Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Appellant, James Townsend v. Midland Funding, LLC

The Consumer Protection Clinic of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, filed a Motion to Participate and an Amicus Brief in the case of Townsend v. Midland Funding, LLC. The case presents the question of whether documents created by third party predecessors in interest—usually a bank—may be admitted into evidence when a debt buyer plaintiff does not demonstrate personal knowledge regarding any of the foundational elements which would be required to admit the documents under the business records exception to the hearsay rule. Amici urge the Court to overturn the lower court, and hold that a debt buyer’s documents may not be admitted into evidence without the debt buyer first laying the proper foundation for the business records exception to the hearsay rule. The Clinic was joined by AARP, the National Consumer Law Center, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, and by the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau and Maryland\u27s Public Justice Center. The Brief deals with the problems of data integrity and the lack of competent, reliable evidence in lawsuits filed purchasers of charged off credit card debt, known as debt buyers. The Consumer Protection Clinic and other amici examine due process and professionalism concerns which arise when our courts (primarily Maryland\u27s District Court) do not strictly apply the special evidentiary and procedural rules which exist for small claims actions

Numerical Analysis of Solid Rocket Motor Instabilities With AP Composite Propellants

A non-steady model for the combustion of ammonium perchlorate composite propellants has been developed in order to be incorporated into a comprehensive gasdynamics model of solid rocket motor flow fields. The model including the heterogeneous combustion and turbulence mechanisms is applied to nonlinear combustion instability analyses. This paper describes the essential mechanisms and features of the model and discusses the methodology of non-steady calculations of the combustion instabilities of solid rocket motors

ECRG4 regulates neutrophil recruitment and CD44 expression during the inflammatory response to injury.

The complex molecular microenvironment of the wound bed regulates the duration and degree of inflammation in the wound repair process, while its dysregulation leads to impaired healing. Understanding factors controlling this response provides therapeutic targets for inflammatory disease. Esophageal cancer-related gene 4 (ECRG4) is a candidate chemokine that is highly expressed on leukocytes. We used ECRG4 knockout (KO) mice to establish that the absence of ECRG4 leads to defective neutrophil recruitment with a delay in wound healing. An in vitro human promyelocyte model identified an ECRG4-mediated suppression of the hyaluronic acid receptor, CD44, a key receptor mediating inflammation resolution. In ECRG4 KO mouse leukocytes, there was an increase in CD44 expression, consistent with a model in which ECRG4 negatively regulates CD44 levels. Therefore, we propose a previously unidentified mechanism in which ECRG4 regulates early neutrophil recruitment and subsequent CD44-mediated resolution of inflammation

A simple and optimal ancestry labeling scheme for trees

We present a $\lg n + 2 \lg \lg n+3$ ancestry labeling scheme for trees. The problem was first presented by Kannan et al. [STOC 88'] along with a simple $2 \lg n$ solution. Motivated by applications to XML files, the label size was improved incrementally over the course of more than 20 years by a series of papers. The last, due to Fraigniaud and Korman [STOC 10'], presented an asymptotically optimal $\lg n + 4 \lg \lg n+O(1)$ labeling scheme using non-trivial tree-decomposition techniques. By providing a framework generalizing interval based labeling schemes, we obtain a simple, yet asymptotically optimal solution to the problem. Furthermore, our labeling scheme is attained by a small modification of the original $2 \lg n$ solution.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. To appear at ICALP'1

Organizational Design for Spill Containment in Deepwater Drilling Operations in the Gulf of Mexico: Assessment of the Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC)

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 led to the deaths of 11 workers, a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf, and nearly three months of massive engineering and logistics efforts to stop the spill. The series of failures before the well was finally capped and the spill contained revealed an inability to deal effectively with a well in deepwater and ultradeepwater. Ensuring that containment capabilities are adequate for drilling operations at these depths is therefore a salient challenge for government and industry. In this paper we assess the Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC), a consortium aimed at designing and building a system capable of containing future deepwater spills in the Gulf. We also consider alternatives for long-term readiness for deepwater spill containment. We focus on the roles of liability and regulation as determinants of readiness and the adequacy of incentives for technological innovation in oil spill containment technology to keep pace with advances in deepwater drilling capability. Liability and regulation can significantly influence the strength of these incentives. In addition, we discuss appropriate governance structure as a major determinant of the effectiveness of MWCC.oil spill, containment, industry R&D, liability, regulation, governance, innovation

Pulling Marbles from a Bag: Deducing the Regional Impact History of the SPA Basin from Impact-Melt Rocks

The South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin is the stratigraphically oldest identifiable lunar basin and is therefore one of the most important targets for absolute age-dating to help understand whether ancient lunar bombardment history smoothly declined or was punctuated by a cataclysm. A feasible near-term approach to this problem is to robotically collect a sample from near the center of the basin, where vertical and lateral mixing provided by post-basin impacts ensures that such a sample will be composed of small rock fragments from SPA itself, from local impact craters, and from faraway giant basins. The range of ages, intermediate spikes in the age distribution, and the oldest ages are all part of the definition of the absolute age and impact history recorded within the SPA basin

Discrimination between thermodynamic models of cis-regulation using transcription factor occupancy data

Many studies have identified binding preferences for transcription factors (TFs), but few have yielded predictive models of how combinations of transcription factor binding sites generate specific levels of gene expression. Synthetic promoters have emerged as powerful tools for generating quantitative data to parameterize models of combinatorial cis-regulation. We sought to improve the accuracy of such models by quantifying the occupancy of TFs on synthetic promoters in vivo and incorporating these data into statistical thermodynamic models of cis-regulation. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation-seq, we measured the occupancy of Gcn4 and Cbf1 in synthetic promoter libraries composed of binding sites for Gcn4, Cbf1, Met31/Met32 and Nrg1. We measured the occupancy of these two TFs and the expression levels of all promoters in two growth conditions. Models parameterized using only expression data predicted expression but failed to identify several interactions between TFs. In contrast, models parameterized with occupancy and expression data predicted expression data, and also revealed Gcn4 self-cooperativity and a negative interaction between Gcn4 and Nrg1. Occupancy data also allowed us to distinguish between competing regulatory mechanisms for the factor Gcn4. Our framework for combining occupancy and expression data produces predictive models that better reflect the mechanisms underlying combinatorial cis-regulation of gene expression