(United States Second Circuit) - Affirmed. The application of the Commodity Exchange Act to alleged misconduct in trading of crude oil extracted from Europe’s North Sea is impermissibly extraterritorial.

(United States First Circuit) - Held that a Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority bondholder did not hold a statutory lien on certain toll revenues. The bondholder contended that, in response to Puerto Rico's financial crisis, the Puerto Rican government was diverting toll revenues to which the bondholder was entitled under a lien and using them for purposes other than paying the bonds. However, the First Circuit concluded that the bondholder held no statutory lien on the toll revenues.

(United States First Circuit) - Affirmed the dismissal of a consumer complaint alleging that manufacturers of prescription eye drops deliberately designed their bottles to emit unnecessarily large drops in a ploy to force patients to waste the expensive medication and thus buy more of it. Moving to dismiss on preemption grounds, the manufacturers contended that the Food and Drug Administration would have to approve any modification of the medication's bottle. Agreeing, the First Circuit held that FDA regulations preempted the plaintiffs' state law claims seeking to force a change in the bottle design.

The show highlights real stories from real celebrities.

The couple tied the knot in December.

See what the rapper tweeted to announce the baby's arrival.

One word: flawless.

Not the first time the brand has made cultural missteps.

"Milano dropped me off a king on my birthday!"

The Atlanta-based rappers perform their 2002 hit.

The Alcohol and Other Drugs Committee's Centennial Paper to review what it has accomplished since its inception in the early 1970s, how it has evolved along with the field, and what challenges and opportunities it confronts going forward. To learn more about the history of impaired driving and the Standing Technical Committee on Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Transportation (ANB50), check out the Committee's Centennial Paper. As part of TRB's Centennial Celebration, the Technical Activities Council invited al...

Ohioans bought 1.36 million gallons of liquor in March, a nearly 25 percent increase over the same period last year. More of us are leaning on alcohol to beat quarantine doldrums and stress, but experts warn that extended overindulging could make it harder to put down the bottle when the lockdown is lifted.

A report from the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Transportation

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) affects at least 10% of newborns globally and leads to the development of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). Despite its high incidence, there is no consensus on the implications of PAE on metabolic disease risk in adults. Here, we describe a cohort of adults with FASDs that had an increased incidence of metabolic abnormalities, including type 2 diabetes, low HDL, high triglycerides, and female-specific overweight and obesity. Using a zebrafish model for PAE, we performed population studies to elucidate the metabolic disease seen in the clinical cohort. Embryonic alcohol exposure (EAE) in male zebrafish increased the propensity for diet-induced obesity and fasting hyperglycemia in adulthood. We identified several consequences of EAE that may contribute to these phenotypes, including a reduction in adult locomotor activity, alterations in visceral adipose tissue and hepatic development, and persistent diet-responsive transcriptional changes. Taken together, our findings define metabolic vulnerabilities due to EAE and provide evidence that behavioral changes and primary organ dysfunction contribute to resultant metabolic abnormalities.

An Offer in Compromise is an agreement between the taxpayer and the government that settles a tax liability for payment of less than the full amount owed. The Internal Revenue Service will generally accept an Offer in Compromise when it … Continue reading →

IBM a également annoncé avec le gouvernement américain la mise en place d’un consortium visant à employer le calcul intensif dans la lutte contre la pandémie de Covid-19. Mené par IBM, le « Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium » rassemble de nombreux acteurs tels que le Département américain de l’Energie, le MIT, trois laboratoires nationaux de recherche aux Etats-Unis ainsi que diverses entreprises technologiques.

IBM et Holcim France Benelux annoncent la migration vers Windows 7 des postes de travail de 2500 utilisateurs sur 286 sites en seulement trois mois grâce au savoir-faire d’IBM Global Technology Services.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Digital Alchemy, a leading Australian database marketing service provider, has extended its commitment to IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) software to more quickly and easily enable cross-channel interactive campaigns for its clients.

Hope Kahn is a Maryland-based journalist who is doing all of the sorts of things I was doing at her age: honing her writing and reporting skills, putting out a student newspaper, and always scrambling to find a good local story.

But that's where the similarities stop. Over the last couple of years she's been punching way above her weight class, having been published in national outlets such as Ms. and The New York Times. Suffice to say those are not exactly things I had accomplished before graduating high school.

More important, she writes about subjects that are touchstones for her generation. Her work with #SinceParkland is a great example of someone from Generation Lockdown working to effect change for her peers.

Recently we did some head shots. The idea was to help her with visually branding herself as the serious, thoughtful journalist she is fast becoming. The setup we used was classic Lighting 101 head-shot-in-a-corner fare, with an L102 and L103 twist. Read more »

White marble, dark chocolate, one light source. Problem?

Not at all. Because pretty much everything you can actually see across the top of that box is not really the "correct" tonality of the chocolate. It's all specular highlights.

Controlling the density of specular highlights is what compresses the subject's wide tonal range and unifies everything into one smooth exposure.
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You do something long enough, you'll eventually learn the little things you can do to help interesting stuff happen. One thing I have learned is this phrase:

"I'm a photographer. What can I do to help you?"

Just something as simple as that opens up all kinds of doors and possibilities. This week, it's how I ended up shooting Mexican sodas on a table-top studio in my basement.
Read more »

Today in Lighting Cookbook, using Google Maps as an entré to meet new subjects, and improvising with a skeleton pack of lighting equipment. Read more »

Photos by Sara Lando and David Hobby except where noted.

Just as most of us are either right- or left-handed, it is said that we all have a dominant side of our brain as well. Left-brained people are supposed to be more analytical and methodical, whereas right-brained people are more artistic and creative.

For most photographers, one of these two areas is probably a relative strength; the other a weakness. But ideally, you need the whole package. Which is something we were exploring earlier this month in Porto, Portugal. Read more »

Watching the movie Joker, I felt repeatedly that I was watching a film that Greg Heisler could have lit. The use of color was unique, sophisticated and fearless — almost a character unto itself.

In this outstanding 15-minute short produced by Vanity Fair, Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher dissects his own use of light and color in the movie. Read more »

To learn to create evocative light with flash, it helps to better understand how we experience the continuous light we see every day.

To do that, you'll need to wean yourself from auto white balance, and even to abandon familiar waypoints like your daylight WB preset. Because our goal is to learn to exist in a more fluid way along the Kelvin scale. Read more »

Hey, there's a pandemic. Have you heard?

Looks like we might be spending a lot of time in the house with our immediate family these days. Maybe that family includes kids. And maybe they are starting to go a little stir crazy.

Keep reading for some ideas for any lighting photographer who might be looking to make the best of some unscheduled family time.Read more »

There's something about shooting medium format — especially in black and white. The look is unmistakeable: creamy highlights supported by lush, detailed shadows.

So it's perfectly understandable why many photographers shell out big bucks for pricey medium format gear. In fact, it's possible that some of you are at this very moment casually thinking about how cool it would be to shoot with a MF camera system.

And why not? I mean, don't you deserve it?

But a lot of the tonal qualities we often associate with medium format can be acheived on the cheap if you light your photos from the bottom end first.

Take the photo above, which was shot with a small-chip Fuji, a kit zoom and a pair of small, $25 soft boxes.
Read more »

I’m not sure if it’s depression or just life catching up but I’ve been having a lot of quicksand days.  Those times when you feel like you’re moving in slow-motion and things that should take 10 minutes for a normal … Continue reading →