Textualism and Obstacle Preemption

Commentators, both on the bench and in the academy,have perceived an inconsistency between the SupremeCourt\u27s trend, in recent decades, towards an increasinglyformalist approach to statutory interpretation and theCourt\u27s continued willingness to find state laws preemptedas obstacles to the accomplishment and execution of thefull purposes and objectives of Congress\u27 --so-called obstacle preemption. This Article argues that by givingthe meaning contextually implied in a statutory textordinary, operative legal force, we can justify most of thecurrent scope of obstacle preemption based solely ontheoretical moves textualism already is committed tomaking.The Article first sketches the history of both textualismand obstacle preemption, showing why the two doctrinesseem so obviously to be in tension with one another. It then introduces the field of linguistic pragmatics-thestudy of context\u27s role in determining meaning-payingspecial attention to the theory of scalar implicature, aframework that attempts to systematize our intuitions thatwe often say one thing but imply another. The Article thenproceeds to apply this theory to the obstacle-preemptioncase law, contending that scalar implicature, propertyadjusted to the legal context, can justify the result in mostobstacle preemption cases. Next, the Article argues thattextualists are committed to accepting this justification ofobstacle preemption because of two deep theoreticalpresuppositions of their theory. Finally, the Article closesby suggesting that this justification of obstacle preemptionnot only challenges widely shared assumptions about theinconsistency of textualism and one of the most commontypes of preemption; it also has the potential to reshapeour understanding of both textualism and obstaclepreemption

Against the Tiers of Constitutional Scrutiny

This year, for the first time in nearly a decade, the Supreme Court will return to the subject of the Second Amendment. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. (NYSRPA) v. City of New York concerns a New York City licensing regime that, at the time the Court granted review, prohibited the transportation of any firearm outside city limits. (The City subsequently changed its licensing regime, perhaps in an effort to make the case go away before the Court could rule on the merits. It is unclear, at the time we write, whether that tactic will succeed.) Although most popular attention will focus on the outcome of the case, the long-term significance of NYSRPA could be how the justices arrive at that outcome, for NYSRPA poses a challenge to what has become a familiar feature of American constitutional law: the tiers of scrutiny

Tracking the Position of an Ultrasonic Transmitter in a Room

Determination of the position of an acoustic transmitter in a room in three dimensions has multiple applications. We are designing a system that will track the position of a person in a room in two or three dimensions using techniques that could be expandable to multiple rooms. The transmitter emits an acoustic pulse that is detected by four or five receivers in the room. The receiver array sends the analog signal as it is received with noise to a signal conditioner. The signal conditioner consists of an active band-pass filter, an envelope detector and a comparator and its output is a digital signal corresponding to a time-delayed version of the original pulse. The rising edge of each receiver\u27s digital signal will trigger a microcontroller to capture the time of arrival of that signal. One of two location algorithms will be used. Either the initial start time of the emitted pulse and the Time of Arrival (TOA) of each rising edge pulse will yield the Time of Flight (TOF) for each received signal of the TOA of each signal will be used to calculate a series of Time Differences of Arrival (TDOA) of the signals. A matrix-based location algorithm will use wither the TOF or TDOA information to determine the two or three dimensional position of the ultrasonic transmitter in the room

Origin and evolution of the Laguna Potrok Aike maar (Patagonia, Argentina)

