Where the Twain Shall Meet: Standing and Remedy in Alaska Center for the Environment v. Browner

In 1994, the Ninth Circuit affirmed standing for citizens to sue to compel the EPA Administrator to undertake a statewide TMDL program. Although the citizens had standing for only some of the water-quality-limited waters in Alaska, the court held that the underlying cause of action was the EPA\u27s failure to initiate the TMDL process for Alaska. This Note proposes that the court improperly reasoned its way to the correct holding. Like the EPA, the court confused standing to sue with the ultimate scope of the remedy. This Note proposes a three-step analysis to consider issues of standing and remedy. The first step is to determine the scope of the underlying action by analyzing the legal duty that forms the basis for the claim. This scoping action is critical since it serves as the referent for the next two steps. The second step is to determine whether the plaintiff has standing with respect to the underlying action. If the court decides on the merits of the case that the plaintiff should prevail, the third step is to determine the appropriate remedy. In this step, the court starts with the underlying cause of action and incorporates other factors as appropriate. This three-step analysis decouples the standing and remedy analyses and should lead to better reasoned opinions. I. INTRODUCTION In Alaska Center for the Environment v. Browner (ACE III), 1 the Ninth Circuit distinguished between standing to sue and the ultimate scope of the remedy. The court affirmed standing for a group ..

Surface term for the capillary condensation transitions in a slit geometry

It is shown that a bare simple fluid model (SFM) proposed some years ago for studying adsorption between two semi-infinite solid walls can be improved by modifying the surface term in the grand potential for the film phase. Such a correction substantially improves the agreement between the predictions for phase transitions provided by that SFM and results obtained from calculations carried out for $^4$He with the density-functional method at zero temperature. The corrective term depends on the strength of the adsorption potential and observables of bulk helium.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table and 5 figure

Minimal Flavor Violation and the Scale of Supersymmetry Breaking

In this paper we explore the constraints from B-physics observables in SUSY models of Minimal Flavor Violation, in the large tan beta regime, for both low and high scale supersymmetry breaking scenarios. We find that the rare B-decays b -> s gamma and B_s -> mu+ mu- can be quite sensitive to the scale M at which supersymmetry breaking is communicated to the visible sector. In the case of high scale supersymmetry breaking, we show that the additional gluino contribution to the b -> s gamma and B_s -> mu+ mu- rare decay rates can be significant for large tan beta, mu and M_3. The constraints on B_u -> tau nu are relatively insensitive to the precise scale of M. We also consider the additional constraints from the present direct Higgs searches at the Tevatron in the inclusive H/A -> tau tau channel, and the latest CDMS direct dark matter detection experiments. We find that altogether the constraints from B-physics, Higgs physics and direct dark matter searches can be extremely powerful in probing regions of SUSY parameter space for low M_A and large tan beta, leading to a preference for models with a lightest CP-even Higgs mass close to the current experimental limit. We find interesting regions of parameter space that satisfy all constraints and can be probed by Higgs searches at the Tevatron and the LHC and by direct dark matter searches in the near future.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures. Added citations. Published in PR

Adsorption of rare-gas atoms on Cu(111) and Pb(111) surfaces by van der Waals-corrected Density Functional Theory

The DFT/vdW-WF method, recently developed to include the Van der Waals interactions in Density Functional Theory (DFT) using the Maximally Localized Wannier functions, is applied to the study of the adsorption of rare-gas atoms (Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe) on the Cu(111) and Pb(111) surfaces, at three high-symmetry sites. We evaluate the equilibrium binding energies and distances, and the induced work-function changes and dipole moments. We find that, for Ne, Ar, and Kr on the Cu(111) surface the different adsorption configurations are characterized by very similar binding energies, while the favored adsorption site for Xe on Cu(111) is on top of a Cu atom, in agreement with previous theoretical calculations and experimental findings, and in common with other close-packed metal surfaces. Instead, the favored site is always the hollow one on the Pb(111) surface, which therefore represents an interesting system where the investigation of high-coordination sites is possible. Moreover, the Pb(111) substrate is subject, upon rare-gas adsorption, to a significantly smaller change in the work function (and to a correspondingly smaller induced dipole moment) than Cu(111). The role of the chosen reference DFT functional and of different Van der Waals corrections, and their dependence on different rare-gas adatoms, are also discussed

Spectroscopy of Nine Cataclysmic Variable Stars

We present optical spectroscopy of nine cataclysmic binary stars, mostly dwarf novae, obtained primarily to determine orbital periods Porb. The stars and their periods are LX And, 0.1509743(5) d; CZ Aql, 0.2005(6) d; LU Cam, 0.1499686(4) d; GZ Cnc, 0.0881(4) d; V632 Cyg, 0.06377(8) d; V1006 Cyg, 0.09903(9) d; BF Eri, 0.2708804(4) d; BI Ori, 0.1915(5) d; and FO Per, for which Porb is either 0.1467(4) or 0.1719(5) d. Several of the stars proved to be especially interesting. In BF Eri, we detect the absorption spectrum of a secondary star of spectral type K3 +- 1 subclass, which leads to a distance estimate of approximately 1 kpc. However, BF Eri has a large proper motion (100 mas/yr), and we have a preliminary parallax measurement that confirms the large proper motion and yields only an upper limit for the parallax. BF Eri's space velocity is evidently large, and it appears to belong to the halo population. In CZ Aql, the emission lines have strong wings that move with large velocity amplitude, suggesting a magnetically-channeled accretion flow. The orbital period of V1006 Cyg places it squarely within the 2- to 3-hour "gap" in the distribution of cataclysmic binary orbital periods.Comment: 31 pages, 5 postscript and one PNG figure. Accepted for PAS

Emission Line Flickering from the Secondary Star in Cataclysmic Variables? A study of V3885 Sagitarii

Spectrophotometric observations of H-alpha and He I 6678 emission lines of the nova-like Cataclysmic Variable V3885 Sgr are presented and analyzed. The binary orbital period was determined as P = 0.20716071(22) days. Doppler Tomography was performed with both H-alpha and He I lines. Disc radial emissivity profiles were also computed. The tomography mapping of flickering sources was performed using the H-alpha line, from which we concluded that the flickering is not uniformly distributed on the disc. The observed tomogram of the flickering was compared with simulations, suggesting that the most intense flickering source in the H-alpha is not located in the accretion disc. It is proposed that the main line flickering source may be associated with the illuminated secondary star.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Accepted to be published on AJ. to donwload high resolution figures: http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/~fabiola/V3885_hires.pd