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Optimization Of Folic Acid Supplementation In The Prevention Of Neural Tube Defects, Shona Cawley, Daniel Mccartney, Jayne V. Woodside, Mary Rose Sweeney, Robert Mcdonnell, Anne M. Molloy, Michael J. Turner

Articles

Background We examined the relationship between timing and duration of folic acid (FA) supplementation in achieving red blood cell (RBC) folate levels in early pregnancy which are optimal (>906 nmol/l) for the prevention of neural tube defects (NTDs). Methods Clinical, FA supplementation and dietary folate details were computerized at the first antenatal visit. Maternal blood samples were analysed for RBC and serum folate. Results Of the 502 women, 98.2% (n = 493) reported taking FA. There was a positive correlation between duration of supplementation and both RBC folate (r = 0.43, P < 0.001) and serum folate (rho = 0.29, P < 0.001). The optimal RBC folate level was achieved in 80.4% (n = 46) of women who started FA 400 μg 4–8 weeks before their LMP compared with only 53.6% (n = 153) in women who started 4–8 weeks after their LMP (P < 0.001). Conclusions This study provides, for the first …

Microfluidics In Coagulation Monitoring Devices: A Mini Review, Leanne Harris, Anthony J. Killard

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Diagnosis and monitoring of disorders of coagulation and disturbances in haemostasis has been around for many years. Thrombotic and bleeding disorders are amongst the leading causes of mortality in the developed world, thus driving research in this area. The simplicity with which miniaturised devices operate and their application to the study of coagulation and haemostasis offer potential advantages over traditional testing, such as improvements in clinical decision making and ultimately patient care. This review looks at progress in microfluidic device development in the field of haemostasis and coagulation biology.

The Relationship Between Early Pregnancy Dietary Intakes And Subsequent Birthweight And Neonatal Adiposity, R.A.K. Kennedy, Laura Mullaney, A.C. O'Higgins, A. Doolan, Daniel Mccartney, M.J. Turner

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Background: Maternal nutrition intakes may influence neonatal birthweight and adiposity; however, inconsistencies within the literature exist. The relationships between maternal dietary intakes in early pregnancy and both birthweight and neonatal adiposity requires elucidation. This study examined the relationship between early pregnancy dietary intakes and subsequent birthweight and neonatal adiposity.

Methods: Women were recruited at their convenience after sonographic confirmation of a singleton pregnancy. Women completed a Willet food frequency questionnaire evaluating habitual food and nutrient intakes at their first antenatal visit. Neonatal body composition was measured using air-displacement plethysmography.

Results: Of the 385 mother-neonate dyads, mean maternal age was 30.8 …

The Infinite Power Of Grammar, Patrick Barry

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Good lawyers know that effective advocacy requires more than just choosing the right words; it also requires choosing the right word order. The formal term for this choice is “syntax.” But perhaps a better description comes from a 1976 essay by Joan Didion called “Why I Write.”

In it, Didion draws a helpful parallel between the arrangement of a photograph and the arrangement of a sentence. “To shift the structure of a sentence,” she notes, “alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of the camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.” Didion refers …

The International Implications Of Wayfair, Reuven Avi-Yonah

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In this article, Avi-Yonah argues that the Court’s recent decision in Wayfair has implications for the EU’s struggle with taxing the digital economy, as well as for the broader international effort to update international tax rules for the 21st century — that is, it bolsters the argument for dispensing with the 19th-century permanent establishment concept.

Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, J. J. Prescott

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The need for prospective beneficiaries to “take up” new programs is a common stumbling block for otherwise well-designed legal and policy innovations. I examine the take-up problem in the context of publicly provided court services and test the effectiveness of various outreach strategies that announce a newly available online court access platform. I study individuals with minor arrest warrants whose distrust of courts may dampen any take-up response. I partnered with a court to quasi-randomly assign outreach approaches to a cohort of individuals and find that outreach improves take-up, that the type of outreach matters, and that online platform access …

A Close Reading Of Barnette, In Honor Of Vincent Blasi Symposium: Barnette At 75: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Fixed Star In Our Constitutional Constellation, Paul Horwitz

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No abstract provided.

President Trump's Emerging Maritime Policy, Craig H. Allen

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President Donald Trump was elected on a pledge to make America great again. Although he did not enter office with a comprehensive national maritime policy, the elements of such a policy have begun to emerge. Since taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump and the Republican controlled 115th Congress have enacted broad tax reforms and significantly increased defense spending, the first step toward rebuilding the US Navy to 355 ships. The 115th Congress also invoked the Congressional Review Act of 1996 to overturn 14 rules issued by federal agencies during President Obama's term.