Laguna Potrok Aike, a maar lake in southern-most Patagonia, is located at about 110 m a.s.l. in the Pliocene to late Quaternary Pali Aike Volcanic Field (Santa Cruz, southern Patagonia, Argentina) at about 52°S and 70°W, some 20 km north of the Strait of Magellan and approximately 90 km west of the city of Rio Gallegos. The lake is almost circular and bowl-shaped with a 100 m deep, flat plain in its central part and an approximate diameter of 3.5 km.Steep slopes separate the central plain from the lake shoulder at about 35 m water depth. At present, strong winds permanently mix the entire water column. The closed lake basin contains a sub saline water body and has only episodic inflows with the most important episodic tributary situated on the western shore. Discharge is restricted to major snowmelt events.Laguna Potrok Aike is presently located at the boundary between the Southern Hemispheric Westerlies and the Antarctic Polar Front. The sedimentary regime is thus influenced by climatic and hydrologic conditions related to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Southern HemisphericWesterlies and sporadic outbreaks of Antarctic polar air masses. Previous studies demonstrated that closed lakes in southern South America are sensitive to variations in the evaporation/precipitation ratio and have experienced drastic lake level changes in the past causing for example the desiccation of the 75 m deep Lago Cardiel during the Late Glacial. Multiproxy environmental reconstruction of the last 16 ka documents that Laguna Potrok Aike is highly sensitive to climate change. Based on an Ar/Ar age determination, the phreatomagmatic tephra that is assumed to relate to the Potrok Aike maar eruption was formed around 770 ka. Thus Laguna Potrok Aike sediments contain almost 0.8 million years of climate history spanning several past glacial-interglacial cycles making it a unique archive for non-tropical and non-polar regions of the Southern Hemisphere. In particular, variations of the hydrological cycle, changes in eolian dust deposition, frequencies and consequences of volcanic activities and other natural forces controlling climatic and environmental responses can be tracked throughout time. Laguna Potrok Aike has thus become a major focus of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. Drilling operations were carried out within PASADO (Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project) in late 2008 and penetrated ~100 m into the lacustrine sediment.Laguna Potrok Aike is surrounded by a series of subaerial paleo-shorelines of modern to Holocene age that reach up to 21 m above the 2003 AD lake level. An erosional unconformity which can be observed basin-wide along the lake shoulder at about 33 m below the 2003 AD lake level marks the lowest lake level reached during Late Glacial to Holocene times. A high- resolution seismic survey revealed a series of buried, subaquatic paleo-shorelines that hold a record of the complex transgressional history of the past approximately 6800 years, which was temporarily interrupted by two regressional phases from approximately 5800 to 5400 and 4700 to 4000 cal BP. Seismic reflection and refraction data provide insights into the sedimentary infill and the underlying volcanic structure of Laguna Potrok Aike. Reflection data show undisturbed, stratified lacustrine sediments at least in the upper ~100 m of the sedimentary infill. Two stratigraphic boundaries were identified in the seismic profiles (separating subunits I-ab, I-c and I-d) that are likely related to changes in lake level. Subunits I-ab and I-d are quite similar even though velocities are enhanced in subunit I-d. This might point at cementation in subunit I-d. Subunit I-c is restricted to the central parts of the lake and thins out laterally.A velocity-depth model calculated from seismic refraction data reveals a funnel-shaped structure embedded in the sandstone rocks of the surrounding Santa Cruz Formation. This funnel struc

Magnetoelastic coupling and Grüneisen scaling in NdB4

We report high-resolution capacitance dilatometry studies on the uniaxial length changes in a NdB4 single crystal. The evolution of magnetically ordered phases below TN = 17.2 K [commensurate antiferromagnetic phase (cAFM)], TIT = 6.8 K [intermediate incommensurate phase (IT)], and TLT = 4.8 K [low-temperature phase (LT)] is associated with pronounced anomalies in the thermal expansion coefficients. The data imply significant magnetoelastic coupling and evidence of a structural phase transition at TLT. While both cAFM and LT favor structural anisotropy δ between in-plane and out-of-plane length changes, it competes with the IT type of order, i.e., δ is suppressed in that phase. Notably, finite anisotropy well above TN indicates short-range correlations which are, however, of neither cAFM, IT, nor LT type. Grüneisen analysis of the ratio of thermal expansion coefficient and specific heat enables the derivation of uniaxial as well as hydrostatic pressure dependencies. While α/cp evidences a single dominant energy scale in LT, our data imply precursory fluctuations of a competing phase in IT and cAFM, respectively. Our results suggest the presence of orbital degrees of freedom competing with cAFM, and successive evolution of a magnetically and orbitally ordered ground state

