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Understanding environmental drivers of recruitment variability in marine fishes remains an important challenge in fish ecology and fisheries management. We developed a conceptual life‐history model for Pacific hake (Merluccius productus) along the west coast of the United States and Canada to generate stage‐specific and spatiotemporally‐specific hypotheses regarding the oceanographic and biological variables that likely influence their recruitment. Our model included seven life stages from pre‐spawning female conditioning through pelagic juvenile recruitment (age‐0 fish) for the coastal Pacific hake stock. Model‐estimated log recruitment deviations from the 2020 hake assessment were used as the dependent variable, with predictor variables drawn primarily from a regional ocean reanalysis for the California Current Ecosystem. Indices of prey and predator abundance were also included in our analysis, as were predictors of local‐ and basin‐scale climate. Five variables explained 59% of the recruitment variability not accounted for by the stock–recruitment relationship in the hake assessment. Recruitment deviations were negatively correlated with May–September eddy kinetic energy between 34.5° and 42.5°N, the North Pacific Current Bifurcation Index, and Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) biomass during the spawner preconditioning stage, alongshore transport during the yolk‐sac larval stage, and the number of days between storm events during the first‐feeding larval stage. Other important predictors included upwelling strength during the preconditioning stage, the number of calm periods during the first‐feeding larval stage, and age‐1 hake predation on age‐0 pelagic juveniles. These findings suggest that multiple mechanisms affect Pacific hake survival across different life stages, leading to variability in population‐level recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Marine Fisheries Service conducts fishery stock assessments to provide the best scientific information available for the U.S. regional fishery management councils. The assessment models applied in the United States are often region specific, although the models share similar mathematical and statistical attributes. However, comprehensive comparison studies identifying similarities and differences among these assessment models remain scarce. We developed a multi-model comparison framework to evaluate the reliability of 4 age-structured assessment models that are commonly used in the United States: the Assessment Model for Alaska, the Age Structured Assessment Program, the Beaufort Assessment Model, and Stock Synthesis. When applied to simulated data, all 4 models produced reliable estimates of assessment quantities of interest, such as fishing mortality, spawning biomass, recruitment, and biological reference points. Although there were differences among models in the calculation of the initial population numbers at age and in the bias adjustment of recruitment, their effects on model outputs were minor when estimation models were configured similarly. In addition, we provide guidelines for converting unfished recruitment and steepness between 2 methods of bias adjustment. We recommend that next-generation stock assessment models include recruitment bias adjustment and that more research be conducted to provide guidelines for which methods might be preferred under which situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article the author discusses the use of Rule B to attach electronic funds transfers (EFT) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He refers to the move of judges to place limitations on the rule's usage by resisting to provide continuous service in an attachment order. He cites the case Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Kirby which involves the Rule B attachment and explains the importance of determining whether a contact is a maritime contract.

The article discusses a court case wherein the defendant claimed that the electronic funds transfer (EFT) did not constitute within the definition of Rule B of the Supplemental Rules for Certain Admiralty and Marine Claims of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reviewed the Attachment Order in its entirety and addresses the arguments made by the defendant. The court asserted that EFT constituted attachable property under Rule B.

The article discusses the court case, Trans-Tec Asia v. M/V Harmony Container, on maritime lien for foreign necessaries provider in the U.S. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has examined the agreement between companies with a choice of law clause under the maritime lien for foreign providers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit investigated the case under the Federal Maritime Lien Act (FMLA), citing the Malaysian law governance in the contract formation.

Discusses the contributions of the journal `Social Justice' to the development of critical criminological ideologies in the United States. Objectives of the emancipatory theorems of Marxism; Crisis attributed to Marxistic thoughts; Theoretical discourses on the radical deviancy of criminology; Evidences of socialism with orthodox sentiments.

This is the second segment of a two-part research essay on the transformations that have taken place in the management by Canadian border agencies of that country's border with the U.S.A., in the aftermath of the final passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1991. The research provides an empirical account of the changes that have taken place in the practices of customs and immigration agencies and of specific police agencies with a dedicated mandate in the oversight of the border. But the paper can also be understood as a contribution to the growing literature on the meaning of the border and of border control in an increasingly global world dominated by large, liberalized free-trade areas. In the first segment of this review, an account of the emergence of free-trade in the Canadian public-political sphere during the decade of 1980 was reviewed and the broader implications of this promulgation of a new liberal public-political common-sense. It was followed by the introduction of discussion of the management of different cross-border activities within the North American free trade area, particularly in respect of the smuggling of illicit commodities and illicit drugs across the Canadian border.

The article presents information about the implementation of justice model. It informs that legal codes and penal policies in different American states has indeed evidenced a concern with the coercion of the offender rather than the protection of offenders' rights, and also that the proclaimed intention of the justice model in reducing the discretionary powers of executives in the courts and in social work agencies had not been activated in practice or in the new codes that have been enacted. The evidence of American developments offered an interesting background for the further investigation of the "justice model" by Dean Clarke and also for a critical essay on the particular form of Marxism involved in Dean's ongoing analysis of justice and law by Alan Norrie. Justice theory as a "capitalist deceit", therefore, has been a second tendency to discourage students and comrades from involvement in the struggles over justice and especially to discourage any involvement in, or compromise with, the debates over justice which have been raging in academic philosophy.

The impact of health care reform on academic medical centers will be just as great as it is on community practices. The economics of academic medical centers and training programs has been challenging, and will become even more so as funding is cut and the demand for regional integrated systems mounts. This article is one of the first to articulate these challenges and is written by authors well positioned to understand this arena., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)