425 research outputs found

    When Prohibition is Not Regulation: Analyzing the Court\u27s Decision in Wallach v. Town of Dryden, 16 N.E.3D 1188 (N.Y. 2014)

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    The increased use of hydraulic fracturing has led to concerns about possible environmental harm. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a resource extraction technique that aims to improve well productivity by pumping fracturing fluids containing a mixture of water, other chemicals, and sand, into an oil or gas well under high pressure. Public opposition to hydraulic fracturing has led to bans and proposed bans on the practice in many American cities and towns. The Town of Dryden, New York, enacted an amendment to its zoning ordinance prohibiting all oil and gas exploration and production within its boundaries. New York state law regulates the oil, gas, and solution mining industry, and the state statute contains a supersession clause that preempts local regulation of these industries. In Wallach v. Town of Dryden, the New York Court of Appeals held the zoning ordinance was a valid regulation of land use, rather than a regulation of the oil and gas industry, and that state law did not preempt the zoning ordinance. This Note examines Wallach v. Town of Dryden in light of the risks and benefits of hydraulic fracturing and prior New York statutes and case law. It explains the hydraulic fracturing process and its history, and explains the approaches Colorado and Pennsylvania have taken to supersession. It also explains the New York statutes and case law relating to municipal authority to regulate land use, and the New York statute regulating the oil and gas industries. Finally, this Note argues the court correctly interpreted precedent in a way that maintains municipal authority to regulate land use while preserving the legislature’s authority to regulate industry, resulting in an appropriate balance of state and local authority that serves public policy. This Note concludes by urging Illinois courts to follow the example set in Wallach v. Town of Dryden when deciding cases challenging local ordinances prohibiting hydraulic fracturing

    Quantitative, Architectural Analysis of Immune Cell Subsets in Tumor-Draining Lymph Nodes from Breast Cancer Patients and Healthy Lymph Nodes

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    Background: To date, pathological examination of specimens remains largely qualitative. Quantitative measures of tissue spatial features are generally not captured. To gain additional mechanistic and prognostic insights, a need for quantitative architectural analysis arises in studying immune cell-cancer interactions within the tumor microenvironment and tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLNs). Methodology/Principal Findings: We present a novel, quantitative image analysis approach incorporating 1) multi-color tissue staining, 2) high-resolution, automated whole-section imaging, 3) custom image analysis software that identifies cell types and locations, and 4) spatial statistical analysis. As a proof of concept, we applied this approach to study the architectural patterns of T and B cells within tumor-draining lymph nodes from breast cancer patients versus healthy lymph nodes. We found that the spatial grouping patterns of T and B cells differed between healthy and breast cancer lymph nodes, and this could be attributed to the lack of B cell localization in the extrafollicular region of the TDLNs. Conclusions/Significance: Our integrative approach has made quantitative analysis of complex visual data possible. Our results highlight spatial alterations of immune cells within lymph nodes from breast cancer patients as an independent variable from numerical changes. This opens up new areas of investigations in research and medicine. Future application of this approach will lead to a better understanding of immune changes in the tumor microenvironment and TDLNs, and how they affect clinical outcome

    Unconstrained SU(2) Yang-Mills Quantum Mechanics with Theta Angle

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    The unconstrained classical system equivalent to spatially homogeneous SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with theta angle is obtained and canonically quantized. The Schr\"odinger eigenvalue problem is solved approximately for the low lying states using variational calculation. The properties of the groundstate are discussed, in particular its electric and magnetic properties, and the value of the "gluon condensate" is calculated. Furthermore it is shown that the energy spectrum of SU(2) Yang-Mills quantum mechanics is independent of the theta angle. Explicit evaluation of the Witten formula for the topological susceptibility gives strong support for the consistency of the variational results obtained.Comment: 20 pages REVTEX, no figures, one reference added, final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

    Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

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    The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

    Association between birth weight and educational attainment : an individual-based pooled analysis of nine twin cohorts

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    Background There is evidence that birth weight is positively associated with education, but it remains unclear whether this association is explained by familial environmental factors, genetic factors or the intrauterine environment. We analysed the association between birth weight and educational years within twin pairs, which controls for genetic factors and the environment shared between co-twins. Methods The data were derived from nine twin cohorts in eight countries including 6116 complete twin pairs. The association between birth weight and educational attainment was analysed both between individuals and within pairs using linear regression analyses. Results In between-individual analyses, birth weight was not associated with educational years. Within-pairs analyses revealed positive but modest associations for some sex, zygosity and birth year groups. The greatest association was found in dizygotic (DZ) men (0.65 educational years/kg birth weight, p=0.006); smaller effects of 0.3 educational years/kg birth weight were found within monozygotic (MZ) twins of both sexes and opposite-sex DZ twins. The magnitude of the associations differed by birth year in MZ women and opposite-sex DZ twins, showing a positive association in the 1915-1959 birth cohort but no association in the 1960-1984 birth cohort. Conclusion Although associations are weak and somewhat inconsistent, our results suggest that intrauterine environment may play a role when explaining the association between birth weight and educational attainment.Peer reviewe

    Performance and Operation of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter