Recent Judicial Biographies: A Composite Review

The great Chief Justice of our time has been considerably recalled in the period under review. Pusey,\u27 in a lengthy readable treatment that does not emphasize the legal, views Hughes as a liberal of circa 1910 who was uncomfortable but acquiescent amid the 1930\u27s progressions. Interesting tidbits include a moving account of Hughes\u27 mission to Holmes to request his resignation; bar letters to White complaining of the vagueness of Holmes\u27 opinions; the friendship of Hughes with White and Harlan; Hughes\u27 concern over the tendency of the New Deal brethren to expansively construe statutes and approve state taxes on interstate commerce movements. Pusey accepts, with some reservation, Hughes\u27 denial of pressuring Roberts at the height of the Court-FDR crisis. Mason warns that the Pusey book was much prepared under the Hughes eye. Mason sees Hughes as basically conservative and playing along with McReynolds & Co. as long as possible. Perkins, in a single volume, also not emphasizing the legal, paints Hughes as an early century liberal trying to correlate the New Deal with its forerunners. Rodell believes that Hughes got a tip-off of the FDR court plan, and actively generalled the opposition. He suspects that Hughes was embittered by his presidential defeat and the mudslinging of the confirmation as Chief Justice

The Emergent Vinifera Wine Industry in North Carolina: A Descriptive Overview

The North Carolina (NC) wine industry has grown rapidly over the past decade and is expected to grow even more as the worldwide wine consumption and export of wines rises. In the United States, the wine market has grown by 13.7 percent since 2002 in volume and by more than 15 percent in dollars as wine has progressed from being a beverage of an elite segment of the market to becoming a mainline beverage, taking its place alongside beer and liquor (MKF Research LLC, 2007; Oches, 2009). The Piedmont Triad Region is uniquely positioned to increase its presence in this industry. Of the 80 wineries in NC that are currently open to the public, nearly half are located in the Piedmont Triad Region. However, growing grapes and making wine is a long term commitment to a community, both financially and physically. The MKF Research report states that the capital-intensive nature of the winery and vineyard sectors is often underestimated, with new entrants to the industry at times unprepared for the extended cash requirements. In addition, only a few local institutions are familiar with the unique needs of the winemaking business. In order to address factors that will impede growth in this nascent industry, it is important to identify the state of the industry and obtain management perspectives on the needs and challenges facing their operations. This study provides information that would help gain a better understanding of the business issues and needs related to the wine and grape industry in North Carolina. Data for this study was drawn from a census of 34 wine producers located in the Yadkin, Swan Creek, and the Haw River valley regions of North Carolina. Descriptive statistics using frequencies and means is used to provide a demographic overview of the industry and to identify the factors that wine producers perceive to be important in affecting their profitability. Results from the study shows that most of the wineries share some common traits: they are small, relatively new to the wine and grape industry and grow grapes other than the traditional native Muscadine grape. Primarily, a majority of the wineries are family-based entrepreneurial businesses that have to behave like mini-conglomerates. These findings are consistent with a study conducted by Taplin and Breckenridge (2008).Profitability Constraints, Financial Management, Marketing, Distribution, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management,

Data-driven analysis of ultrasonic pressure tube inspection data

Pressure tubes are critical components of the CANDU reactors and other pressurized heavy water type reactors, as they contain the nuclear fuel and the coolant. Manufacturing flaws, as well as defects developed during the in-service operation, can lead to coolant leakage and can potentially damage the reactor. The current inspection process of these flaws is based on manually analyzing ultrasonic data received from multiple probes during planned, statutory outages. Recent advances on ultrasonic inspection tools enable the provision of high resolution data of significantly large volumes. This is highlighting the need for an efficient autonomous signal analysis process. Typically, the automation of ultrasonic inspection data analysis is approached by knowledge-based or supervised data-driven methods. This work proposes an unsupervised data-driven framework that requires no explicit rules, nor individually labeled signals. The framework follows a two-stage clustering procedure that utilizes the DBSCAN density-based clustering algorithm and aims to provide decision support for the assessment of potential defects in a robust and consistent way. Nevertheless, verified defect dimensions are essential in order to assess the results and train the framework for unseen defects. Initial results of the implementation are presented and discussed, with the method showing promise as a means of assessing ultrasonic inspection data

Spatial calibration of large volume photogrammetry based metrology systems

Photogrammetry systems are used extensively as volumetric measurement tools in a diverse range of applications including gait analysis, robotics and computer generated animation. For precision applications the spatial inaccuracies of these systems are of interest. In this paper, an experimental characterisation of a six camera Vicon T160 photogrammetry system using a high accuracy laser tracker is presented. The study was motivated by empirical observations of the accuracy of the photogrammetry system varying as a function of location within a measurement volume of approximately 100 m3. Error quantification was implemented through simultaneously tracking a target scanned through a sub-volume (27 m3) using both systems. The position of the target was measured at each point of a grid in four planes at different heights. In addition, the effect of the use of passive and active calibration artefacts upon system accuracy was investigated. A convex surface was obtained when considering error as a function of position for a fixed height setting confirming the empirical observations when using either calibration artefact. Average errors of 1.48 mm and 3.95 mm were obtained for the active and passive calibration artefacts respectively. However, it was found that through estimating and applying an unknown scale factor relating measurements, the overall accuracy could be improved with average errors reducing to 0.51 mm and 0.59 mm for the active and passive datasets respectively. The precision in the measurements was found to be less than 10 μm for each axis

A Strong Jet Signature in the Late-Time Lightcurve of GW170817

We present new 0.6-10 GHz observations of the binary neutron star merger GW170817 covering the period up to 300 days post-merger, taken with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and the MeerKAT telescope. We use these data to precisely characterize the decay phase of the late-time radio light curve. We find that the temporal decay is consistent with a power-law slope of t^-2.2, and that the transition between the power-law rise and decay is relatively sharp. Such a slope cannot be produced by a quasi-isotropic (cocoon-dominated) outflow, but is instead the classic signature of a relativistic jet. This provides strong observational evidence that GW170817 produced a successful jet, and directly demonstrates the link between binary neutron star mergers and short-hard GRBs. Using simple analytical arguments, we derive constraints on the geometry and the jet opening angle of GW170817. These results are consistent with those from our companion Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) paper, reporting superluminal motion in GW170817.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter