Unanimous Vote Research Articles

The Governance Market: A New Vision for Paul Romer's Charter Cities Concept

In 2011, the Honduran government, in a nearly unanimous vote, passed legislation to allow for “Special Development Regions” where large, independently governed “charter cities” would be built on nearly unoccupied land. The legislation in Honduras has since fallen through; however, idea of charter cities is still very much being considered elsewhere and is becoming more and more of a subject of discussion in the development community. Many are seeing them as “start up governments” that enable poorer countries to bypass the political corruption and entrenched interests that often prevent them from implementing badly needed reforms. They additionally provide people from these countries with options, creating an alternative to either staying where they are or making a perilous attempt at immigration to an already developed economy.This article examines the charter cities idea in light of various conceptions of the role and objectives of cities in the developing world. It looks at its potential to create a highly differentiated network of cities that are incentivized to govern more effectively. It also proposes a new voucher system for the charter cities idea that may help it more effectively respond to the demands of people in less-developed regions. The voucher system effectively would create a “governance market,” in which governments would innovate and compete with each other to attract residents regardless of their wealth.

Copyright and the Commons: Eileen Simpson and Ben White’s <em>Struggle in Jerash</em> (2009)

David Joselit's After Artis devoted to analyzing scale and speed at which proliferate today as well as ways in which these trajectories have been taken up in recent artistic practice. In midst of a discussion of work of Pierre Huyghe, an artist who has dealt extensively with issues of intellectual property, a footnote with an at best tenuous relationship to body of text rather perplexingly deems a discussion of copyright beyond scope of book.1 As that body of laws that serves to regulate scale and speed at which may legally proliferate, one might assume that considerations of copyright would play a significant role in Joselit's text. But it is this exclusion that allows Joselit to set up what is perhaps book's grounding opposition, between what he terms the free 'neoliberal' circulation of images and a fundamentalist attitude that posits that art and architecture are rooted to a specific place.* There is no question as to where Joselit locates his own allegiances in this conflict: for him, neoliberal circulation proposes exciting new forms of connectivity, while fundamentalists cling to rather unfortunate privileging of discrete objects and fail to recognize that contemporary existence is characterized above all by ecstatic mobility. Despite centrality of logic of privatization to economic philosophy of neoliberalism, privatization of visual culture through aggressive enforcement of copyright nowhere enters into Joselit's application of this term to realm of images.Copyright's absence here takes on a strategic importance, as it allows Joselit to map an opposition of present/past onto that of neoliberal movement/fundamentalist stasis and make an epochal claim for ours as a time of unfettered transmission and networked relationality. A consideration of copyright law, and particularly extent to which it has rigidified over last twenty years, would temper apparent freedoms of neoliberal circulation thatjoselit values by introducing a discussion of a pervasive form of control irreducible to fundamentalism he can so easily dismiss as oldfashioned. During this period, aggressive legislation and prosecution, copyright enforcement robots, and digital rights management systems have transformed a set of laws originally formulated to stimulate creativity into a framework for profit-motivated policing. In particular, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, passed by a unanimous vote in U.S. Senate, heralded a new era of extremism.3 But for Joselit, an assessment of realities of copyright in post-DMCA context would reveal its ability to render sclerotic connective circuits he holds so dear.Such an affirmation of unbridled circulation is exemplary of a pervasive tendency among artists and critics engaging with contemporary mobility of images, though it is seldom expressed as explicitly as it is in After Art. It is a tendency that cuts across a wide variety of aesthetic and political investments to celebrate promiscuous circulation as sine qua non of contemporary visual culture, often implicidy replaying long-standing but spurious association of digital technology with freedom, democracy, and user autonomy. However, just as it is necessary to recognize Internet as a technology of both freedom and control, so too is it imperative that contemporary circulation of is understood as both more unmoored and more restrained than ever before. In 1994 John Perry Barlow, founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote that Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to contain digitized expression any more than real estate law might be revised to cover allocation of broadcasting spectrum-and yet this is exactly what has occurred.4 Though such revisions are certainly not watertight, they cannot be ignored. Moreover, this development is not particularly surprising; after all, history of copyright legislation is nothing other than history of grappling with technological innovations that challenge it. …

