The Clean Power Plan Puzzle: The Future of Efforts to Control Climate Pollution in the Northeast

In October 2015 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the first national plan to cut climate pollution from power plants. Called the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the effort requires a 32% nation-wide reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the power sector. The CPP also gives states multiple pathways to comply. Now states are on the clock: they must submit their individual compliance plans or signal their intent to submit multi-state plans by September 2016. The nine states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first market-based trading platform established to cut climate pollution from power plants in the Northeast, must now decide the future of the effort. This paper explores a few of the key issues for state regulators in the RGGI region with a special focus on New York State. We discuss the need to reset the RGGI cap to ensure progress toward New York’s and other state climate pollution reduction goals. We recommend a change to RGGI’s structure that will ensure compliance with the CPP. We discuss the EPA’s proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program (CEIP), an effort to encourage early state actions to reduce emissions. And we discuss other implementation issues with respect to linking RGGI to other mass-based state compliance plans. In brief, we recommend that the RGGI states adopt a new cap that requires at least a 2.5 percent per year reduction in region-wide GHG emissions

Coarse grained belief propagation for simulation of interacting quantum systems at all temperatures

We continue our numerical study of quantum belief propagation initiated in [Phys. Rev. A, 77 (2008), p. 052318]. We demonstrate how the method can be expressed in terms of an effective thermal potential that materializes when the system presents quantum correlations, but is insensitive to classical correlations. The thermal potential provides an efficient means to assess the precision of belief propagation on graphs with no loops. We illustrate these concepts using the one-dimensional quantum Ising model and compare our results with exact solutions. We also use the method to study the transverse field quantum Ising spin glass for which we obtain a phase diagram that is largely in agreement with the one obtained in [arXiv:0706.4391] using a different approach. Finally, we introduce the coarse grained belief propagation (CGBP) algorithm to improve belief propagation at low temperatures. This method combines the reliability of belief propagation at high temperatures with the ability of entanglement renormalization to efficiently describe low energy subspaces of quantum systems with local interactions. With CGBP, thermodynamic properties of quantum systems can be calculated with a high degree of accuracy at all temperatures.Comment: updated references and acknowledgement

Islamic Family Law and Anglo-American Public Policy

This Article discusses the response of the English judiciary and legislature to the differing expectations and norms of the Muslim community living in its midst. Although the emphasis is necessarily on the English experience, it is hoped that the problems and the reactions will have echoes on the other side of the Atlantic. England, perhaps more than the United States, enjoys an ecclesiastical entrenchment in historical terms. Little of this experience however should be left in the ongoing day to day reality of the administration of family law. This Article proposes that pluralism and diversity must be a central theme of modern English family law, as much perhaps as it is for American family law. The cases discussed herein will make apparent that this theme is not always the stated position of English judicial reasoning

Islamic Family Law and Anglo-American Public Policy

This Article discusses the response of the English judiciary and legislature to the differing expectations and norms of the Muslim community living in its midst. Although the emphasis is necessarily on the English experience, it is hoped that the problems and the reactions will have echoes on the other side of the Atlantic. England, perhaps more than the United States, enjoys an ecclesiastical entrenchment in historical terms. Little of this experience however should be left in the ongoing day to day reality of the administration of family law. This Article proposes that pluralism and diversity must be a central theme of modern English family law, as much perhaps as it is for American family law. The cases discussed herein will make apparent that this theme is not always the stated position of English judicial reasoning

PATIENTS’ PERCEPTION OF QUALITY HEALTH CARE DELIVERY AT THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF PRIVATE HOSPITALS IN GHANA

One of the main forces behind global health campaigns is quality improvement, and this is especially true in acute care settings like emergency departments, where making quick, life-saving judgments is of utmost importance. The majority of researchers in Ghana have focused mostly on secondary and tertiary hospitals in Ghana, paying less attention to basic healthcare settings, which are the main entrance points for the majority of emergency situations. The purpose of this study was to investigate how patients perceived receiving high-quality care in private hospitals in Ghana\u27s emergency rooms. A sample of 160 patients was used to explore perception on quality care delivery at the Emergency Department (ED) of private hospitals in Ghana.The findings showed that patients thought doctors had adequate knowledge in their field based on their ability to assess, prescribe appropriate medications, and request diagnostic investigations that are pertinent to the working diagnosis, even though they thought the physical care and information flow at the ED was subpar. The study suggests using a digital compliant management system that enables patients to express their issues in real time, along with a high degree of responsiveness. Future studies may also investigate the perceptions of particular patient populations to discover requirements unique to them, thus enhancing the patient-centered approach to care, taking into account that the study examined the viewpoints of a variety of patient demographics