Understanding Duties and Conflicts of Interest--A Guide for the Honorable Agent

This article examines the importance of understanding agent duties and conflicts of interest, both for drafting a power of attorney that meets a principal’s objectives and for providing guidance to the agent who will act under its authority. Professor Whitton suggests that current custom and practice with respect to powers of attorney often overlooks the need to adjust agent duties to accommodate the principal’s expectations, thus resulting in inadvertent conflicts between the duty to do what the principal expects and default duties of loyalty. The article offers practical guidelines for identifying and reconciling these conflicts, as well as best practices to improve the agent’s understanding of the authority granted in the power of attorney, the principal’s expectations for exercise of that authority, and the duties an agent must meet when carrying out the principal’s expectations

Collaborative virtual gaming worlds in higher education

There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the increased use of multi‐user virtual environments (MUVEs) and massively multi‐player online role‐playing games (MMORPGs) for collaborative learning. However, this paper argues that collaborative gaming worlds have been in use much longer and are much wider in scope; it considers the range of collaborative gaming worlds that exist and discusses their potential for learning, with particular reference to higher education. The paper discusses virtual gaming worlds from a theoretical pedagogic perspective, exploring the educational benefits of gaming environments. Then practical considerations associated with the use of virtual gaming worlds in formal settings in higher education are considered. Finally, the paper considers development options that are open to educators, and discusses the potential of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) for learning in higher education. In all, this paper hopes to provide a balanced overview of the range of virtual gaming worlds that exist, to examine some of the practical considerations associated with their use, and to consider their benefits and challenges in learning and teaching in the higher education context

Development of a cell population migration assay

Cellular migration is central to many physiological and pathological processes, from wound healing and the immune response to cancer cell invasion. Many in-vitro assays have been developed to study these processes and can be classified by the nature of the assay, for example migration of single cells or entire populations, as well as migration on a planar surface or through a 3D structure. This work concerns the development of an assay to study the migration of whole populations of cells across a deformable planar substratum, which may be coated in adsorbed adhesion molecules. The technique detailed below was developed from the Teflon fence assay

The UPC Substituted Judgment/Best Interest Standard for Guardian Decisions: A Proposal for Reform

The introduction in 1997 of substituted judgment as a guiding principle for guardian decisions was a key contribution of the UPC to guardianship reform. The current UPC section 5-314(a) instructs guardians to consider the expressed desires and personal values of the ward when making decisions and to at all times...act in the ward\u27s best interest. This dual mandate for guardian decisions was intended to promote the self-determination interests of incapacitated adults. This article argues that in practice the standard has failed to achieve this goal. It analyzes the shortcomings of UPC Section 5-314(a) and other statutory decision-making standards and offers an improved decision-making model. Frolik and Whitton propose reform of Section 5-314(a) to provide better guidance for guardians, and to harmonize the standard for guardian decisions with other surrogate decision-making standards within the UPC

The UPC Substituted Judgment/Best Interest Standard for Guardian Decisions: A Proposal for Reform

The introduction in 1997 of substituted judgment as a guiding principle for guardian decisions was a key contribution of the UPC to guardianship reform. The current UPC section 5-314(a) instructs guardians to consider the expressed desires and personal values of the ward when making decisions and to at all times...act in the ward\u27s best interest. This dual mandate for guardian decisions was intended to promote the self-determination interests of incapacitated adults. This article argues that in practice the standard has failed to achieve this goal. It analyzes the shortcomings of UPC Section 5-314(a) and other statutory decision-making standards and offers an improved decision-making model. Frolik and Whitton propose reform of Section 5-314(a) to provide better guidance for guardians, and to harmonize the standard for guardian decisions with other surrogate decision-making standards within the UPC