FDA Advisory Panel Recommends Approval of Drug for Preoperative Treatment of Breast Cancer

In a nearly unanimous vote, an advisory panel for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voiced its support on September 12 for the approval of the drug pertuzumab for use in the neoadjuvant (preoperative) treatment of breast cancer. Pertuzumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting the HER2/neu receptor, was approved by the FDA in 2012 for use in combination with trastuzumab and docetaxel for the treatment of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who had not received prior anti-HER2 therapy or chemotherapy. If the FDA takes its advisory panel�s advice, pertuzumab would also be approved for use as neoadjuvant treatment in early HER2-positive breast cancers.

California provider status bill heads to governor

California provider status bill heads to governor

A new cover for Neuroradiology

From this issue, Neuroradiology will appear with a new cover. On the initiative of our Managing Editor, Dr Lisa Babinec, and after approval by the Editorial Director for Neuroradiology at Springer Verlag, Dr Ute Heilmann, we searched for an appropriate figure. Following a unanimous ESNR Executive Committee vote under the Presidency of Prof. Turgut Tali, you can now see our updated cover on this month’s issue. The color figure represents a “stream tube”DTI tractography of the human brain, made by Thijs Dhollander, Frederik Maes, Paul Suetens, and Stefan Sunaert from the Medical Imaging Research Center and the Department of Radiology of the University Hospitals UZ Leuven in Belgium. Specifically, we see a left lateral view on a whole brain fiber tractography performed on our stereotactic DTI atlas constructed from 42 healthy volunteers nonlinearly registered to the MNI space [1]. Readers will notice superimposed deterministic reconstructions of the uncinate fascicule (in blue), the corticospinal tract (in white), the cingulum bundle (in pink) and the superior longitudinal fascicule (first eigenvector color coded: red = left–right, green = anterior-posterior, blue = cranialcaudal) on the sparse whole brain white matter tractography (in green/yellow). There has been some discussion and criticism of this choice amongst the Section Editors of Neuroradiology. The first concern highlighted the fact that the old cover is so familiar and recognizable to all of us that we might lose our brand identity. Yet the old cover, which has been in place since 2002, contained images of neurons under the microscope, an illustration which is more suitable for a neuropathology journal than for a neuroradiology journal. The second criticism concerned the fact that the illustration is purely diagnostic and would neglect the importance of the interventional part of our journal. Another point of discussion was the realism of the represented white matter tracts. A final remark was that similar images were used by Industry to promote their equipment. Our Section Editor for Paediatric Neuroradiology, Charles Raybaud from Toronto, Canada, finally convinced us all with the following wise words: “The DTIimage might appear too ‘specific’, but there is another way of looking at it. After Joseph Jules Dejerine devoted 350 pages to the white matter anatomy at the end of the 19th century, for approximately 100 more years, pathologists, neuroradiologists and many neurologists (until Norman Geschwind) ignored the white matter as an organized part of the brain, while always using the lateral view of the cortex implicitly with Brodmann's areas for illustration. However, white matter is organized as much as the cortex; white matter is anatomy; white matter is connection; white matter is function; and white matter is made of axons, representing 50 % of the brain volume and a great deal of its pathogenesis. So if we like the colorful image, I don't see why it can’t be considered reflecting anatomy, function, diagnosis and modernity.” The fact that the new cover of Neuroradiology is used for the first time during the month of the 37th Annual Meeting and Advanced Course of the ESNR in Frankfurt is not coincidental and symbolizes the strong band between ESNR and Neuroradiology. G. Wilms (*) Department of Radiology, UZ Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium e-mail: guido.wilms@uz.kuleuven.ac.be

