Recent Changes in the Texas Usury Statutes - Do They Affect Common Law Usury Claims?

This comment examines the cure provision of the Texas usury statute and discusses its effect on a plaintiff\u27s recovery for common law usury. Part I discusses the historical background of usury laws and Texas usury statutes. Part II explains that the Texas Supreme Court has adjudicated common law and statutory usury actions and has concluded that Texas courts may allow both actions independently. Part III examines the new statutory cure provision. Part IV analyzes the questions that arise in applying the statutory usury cure remedy. Finally, the author concludes the statutory cure provision should not apply to a common law usury cause of action

Shallow angle water entry of ballistic projectiles

The water-entry of ballistic projectiles is investigated using high-speed digital imaging to capture the subsurface cavity dynamics. Specially designed 0.22 caliber projectiles are fired into water at shallow angles to the free surface (5º to 15º) at Mach numbers between 0.3 and 1.0. Redesigned projectile tip geometries allowed projectiles to successfully enter the water and travel large distances underwater, due to the subsurface vapor-cavity that forms after impact, dramatically decreasing drag on the projectile. Projectile dynamics, critical entry angle and cavity formation are discussed for various bullet geometries, and results show that successful water-entry is a function of tip shape and length-to-diameter ratio. The data conclusively show that bullets with lower length-to-diameter ratios tumble inside the vapor cavity, while higher length-to-diameter ratios can lean against the cavity walls inducing a planing force pushing them back inside the cavity and mitigating the tumbling behavior. Experimental cavity observations of vapor-cavity formation is compared to a modified version of Logvinovich's [1] theoretical model, which includes an updated formulation of the model and an angle of attack correction. Despite the unsteady nature of this problem, this improved steady state model fits well with experimental data and serves as an accurate design tool for naval engineers.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84284/1/CAV2009-final100.pd

The effect of cereal type and micronisation on the concentration of lactic acid in the production of fermented liquid feed for pigs

The use of fermented liquid feeds (FLF) is gaming popularity in Europe as a means of improving the gut health of pigs and improvmg the stability and safety of liquid feed in ad libitum feeding systems with modern liquid feeding systems it is often advantageous to ferment the cereal component of the diet and use this as a base to which other components are added to formulate a range of diets for the whole unit. The exception to this may be diets for newly weaned pigs where it is normal (in the UK) for processed cereals to be used

Levelling foods for priority micronutrient value can provide more meaningful environmental footprint comparisons

A growing literature in Life Cycle Assessment seeks to better inform consumers, food policymakers, food supply chain actors, and other relevant stakeholders about how individual foods contribute to sustainable diets. One major challenge involves accurately capturing potential trade-offs between nutritional provision and environmental impacts associated with food production. In response, food system sustainability literature has turned increasingly to nutritional Life Cycle Assessment, which assesses the environmental footprints of different foods while accounting for nutritional value. Here we provide examples that show how environmental footprints based on a priority micronutrient-focused functional unit can provide nutritionally meaningful insights about the complexities involved in sustainable food systems. We reinforce the idea that there are limitations in using single-value nutrition-environment scores to inform food guidance, as they do not adequately capture the complex multi-dimensionality and variation involved in healthy and sustainable food systems. In our discussion we highlight the need for future agri-food sustainability assessments to pay attention to regional nutritional and environmental variation within and between commodities, and to better interpret trade-offs involved in food substitutions

Contrasting local and long-range-transported warm ice-nucleating particles during an atmospheric river in coastal California, USA

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) have been found to influence the amount, phase and efficiency of precipitation from winter storms, including atmospheric rivers.Warm INPs, those that initiate freezing at temperatures warmer than -10°C, are thought to be particularly impactful because they can create primary ice in mixed-phase clouds, enhancing precipitation efficiency. The dominant sources of warm INPs during atmospheric rivers, the role of meteorology in modulating transport and injection of warm INPs into atmospheric river clouds, and the impact of warm INPs on mixed-phase cloud properties are not well-understood. In this case study, time-resolved precipitation samples were collected during an atmospheric river in northern California, USA, during winter 2016. Precipitation samples were collected at two sites, one coastal and one inland, which are separated by about 35 km. The sites are sufficiently close that air mass sources during this storm were almost identical, but the inland site was exposed to terrestrial sources of warm INPs while the coastal site was not. Warm INPs were more numerous in precipitation at the inland site by an order of magnitude. Using FLEXPART (FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model) dispersion modeling and radar-derived cloud vertical structure, we detected influence from terrestrial INP sources at the inland site but did not find clear evidence of marine warm INPs at either site.We episodically detected warm INPs from long-range-transported sources at both sites. By extending the FLEXPART modeling using a meteorological reanalysis, we demonstrate that long-range-transported warm INPs were observed only when the upper tropospheric jet provided transport to cloud tops. Using radar-derived hydrometeor classifications, we demonstrate that hydrometeors over the terrestrially influenced inland site were more likely to be in the ice phase for cloud temperatures between 0 and -10°C. We thus conclude that terrestrial and long-rangetransported aerosol were important sources of warm INPs during this atmospheric river. Meteorological details such as transport mechanism and cloud structure were important in determining (i) warm INP source and injection temperature and (ii) ultimately the impact of warm INPs on mixed-phase cloud properties