“High” Standards: How The Tide Of Marijuana Legalization Sweeping The Country Ignores The Hidden Risks Of Edibles, Steve Calandrillo, Katelyn Fulton

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As a tide of marijuana legalization sweeps across the United States, there is a surprising lack of scrutiny as to whether the benefits of recreational marijuana outweigh the risks. Notably, marijuana edibles present special risks to the population that are not present in smoked marijuana. States that have legalized recreational marijuana are seeing an increase in edible-related calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency rooms. These negative reactions are especially prevalent in vulnerable populations such as children, persons with underlying preexisting conditions, and out-of-state marijuana novices. Unfortunately, research on edible marijuana is scant and state regulatory regimes are …

Disruptive Lending For Innovations: Signaling Model And Banks Selection Of Startups Innovations, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Erik Hille

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Startups desperately need funding. But lending to startups is too risky for banks. How can banks lend to startups whose cash flow is negative, tangible assets are nonexistent, and most valuable assets are patents? In light of the uncertainties, what can banks do in lending for innovations? In this Article, we turn to economic theory to demonstrate how banks can make their selections of startups, ensuring their returns and encouraging innovations. Specifically, we create a signaling model with partial separating equilibria to demonstrate how banks can address the information asymmetry problem by relying on a truth-telling signal in assessing the …

The Puzzle In Financing With Trademark Collateral, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Erik Hille

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If trademarks are important corporate assets, do banks and nonbanks lend against trademarks? Or do lenders accept trademark collateral merely as part of a blanket lien? Do banks and nonbanks treat trademarks differently than patents in lending, including venture lending? This first empirical study will attempt to answer these questions. We extract and analyze security interest filings in trademarks and patents against the backdrop of secured transactions law and banking regulations. Based on the data, it seems banks and nonbanks have an aversion for trademark collateral and, by practice, treat most trademarks as idle assets. We also argue that the …

Sovereign Patent Funds, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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No abstract provided.

Consociationalism Vs. Incentivism In Divided Societies: A Question Of Threshold Design Or Of Sequencing?, Clark B. Lombardi, Pasarlay Shamshad

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Scholarship on constitutional design for post-conflict or divided societies focuses a great deal of attention on two issues: (1) the processes and timing by which constitutional rules should be established and (2) whether constitutions should reflect a consociationalist or incentivist approach to governance. Scholars are increasingly willing to entertain the possibility that constitutions drafted during period of transition from civil war or authoritarianism need not, and often should not, answer immediately all questions that constitutions tend to answer; however, they tend to assume that the question of whether constitutions should be consociationalist or incentivist is one that should not be …

Is The License Still The Product?, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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The Supreme Court rejected the use of patent law to enforce conditional sales contracts in Impression Products v. Lexmark. The case appears to be just another step in the Supreme Court’s ongoing campaign to reset the Federal Circuit’s patent law jurisprudence. However, the decision casts a shadow on cases from all federal circuits that have enforced software licenses for more than 20 years and potentially imperils the business models on which software developers rely to create innovative products and to bring those products to market in a variety of useful ways.

For over two decades, we could say that …

Protecting Offshore Areas From Oil And Gas Leasing: Presidential Authority Under The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act And The Antiquities Act, Robert T. Anderson

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For over one hundred years, presidents of both parties have used executive power to protect America’s lands and waters. Until the second half of the twentieth century, however, little attention was given to protecting the marine ecosystem. Federal authority reaches out to two hundred miles or more in the oceans off the United States, covering an area known as the Outer Continental Shelf. Federal interest in the area historically focused on developing oil and gas reserves and ensuring that the area was open to trade and commerce. The area is also very important for indigenous subsistence uses and commercial and …

Investors' Paradox, Anita K. Krug

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For the first time in an era, new investment products for smaller ("retail ") investors are emerging. These products are mutual funds that engage in the types of trading and investment activities that have long been the province of sophisticated investors. Accordingly, the new funds (called "alternative funds") promise to reduce the gulf between retail investors and their sophisticated counterparts, in terms of portfolio diversification and investment results.

This Article describes the complex mix of factors that spawned alternative funds and critically evaluates the funds' potential, the first scholarly work to do so. It additionally unearths the paradox that impedes …

International Lobbying Law, Melissa J. Durkee

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An idiosyncratic array of international rules allows “consultants” to gain special access to international officials and lawmakers. Historically, many of these consultants were public-interest associations like Amnesty International. For this reason, the access rules have been celebrated as a way to democratize international organizations, enhancing their legitimacy and that of the rules they produce. But a focus on the classic public-law virtues of democracy and legitimacy produces a theory at odds with the facts: Many of these international consultants are now industry and trade associations like the World Coal Association, whose principal purpose is to lobby for their corporate clients. …

Freedom In Structure: Helping Foreign-Trained And International Graduate Students Develop Thesis Statements By Component, Elizabeth R. Baldwin

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This article explains how foreign-trained and international graduate students can use a thesis development template to find and articulate narrow, novel, non-obvious, and useful claims for their final, academic papers in law. These students, in particular, are in need of clear direction and methods for crafting well-developed claims (or thesis statements), given that many are non-native speakers of English who trained in different legal and educational systems with different expectations about what constitutes good academic writing—in any genre, let alone law. Through the use of a thesis development template (adapted from writing advice by Joseph M. Williams and Eugene Volokh), …

Profit-Split Method: Time For Countries To Apply A Standardized Approach, Jeffery M. Kadet, Tommaso Faccio, Sol Picciotto

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Now that the OECD has issued its final guidance on the action 10 profit-split method, individual countries must determine how they might consider and apply the profit-split method.

It’s true that some countries have large and well-staffed transfer pricing audit groups that include economists and other tax professionals knowledgeable in the application of transfer pricing principles and rules. However, those resources are never enough to match the legions of specialists that can be deployed by large multinational groups.

The situation is even worse elsewhere. Most countries not only have significant resource and personnel constraints, but they also simply do not …

Effects Of The New Sourcing Rule: Eci And Profit Sharing, David L. Koontz, Jeffery M. Kadet

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For the first time in eons, Congress has seen fit to change a basic rule for the sourcing of income. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (P.L. 115-97) minced few words in its addition of a single sentence to section 863(b) that applies to sales or exchanges of inventory property (1) produced in whole or in part by the taxpayer in one country, and (2) sold or exchanged in another country. The United States can either be the country where the inventory property is produced or the country where it is sold.

With this change, income from the sale of …

Letter From Jeffery M. Kadet And David L. Koontz To The Internal Revenue Serv. (June 5, 2018) On Notice 2018-43, 2018-2019 Priority Guidance Plan Regulatory And Ruling Guidance Concerning Various International Tax Issues, Jeffery M. Kadet, David L. Koontz

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A principal focus of our suggestions is the modernization and updating of regulations as well as providing guidance that will affect the many multinational corporations (MNCs) whose operations take place partially or wholly within the U.S. Many of these MNCs have embarked on complicated and legalistic schemes whose primary purpose is to shift profits without any real operational changes and to record those profits within zero- and low-taxed foreign members. Importantly, this includes not only U.S.-based MNCs, but also the many inverted MNCs that structured their inversions to remain untouched by the §7874 anti-inversion rules.

Sourcing Rule Change: Manufacturing And Competitiveness, Jeffery M. Kadet

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In this article, Kadet explains how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act favors foreign-based manufacturers selling through a U.S. sales branch over comparable U.S. manufacturers, and he recommends legislative fixes.

Indigenous Rights To Water & Environmental Protection, Robert T. Anderson

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This article examines the rights of Indian nations in the United States to adequate water supplies and environmental protection for their land and associated resources. Part I of this article provides a brief background on the history of federal-tribal relations and the source and scope of federal obligations to protect tribal resources. Part II reviews the source and nature of the federal government’s moral and legal obligations to Indian tribes, which are generally referred to as the trust responsibility. Indian reserved water rights and the difficulty tribes experience in protecting habitat needed for healthy treaty resources is discussed in Part …

Ph-Dependent Silica Nanoparticle Dissolution And 1 Cargo Release, Giorgia Giovaninni, Colin J. Moore, Andrew John Hall, Hugh Byrne, Vladimir Gubala

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The dissolution of microporous silica nanoparticles (NP) in aqueous environments of different biologically relevant pH was studied in order to assess their potential as drug delivery vehicles. Silica NPs, loaded with fluorescein, were prepared using different organosilane precursors (tetraethoxysilane, ethyl triethoxysilane or a 1:1 molar ratio of both) and NP dissolution was evaluated in aqueous conditions at pH 4, pH 6 and pH 7.4. These conditions correspond to the acidity of the intracellular environment (late endosome, early endosome, cytosol respectively) and gastrointestinal tract (‘fed’ stomach, duodenum and jejunum respectively). All NPs degraded at pH 6 and pH 7.4, while no …

Application Of Box-Behnken Experimental Design For The Formulation And Optimisation Of Selenomethionine-Loaded Chitosan Nanoparticles Coated With Zein For Oral Delivery., Giuliana Vozza, Hugh Byrne, Jesus Maria Frias, Minna Khalid Danish, Sinéad M. Ryan

