The Right to Be Counted

Review of Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics, by Peter Skerry

The Promise and Pitfalls of the New Voting Rights Act

In the summer of 2006, Congress reauthorized the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) with a unanimous vote in the Senate and with limited opposition in the House of Representatives. The veneer of bipartisanship that outsiders perceived in the final vote glossed over serious disagreements between the parties over the meaning of the central provision of the new VRA, which prohibits voting laws that "diminish the ability" of minority citizens "to elect their preferred candidates of choice." Those disagreements came to the surface in a fractured Senate Committee Report released only after Congress had passed the law. This Article describes the unprecedented legislative history of this law, and the political and constitutional constraints that led the law to take the form that it did. It also presents an interpretation of the new retrogression standard that avoids the partisan bias of alternatives while emphasizing the importance of racially polarized voting to the constitutionality and meaning of this new law. It urges that the new law be read as preventing redistricting plans that reduce the aggregated probability across districts of the election of candidates preferred by the minority community and disfavored by whites

Partisanship, Public Opinion, and Redistricting

When the Supreme Court first entered the political thicket with the "one person, one vote" cases of the 1960s, contemporaneous polls showed the Court to be on the right side of public opinion. In 1966, 76% of Americans called the Supreme Court decision "rul[ing] all Congressional Districts had to have an equal number of people in them so each person's vote would count equally" "right" (Louis Harris and Associates Poll, The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research). Few, if any, innovations from the Warren Court years met with such deep approval by the public or have had comparable staying power. Indeed, majorities continue to support redistricting based on population equality (see Ansolabehere and Persily 2009). Beyond the easy-to-grasp concept of "one person, one vote," however, the public has little knowledge or opinion concerning the redistricting process. Polling on redistricting has been done sporadically and locally. As a consequence, only a few published articles attempt to describe or account for public attitudes concerning the complicated and low salience modern controversies surrounding redistricting on such issues as partisan or incumbent-protecting gerrymandering. This article analyzes survey data with the hope of gauging where Americans stand on various controversies surrounding the redistricting process. Part I briefly presents the public opinion surveys utilized and the questions most central to the analysis. Part II begins by examining the extent to which the public is uninformed and lacks opinions about redistricting. In short, Americans exhibit both characteristics”must have neither heard much about the debate nor have opinions about it. Part III analyzes the structure of public opinion where it does exist. We begin by considering the impact of demographics on public opinion. Breaking up our discussion into subsections on fairness, satisfaction, and institutional actors, we then analyze variables related to partisanship and incumbency protection. We analyze, for instance, whether respondents feel differently about the process if their party controls their state's government than if they identify with the party out of power. We look at whether, in states with divided government, respondents are any more likely to view the results redistricting outcome as fair or satisfactory than in unified governments. And we distinguish between states with maps that are biased in one party's favor and those that are not. Overall, we find that respondents hold rational opinions. Winners are happier than losers, and voters generally desire a fair process achieved through methods muting the potential influence of partisanship in the line-drawing process. Part III concludes by briefly illustrating the strong relationship that opinions on redistricting have with opinions about politicians more generally

Building dynamic thermal model calibration using the Energy House facility at Salford

Thermal modelling tools have widely been used in the construction industry at the design stage, either for new build or retrofitting existing buildings, providing data for informed decision-making. The accuracy of thermal models has been subject of much research in recent decades due to the potential large difference between predicted and ‘in-use’ performance – the so called ‘performance gap’. A number of studies suggested that better representation of building physics and operation details in thermal models can improve the accuracy of predictions. However, full-scale model calibration has always been challenging as it is difficult to measure all the necessary boundary conditions in an open environment. Thus, the Energy House facility at the University of Salford – a full-sized end terrace house constructed within an environmental chamber – presents a unique opportunity to conduct full-scale model calibration. The aim of this research is to calibrate Energy House thermal models using various full-scale measurements. The measurements used in this research include the co-heating tests for a whole house retrofit case study, and thermal resistance from window coverings and heating controls with thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs). Thermal models were created using an IESVE (Integrated Environment Solutions Virtual Environment). IESVE is a well-established dynamic thermal simulation tool widely used in analysing the dynamic response of a building based on the hourly input of weather data. The evidence from this study suggests that thermal models using measured U-values and infiltration rates do perform better than the models using calculated thermal properties and assumed infiltration rates. The research suggests that better representations of building physics help thermal models reduce the performance gap. However, discrepancies still exist due to various other underlying uncertainties which need to be considered individually with each case. In relative terms, i.e., variations in percentage, the predictions from thermal models tend to be more reliable than predicting the absolute numbers

Can houseplants improve indoor air quality by removing CO2 and increasing relative humidity?