South Sudan: from revolution to independence

In July 2011 the Republic of South Sudan achieved independence, concluding what had been Africa's longest running civil war. The process leading to independence was driven by the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, a primarily Southern rebel force and political movement intent on bringing about the reformed unity of the whole Sudan. Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, a six year peace process unfolded in the form of an interim period premised upon 'making unity attractive' for the Sudan. A failed exercise, it culminated in an almost unanimous vote for independence by Southerners in a referendum held in January 2011. Violence has continued since, and a daunting possibility for South Sudan has arisen - to have won independence only to descend into its own civil war, with the regime in Khartoum aiding and abetting factionalism to keep the new state weak and vulnerable. Achieving a durable peace will be a massive challenge, and resolving the issues that so inflamed Southerners historically - unsupportive governance, broad feelings of exploitation and marginalisation and fragile ethnic politics - will determine South Sudan's success or failure at statehood. A story of transformation and of victory against the odds, this book reviews South Sudan's modern history as a contested region and assesses the political, social and security dynamics that will shape its immediate future as Africa's newest independent state.

EULAR definition of erosive disease in light of the 2010 ACR/EULAR rheumatoid arthritis classification criteria

The aim of this report was to propose a definition for erosive disease in the context of inflammatory arthritis in light of the 2010 American College of Rheumatology (ACR)/European League...

Independence in Europe: Secession, Sovereignty, and the European Union

III. THE EUROPEAN UNION AS A FORUM FOR SELF-DETERMINATION CLAIMS European integration was not always popular among nationalists in Europe's stateless nations. The SNP, for example, argued that integration amounted merely to the transfer of sovereignty over Scotland from one alien government in London to another in Brussels. (156) Yet by the 1980s, the SNP had become firm supporter of the European project and proponent of Independence in (157) Flemish nationalists have also embraced integration, and the N-VA describes itself as extremely pro-European party that supports both a stronger Flanders and stronger (158) The centrality of the EU to Catalan nationalist discourse is evident in the banners carried by demonstrators in Barcelona calling for Catalonia to become New European State, (159) in the Declaration of Sovereignty's assurance that [t]he founding principles of the European Union shall be defended and promoted, (160) and in Artur Mas's proposed wording for future referendum question: Do you want Catalonia to become new state within the European Union? (161) It is overly simplistic to conclude that the EU encourages or discourages separatism or that it makes secession easier or more difficult. Nonetheless, European integration affect[s] how the parties to [separatist] conflict perceive their own interests and identities. (162) Three aspects of the EU play particularly important role in shaping Flemish, Scottish, and Catalan self-determination claims and considering how such claims might be addressed: the respective roles of and regions in EU institutions, the rules governing EU membership, and the debates over the future of in the wake of the eurozone crisis. A. States and Regions Although it is often obscured by considerations of the EU's impact on sovereignty, the fact remains that the EU is in ways governed cooperation among the governments of its member states rather than by supranational structures with independent authority. (163) States remain the primary actors within the EU Membership in the EU is limited to sovereign that meet the EU's admissions criteria and that are admitted through unanimous vote by member states. (164) Once admitted to membership, participate directly in the EU's primary governing institutions: the European Council (consisting of ministers from each member state), the European Commission (consisting of one commissioner from each member state), and the European Parliament (consisting of elected representatives from the member states). (165) Thus, [statehood in the EU ... retains meaning for nationalists because it still remains the sole means by which nationalists can be recognized as sovereign equals in the European political system. (166) Attempts to establish formal channels for regional participation in EU governance have produced only limited results. During the 1980s and 1990s, it became popular to envision Europe of the in which local governments would replace as the primary building blocks of more fully integrated Europe. Many regions established information offices in Brussels in an effort to access the emerging European policymaking structures. (167) Bolstering the of the Regions idea was the Maastricht Treaty, which entered into force in 1993. (168) Maastricht enshrined the principle of subsidiarity (pursuant to which authority over any given area of competency should be vested at the lowest possible political level) in EU law, established Committee of the Regions, and allowed regional ministers to sit on member state delegations in the European Council where the member state deemed such participation appropriate. (169) Yet on balance, the robust regional role that the Maastricht Treaty appeared to promise has never fully materialized. According to Laible, many observers point not to the strength of regions in EU policymaking, but to their weakness. …

Multilevel Energy Policy in the EU: Paving the Way for Renewables?