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Selenomethionine is an essential amino acid with a narrow therapeutic index and susceptibility to oxidation. Here it was encapsulated into a nanoparticle composed of chitosan cross-linked with tripolyphosphate for oral delivery. The formulation was optimised using a three-factor Box-Behnken experimental design. The chitosan:tripolyphosphate ratio, chitosan solvent pH, and drug load concentration were independently varied. The dependent variables studied were encapsulation efficiency, particle size, polydispersity index and zeta potential. For optimisation, encapsulation efficiency and zeta potential were maximised, particle diameter was set to 300 nm and polydispersity index was minimised. A 0.15 mg/mL concentration of selenomethionine, chitosan solvent pH of 3, …

Quantifying The Concentration Of Glucose, Urea, And Lactic Acid In Mixture By Confocal Raman Microscopy, Zhengyuan Tang, Sinead Barton, Thomas Ward, John Lowry, Michelle Doran, Hugh Byrne, Bryan Hennelly

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Raman spectroscopy has numerous applications in the field of biology. One such application is the simultaneously measurement of the concentration of multiple biochemical components in low volume aqueous mixtures, for example, a single drop of blood serum. Over twenty years ago, it was shown for the first time that it was possible to estimate the concentration of glucose, urea, and lactic acid in mixture by combining Raman Spectroscopy with Partial Least Squares Regression analysis. This was followed by numerous contributions in the literature designed to increase the number of components and reduce the limits of concentration that could be simultaneously …

Inner Surface Biofilm Inactivation By Atmospheric Pressure Helium Porous Plasma Jet, Peng Lu, Dana Ziuzina, Patrick J. Cullen, Paula Bourke

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We present a helium porous plasma jet based on gas diffuser, designed with the aim of decontaminating inner surfaces of contaminated structures, e.g., pipes. The porous plasma jet operates with three discharge modes in ambient air and inside a vessel. Its decontamination capacity is demonstrated by evaluating the inactivation efficacy of biofilm form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, adherent to inner surface of a glass vial. Plasma treatments for 5 min with filament mode and double region helium discharge mode reduced bacterial numbers by 2.4 and 2.5 Log₁₀ CFU/ml. Plasma treatment with double region air‐like discharge mode was the most …

Multi-Drug Resistant Escherichia Coli In Diarrhoeagenic Foals: Pulsotyping, Phylotyping, Serotyping, Antibiotic Resistance And Virulence Profiling, C.A. Kennedy, Ciara Walsh, M. Karczmarczyk, S. O'Brien, N. Akasheh, M. Quirke, S. Farrell-Ward, T. Buckley, U. Fogherty, K. Kavanagh, C.T. Parker, T. Sweeney, S. Fanning

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Extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) possess the ability to cause extraintestinal infections such as urinary tract infections, neonatal meningitis and sepsis. While information is readily available describing pathogenic E. coli populations in food-producing animals, studies in companion/sports animals such as horses are limited. In addition, many antimicrobial agents used in the treatment of equine infections are also utilised in human medicine, potentially contributing to the spread of antibiotic resistance determinants among pathogenic strains. The aim of this study was to phenotypically and genotypically characterise the multidrug resistance and virulence associated with 83 equine E. coli isolates recovered from foals with …

Hollow Core Fiber Based Interferometer For High Temperature (1000 °C) Measurement, Dejun Liu, Qiang Wu, Chao Mei, Jinhui Yuan, Xiangjun Xin, Arun Mallik, Fangfang Wei, Wei Han, Rahul Kumar, Chongxiu Yu, Shengpeng Wan, Xingdao He, Bo Liu, Gang-Ding Peng, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell

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A simple, cost effective high temperature sensor (up to 1000 °C) based on a hollow core fiber (HCF) structure is reported. It is configured by fusion splicing a short section of HCF with a length of few millimeters between two standard single mode fibers (SMF-28). Due to multiple beam interference introduced by the cladding of the HCF, periodic transmission dips with high spectral extinction ratio and high quality (Q) factor are excited. However, theoretical analysis shows that minor variations of the HCF cladding diameter may result in a significant decrease in the Q factor. Experimental results demonstrate that the position …

Measurements Of Milli-Newton Surface Tension Forces With Tilted Fiber Bragg Gratings, Changyu Shen, Chuan Zhong, Dejun Liu, Xiokang Lian, Jianyao Zheng, Jingjing Wang, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell, Jacques Albert, John F. Donegan

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Small lateral forces (lower than 0.1 N) cannot normally be measured with conventional single-mode fiber-based sensors because of the high value of their Young modulus (>70 GPa). Here we demonstrate the measurement of lateral forces in the range from 0.2 to 1.4 × 10−3 N with a tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) in conventional single-mode fiber pushed against the surface tension (ST) of a bead of water. The measured transmission changes of individual cladding mode resonances of the TFBG corresponding to these force values are of the order of 29 dB. Separate measurements of the contact angle between the …