High indoor CO2 concentrations and low relative humidity (RH) create an array of well-documented human health issues. Therefore, assessing houseplants’ potential as a low-cost approach to CO2 removal and increasing RH is important. We investigated how environmental factors such as ’dry’ ( 0.30 m3 m-3) growing substrates, and indoor light levels (‘low’ 10 µmol m-2 s-1, ‘high’ 50 µmol m-2 s-1 and ‘very high’ 300 µmol m-2 s-1), influence the plants’ net CO2 assimilation (‘A’) and water-vapour loss. Seven common houseplant taxa – representing a variety of leaf types, metabolisms and sizes – were studied for their ability to assimilate CO2 across a range of indoor light levels. Additionally, to assess the plants’ potential contribution to RH increase, the plants’ evapo-transpiration (ET) was measured. At typical ‘low’ indoor light levels ‘A’ rates were generally low (< 3.9 mg hr-1). Differences between ‘dry’ and ’wet’ plants at typical indoor light levels were negligible in terms of room-level impact. Light compensation points (i.e. light levels at which plants have positive ‘A’) were in the typical indoor light range (1-50 µmol m-2 s-1) only for two studied Spathiphyllum wallisii cultivars and Hedera helix; these plants would thus provide the best CO2 removal indoors. Additionally, increasing indoor light levels to 300 µmol m-2 s-1 would, in most species, significantly increase their potential to assimilate CO2. Species which assimilated the most CO2 also contributed most to increasing RH

Interaction between plant species and substrate type in the removal of CO2 indoors

Elevated indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide [CO2] cause health issues, increase workplace absenteeism and reduce cognitive performance. Plants can be part of the solution, reducing indoor [CO2] and acting as a low-cost supplement to building ventilation systems. Our earlier work on a selection of structurally and functionally different indoor plants identified a range of leaf-level CO2 removal rates, when plants were grown in one type of substrate. The work presented here brings the research much closer to real indoor environments by investigating CO2 removal at a whole-plant level and in different substrates. Specifically, we measured how the change of growing substrate affects plants’ capacity to reduce CO2 concentrations. Spathiphyllum wallisii 'Verdi', Dracaena fragrans 'Golden Coast' and Hedera helix, representing a range of leaf types and sizes and potted in two different substrates, were tested. Potted plants were studied in a 0.15 m3 chamber under ‘very high’ (22000 lux), ‘low’ (~ 500 lux) and ‘no’ light (0 lux) in ‘wet’ (> 30 %) and ‘dry’ (< 20 %) substrate. At ‘no’ and ‘low’ indoor light, houseplants increased the CO2 concentration in both substrates; respiration rates, however, were deemed negligible in terms of the contribution to a room-level concentration, as they added ~ 0.6% of a human’s contribution. In ‘very high’ light D. fragrans, in substrate 2, showed potential to reduce [CO2] to a near-ambient (600 ppm) concentration in a shorter timeframe (12 hrs, e.g. overnight) and S. wallisii over a longer period (36 hrs, e.g. weekend)

The Right to Bail in International Extradition Proceedings

Part I provides a general introduction to the history of the extradition statute. Part II describes the complex procedures involved in each stage of an extradition proceeding as they relate to bail. Part III presents a short description, by way of comparison, of the governing law for federal bail cases outside the realm of extradition law. Part IV examines the "rule" of "special circumstances" first phrased (perhaps inadvertently) in Wright, made prominent by a single opinion of Judge Learned Hand, and developed piecemeal by federal district courts throughout the course of this century. Part V describes the legislative efforts that attempted to bring order to this confusing area of the law and provides a few suggestions for directing future legislation