Forschendes Lernen. Konzeptuelle Grundlagen und Potenziale digitaler Medien

Im folgenden Artikel wird dargelegt, was unter dem Konzept des forschenden Lernens zu verstehen ist und welche Einsatzmöglichkeiten sich für das forschende Lernen im Kontext Universität ergeben. Dabei werden speziell diejenigen Merkmale theoretisch herausgearbeitet, die aus Lehrendenperspektive Anknüpfungspunkte für einen prozessbegleitenden Medieneinsatz bieten. Exemplarisch wird eine Lehrveranstaltung angeführt, die auf Fallebene zeigt, wie ein forschungsorientiertes Seminar um digitale Medien angereichert werden kann und welche Chancen und Grenzen sich bei der selbstgesteuerten Verwendung digitaler Medienangebote ergeben. Die Evaluation des Seminars zeigt, dass die Studierenden einen großen Lernzuwachs erleben, jedoch teilweise durch die Offenheit des Lernens überfordert sind. Diese und andere Gründe führen dazu, dass die von Lehrenden vorgeschlagenen Medienangebote selten bis kaum genutzt werden. Zudem sehen Lernende die Qualität virtuell distribuierter Inhalte kritisch, was sich auf die Akzeptanz und die Nutzung der vorhandenen digitalen Medienangebote auswirkt. (DIPF/Orig.

Connecting the dots: a correlation between ionizing radiation and cloud mass-loss rate traced by optical integral field spectroscopy

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: [2016], A. F. McLeod, et al., MNRAS 462 (4): 3537-3569, first published on line July 30, 2016, available on line via doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw1864. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present an analysis of the effect of feedback from O- and B-type stars with data from the integral field spectrograph Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) mounted on the Very Large Telescope of pillar-like structures in the Carina Nebular Complex, one of the most massive star-forming regions in the Galaxy. For the observed pillars, we compute gas electron densities and temperatures maps, produce integrated line and velocity maps of the ionized gas, study the ionization fronts at the pillar tips, analyse the properties of the single regions, and detect two ionized jets originating from two distinct pillar tips. For each pillar tip, we determine the incident ionizing photon flux Q0, pil originating from the nearby massive O- and B-type stars and compute the mass-loss rate M˙M˙ of the pillar tips due to photoevaporation caused by the incident ionizing radiation. We combine the results of the Carina data set with archival MUSE data of a pillar in NGC 3603 and with previously published MUSE data of the Pillars of Creation in M16, and with a total of 10 analysed pillars, find tight correlations between the ionizing photon flux and the electron density, the electron density and the distance from the ionizing sources, and the ionizing photon flux and the mass-loss rate. The combined MUSE data sets of pillars in regions with different physical conditions and stellar content therefore yield an empirical quantification of the feedback effects of ionizing radiation. In agreement with models, we find that M˙∝Q1/20,pilM˙∝Q0,pil1/2.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Switchable Gene Expression in Escherichia coli Using a Miniaturized Photobioreactor

We present a light-switchable gene expression system for both inducible and switchable control of gene expression at a single cell level in Escherichia coli using a previously constructed light-sensing system. The lambda cl repressor gene with an LVA degradation tag was expressed under the control of the ompC promoter on the chromosome. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene fused to a lambda repressor-repressible promoter was used as a reporter. This light-switchable system allows rapid and reversible induction or repression of expression of the target gene at any desired time. This system also ensures homogenous expression across the entire cell population. We also report the design of a miniaturized photobioreactor to be used in combination with the light-switchable gene expression system. The miniaturized photobioreactor helps to reduce unintended induction of the light receptor due to environmental disturbances and allows precise control over the duration of induction. This system would be a good tool for switchable, homogenous, strong, and highly regulatable expression of target genes over a wide range of induction times. Hence, it could be applied to study gene function, optimize metabolic pathways, and control biological systems both spatially and temporally.open0