Harry Hess and sea-floor spreading

Harry Hess's hypothesis of sea-floor spreading brought together his long-standing interests in island arcs, oceanic topography, and the oceanic crust. The one unique feature of Hess's hypothesis was the origin of the oceanic crust as a hydration rind on the top of the mantle -- an idea that was not well received, even by the early converts to sea-floor spreading. Hess never changed his mind on this issue, and his stubbornness illuminates the logic of his discovery. Published and archival records show that 1) Hess became convinced the oceanic crust was a hydration rind as early as mid 1958, when he was still a fixist, 2) he devised sea-floor spreading in 1960 to reconcile the hydration-rind model with the newly discovered, high heat flow at oceanic ridge crests, and 3) Hess's new mobilist solution did the least amount of violence to his older fixist solution

A passive vibration-cancelling isolation mount

An analysis of an idealized passive vibration-cancelling two-terminal mount with one degree of freedom at each mechanical terminal isolating a nonrigid machine from a nonrigid foundation is presented. To evaluate a vibration-cancelling (VC) mount, its effectiveness as a function of frequency is compared with the effectiveness of both conventional and compound mounts isolating a rigid machine from a nonrigid foundation. The comparisons indicate that a carefully designed and manufactured VC mount should provide substantially greater vibration reduction at its cancellation frequency than either a conventional or compound mount having the same low frequency stiffness, i.e., stiffness at the natural frequency of the machine mount system

Smokejumper Obituary: Inglis, Alan O. (Missoula 1945)

https://dc.ewu.edu/smokejumper_bios/1728/thumbnail.jp

Static-light mesons on a dynamical anisotropic lattice

We present results for the spectrum of static-light mesons from Nf=2 lattice QCD. These results were obtained using all-to-all light quark propagators on an anisotropic lattice, yielding an improved signal resolution when compared to more conventional lattice techniques. In particular, we consider the inversion of orbitally-excited multiplets with respect to the `standard ordering', which has been predicted by some quark models.Comment: 3 pages with 3 figures. Talk by JF at "Quarks and Nuclear Physics", Madrid 5th-10th June 200

Regulatory Protectionism and the Law of International Trade

A wide array of policy instruments can protect domestic firms against foreign competition. Regulatory measures that raise the costs of foreign firms relative to domestic firms are exceptionally wasteful protectionist devices, however, with deadweight costs that can greatly exceed those of traditional protectionist instruments such as tariffs and quotas. This Article develops the welfare economics of regulatory protectionism and a related political economy analysis of the national and international legal systems that must confront it, including the WTO, the NAFTA, the European Union, and the United States federal system. It explains why regulatory measures that serve no purpose other than to protect domestic firms against foreign competition will generally be prohibited in politically sophisticated trade agreements, even when other instruments of protection are to a degree permissible. It further suggests why regulatory measures that serve honest, non-protectionist objectives will be permissible in sophisticated trade agreements even though their regulatory benefits may be small and their adverse effect on trade may be great--that is, it explains why trade agreements generally do not authorize balancing analysis akin to that undertaken in certain dormant commerce clause cases under U.S. law

National Health Insurance Proposals: An Ethical Perspective

Presented to the WMU Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, January 31, 1992