Water-resource records of Brevard County, Florida

The U. S. Geological Survey made a comprehensive investigation of the water resources of Brevard County from 1954 to 1958. The purposes of this investigation were: (1) to determine the occurrence and chemical quality of water in the streams and lakes, (2) to determine the location and the thickness of aquifers, and (3) to determine the occurrence and chemical quality of the ground water. During the period from 1933 to 1954, water records were collected from a few stream-gaging stations and a few observation wells. The purpose of this report is to present basic data collected during these investigations. (Document has 188 pages.

On the Quantum Jarzynski Identity

In this note, we will discuss how to compactly express and prove the Jarzynski identity for an open quantum system with dissipative dynamics. We will avoid explicitly measuring the work directly, which is tantamount to continuously monitoring the system, and instead measure the heat flow from the environment. We represent the measurement of heat flow with Hermitian map superoperators that act on the system density matrix. Hermitian maps provide a convenient and compact representation of sequential measurement and correlation functions.Comment: 4 page

Quantum Operation Time Reversal

The dynamics of an open quantum system can be described by a quantum operation, a linear, complete positive map of operators. Here, I exhibit a compact expression for the time reversal of a quantum operation, which is closely analogous to the time reversal of a classical Markov transition matrix. Since open quantum dynamics are stochastic, and not, in general, deterministic, the time reversal is not, in general, an inversion of the dynamics. Rather, the system relaxes towards equilibrium in both the forward and reverse time directions. The probability of a quantum trajectory and the conjugate, time reversed trajectory are related by the heat exchanged with the environment.Comment: 4 page

Land Cover in a Managed Forest Ecosystem: Mexican Shade Coffee

Managed forest ecosystems—agroforestry systems in which crops such as coffee and bananas are planted side-by-side with woody perennials—are being touted as a means of safeguarding forests along with the ecological services they provide. Yet we know little about the determinants of land cover in such systems, information needed to design effective forest conservation policies. This paper presents a spatial regression analysis of land cover in a managed forest ecosystem—a shade coffee region of coastal Mexico. Using high-resolution land cover data derived from aerial photographs along with data on the geophysical and institutional characteristics of the study area, we find that plots in close proximity to urban centers are less likely to be cleared, all other things equal. This result contrasts sharply with the literature on natural forests. In addition, we find that membership in coffee-marketing cooperatives, farm size, and certain soil types are associated with forest cover, while proximity to small town centers is associated with forest clearing.deforestation, managed forest ecosystem, agroforestry, shade-grown coffee, Mexico, spatial econometrics, land cover

In Defense of the Obama Administration\u27s Non-Defense of DOMA

The Constitution charges the President with the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . . .” Moreover, the President takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Although “[g]enerally, these duties are compatible . . ., when the Executive faces a law that he believes is unconstitutional, he must decide whether the law should be executed as written and defended if attacked, or whether the duty of faithfulness to the Constitution requires its repudiation.” This decision belongs to the President alone as the head of a co-equal branch of the federal government. The doctrine of separation of powers dictates, inter alia, that the President enforces the laws that Congress passes. But, a constitutional problem arises “[w]hen the President’s obligation to act in accord with the Constitution appears to be in tension with his duty to execute laws enacted by Congress . . . .” When advising the President, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has maintained since at least 1860 that “the Constitution provides the President with the authority to refuse to enforce unconstitutional provisions.” However, reasonable minds disagree as to the appropriate standard that should be used by the President and the DOJ when deciding whether or not to enforce a statute. Moreover, substantially less has come out of the DOJ regarding the President’s decision not to defend legislation. The purposes of this paper are: (1) to summarize the case law, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, and scholarship pertaining to the doctrines of non-enforcement and non-defense; (2) to propose workable standards for both non-enforcement and non-defense that can be used by future Presidents and the DOJ; and, (3) to apply these standards to President Obama’s recent decision to continue to enforce, but to not defend, Section 3 of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in order to show why the decision was proper. Part I explores the distinction between executive non-enforcement and executive non-defense. Part I.A discusses the case law (I.A.1), OLC opinions (I.A.2), and scholarship (I.A.3) addressing non-enforcement, while Part I.B explores the case law (I.B.1), OLC opinions (I.B.2), and scholarship (I.B.3) regarding non-defense. Part II briefly surveys the history of DOMA and the recent decision by the Obama administration not to defend Section 3 of DOMA. Finally, Part III proposes standards to be used by future administrations faced with whether to enforce and defend a statute, and the section ends by applying the standards to conclude that the Obama administration’s decision to continue to enforce, but not to defend, Section 3 of DOMA was proper

The fluctuation theorem and Lyapunov weights

The Fluctuation Theorem (FT) is a generalisation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that applies to small systems observed for short times. For thermostatted systems it gives the probability ratio that entropy will be consumed rather than produced. In this paper we derive the Transient and Steady State Fluctuation Theorems using Lyapunov weights rather than the usual Gibbs weights. At long times the Fluctuation Theorems so derived are identical to those derived using the more standard Gibbs weights.Comment: 26 pages; to appear in Physica

