith: A New Look At An Old Doctrine

In this article we sketch the basic contours of the contractual policing devices that apply to special relationships and to arm\u27s length transactions. We then explicate in greater detail the duty of good faith under general contract law and the Uniform Commercial Code. Finally, we explore some strategies for shortening arm\u27s length transactions through consensual extensions of the duty of good faith

A New Approach to Black Hole Microstates

If one encodes the gravitational degrees of freedom in an orthonormal frame field there is a very natural first order action one can write down (which in four dimensions is known as the Goldberg action). In this essay we will show that this action contains a boundary action for certain microscopic degrees of freedom living at the horizon of a black hole, and argue that these degrees of freedom hold great promise for explaining the microstates responsible for black hole entropy, in any number of spacetime dimensions. This approach faces many interesting challenges, both technical and conceptual.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures, LaTeX; submitted to Mod. Phys. Lett. A.; this essay received "honorable mention" from the Gravity Research Foundation, 199

Quantification of gait parameters in freely walking wild type and sensory deprived Drosophila melanogaster

Coordinated walking in vertebrates and multi-legged invertebrates such as Drosophila melanogaster requires a complex neural network coupled to sensory feedback. An understanding of this network will benefit from systems such as Drosophila that have the ability to genetically manipulate neural activities. However, the fly's small size makes it challenging to analyze walking in this system. In order to overcome this limitation, we developed an optical method coupled with high-speed imaging that allows the tracking and quantification of gait parameters in freely walking flies with high temporal and spatial resolution. Using this method, we present a comprehensive description of many locomotion parameters, such as gait, tarsal positioning, and intersegmental and left-right coordination for wild type fruit flies. Surprisingly, we find that inactivation of sensory neurons in the fly's legs, to block proprioceptive feedback, led to deficient step precision, but interleg coordination and the ability to execute a tripod gait were unaffected. - See more at: http://elife.elifesciences.org/content/2/e00231#sthash.6OwrygKl.dpu

Kinematic Responses to Changes in Walking Orientation and Gravitational Load in Drosophila melanogaster

Walking behavior is context-dependent, resulting from the integration of internal and external influences by specialized motor and pre-motor centers. Neuronal programs must be sufficiently flexible to the locomotive challenges inherent in different environments. Although insect studies have contributed substantially to the identification of the components and rules that determine locomotion, we still lack an understanding of how multi-jointed walking insects respond to changes in walking orientation and direction and strength of the gravitational force. In order to answer these questions we measured with high temporal and spatial resolution the kinematic properties of untethered Drosophila during inverted and vertical walking. In addition, we also examined the kinematic responses to increases in gravitational load. We find that animals are capable of shifting their step, spatial and inter-leg parameters in order to cope with more challenging walking conditions. For example, flies walking in an inverted orientation decreased the duration of their swing phase leading to increased contact with the substrate and, as a result, greater stability. We also find that when flies carry additional weight, thereby increasing their gravitational load, some changes in step parameters vary over time, providing evidence for adaptation. However, above a threshold that is between 1 and 2 times their body weight flies display locomotion parameters that suggest they are no longer capable of walking in a coordinated manner. Finally, we find that functional chordotonal organs are required for flies to cope with additional weight, as animals deficient in these proprioceptors display increased sensitivity to load bearing as well as other locomotive defects

Engrailed cooperates directly with Extradenticle and Homothorax on a distinct class of homeodomain binding sites to repress sloppy paired.

Even skipped (Eve) and Engrailed (En) are homeodomain-containing transcriptional repressors with similar DNA binding specificities that are sequentially expressed in Drosophila embryos. The sloppy-paired (slp) locus is a target of repression by both Eve and En. At blastoderm, Eve is expressed in 7 stripes that restrict the posterior border of slp stripes, allowing engrailed (en) gene expression to be initiated in odd-numbered parasegments. En, in turn, prevents expansion of slp stripes after Eve is turned off. Prior studies showed that the two tandem slp transcription units are regulated by cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) with activities that overlap in space and time. An array of CRMs that generate 7 stripes at blastoderm, and later 14 stripes, surround slp1 (Fujioka and Jaynes, 2012). Surprisingly given their similarity in DNA binding specificity and function, responsiveness to ectopic Eve and En indicates that most of their direct target sites are either in distinct CRMs, or in different parts of coregulated CRMs. We localized cooperative binding sites for En, with the homeodomain-containing Hox cofactors Extradenticle (Exd) and Homothorax (Hth), within two CRMs that drive similar expression patterns. Functional analysis revealed two distinct, redundant sites within one CRM. The other CRM contains a single cooperative site that is both necessary and sufficient for repression in the en domain. Correlating in vivo and in vitro analysis suggests that cooperativity with Exd and Hth is a key ingredient in the mechanism of En-dependent repression, and that apparent affinity in vitro is an unreliable predictor of in vivo function