City versus Countryside: Environmental Equity in Context

This Article takes an approach to the problem of environmental equity that is different from the remedies advocated by the leaders of the environmental equity movement. The plea that the benefits of environmental protection be extended to all groups in society is, of course, a legitimate one, but the movement is too narrowly focused and its aims are too modest. I dissent from the two central premises held by environmental equity advocates. First, the movement assumes that judicially recognized and enforced rights will lead to improved public health. Second, the movement asserts that disadvantaged communities should adopt a “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) strategy. In contrast, I argue that the current focus of the environmental equity movement, important as it is, is too narrow because the legal strategy of the civil rights movement is largely inapplicable to environmental issues. Environmental protection is not a rights-based movement. Thus, the judiciary’s role in promoting environmental quality is limited compared to its role in promoting racial justice through the recognition and enforcement of constitutionally-based civil rights. In addition, I argue that the NIMBY strategy is equally shortsighted. Environmental equity takes current environmental protection strategies as a given at a time when the science and ethics of environmental protection are undergoing a profound re-evaluation

City versus Countryside: Environmental Equity in Context

This Article takes an approach to the problem of environmental equity that is different from the remedies advocated by the leaders of the environmental equity movement. The plea that the benefits of environmental protection be extended to all groups in society is, of course, a legitimate one, but the movement is too narrowly focused and its aims are too modest. I dissent from the two central premises held by environmental equity advocates. First, the movement assumes that judicially recognized and enforced rights will lead to improved public health. Second, the movement asserts that disadvantaged communities should adopt a “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) strategy. In contrast, I argue that the current focus of the environmental equity movement, important as it is, is too narrow because the legal strategy of the civil rights movement is largely inapplicable to environmental issues. Environmental protection is not a rights-based movement. Thus, the judiciary’s role in promoting environmental quality is limited compared to its role in promoting racial justice through the recognition and enforcement of constitutionally-based civil rights. In addition, I argue that the NIMBY strategy is equally shortsighted. Environmental equity takes current environmental protection strategies as a given at a time when the science and ethics of environmental protection are undergoing a profound re-evaluation

Cruise Report 64-S-5 Shrimp

(PDF contains 5 pages.

The lifeboat problem

We study an all-pay contest with multiple identical prizes ("lifeboat seats"). Prizes are partitioned into subsets of prizes ("lifeboats"). Players play a twostage game. First, each player chooses an element of the partition ("a lifeboat"). Then each player competes for a prize in the subset chosen ("a seat"). We characterize and compare the subgame perfect equilibria in which all players employ pure strategies or all players play identical mixed strategies in the first stage. We find that the partitioning of prizes allows for coordination failure among players when they play nondegenerate mixed strategies and this can shelter rents and reduce rent dissipation compared to some of the less efficient pure strategy equilibria

A Detailed Kinematic Map of Cassiopeia A's Optical Main Shell and Outer High-Velocity Ejecta

We present three-dimensional kinematic reconstructions of optically emitting material in the young Galactic supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). These Doppler maps have the highest spectral and spatial resolutions of any previous survey of Cas A and represent the most complete catalog of its optically emitting material to date. We confirm that the bulk of Cas A's optically bright ejecta populate a torus-like geometry tilted approximately 30 degrees with respect to the plane of the sky with a -4000 to +6000 km/s radial velocity asymmetry. Near-tangent viewing angle effects and an inhomogeneous surrounding CSM/ISM environment suggest that this geometry and velocity asymmetry may not be faithfully representative of the remnant's true 3D structure or the kinematic properties of the original explosion. The majority of the optical ejecta are arranged in several well-defined and nearly circular ring-like structures with diameters between approximately 30 arcsec (0.5 pc) and 2 arcmin (2 pc). These ejecta rings appear to be a common phenomenon of young core-collapse remnants and may be associated with post-explosion input of energy from plumes of radioactive 56Ni-rich ejecta that rise, expand, and compress non-radioactive material. Our optical survey also encompassed Cas A's faint outlying ejecta knots and exceptionally high-velocity NE and SW streams of S-rich debris often referred to as `jets'. These outer knots, which exhibit a chemical make-up suggestive of an origin deep within the progenitor star, appear to be arranged in opposing and wide-angle outflows with opening half-angles of approximately 40 degrees.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted by ApJ, associated movie files can be found at https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~dmilisav

Transcendence measures and algebraic growth of entire functions

In this paper we obtain estimates for certain transcendence measures of an entire function $f$. Using these estimates, we prove Bernstein, doubling and Markov inequalities for a polynomial $P(z,w)$ in ${\Bbb C}^2$ along the graph of $f$. These inequalities provide, in turn, estimates for the number of zeros of the function $P(z,f(z))$ in the disk of radius $r$, in terms of the degree of $P$ and of $r$. Our estimates hold for arbitrary entire functions $f$ of finite order, and for a subsequence $\{n_j\}$ of degrees of polynomials. But for special classes of functions, including the Riemann $\zeta$-function, they hold for all degrees and are asymptotically best possible. From this theory we derive lower estimates for a certain algebraic measure of a set of values $f(E)$, in terms of the size of the set $E$.Comment: 40 page