Is State Preemption Weakening the Authoritarian Resilience of Local Government in the United States?

In many countries in the world today democratic institutions and ideals seem threatened. Due process, equal protection, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to vote, and other democratic ideals are deeply ingrained in US culture and government. Traditionally, the federal government is thought to be the guardian of these rights, ensuring that state governments adhere to the rule of law established by our written constitution. Similarly, state governments are thought to uphold these democratic ideals vis a vis local governments. The American system of checks and balances and separation of powers and the resulting interplay between the branches of government are considered safeguards that protect the rule of law. This horizontal separation of powers often overshadows the similar function served by the vertical separation of governmental power created by our division of power into federal, state and local. If the federal and state governments act contrary to the rule of law established by our federal and state constitutions, local governments offer at least some degree of authoritarian resilience. The goal of this article is to set forth the manner in which local governments may resist anti-democratic action from federal and state governments and then to discuss the danger posed in the United States by the recent increase in State preemptions of local government power - particularly in regard to sanctuary cities, climate change, gun regulation, affordable housing, and LGBT rights. Ultimately, governments at different levels are intended to monitor each other and when local governments are preempted from exercising their powers in regard to socially important issues their authoritarian resilience is seriously impaired

Economics of Beef Cow Replacement.

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Dynamic responses of phosphorus metabolism to acute and chronic dietary phosphorus-limitation in Daphnia

Food quality is highly dynamic within lake ecosystems and varies spatially and temporally over the growing season. Consumers may need to continuously adjust their metabolism in response to this variation in dietary nutrient content. However, the rates of metabolic responses to changes in food nutrient content has received little direct study. Here, we examine responses in two metabolic phosphorus (P) pools, ribonucleic acids (RNA) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), along with body mass and body P content in Daphnia magna exposed to chronic and acute dietary P-limitation. First, we examined food quality effects on animals consuming different food carbon (C):P quality over a 14 day period. Then, we raised daphnids on one food quality for 4 days, switched them to contrasting dietary treatments, and measured changes in their metabolic responses at shorter time-scales (over 48 h). Animal P, RNA, and ATP content all changed through ontogeny with adults containing relatively less of these pools with increasing body mass. Irrespective of age, Daphnia consuming high C:P diets had lower body %P, %RNA, %ATP, and mass compared to animals eating low C:P diets. Diet switching experiments revealed diet dependent changes in body %P, %RNA, %ATP, and animal mass within 48 h. We found that Daphnia switched from low to high C:P diets had some metabolic buffering capacity with decreases in body %P occurring after 24 h but mass remaining similar to initial diet conditions for 36 h after the diet switch. Switching Daphnia from low to high C:P diets caused a decrease in the RNA:P ratio after 48 h. Daphnia switched from high to low C:P diets increased their body P, RNA, and ATP content within 8–24 h. This switch from high to low C:P diets also led to increased RNA:P ratios in animal bodies. Overall, our study revealed that consumer P metabolism reflects both current and past diet due to more dynamic and rapid changes in P biochemistry than total body mass. This metabolic flexibility is likely linked to resource integration in D. magna, which reduces the negative effects of short-term or variable exposure to nutrient-deficient foods

Seasonal effects of food quality and temperature on body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and biomass production in Daphnia populations

Food quality and temperature can affect zooplankton production in lakes by altering organismal metabolism. However, the influence of these factors on consumer nutritional physiology and population biomass remains relatively understudied in natural populations. Here, we examined seasonal changes in body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and population biomass in two Daphnia species collected from two separate lakes differing in dietary phosphorus (P) supply. Food quality, measured as seston carbon:P (C:P) ratios, varied throughout the study in each lake, and water temperatures generally increased across the growing season. Daphnid elemental composition was correlated with food quality in both populations, but relationships between daphnid body stoichiometry and temperature were consistently stronger as Daphnia body C:P ratios and content of major biochemical pools declined simultaneously throughout the summer, which largely coincided with increased water temperatures. Warmer temperatures were associated with relaxed %P-RNA coupling as daphnid body RNA content declined and P content remained relatively high. These responses combined with temperature related decreases in Daphnia body %lipids and %C appeared to explain declines in daphnid body C:P ratios in both lakes over the growing season. Seasonal changes in population biomass were related to both food quality and water temperature in the lower nutrient lake. Biomass production under more eutrophic conditions however was unrelated to food quality and was instead associated with seasonal temperature changes in the higher nutrient lake. Overall, our study shows that seasonal changes in temperature and resource quality may differentially affect consumer stoichiometry and biomass production in lake ecosystems by altering consumer elemental metabolism

Interactive effects of genotype and food quality on consumer growth rate and elemental content

Consumer body stoichiometry is a key trait that links organismal physiology to population and ecosystem-level dynamics. However, as elemental composition has traditionally been considered to be constrained within a species, the ecological and evolutionary factors shaping consumer elemental composition have not been clearly resolved. To this end, we examined the causes and extent of variation in the body phosphorus (P) content and the expression of P-linked traits, mass specific growth rate (MSGR), and P use efficiency (PUE) of the keystone aquatic consumer Daphnia using lake surveys and common garden experiments. While daphnid body %P was relatively constrained in field assemblages sampled across an environmental P gradient, unique genotypes isolated from these lakes showed highly variable phenotypic responses when raised across dietary P gradients in the laboratory. Specifically, we observed substantial inter- and intra-specific variation and differences in daphnid responses within and among our study lakes. While variation in Daphnia body %P was mostly due to plastic phenotypic changes, we documented considerable genetic differences in daphnid MSGR and PUE, and relationships between MSGR and body P content were highly variable among genotypes. Overall, our study found that consumer responses to food quality may differ considerably among genotypes and that relationships between organismal life-history traits and body stoichiometry may be strongly influenced by genetic and environmental variation in natural assemblages

Earthquake Resistance of a Rockfill Dam

The paper describes the investigation of the seismic safety of a 131 m high rock fill dam presently under construction across the Rio Chixoy in Guatemala. The dam is located in a region of high seismicity the recently active Motagua fault being only 40 km distant. Due to the possibility of high peak ground accelerations it was considered necessary to conduct a full dynamic analysis, which was carried out in stages following the Seed-Lee-Idriss method, the latter being modified where it was deemed necessary

Cytoskeletal Changes During Adhesion and Release: A Comparison of Human and Nonhuman Primate Platelets

The organization of cytoskeletal proteins in whole-mount adherent platelets from African green monkeys and normal human volunteers has been studied by SEM, high vacuum electron microscopy (HVEM) and conventional (120 kV) electron microscopy. We describe three distinct organizational zones, the Central Matrix, the Trabecular Zone and the Peripheral Web in spread platelets from both sources. The Central Matrix is an ill-defined superstructure of 80-100 Å filaments of short length which enshrouded the granules, dense bodies, mitochondria and elements of the open-channel and dense-tubular systems. The latter, identified through the use of peroxidase cytochemistry with the whole mounts, is an anastomosing network of elongate saccules having diameters of 600-1200 Å. The Trabecular Zone, which encircles the Central Matrix, contains 165, 80-100 and 30-50 Å filaments in an open lattice of irregular lattice spacing. The outermost region of the cells, the Peripheral Web, is comprised of 70 Å filaments organized in a honeycomb lattice with center to center spacing in the range 150-300 Å. This pattern for the spread cells is not consistently observed in cells during the early stages of adhesion; therefore, correlations of SEM and TEM observations are made for the various stages of adhesion/activation