The legal and political interrelations between national and EU energy policy competencies and the actual policies are multifaceted. In order to understand those interrelations properly one has to analyse both the formal competencies of the EU as enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty and the actual EU policies with their direct and indirect impact on the choice of energy sources. The Treaty grants the EU competence as regards (a) the functioning of the energy market; (b) security of energy supply in the Union; (c) promotion of energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy; and (d) promotion of the interconnection of energy networks. However, Member States remain in control of choosing between different energy sources and the general structure of their energy supply. Any decision affecting this national competence must be adopted by a unanimous vote of the European Council. EU renewable energy support policy needs to develop within the framework of these mixed and multifaceted competences. Our overall argument is that easy fixes do not work. Considering the different national preferences regarding the energy mix, it is premature to ask for a full-fledged EU energy competence leading to a harmonised support system for renewables. Besides which, the emerging climate and renewables policies could also be a driver for deepened energy integration – rather as a bottom-up than a top-down process. In that sense a framework for 2030 with clear goals for climate mitigation, renewables shares and efficiency are of pivotal importance for the transition towards a low carbon economy by 2050.

What were the adverse events for Dupuytren’s patients treated with Xiaflex who had contractures less than 20°?

Dear Sir: I read with interest the online first article “Nonsurgical treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture: 1-year US post-marketing safety data for collagenase clostridium histolyticum” that reports the 270 adverse incidents voluntarily reported to the FDA during the first 12 months that the drug had been used after approval in the USA [3]. I believe that transcript of the FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee’s September 16, 2009 meeting underscores the importance of my question for the authors. All of my page references are to the transcript pages for that hearing [2]. Auxilium’s senior vice-president of quality and regulatory affairs clearly stated (pp. 21–2): “The proposed indication is the treatment of advanced Dupuytren's disease, and that can be defined as a progressive disease resulting in a fixed flexion deformity or a contracture in one of several joints, most commonly the last two digits of the hand.” Auxilium’s chief medical officer presented data to support the proposed indication. He said (pp. 40–1): “The three double-blind placebo-controlled trials were all identically designed …The key inclusion criteria, these were adults at least 18 years of age who were affected with Dupuytren's disease and a palpable cord, causing a contracture of at least 20 degrees.” (emphasis mine) He stated that the objective measurement of “clinical success was reduction of the joint contracture from at least 20 degrees (the inclusion criterion) to no more than 5 degrees” (pp. 42–3): “Now, the primary endpoint, the primary outcome of all of the studies, was the proportion of subjects who achieved that correction to within zero to 5 degrees after their last injection, and this was defined as ‘clinical success’ in the protocol.” The severity of Dupuytren’s contracture is extremely important. Most of us are familiar with and use Hueston’s Table Top test to counsel patients who arrive with nodules and cords [1]. Even Auxilium’s own presenter stated (p. 31): But we reserve treatment of the contracture until the contracture is bad enough, because there’s limitations with all of our treatments. A quick test is when a patient can’t get their hand flat on a table anymore, we typically think that their contracture has advanced to the point that intervention is warranted. Agreeing with the Auxilium speaker was William Swartz MD, a member of the FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee. He noted that most of his patients with Dupuytren’s disease do not develop contractures that required any treatment (pp. 104–5). “Most patients who come to my office with this condition have it in a mild form. They may have a nodule that may or may not be painful. They may have an early contracture. And our advice to these patients is that we don’t know if it’s going to be progressive or not. And so observation, as has been mentioned earlier, is the most often the first encounter and the first advice to these patients, and they come back when it’s more significant. Swartz was concerned about the possible off-label use of Xiaflex for milder cases (pp. 105–6): But with this medication, I can envision that our inclination is going to be to recommend that we treat them without knowing that in fact, they will have a progressive condition, and treat them before the contracture of the MP joint is more than 30 degrees or the PIP joint more than 20 degrees. So my question to the FDA panel as well as to the Auxilium people is would this be considered an off-label treatment, and is this going to be—and I guess, a better question, will there be a long-term focus and study of these patients to see if in fact, it does prevent progressive disease? That’s my first question.” It appears that Dr. Swartz’s concern about “off-label” use of Xiaflex has happened, but not for the reason that he expected. Despite the fact that by a unanimous vote of 12 to 0 the Committee recommended (p. 244): “Approval of Auxilium’s clostridial collagenase for the treatment of patients with advanced Dupuytren's disease” (emphasis mine). Xiaflex’s “Current Indication and Usage” states: “XIAFLEX is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with Dupuytren’s contracture with a palpable cord.” In other words, Xiaflex is indicated for any degree of contracture no matter how mild it may be despite the absence of any data on its safety and efficacy for contractures less than 20°. My question for the authors is: Since none of the published prospective trials included patients with contractures less than 20°, what were the adverse events for patients with contractures less than 20° in your study?

