Disclaiming Property

Can Congress pick and choose when it must follow the Constitution? One would expect not, and yet the Supreme Court has allowed it to do so. In multiple statutory programs, Congress has disclaimed constitutional property protections for valuable interests that otherwise serve as property. The result is billions of dollars’ worth of “disclaimed property” that can be bought, sold, mortgaged, or leased, but that can also be revoked at any moment without due process or just compensation. Disclaimed property already represents a great source of value, and property disclaimers are at the core of major recent policies ranging from natural resource management to intellectual property governance. As legislatures continue with market-based regulations for environmental concerns or licensing arrangements for the sharing economy, the use of disclaimed property is poised to expand even further. As a relatively recent phenomenon, property disclaimers have gone largely unconsidered by courts and scholars, but their increased importance now calls for closer study. Accordingly, this Article offers a practical and theoretical analysis of disclaimed property. It begins by examining property disclaimers arising in contexts that range from natural resources to intellectual property. It then synthesizes the judicial treatment of these interests and offers a model for valuing constitutional property protections. Building upon this background, it evaluates the constitutionality of property disclaimers as well as the policy justifications for such provisions. After a doctrinal and economic analysis, it ultimately concludes that while property disclaimers raise significant political process concerns, they may be constitutional nonetheless. However, the Article also concludes that property disclaimers are apt to be ineffective in their pursuit of legislative flexibility. Thus, this Article counsels that despite the current use and likely expansion of property disclaimers, they do not represent a beneficial or desirable policy tool

Sensitivity to scope in contingent valuation – introducing a flexible community analogy to communicate mortality risk reductions

Validity in contingent valuation (CV) is often tested through the sensitivity of estimated willingness to pay (WTP) to the size or quality of a good or service (‘more is better’ and near proportionality). We investigate the performance of two communication aids (a flexible community analogy and an array of dots) in valuing mortality risk reductions for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Our results do not support the prediction of expected utility theory, i.e. that WTP for a mortality risk reduction increases with the amount of risk reduction (weak scope sensitivity), for any of the communication aids. In fact, the array of dots even shows a decreasing WTP when the risk reduction is larger. We find some evidence that level of education influences how communication aids are perceived. Also, a larger municipal population results in lower WTP which may signal problems with strategic bias.Contingent valuation; Willingness to pay; Validity; Sensitivity to scope; Risk communication; Community analogy; Cardiac arrest

A geometry of information, I: Nerves, posets and differential forms

The main theme of this workshop (Dagstuhl seminar 04351) is `Spatial Representation: Continuous vs. Discrete'. Spatial representation has two contrasting but interacting aspects (i) representation of spaces' and (ii) representation by spaces. In this paper, we will examine two aspects that are common to both interpretations of the theme, namely nerve constructions and refinement. Representations change, data changes, spaces change. We will examine the possibility of a `differential geometry' of spatial representations of both types, and in the sequel give an algebra of differential forms that has the potential to handle the dynamical aspect of such a geometry. We will discuss briefly a conjectured class of spaces, generalising the Cantor set which would seem ideal as a test-bed for the set of tools we are developing.Comment: 28 pages. A version of this paper appears also on the Dagstuhl seminar portal http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/04351

