Recent developments in employee benefits law

The first part of this article highlights important judicial developments involving employee benefits and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA"), as amended, during the latter part of 2003 and the first part of 2004, including the most significant U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit court decisions. The second part covers recent legislative and regulatory developments in employee benefits law. This article is not meant to be exhaustive, but discusses the more important developments during 2003-2004, with particular focus on issues of concern to the insurance industry.     

We Fearless Ones: Nietzsche and Critical Legal Studies

Abstraction destroys life. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Identification of Opioids and Related Substances using Handheld Raman Spectrometers

This study describes the performance of handheld Raman devices for detecting one hundred opioids and related substances including fentanyl and several analogs. Using a single “parent” device, signatures (spectra) with excellent signal-to-noise ratios were generated using <5 mg of most compounds. The signatures were added to a method (library), which was electronically transferred to three “daughter” devices. The devices were able to discriminate different salt forms and isomers. On average, the daughter devices yielded a true-positive rate of 97.3% for generating an alarm for opioids and were 93.3% effective for correctly identifying the opioid. The devices yielded true-negative, false-positive and false-negative rates of 100%, 0%, and 2.7%, respectively, where false negatives were due to weak signal and fluorescence. These data demonstrate that the parent-daughter electronic transfer method was successful and effective, which permits the ability to develop methods in the laboratory that can be seamlessly pushed out to field devices.     

Social media taxation and its impact on Africa's economic growth

Technology affordances enable citizens to digitally connect and collectively act towards realization of established economic goals of a given country. This paper contributes to scholarly discussions on the effects of social media tax on Africa's economic growth. For African economies to grow, there is need to abolish social media tax and device means through which social media discussions that generate billions of data are captured and analyzed to guide policymaking processes aimed at economic growth. We connote that social media tax disengages the government from its citizens that access information through social media platforms. The tax is a hindrance to realization of the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA‐2024) and the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063.