美国联邦第九巡回区法院对于律师费请求的判决标准

对于仲裁费请求的判决或裁决标准,一直是各国司法实践中的热点问题。本文作者凭借多年积累的丰富职业经验,就美国司法实践中的这一问题做了细致具体的梳理。文章首先介绍了美国司法实践中的一般做法,之后以美国联邦地区法院第九巡回法院为例,逐条罗列了具体的判决标准并做了细致的分析。     

如何在美国为中国公司选择合适的代理律师

针对越来越多的中国公司在美国聘请代理律师时遇到的困难,本文介绍了中国公司在美国选择合适代理律师的重要性、美国复杂而多样化的律师信息报告制度以及如何针对中国传统儒家式的行事风格来选择律师的技巧。本文认为在选聘律师的过程中,中国公司应在了解美国司法环境及美国律师特色之后谨慎、有规划、有技巧的进行律师选聘,从而才能选到最合适的律师为中国公司提供最理想的服务。     

Employment among Social Security disability program beneficiaries, 1996-2007

We use linked administrative data from program and earnings records to summarize the 2007 employment rates of Social Security disability program beneficiaries at the national and state levels, as well as changes in employment since 1996. The findings provide new information on the employment activities of beneficiaries that should be useful in assessing current agency policies and providing benchmarks for ongoing demonstration projects and future return-to-work initiatives. The overall employment rate--which we define as annual earnings over $1,000--was 12 percent in 2007. Substantial variation exists within the population. Disability Insurance beneficiaries and those younger than age 40 were much more likely to work relative to other Social Security beneficiaries. Additionally, substantial regional variation exists across states; employment rates ranged from 7 percent (West Virginia) to 23 percent (North Dakota). Moreover, we find that the employment rates among beneficiaries were sensitive to the business cycle and persistent over time.     

大学生宗教信仰的社会心理学分析

随着大学教育、教学活动与社会联系的日益深入,宗教文化在大学校园中也有一定程度的渗入和传播,信教的大学生人数呈上升趋势。导致大学生宗教信仰的原因既有西方宗教文化的影响等外部因素,也有大学生好奇心强、追求自我实现等内部心理因素。高校一方面应尊重大学生的宗教信仰,另一方面应采取加强对大学生的无神论教育等措施引导大学生树立科学的世界观和人生观,为社会主义建设事业培养更多的合格人才。     

評高国麟著《泰国华僑之双重身份》

《泰国华僑之双重身份》这本书,把华僑在泰国的商业組织、勢力、家庭和團体的生活、教育、国籍與政治兴趣等問題都給予詳細的研究和闡述。在該书的第一章里,高国麟博士提出了一些突出的問題,就是如何把少数的华人和泰國人民同化的問     

Validated method for the simultaneous determination of Delta9-THC and Delta9-THC-COOH in oral fluid, urine and whole blood using solid-phase extraction and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization

A fully validated, sensitive and specific method for the extraction and quantification of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 11-nor-9-carboxy-Delta(9)-THC (THC-COOH) and for the detection of 11-hydroxy-Delta(9)-THC (11-OH THC) in oral fluid, urine and whole blood is presented. Solid-phase extraction and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technique were used, with electrospray ionization. Three ions were monitored for THC and THC-COOH and two for 11-OH THC. The compounds were quantified by selected ion recording of m/z 315.31, 329.18 and 343.16 for THC, 11-OH THC and THC-COOH, respectively, and m/z 318.27 and 346.26 for the deuterated internal standards, THC-d(3) and THC-COOH-d(3), respectively. The method proved to be precise for THC and THC-COOH both in terms of intra-day and inter-day analysis, with intra-day coefficients of variation (CV) less than 6.3, 6.6 and 6.5% for THC in saliva, urine and blood, respectively, and 6.8 and 7.7% for THC-COOH in urine and blood, respectively. Day-to-day CVs were less than 3.5, 4.9 and 11.3% for THC in saliva, urine and blood, respectively, and 6.2 and 6.4% for THC-COOH in urine and blood, respectively. Limits of detection (LOD) were 2 ng/mL for THC in oral fluid and 0.5 ng/mL for THC and THC-COOH and 20 ng/mL for 11-OH THC, in urine and blood. Calibration curves showed a linear relationship for THC and THC-COOH in all samples (r(2)>0.999) within the range investigated. The procedure presented here has high specificity, selectivity and sensitivity. It can be regarded as an alternative method to GC-MS for the confirmation of positive immunoassay test results, and can be used as a suitable analytical tool for the quantification of THC and THC-COOH in oral fluid, urine and/or blood samples.     

Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome mimicking child abuse by burning

Determining the cause for the sudden death in young adults tends to be complex and difficult. Two cases of death of young people were autoptically investigated who died suddenly while carrying out their hobbies (a 22-year-old male musician and a 20-year-old female dancer). In both cases neither the police investigation, the autopsy, nor the toxicological investigations gave any relevant results. However, when investigating the histology fatty and fibrotic tissue in the right ventricle of the myocardium were found, whereas the myocytes proved to be degenerated--typical for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). It is important to consider the possibility of heart rhythm failure if a clear reason for sudden death in young adults cannot be detected. Heart rhythm failure often involves the genetic background of the case, which suggests that genetic analysis should be carried out as a supportive means of diagnostics.     

Patella sex determination by 3D statistical shape models and nonlinear classifiers

Sex determination is one of the essential steps in personal identification of an individual from skeletal remains. Most elements of the skeleton have been subjected to discriminant function analysis for sex estimation, but little work has been done in terms of the patella. This paper proposes a new sex determination method from the patella using a novel automated feature extraction technique. A dataset of 228 patellae (95 females and 133 males) was amassed from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection from the University of Tennessee and was subjected to noninvasive high resolution computed tomography (CT). After the CT data were segmented, a set of features was automatically extracted, normalized, and ranked. The segmentation process with surface smoothing minimizes the noise from enthesophytes and ultimately allows our methods to distinguish variations in patellar morphology. These features include geometric features, moments, principal axes, and principal components. A feature vector of dimension 45 for each subject was then constructed. A set of statistical and supervised neural network classification methods were used to classify the sex of the patellar feature vectors. Nonlinear classifiers such as neural networks have been used in previous research to analyze several medical diagnosis problems, including quantitative tissue characterization and automated chromosome classification. In this paper, different classification methods were compared. Classification success ranged from 83.77% average classification rate using labels from a Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering step, to 90.3% for linear discriminant classification (LDC). We obtained results of 96.02% and 93.51% training and testing classification rates, respectively, using feed-forward backpropagation neural networks (NN). These promising results using newly developed features and the application of nonlinear classifiers encourage the usage of these methods in forensic anthropology for identifying the sex of an individual from incomplete skeletons retaining at least one patella.