Why Aim Law Toward Human Survival

Our legal system is contributing to humanity’s demise by failing to take account of our species’ situation. For example, in some cases law works against life and supports interests such as liberty or profit maximization.If we do not act, science tells us that humanity bears a significant (and growing) risk of catastrophic failure. The significant risk inherent in the status quo is unacceptable and requires a response. We must act. It is getting hotter. When we decide to act, we need to make the right choice.There is no better choice. You and all your relatives have rights. The basic ones are life, liberty, and property. These secular rights apply to each of us and to all of us equally. At least they should. In any event, life comes first, both individually and collectively—for without life, we have no other rights. A collective life failure destroys all individual rights.We need to re-aim our systems from profit and wealth maximization toward supporting a longer life for the human species. Here is why: We are killing our planetary life support system. System failure kills our unique species, life as we know it, and all other rights. We are well on our way.This paper can neither begin to provide all the troubling details, nor should it. Looking down into the abyss of failure is unlikely to help. Instead of fighting a growing multiplicity of confusing and sometimes contradictory problems, we should aim ourselves in the opposite direction, away from failure and collapse—and toward the survival of our species.One key means to do this is with law which provides systems of control and enforcement of limits. We need to use law to structure and control the human system toward success. Instead of attempting to avoid death and collapse, we need to aim humanity toward a longer duration. Doing so will help structure our thinking and our laws, better protecting the rights of all. We need to engineer and aim law toward the survival of the human species and the life support system upon which we depend.Such complex global problems we as a species create and thus face cannot possibly have a one-person solution. The enormity of the situation requires that we work together. But if we structure our work, we stand a better chance of success. How can law help with the structure to support a human future? This is a question of philosophy and law

Preserving Life by Ranking Rights

Border walls, abortion, and the death penalty are the current battlegrounds of the right to life. We will visit each topic and more in this paper, as we consider ranking groups of constitutional rights.The enumerated rights of the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments—life, liberty, and property—merit special treatment. They have a deeper and richer history that involves ranking. Ranking life in lexical priority over liberty and property rights protects life first and maximizes safe liberty and property rights in the absence of a significant risk to life. This is not new law; aspects of it have long appeared in common law and statute. Federal implementation of ranking due process rights, an ordered substantive due process, would protect our most basic and fundamental right and make our entire legal system more humane. By using a conceptual partition between life and other rights, we can create channels of cooperation to solve problems of incommensurability and to provide a more just legal system

Why Law Now Needs to Control Rather than Follow Neo-Classical Economics

Selfish utilitarianism, neo-classical economics, the directive of short-term income maximization, and the decision tool of cost-benefit analysis fail to protect our species from the significant risks of too much consumption, pollution, or population. For a longer-term survival, humanity needs to employ more than cost-justified precaution.This article argues that, at the global level, and by extension at all levels of government, we need to replace neo-classical economics with filters for safety and feasibility to regulate against significant risk. For significant risks, especially those that are irreversible, we need decision tools that will protect humanity at all scales. This article describes both standards, their operations, and their interoperability. Further, it defends feasible risk reduction as an effective decision and regulatory tool

I. On tithonized chlorine

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Studies in Intestinal Obstruction: With a Report of Feeding Heterologous Jejunal and Ileac Cells to a Human Being

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Hierarchical metabolomics demonstrates substantial compositional similarity between genetically-modified and conventional potato crops

There is current debate whether genetically modified (GM) plants might contain unexpected, potentially undesirable changes in overall metabolite composition. However, appropriate analytical technology and acceptable metrics of compositional similarity require development. We describe a comprehensive comparison of total metabolites in field-grown GM and conventional potato tubers using a hierarchical approach initiating with rapid metabolome “fingerprinting” to guide more detailed profiling of metabolites where significant differences are suspected. Central to this strategy are data analysis procedures able to generate validated, reproducible metrics of comparison from complex metabolome data. We show that, apart from targeted changes, these GM potatoes in this study appear substantially equivalent to traditional cultivars

The lifetime of nitrogen oxides in an isoprene-dominated forest

The lifetime of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) affects the concentration and distribution of NO_x and the spatial patterns of nitrogen deposition. Despite its importance, the lifetime of NO_x is poorly constrained in rural and remote continental regions. We use measurements from a site in central Alabama during the Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS) in summer 2013 to provide new insights into the chemistry of NO_x and NO_x reservoirs. We find that the lifetime of NO_x during the daytime is controlled primarily by the production and loss of alkyl and multifunctional nitrates (ΣANs). During SOAS, ΣAN production was rapid, averaging 90 ppt h^(−1) during the day, and occurred predominantly during isoprene oxidation. Analysis of the ΣAN and HNO_3 budgets indicate that ΣANs have an average lifetime of under 2 h, and that approximately 45 % of the ΣANs produced at this site are rapidly hydrolyzed to produce nitric acid. We find that ΣAN hydrolysis is the largest source of HNO_3 and the primary pathway to permanent removal of NO_x from the boundary layer in this location. Using these new constraints on the fate of ΣANs, we find that the NO_x lifetime is 11 ± 5 h under typical midday conditions. The lifetime is extended by storage of NO_x in temporary reservoirs, including acyl peroxy nitrates and ΣANs