Zoning Churches: Washington State Constitutional Limitations on the Application of Land Use Regulations to Religious Buildings

This Article traces a path to various land use regulatory approaches that should survive scrutiny under the Washington State Constitution. Part I outlines the legal history of challenges to the application of zoning regulations to church buildings; Part I also describes the contexts in which such disputes presently arise. Part II introduces the Washington State Constitution\u27s provision regarding the free exercise of religion and describes the limited body of case law that has applied this provision in the land use context. Part III considers the role of federal case law in interpreting the free exercise clause of the Washington State Constitution. Part IV discusses how,if future cases are not resolved under existing case law, cases should be analyzed under the state constitution. Finally, Part V briefly considers the limit the establishment clause would impose on any exceptions for churches from generally applicable zoning regulations, whether based on a legislative enactment or a more expansive interpretation of the free exercise clause. Ultimately, this Article concludes that land use regulatory systems can be applied to churches in a manner that complies with the Washington State Constitution

The Parallel Worm Tracker: A Platform for Measuring Average Speed and Drug-Induced Paralysis in Nematodes

Background Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion is a simple behavior that has been widely used to dissect genetic components of behavior, synaptic transmission, and muscle function. Many of the paradigms that have been created to study C. elegans locomotion rely on qualitative experimenter observation. Here we report the implementation of an automated tracking system developed to quantify the locomotion of multiple individual worms in parallel. Methodology/Principal Findings Our tracking system generates a consistent measurement of locomotion that allows direct comparison of results across experiments and experimenters and provides a standard method to share data between laboratories. The tracker utilizes a video camera attached to a zoom lens and a software package implemented in MATLAB®. We demonstrate several proof-of-principle applications for the tracker including measuring speed in the absence and presence of food and in the presence of serotonin. We further use the tracker to automatically quantify the time course of paralysis of worms exposed to aldicarb and levamisole and show that tracker performance compares favorably to data generated using a hand-scored metric. Conclusions/Signficance Although this is not the first automated tracking system developed to measure C. elegans locomotion, our tracking software package is freely available and provides a simple interface that includes tools for rapid data collection and analysis. By contrast with other tools, it is not dependent on a specific set of hardware. We propose that the tracker may be used for a broad range of additional worm locomotion applications including genetic and chemical screening

Two Inter-Row Spacing and Staggered Planting on Collard (Brassica oleracea L. var. acephala DC.) Yield in a Wiregrass Tunnel House

There is interest among small vegetable producers to grow collards in Tunnel Houses during the winter months. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to determine if collard yields could be increased by reducing row spacing and increasing plant density. This study had four treatments replicated three times, and “Georgia” and “Hi-Crop Hybrid” collards were transplanted on single, and staggered rows spaced 18” and 24” apart in a split-split-plot design. At 45 days after transplanting 50% of the leaves from all plants in each treatment were harvested, counted, and weighed. The results showed staggered 18 and 24” rows increased yields by 43 and 51%, respectively, over single planted rows for both varieties. Staggered rows incurred higher planting costs, but increased net returns to management. The increase in yield was variety-dependent, thus suggesting that the genetic potential of the varieties needs to be considered when using plant density to increase yields

Estimating the potential blue carbon gains from tidal marsh rehabilitation: A case study from south eastern Australia

© Copyright © 2020 Gulliver, Carnell, Trevathan-Tackett, Duarte de Paula Costa, Masqué and Macreadie. Historically, coastal “blue carbon” ecosystems (tidal marshes, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows) have been impacted and degraded by human intervention, mainly in the form of land acquisition. With increasing recognition of the role of blue carbon ecosystems in climate mitigation, protecting and rehabilitating these ecosystems becomes increasingly more important. This study evaluated the potential carbon gains from rehabilitating a degraded coastal tidal marsh site in south-eastern Australia. Tidal exchange at the study site had been restricted by the construction of earthen barriers for the purpose of reclaiming land for commercial salt production. Analysis of sediment cores (elemental carbon and 210Pb dating) revealed that the site had stopped accumulating carbon since it had been converted to salt ponds 65 years earlier. In contrast, nearby recovered (“control”) tidal marsh areas are still accumulating carbon at relatively high rates (0.54 tons C ha–1year–1). Using elevation and sea level rise (SLR) data, we estimated the potential future distribution of tidal marsh vegetation if the earthen barrier were removed and tidal exchange was restored to the degraded site. We estimated that the sediment-based carbon gains over the next 50 years after restoring this small site (360 ha) would be 9,000 tons C, which could offset the annual emissions of ∼7,000 passenger cars at present time (at 4.6 metric tons pa.) or ∼1,400 Australians. Overall, we recommend that this site is a promising prospect for rehabilitation based on the opportunity for blue carbon additionality, and that the business case for rehabilitation could be bolstered through valuation of other co-benefits, such as nitrogen removal, support to fisheries, sediment stabilization, and enhanced biodiversity

Suitability of meteorological data for interpreting ammonia concentrations on Ballynahone Bog SAC.

