The Use of Non-Discriminatory Language in the Law
The use of language is fundamental to law. This paper addresses three reasons why lawyers should use non-discriminatory (and especially non-sexist) language: to
promote accuracy in legal writing and speech; to meet current standards of
professional integrity and responsibility; and to be consistent with legal norms of equality and non-discrimination in Canadian law. The paper then examines ways of achieving non-discriminatory language in English and French in a number of concrete situations. The paper examines the `false generics" of "l'homme" and "man"; the problems of gender specific pronouns (a problem which has different implications in English and in French); and the use of a non-sexist vocabulary. Finally, it explores briefly the relationship between non-discriminatory language and other aspects of equality in the legal profession.
Adding a Third Dimension: The Danadian Approach to Constitutional Equality Guarantees
The problem that has most vexed judicial decisionmakers and academic writers about constitutional equality guarantees is how to measure equality in deciding when equality rights have been violated. This article suggests that an analysis in three dimensions provides valuable direction toward a solution. In its early decisions under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,' the Supreme Court of Canada has addressed equality in a ground-breaking and creative way. 2 At the core of its approach to equality rights in these decisions is the kind of simple yet profound insight that the concept of "equity" exemplifies in the law of remedies. The insightembodied in what I refer to as the "equality principle"-is that equality rights are constitutionally guaranteed in order to counterbalance certain types of inequalities between people. They are not primarily designed to address "inequality" in a generic or abstract sense.3 The wording and context of the Canadian constitutional equality guarantees determine the kinds of inequalities that must be addressed and the possible ways of addressing them. The equality rights are aimed at the alleviation of particular disadvantages, such as those between women and men, racial or religious minorities and the dominant group, persons with handicapping conditions and those of average abilities, the elderly or the very young and the rest of the population, and
Computational fluid dynamics as a development tool for rotary blood pumps.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is beginning to significantly impact the development of biomedical devices, in particular rotary cardiac assist devices. The University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Center for Artificial Organ Development has extensively used CFD as the primary tool to analyze and design a novel axial flow blood pump having a magnetically suspended rotor. The blood-contacting surfaces of the pump were developed using a design strategy based on CFD that involved closely coupling a Navier-Stokes solver to a parameterized geometry modeler and advanced mesh movement techniques. CFD-based blood damage models for shear-induced hemolysis as well as surrogate functions describing thrombosis potential were employed to help guide design improvements. This CFD-based design approach resulted in the timely development of a pump subjected to multiple geometric refinements without building expensive physical prototypes for each design iteration. A physical prototype of the final improved pump was fabricated and experimentally analyzed using particle imaging flow visualization. The CFD predicted results correlated well with the experimental data including pressure-flow (H-Q) performance and specific flow field features. It is estimated that the present CFD-based design approach shortened the overall design time frame from an order of years to months.