Effect of micro-organism and particle size on fermentation of sorghum and maize for poultry feed

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of particle size and micro-organism on fermentation of sorghum and maize for poultry feed. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolour L. Moench) and maize were milled in a hammer mill and separated into coarse, medium, fine and very fine particles sizes with a stack of sieves of apertures 2.5 mm, 850 μm and 500 μm, from the first to the last sieve and ending in a pan with the very fine particles. Samples were weighed into 100 g sachets and irradiated using 60Co at 25 kGy γ-radiation. Grains were fermented with sterile distilled water for 24 h at a ratio of 1 feed:1.4 water and inoculated with 0.01 ml of an overnight culture of De Man, Rogosa and Sharpe (MRS) broth containing Pediococcus acidilactici (PA1) or Lactobacillus plantarum (SLP) (ca 109 cfu/ml). The medium was incubated at 30°C simultaneously with a control treatment without lactic acid bacteria (LAB). Subsamples were collected aseptically at the beginning of the fermentation (0 h) and at 4, 8, 24 h after fermentation for pH, sugar and organic acids analysis. Significant reductions in the pH of maize and sorghum for LAB treatments (PA1 and SLP) were evident after 8 hours of fermentation. Twenty four hour lactic acid concentrations from coarse particle size fermentations were not significantly different from concentrations in the medium and fine particle size fermentations. The choice of LAB did not affect the concentration of lactic acid for any particle size. However, acetic acid production from fermentation with PA1 was significantly higher (P<0.01) than the concentration obtained with SLP. Results suggest that moderate grain processing may be enough to permit production of biosafe levels of lactic acid in fermented feed for poultry birds.Keywords: Fermentation, lactic acid bacteria, maize, particle size, sorghum African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(26), pp. 4147-415

Isotope effect in superconductors with coexisting interactions of phonon and nonphonon mechanisms

We examine the isotope effect of superconductivity in systems with coexisting interactions of phonon and nonphonon mechanisms in addition to the direct Coulomb interaction. The interaction mediated by the spin fluctuations is discussed as an example of the nonphonon interaction. Extended formulas for the transition temperature Tc and the isotope-effect coefficient alpha are derived for cases (a) omega_np omega_D, where omega_np is an effective cutoff frequency of the nonphonon interaction that corresponds to the Debye frequency omega_D in the phonon interaction. In case (a), it is found that the nonphonon interaction does not change the condition for the inverse isotope effect, i.e., mu^* > lambda_ph/2, but it modifies the magnitude of alpha markedly. In particular, it is found that a giant isotope shift occurs when the phonon and nonphonon interactions cancel each other largely. For instance, strong critical spin fluctuations may give rise to the giant isotope effect. In case (b), it is found that the inverse isotope effect occurs only when the nonphonon interaction and the repulsive Coulomb interaction, in total effect, work as repulsive interactions against the superconductivity. We discuss the relevance of the present result to some organic superconductors, such as kappa-(ET)2Cu(NCS)2 and Sr2RuO4 superconductors, in which inverse isotope effects have been observed, and briefly to high-Tc cuprates, in which giant isotope effects have been observed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, (with jpsj2.cls, ver.1.2), v2:linguistic correction

Nonanalytic behavior of the spin susceptibility in clean Fermi systems

The wavevector and temperature dependent static spin susceptibility, \chi_s(Q,T), of clean interacting Fermi systems is considered in dimensions 1\leq d \leq 3. We show that at zero temperature \chi_s is a nonanalytic function of |Q|, with the leading nonanalyticity being |Q|^{d-1} for 1<d<3, and Q^2\ln|Q| for d=3. For the homogeneous spin susceptibility we find a nonanalytic temperature dependence T^{d-1} for 1<d<3. We give qualitative mode-mode coupling arguments to that effect, and corroborate these arguments by a perturbative calculation to second order in the electron-electron interaction amplitude. The implications of this, in particular for itinerant ferromagnetism, are discussed. We also point out the relation between our findings and established perturbative results for 1-d systems, as well as for the temperature dependence of \chi_s(Q=0) in d=3.Comment: 12pp., REVTeX, 5 eps figures, final version as publishe

Can we estimate the impact of small targeted dietary changes on human health and environmental sustainability?

A recent analysis by Stylianou et al. (2021) estimated the impact of small dietary changes in the consumption of individual foods on human health and the environment, expressed as minutes of healthy life lost or gained daily combined with dietary carbon footprints. While an appealing concept given its simplistic interpretation, we aim to draw the attention of nLCA practitioners and developers to the significant limitations and uncertainties of this analysis, based on existing evidence. Stylianou's approach produces results that fail to recognize the importance of essential nutrient density and the risks associated with ultra-processed foods, added sugar, and refined starches. The novel impact assessment undoubtedly brings a new perspective to the growing field of nutritional Life Cycle Assessment. However, the authors neglect numerous methodological limitations, fail to direct the readers' attention to (mis)interpretation risks, and draw highly definitive recommendations aiming to directly influence consumer choices and policymaking. Due to extensive data limitations and associated uncertainties in extant databases (both environmental and nutritional), we recommend caution in the use of this (or any other) food classification system to inform consumer behavior, front-of-package labelling, policies, and programs