Disenfranchisement in Sovereign Bonds

Long a part of sovereign bonds governed by English law, Collective Action Clauses, or CACs, became widespread in the early-2000s for bonds governed by American law. These clauses allow bondholders to change their bonds’ payment terms with something less than a unanimous vote, usually a supermajority. Amid the present European sovereign debt crisis, many view CACs as the most promising legal means of averting financial catastrophe. Too, a Model CAC is slated to be adopted by Eurozone sovereign-issuers beginning on January 1, 2013. This Note introduces a bond provision related to CACs that, to date, has received little scholarly attention: disenfranchisement, which is intended to safeguard the CAC process by barring a sovereign from lessening or even abrogating its obligations. This Note advocates disenfranchisement as an essential part of any forward-looking legal solution to sovereign defaults. Yet it argues that present disenfranchisement language uses an inapt corporate paradigm. The current language does not align fully with the historical justifications for CACs or the realities of the modern sovereign debt market. Mindful of CACs’ purposes and values, this Note uses the discussion to flag the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed Eurozone Model CAC for financial policymakers as well as the broader sovereign debt investment community.

AAOS Rotator Cuff Clinical Practice Guideline Misses the Mark

AAOS Rotator Cuff Clinical Practice Guideline Misses the Mark

The Separation of Investments and Management

Investment funds — including hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and closed-end funds — have unusual corporate structures: They separate investments and management. In a typical set-up, all of the investment assets belong to one entity (a “fund”) with one set of owners, and all of the managers, workers and operational assets belong to a different entity (a “management company” or “adviser”) with a different set of owners. These funds also radically limit investors’ control. For example, many funds cannot fire and replace their management companies or their employees — not even by unanimous vote of the funds’ boards and equity holders. This paper shows for the first time that the separation of investments and management is a defining feature of all investment funds and explains for the first time why it occurs. It occurs because, for several reasons unique to investment funds, fund investors value the way that the separation of investments and management limits their control over their managers and their exposure to their managers’ earnings and liabilities. This understanding offers broad perspective on many puzzling features of investment funds’ organization. It also helps us to define what exactly investment funds are and to discern the basic purposes of fund regulation.

