Judicial Review of the Fact Findings of the Federal Trade Commission

Section 5 of the Trade Commission Act (15 U. S. C. § 45) and Section 11 of the Clayton Act (15 U. S. C. § 21) provide that The findings of the Commission as to facts, if supported by testimony, shall be conclusive. This follows the form of the usual statutory provision, and its settled interpretation is that the findings of the administrative board, if supported by substantial evidence, are conclusive as to issues of fact. The purpose of the creation of the Trade Commission was largely to establish an administrative tribunal consisting of a body of persons especially qualified by reason of information, experience and study to administer the federal program against unfair competition and monopoly. The Trade Commission Act took the function of gathering evidence entirely out of the hands of the courts and vested it in the Commission. The Commission was given the power to employ experts and examiners, including attorneys, economists, accountants and specialists in various fields. It would seem, therefore, that by the terms conclusive, if supported by testimony Congress had it in mind that the administrative specialist rather than the court would determine the facts and draw the inferences therefrom. The test, then, which both logic and reason would seem to require the courts to adopt in determining whether or not the order of the Commission is to be upheld is simply this: Are the findings supported by substantial evidence? The court should not go beyond this to weigh the evidence or review the findings of fact found by the Commission. In a number of cases the Circuit Courts of Appeal have treated the findings of the Commission with due respect and have held that the findings were supported by evidence and as such were conclusive upon the courts. But the courts seem to have a natural suspicion of the functions of administrative officers and bodies and when the Commission presents a case which is not as strong as the court feels it should be it is more likely than not to set aside the administrative order and substitute therefor its own opinion. The courts have, of course, developed and evoked certain doctrines and rationalizations whereby to achieve their ends, while ostensibly obeying the legislative command. A study of the use of these rationalizations is necessary in order to determine to what extent the courts actually consider the fact findings of the Commission sufficient bases for decisions. This may perhaps best be done by first considering some of the more illustrative of those cases in which it has been found that the findings of the Commission were not supported by substantial evidence

ActiveTrans Priority Tool: An Analysis of the San Luis Obispo Council of Government’s Regional Transportation Plan Active Transportation Project List and Step-by-Step Methodology

This is the first effort by SLOCOG to systematically rank and prioritize existing proposed active transportation projects through a GIS methodology across the county. The methodology demonstrates to member agencies and SLOCOG with a step-by-step approach to allocate limited resources to desired active transportation projects in an equitable way. The variables were selected by a Steering Committee. The report also includes suggestions for improved future analysis. This information can help to inform future plans and allocate funds. The Regional Active Transportation Project Selection & Ranking Tool Methodology combines data from six factors to create a priority score. The six factors are: Opportunities, Safety, Existing Conditions, Demand, Connectivity, and Equity. Each factor score was weighted based on stakeholder input. The final table ranks projects by their composite priority score but projects can also be considered by each factor individually depending on priorities

A crystallization study of a tetrasilicic fluormica glass

The transformation of a synthetic mica composition K₂Mg₅Si₈O₂₀F₄ from amorphous to crystalline structure was studied isothermally at selected temperatures from 560°C to 1150°C. thermal changes associated with the transformation were followed by differential thermal analysis techniques. Structural changes promoted by the isothermal treatments were observed by density measurements, Debye-Scherrer X-ray diffraction techniques, electron replication microscopy, and electron scanning microscopy. Isothermal treatment at 450°C for 9 hours produces structural ordering in quenched K₂Mg₅Si₈O₂₀F₄ glass. Fluorine exerts a significant influence on the transformation temperature; decreasing amounts of fluorine producing increasing transformation temperatures. The crystallizing phase rapidly attains a limiting particle size and morphology at temperatures in the 600°C region. Treatments of quenches K₂Mg₅Si₈O₂₀F₄ glass at 900°C and above promotes a change from spherulitic to blocky crystal habit, accompanied by a more complete development of mica structure during growth --Abstract, page ii

Entropy-scaling search of massive biological data

Many datasets exhibit a well-defined structure that can be exploited to design faster search tools, but it is not always clear when such acceleration is possible. Here, we introduce a framework for similarity search based on characterizing a dataset's entropy and fractal dimension. We prove that searching scales in time with metric entropy (number of covering hyperspheres), if the fractal dimension of the dataset is low, and scales in space with the sum of metric entropy and information-theoretic entropy (randomness of the data). Using these ideas, we present accelerated versions of standard tools, with no loss in specificity and little loss in sensitivity, for use in three domains---high-throughput drug screening (Ammolite, 150x speedup), metagenomics (MICA, 3.5x speedup of DIAMOND [3,700x BLASTX]), and protein structure search (esFragBag, 10x speedup of FragBag). Our framework can be used to achieve "compressive omics," and the general theory can be readily applied to data science problems outside of biology.Comment: Including supplement: 41 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables, 1 bo

Another Country: When Your Nation Doesn’t Consider You To Be a Citizen

I plan to show how the characters in Another Country uncover the inherently racist and homophobic requirements for citizenship in a nation. The novel Another Country by African American author James Baldwin (1924-1987) exposes the fallible nature of hetero-normative and racial ideals that narrowly define a model citizen of a nation-state. The queer interracial relationships in the novel, particularly between the main character Rufus and his lover Eric, transgress the boundaries of nation, race, and sexuality, thus revealing the illusionary nature of categorizations that are defined and applied by nation-state apparatuses in order to discriminate and maintain uniformity. In addition to questioning the citizenship requirements for the nation-state, Baldwin highlights the voices of those who have been historically underrepresented in society and literature, particularly queer, black, and working class people. The ideals of a uniform nationhood often lead to repressive and discriminatory classification of perceived citizens and illegitimate interlopers. Rufus is a black, queer, lower class Jazz musician from Harlem during the year 1960. He has ambivalent feelings about his homeland, because even though it is his native land, it refuses to treat him as a citizen. His feelings of alienation in his home country relate to the nation-state’s need to control and dominate its populous in order to maintain power. Nations by and large define themselves as homogenous units, which usually leads to repression and expulsion of racial and sexual minorities. By analyzing key passages of the text, focusing on its transnational nature and using the perspectives of Post-Colonial, Critical Race, and Queer Theory, I will show how state ideologies of citizenship impact the main characters as queer diasporic migrants. Moreover, I will demonstrate how the stringent requirements for citizenship in the 1960s correlate to discrimination that occurs contemporarily in the United States

Reliable communication across ad hoc networks

This paper presents a fully decentralised peer-topeer voice communication tool intended for use across mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) by distributed groups who desired collaboration. We examined the synergy between MANETs and peer-to-peer virtual overlay networks which allowed the creation of ad hoc applications. One style of communication considered suitable for task oriented distributed group collaboration was push-to-talk. This research was focused on providing a push-to-talk communication platform suitable for deployment across MANETs. The research methodology employed was a proof of concept approach within a classical experimental computer science paradigm. We developed a prototype which used JXTA, a peer-to-peer virtual overlay network, to provide push-to-talk functionality across MANETs. Guaranteed delivery of messages was provided via a peer-to-peer voicemail delivery system. While the system did what intended we show that JXTA had a problem with the efficient delivery of voice samples.Telkom, Cisco, THRI