Legally Ill: Is the Federal Health Insurance Mandate Constitutional?

This article explores the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the health care reform bill known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as well as the economic penalty that is assessed to those who do not meet the mandate. A brief history of prior health reform initiatives in the United States will be examined to provide a historical context for the current political debate regarding the currently instituted reforms. The legal justifications of the proponents for the mandate will be analyzed regarding their constitutionality, and the legal fate of the mandate will be examined. Lastly, this article will explore other potential health care reform alternatives that are constitutionally sound

Alien Registration- Karter, Bolus (Waterville, Kennebec County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/14760/thumbnail.jp

The distribution and population structure of Aloe pillansii in South Africa, in relation to climate and elevation

South Africa comprises almost 10% of known plant species and also has the only arid zone "hotspot" defined worldwide, namely the succulent Karoo. Anthropogenic climate change predictions for South Africa suggest rapid climate change in the next 50 years will have adverse effects on its vegetation biomes. This study shows how the aborescent succulent, Aloe pillansii, has a limited distribution due significantly to environmental and climatic variables and therefore it is potentially at risk given anthropogenic climate change predictions. The total South African A. pillansii population investigated is made up of 1202 individuals and is found in the Richtersveld, which is part of the Succulent Karoo. The A. pillansii individuals were sampled in terms of their height and geographical position and then defined into subpopulations by a distance of 2 kms of separation. The sub-populations were then evaluated in terms of their respective environmental and climatic variables acquired from a CCWR database for South Africa using Arc View 3.2. The sub-population size class distributions were also constructed so that population dynamics and recruitment could be investigated. The results show how the A. pillansii sub-populations are limited to a specific environmental and climatic range. The sub-populations group along similar environmental and climatic variables with the healthiest sub-populations found at lower elevation, higher temperatures and higher Potential Evapo-Transpiration. The climatic range of A. pillansii is also evident from the range of its environmental and climatic variables and the associated unhealthy sub-populations that lie on the extremes of this range. Recruitment was found to correlate strongly with the environmental and climatic variables, % winter rainfall and elevation, suggesting it is moisture limited. The evidence found in this study of A. pillansii 's specific environmental and climatic distribution may have negative implications for its future survival and conservation especially with present indications of anthropogenic climate change

Economic Reforms and the Agricultural Situation in Russia

The Russian Federation, like other countries of Eastern Europe, is undergoing a complicated period of transition from centralized to democratic methods of management. The main goal of this period is the transition to market relations within the entire national economy. Specifically, the goal of agricultural land reform is to convert the legal structure as it relates to land in order to create favorable conditions for competition among all forms of ownership

INTERPRETATION OF NARROW BEAM SONAR ECHOS USING A VARIABLE IMPEDANCE SUBBOTTOM MODEL

An underwater antenna consisting of an acoustic paraboloid reflector with a 12 kHz transducer mounted at its focus was designed and built for remote sensing of the subbottom {1}. Surveys taken with the 3 degree half-power beamwidth projector operating in a 1/2 ms pulsed mode indicated horizontal and vertical resolutions of less than 1 m with penetration into the sediments of up to 20 m at 20 m of depth. The image detail was substantially increased over that taken with a conventional 30 degree profiler. The data was interpreted using a physical model of the subbottom consisting of plane parallel layers of variable impedance overlying those of monotonically increasing impedance to a basement of granite {2,3}. A signal processing technique, extracting both phase and amplitude information of the acoustic echos, was used to simulate the data. The magnitude and phase angle of the boundary reflection coefficients were calculated allowing determination of positive or negative changes in the characteristic acoustic impedance of the respective layers. Relative impedance profiles, plotted over a region where facsimile graphs indicated a continuous subbottom layer, showed a consistent decrease of impedance at that depth before increasing again as expected

A relation-algebraic approach to simple games

Simple games are a powerful tool to analyze decision - making and coalition formation in social and political life. In this paper, we present relation-algebraic models of simple games and develop relational specifications for solving some basic problems of them. In particular, we test certain fundamental properties of simple games and compute specific players and coalitions. We also apply relation algebra to determine power indices. This leads to relation-algebraic specifications, which can be evaluated with the help of the BDD-based tool RelView after a simple translation into the tool's programming language. In order to demonstrate the visualization facilities of RelView, we consider an example of the Catalonian Parliament after the 2003 election.Relation algebra ; RelView ; simple game ; winning coalition ; swinger ; dominant player ; central player ; power index

A QOBDD-based Approach to Simple Games

Simple games are a commonly used model for the analysis of voting systems in which each participant can vote “yes” or “no” and where the outcome is “yes” or “no” as well. Quasi-reduced and ordered binary decision diagrams, or QOBDDs for short, are well-known as compact representations for subsets of powersets and Boolean functions. In this thesis, we use QOBDDs to represent simple games and to develop practically applicable algorithms to solve problems for simple games. We study properties of QOBDDs when they are used to represent simple games as well as the runtime behavior of our algorithms

A relation-algebraic approach to simple games

International audienceSimple games are a powerful tool to analyze decision - making and coalition formation in social and political life. In this paper, we present relation-algebraic models of simple games and develop relational specifications for solving some basic problems of them. In particular, we test certain fundamental properties of simple games and compute specific players and coalitions. We also apply relation algebra to determine power indices. This leads to relation-algebraic specifications, which can be evaluated with the help of the BDD-based tool RelView after a simple translation into the tool's programming language. In order to demonstrate the visualization facilities of RelView, we consider an example of the Catalonian Parliament after the 2003 election