Power Matters: The Structural Sources of Brazilian Foreign Policy

Power Matters: The Structural Sources of Brazilian Foreign PolicyI beg your pardon: Octavio wrote a book on what?! For those familiar with previous publications and career path of Amorim Neto - and there are many in Brazil as well as abroad - nothing could be more surprising than him writing a book on policy. Domestic institutions such as presidents, cabinets and parliaments had always been at core of his research, and articles in World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, American Journal of Political Science, and Party Politics have earned him a reputation as a quantitative-oriented, comparative politics scholar. How - and why - could he possibly have transited from a solid terrain that he fully mastered to uncharted territories of another social science he had previously published? I think two reasons should be called forth to explain this gamble. First, it is not so infrequent for people to come back to their first love, and diplomatic history was among Amorim Neto's earliest and dearest interests - and remained a strong reason for his fondness for politics. Second, and partly as a consequence of above, he bought into idea that comparative politics and international relations were separate disciplines. Rather, as he once wrote that comparative politics was the politics of others (2010), he would most likely subscribe to Javier Solana's dictum that foreign policy is all about domestic policy of others, and thus that international relations is arena of interaction between both comparable and entangled units. In his understanding, all these fields of knowledge fall fully within sphere of power relations, which is to say that they belong to what political science - and political scientists - study. For such an open mindset, state borders are not stiffenough as to keep knowledge in watertight compartments or, to paraphrase Almond (1988), separate tables. So Amorim Neto decided to invest his methodological skills and comparatist training into a new, though related, venture: to find out determinants of contemporary policy of his home country.This book introduces three main innovations to preexisting analyses. They regard methods, time frame and theory. As to methods, this volume is first systematic attempt to test with empirical data whether it is domestic politics or international system that have influenced more decisively Brazilian policy. Thus far, discussions had mostly been held between arguments on continuity (accentuating professionalism of Itamaraty and above-politics strategies) versus change (focusing on leadership and epitomized in famous Lula's sentence, never before in history of this country). However, both strands of arguments were defended in an impressionistic rather than fact-based fashion and also, more often than not, ideologically biased and normatively oriented. To overcome these pitfalls, Amorim Neto made careful though risky decision to use a quantitative indicator to measure orientation of Brazilian policy, and so he resorted to a database that included every non unanimous vote in General Assembly of United Nations (Voeten e Merdzanovic 2008) to build dependent variable, i.e., policy alignment with United States. It measured degree of convergence in voting behavior between two countries over time and across issues, and showed that it decreased abruptly from over 80% in 1940s to around 10% in 2000s.As book shows, to consider policy alignment with United States as a proxy for Brazilian policy at large follows a methodological choice that is shared by virtually all scholars regardless of paradigmatic leaning. Yet, it also brings us to second innovation: time span. Unlike most of literature, Amorim Neto does not start his narrative either with Barao de Rio Branco or with preceding empire. This decision is made on methodological grounds, as there was no UN - and therefore no voting record - prior to 1945. …

Hazel Beh Retires from the Editorial Board

Having served the Journal admirably, Dr. Hazel Beh expressed a desire to retire from the Editorial Board. She has been with the Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction since 2003, when it began at ASCE as a legal affairs section in the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice. We have depended on her to set standards for the review process and to impart a character to the Journal. Indeed, she has helped pave the road to our current status. In addition to a law degree, Dr. Beh holds a Ph.D. in American studies and an M.S. in social work. She is professor of law at the University of Hawaiʻi William S. Richardson School of Law, where she teaches contracts, advanced torts, insurance, higher education, and legal writing. She received the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents’ Excellence in Teaching Award, the university’s highest honor for professors. Recently, she stepped down as associate dean for academic affairs. In other service, she was section chair both for contracts and for education law at the American Association of Law Schools. Before joining the faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi, Dr. Beh clerked for Hawaiʻi Supreme Court Chief Justice Herman Lum and City and County of Honolulu Corporation Counsel. At its most recent meeting, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction passed a unanimous vote expressing appreciation for her services to the Journal. We wish her the best!

BMA is “preparing ground” for industrial action on pensions

The BMA has confirmed that it is preparing to ballot its members on industrial action because of the stalemate in negotiations with the government over changes to pension schemes. After a unanimous vote in favour of a national ballot at the BMA’s annual representatives meeting this summer ( BMJ Careers , 1 Jul, http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20003604), the association has announced that it has reached the most advanced discussions for 30 years and is “getting everything in place” to take the next steps towards industrial action. “We have ploughed the ground and fertilised it. We haven’t planted seeds yet, because we’re …