Tinnitus, medial olivocochlear system and music exposure in adolescents

The most common cause of tinnitus is the exposure to noise; in the case of adolescents, music is the main sound source they are exposed to. Currently, one of the hypotheses about the genesis of tinnitus is related to the deterioration in the functioning of the medial olivocochlear system (MOCS). The aim of this study was to determine the presence or absence of tinnitus in adolescents with normal hearing and to relate it to: (a) the functioning of the MOCS, by the contralateral suppression of the transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) and (b) the musical general exposure (MGE). A cross-sectional descriptive correlational study was conducted. The sample was composed by adolescents with ages between 14 and 15. Two questionnaires were administered, one in relation to the subjective report of tinnitus and the other in relation to recreational activities to know the MGE. The results showed that the amplitude of frequencies (1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 Hz) and global amplitude of TEOAEs, with and without acoustic contralateral stimulation, were higher in the group without tinnitus, with a statistically significant difference (P < 0.05). The suppressive effect was higher in the group without tinnitus; however, there was no statistically significant difference. Contrastingly, a significant association (P < 0.05) between exposure to music and tinnitus was observed; 72.41% of the adolescents with high exposure to music had tinnitus.Discussion and Conclusion:The results of the present investigation provide a contribution to the hypothesis of "the participation of the MOCS." Furthermore, a high MGE can be considered a risk factor for the onset of tinnitus.Fil: Hinalaf, María de Los Angeles. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Medicina; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Maggi, Ana Luz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; ArgentinaFil: Hug, Mercedes Ximena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; ArgentinaFil: Kogan, Pablo. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; ArgentinaFil: Perez Villalobo, Jorge Alejandro. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; ArgentinaFil: Biassoni, Ester Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Transferencia en Acústica; Argentin

MODELS AND SOLUTION ALGORITHMS FOR EQUITABLE RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN AIR TRAFFIC FLOW MANAGEMENT

Population growth and economic development lead to increasing demand for travel and pose mobility challenges on capacity-limited air traffic networks. The U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) has been operated near the capacity, and air traffic congestion is expected to remain as a top concern for the related system operators, passengers and airlines. This dissertation develops a number of model reformulations and efficient solution algorithms to address resource allocation problems in air traffic flow management, while explicitly accounting for equitable objectives in order to encourage further collaborations by different stakeholders. This dissertation first develops a bi-criteria optimization model to offload excess demand from different competing airlines in the congested airspace when the predicted traffic demand is higher than available capacity. Computationally efficient network flow models with side constraints are developed and extensively tested using datasets obtained from the Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) database (now known as the Traffic Flow Management System). Representative Pareto-optimal tradeoff frontiers are consequently generated to allow decision-makers to identify best-compromising solutions based on relative weights and systematical considerations of both efficiency and equity. This dissertation further models and solves an integrated flight re-routing problem on an airspace network. Given a network of airspace sectors with a set of waypoint entries and a set of flights belonging to different air carriers, the optimization model aims to minimize the total flight travel time subject to a set of flight routing equity, operational and safety requirements. A time-dependent network flow programming formulation is proposed with stochastic sector capacities and rerouting equity for each air carrier as side constraints. A Lagrangian relaxation based method is used to dualize these constraints and decompose the original complex problem into a sequence of single flight rerouting/scheduling problems. Finally, within a multi-objective utility maximization framework, the dissertation proposes several practically useful heuristic algorithms for the long-term airport slot assignment problem. Alternative models are constructed to decompose the complex model into a series of hourly assignment sub-problems. A new paired assignment heuristic algorithm is developed to adapt the round robin scheduling principle for improving fairness measures across different airlines. Computational results are presented to show the strength of each proposed modeling approach

The increments of justice: exploring the outer reach of Akiba's edge towards native title 'ownership'

The Torres Strait regional sea claim, culminating in the High Court decision of Akiba v Commonwealth, signalled a new respect for the holistic relationships and dominion that underlay First Peoples’ custodianship of land and waters. The ‘Akiba correction’ centred upon a distinction between ‘underlying rights’ and specific exercises of them – and produced in that case a surviving right to take resources for any purpose (subject to current regulation). The correction emerged from extinguishment disputes, but the significance of this edge towards ‘ownership’ was soon evident in ‘content’ cases on the mainland. Yet there are new challenges coming in the wake of Akiba. What of the many native title determinations that have been settled or adjudicated on pre-Akiba thinking? And what does this renaissance in native title law offer to the communities that will fail (or have failed) the rigorous threshold tests of continuity – also crafted with the older mindset