In Defense of the Obama Administration\u27s Non-Defense of DOMA

The Constitution charges the President with the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . . .” Moreover, the President takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Although “[g]enerally, these duties are compatible . . ., when the Executive faces a law that he believes is unconstitutional, he must decide whether the law should be executed as written and defended if attacked, or whether the duty of faithfulness to the Constitution requires its repudiation.” This decision belongs to the President alone as the head of a co-equal branch of the federal government. The doctrine of separation of powers dictates, inter alia, that the President enforces the laws that Congress passes. But, a constitutional problem arises “[w]hen the President’s obligation to act in accord with the Constitution appears to be in tension with his duty to execute laws enacted by Congress . . . .” When advising the President, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has maintained since at least 1860 that “the Constitution provides the President with the authority to refuse to enforce unconstitutional provisions.” However, reasonable minds disagree as to the appropriate standard that should be used by the President and the DOJ when deciding whether or not to enforce a statute. Moreover, substantially less has come out of the DOJ regarding the President’s decision not to defend legislation. The purposes of this paper are: (1) to summarize the case law, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, and scholarship pertaining to the doctrines of non-enforcement and non-defense; (2) to propose workable standards for both non-enforcement and non-defense that can be used by future Presidents and the DOJ; and, (3) to apply these standards to President Obama’s recent decision to continue to enforce, but to not defend, Section 3 of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in order to show why the decision was proper. Part I explores the distinction between executive non-enforcement and executive non-defense. Part I.A discusses the case law (I.A.1), OLC opinions (I.A.2), and scholarship (I.A.3) addressing non-enforcement, while Part I.B explores the case law (I.B.1), OLC opinions (I.B.2), and scholarship (I.B.3) regarding non-defense. Part II briefly surveys the history of DOMA and the recent decision by the Obama administration not to defend Section 3 of DOMA. Finally, Part III proposes standards to be used by future administrations faced with whether to enforce and defend a statute, and the section ends by applying the standards to conclude that the Obama administration’s decision to continue to enforce, but not to defend, Section 3 of DOMA was proper

Microscopic reversibility of quantum open systems

The transition probability for time-dependent unitary evolution is invariant under the reversal of protocols just as in the classical Liouvillian dynamics. In this article, we generalize the expression of microscopic reversibility to externally perturbed large quantum open systems. The time-dependent external perturbation acts on the subsystem during a transient duration, and subsequently the perturbation is switched off so that the total system would thermalize. We concern with the transition probability for the subsystem between the initial and final eigenstates of the subsystem. In the course of time evolution, the energy is irreversibly exchanged between the subsystem and reservoir. The time reversed probability is given by the reversal of the protocol and the initial ensemble. Microscopic reversibility equates the time forward and reversed probabilities, and therefore appears as a thermodynamic symmetry for open quantum systems.Comment: numerical demonstration is correcte

Near-equilibrium measurements of nonequilibrium free energy

A central endeavor of thermodynamics is the measurement of free energy changes. Regrettably, although we can measure the free energy of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium, typically all we can say about the free energy of a non-equilibrium ensemble is that it is larger than that of the same system at equilibrium. Herein, we derive a formally exact expression for the probability distribution of a driven system, which involves path ensemble averages of the work over trajectories of the time-reversed system. From this we find a simple near-equilibrium approximation for the free energy in terms of an excess mean time-reversed work, which can be experimentally measured on real systems. With analysis and computer simulation, we demonstrate the accuracy of our approximations for several simple models.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Sexual dimorphisms in the dermal denticles of thelesser-spotted catshark, Scyliorhinus canicula (Linnaeus, 1758)

The dermal layers of several elasmobranch species have been shown to be sexually dimorphic. Generally, when this occurs the females have thicker dermal layers compared to those of males. This sexual dimorphism has been suggested to occur as a response to male biting during mating. Although male biting as a copulatory behaviour in Scyliorhinus canicula has been widely speculated to occur, only relatively recently has this behaviour been observed. Male S. canicula use their mouths to bite the female's pectoral and caudal fins as part of their pre-copulatory behaviour and to grasp females during copulation. Previous work has shown that female S. canicula have a thicker epidermis compared to that of males. The structure of the dermal denticles in females may also differ from that of males in order to protect against male biting or to provide a greater degree of friction in order to allow the male more purchase. This study reveals that the length, width and density of the dermal denticles of mature male and female S. canicula are sexually dimorphic across the integument in areas where males have been observed to bite and wrap themselves around females (pectoral fin, area posterior to the pectoral fin, caudal fin, and pelvic girdle). No significant differences in the dermal denticle dimensions were found in other body areas examined (head, dorsal skin and caudal peduncle). Sexually dimorphic dermal denticles in mature S. canicula could be a response to male biting/wrapping as part of the copulatory process