Meteorology plays a key role in atmospheric nitrogen (N) input to designated sites, in terms of local ammonia (NH3) concentrations and N deposition originating from local, regional and transboundary sources. An earlier study by Williams et al. (2021) compared how local prevailing wind patterns could affect atmospheric nitrogen dispersion and thus the measured NH3 concentrations at Ballynahone Bog Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Other meteorological variables that influence local NH3 emissions and therefore N input to sensitive habitats, are temperature, precipitation and humidity. To determine how local weather patterns influence NH3 concentrations on the bog, we therefore need to investigate these other, potential confounding, meteorological parameters, in addition to wind direction and wind speed. The aim of this study was to investigate local meteorological patterns and their temporal variability using locally measured weather data for the period October 2020 to September 2021

Time is not enough : promoting strategic engagement with writing for publication

Research, scholarship and publication are central to the work of higher education. However, even academics with the necessary research and writing skills can struggle to publish as often as they would like. Research suggests that a writing retreat is one solution; there is a process going on there that addresses the problem, but how it does so has not been fully explained. We used a novel approach, containment theory, to explain why the functions of a structured retreat work. We argue that a retreat does more than simply provide time to write; it is a model for academics to meet the demands of research assessment. Finally, we conceptualise this as strategic engagement - a model for producing regular writing for publication while continuing to meet other professional demands

The influence of residential and workday population mobility on exposure to air pollution in the UK

Traditional approaches of quantifying population-level exposure to air pollution assume that concentrations of air pollutants at the residential address of the study population are representative for overall exposure. This introduces potential bias in the quantification of human health effects. Our study combines new UK Census data comprising information on workday population densities, with high spatio-temporal resolution air pollution concentration fields from the WRF-EMEP4UK atmospheric chemistry transport model, to derive more realistic estimates of population exposure to NO2, PM2.5 and O3. We explicitly allocated workday exposures for weekdays between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. Our analyses covered all of the UK at 1 km spatial resolution. Taking workday location into account had the most pronounced impact on potential exposure to NO2, with an estimated 0.3 μg m−3 (equivalent to 2%) increase in population-weighted annual exposure to NO2 across the whole UK population. Population-weighted exposure to PM2.5 and O3 increased and decreased by 0.3%, respectively, reflecting the different atmospheric processes contributing to the spatio-temporal distributions of these pollutants. We also illustrate how our modelling approach can be utilised to quantify individual-level exposure variations due to modelled time-activity patterns for a number of virtual individuals living and working in different locations in three example cities. Changes in annual-mean estimates of NO2 exposure for these individuals were considerably higher than for the total UK population average when including their workday location. Conducting model-based evaluations as described here may contribute to improving representativeness in studies that use small, portable, automatic sensors to estimate personal exposure to air pollution

Development and use of lentiviral vectors pseudotyped with influenza B haemagglutinins: application to vaccine immunogenicity, mAb potency and sero-surveillance studies

Influenza B viruses cause respiratory disease epidemics in human populations and are included in seasonal influenza vaccines. Serological methods are employed to evaluate vaccine immunogenicity prior to licensure. However, the haemagglutination inhibition assay, which represents the gold standard for assessing the immunogenicity of influenza vaccines, has been shown to be relatively insensitive for the detection of antibodies against influenza B viruses. Furthermore, this assay, and the serial radial haemolysis assay are not able to detect stalk-directed cross-reactive antibodies. For these reasons there is a need to develop new assays that can overcome these limitations. The use of replication-defective viruses, such as lentiviral vectors pseudotyped with influenza A haemagglutinins, in microneutralization assays is a safe and sensitive alternative to study antibody responses elicited by natural infection or vaccination. We have produced Influenza B haemagglutinin-pseudotypes using plasmid-directed transfection. To activate influenza B haemagglutinin, we have explored the use of proteases by adding relevant encoding plasmids to the transfection mixture. When tested for their ability to transduce target cells, the newly produced influenza B pseudotypes exhibit tropism for different cell lines. Subsequently the pseudotypes were evaluated as surrogate antigens in microneutralization assays using reference sera, monoclonal antibodies, human sera collected during a vaccine immunogenicity study and surveillance sera from seals. The influenza B pseudotype virus neutralization assay was found to effectively detect neutralizing and cross-reactive responses despite lack of significant correlation with the haemagglutinin inhibition assay

Long-term increases in soil carbon due to ecosystem fertilization by atmospheric nitrogen deposition demonstrated by regional-scale modelling and observations

Fertilization of nitrogen (N)-limited ecosystems by anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen deposition (Ndep) may promote CO2 removal from the atmosphere, thereby buffering human effects on global radiative forcing. We used the biogeochemical ecosystem model N14CP, which considers interactions among C (carbon), N and P (phosphorus), driven by a new reconstruction of historical Ndep, to assess the responses of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in British semi-natural landscapes to anthropogenic change. We calculate that increased net primary production due to Ndep has enhanced detrital inputs of C to soils, causing an average increase of 1.2 kgCm−2 (c. 10%) in soil SOC over the period 1750–2010. The simulation results are consistent with observed changes in topsoil SOC concentration in the late 20th Century, derived from sample-resample measurements at nearly 2000 field sites. More than half (57%) of the additional topsoil SOC is predicted to have a short turnover time (c. 20 years), and will therefore be sensitive to future changes in Ndep. The results are the first to validate model predictions of Ndep effects against observations of SOC at a regional field scale. They demonstrate the importance of long-term macronutrient interactions and the transitory nature of soil responses in the terrestrial C cycle