Expelled by a Unanimous Vote

The first baseman of the great 1860 Excelsior Club of Brooklyn has had a secure niche in baseball history. His claim to fame has been recounted by quite a few sources, often with minor variations, but this has been the gist: Aleck first baseman of the pre-war Excelsiors, was a doctor who enlisted in the Confederate Army. In 1863, his allegiance came to the attention of the Excelsior Club, whose members unanimously voted to expel him.1And with that, Pearsall takes his bow and exits the baseball stage. A few sources note that he was playing ball in Richmond in 1866, while others report that a year or two later he was practicing medicine in Montgomery, Alabama, and playing first base for the Montgomery Base Ball Club. There are also a few references to Pearsall's stellar play for the Excelsiors and some claims that he originally played for a Brooklyn club of doctors known as the Aesculapeans (by various spellings). That is essentially where his story has traditionally ended, leaving a host of unanswered questions: What became of Pearsall? What led him to side with the Confederates? Did he retain an interest in baseball in later life?None of those questions could be answered without identifying so that is what we set out to do first. After completing our research, we were pleased to discover that Brian McKenna, a diligent researcher who blogs at baseballhistoryblog.com, had independently explored the same subject in May 2010 and come to the same surprising conclusion about Pearsall's identity.Confederate service records were the obvious place to begin research and they contained only one candidate: an Pearsall, who served as surgeon of the 9th Kentucky Cavalry and fulfilled many other medical duties for the Confederate Army. Eventually he became a brigade surgeon under Colonel William C.P. Breckinridge and served in that capacity until near the close of the war.2 After the war, this man settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where he practiced medicine from 1868-1878. As additional proof, he had studied medicine at Columbia College's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York and had also been affiliated with hospitals in Richmond and Atlanta.It was a perfect match in every respect except for one: This man's full name was Andrew Thustin not Aleck as given in so many sources. This necessitated a return to contemporaneous coverage and it soon became clear that the names Aleck and Alexander appeared in none of them. The 1863 article describing his expulsion from the Excelsior Club referred to him as A.T. and so too did the subsequent note that he was practicing medicine in Montgomery. Game accounts and retrospective pieces similarly referred to the ballplayer as either Pearsall or as A.T. never as Aleck or Alexander. This does not of course preclude the possibility that Aleck was a legitimate nickname that just doesn't appear in any extant sources-proving such a negative is never feasible. Yet there appears to be no basis for it and most likely it is simply an error passed along from one work to another.With his identity now established, what could be learned of the life of Dr. Andrew Thustin Pearsall? Pearsall was born on April 22, 1839, the son of Thomas Pearsall and his wife Martha, whose maiden name of Thustin was given to Andrew as a middle name. There has been some confusion about whether he was born in Alabama or New York and, in light of his later decision to fight for the South, it is not an insignificant question.Birth records from that long ago are not able to provide a definitive answer, but the clear preponderance of available evidence points to Florence, Alabama, as his place of birth. Alabama was given as his place of birth on most census listings and in all biographical profiles of Dr. including his obituaries. An even stronger piece of evidence is a biographical sketch of Pearsall's father that explains the circumstances of the Alabama birth and provides additional insight into his son's early years. …

Unanimous Vote by ODAC to Recommend Accelerated FDA Approval for Brentuximab

Unanimous Vote by ODAC to Recommend Accelerated FDA Approval for Brentuximab

Deliberation with Evidence

In committee deliberation, requiring a unanimous vote intuitively provides the strongest incentives for actors to share fully their opinions and private information. It is also believed that full revelation of (decision-relevant) information occurs when personal biases are made clear before deliberation. However, recent literature suggests that both intuitions are flawed. Austen-Smith and Feddersen propose a model in which the unanimity rule performs worse than other rules in promoting fully revealing deliberation, and uncertainty about individuals' preferences promotes full sharing of information. We extend this work by incorporating the possibility that individuals may provide verifiable evidence for their private information. Under this circumstance, we demonstrate that Austen-Smith and Feddersen's results are reversed. First, a unanimous voting rule performs better than any other, as unanimity is the only rule that always promotes fully revealing deliberation. Second, under fairly general conditions, uncertainty about individuals' preferences prevents full sharing of information.

Once on 'Fast Track,' Avastin Now Derailed

A unanimous vote last week by advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is likely to sharply curtail access in America to the breast cancer drug Avastin.