Discretionary Appellate Review of Non-Final Orders: It’s Time to Change the Rules

This article discusses the uncertainty of United States Courts of Appeals jurisdiction over non-final orders

INTERDEPENDENT INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE IN THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS: PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT

Prepared for: Federal Emergency Management AgencyThe U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is a territory comprised of three main islands—Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas—and a number of smaller surrounding islands, located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles approximately 40 miles east of Puerto Rico and over 1,100 miles from Miami, Florida. In September 2017, two Category-5 hurricanes made landfall within a two-week period and collectively devastated the homes, businesses, and infrastructure throughout the Territory.This technical report (1) explains the structure, function, and tensions associated with energy, water, transportation, and communication infrastructure that were chronic problems prior to the hurricanes; (2) documents hurricane response, recovery, and mitigation activities for these infrastructure systems after the hurricanes; and (3) provides concrete approaches to overcome potential barriers to resilience (where they exist) and open questions for research (where they do not yet exist).Federal Emergency Management AgencyFederal Emergency Management AgencyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Energy Transduction of Isothermal Ratchets: Generic Aspects and Specific Examples Close to and Far from Equilibrium

We study the energetics of isothermal ratchets which are driven by a chemical reaction between two states and operate in contact with a single heat bath of constant temperature. We discuss generic aspects of energy transduction such as Onsager relations in the linear response regime as well as the efficiency and dissipation close to and far from equilibrium. In the linear response regime where the system operates reversibly the efficiency is in general nonzero. Studying the properties for specific examples of energy landscapes and transitions, we observe in the linear response regime that the efficiency can have a maximum as a function of temperature. Far from equilibrium in the fully irreversible regime, we find a maximum of the efficiency with values larger than in the linear regime for an optimal choice of the chemical driving force. We show that corresponding efficiencies can be of the order of 50%. A simple analytic argument allows us to estimate the efficiency in this irreversible regime for small external forces.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure

Challenges of mainstreaming green infrastructure in built environment professions

© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Green infrastructure (GI) has been identified as a promising approach to help cities adapt to climate change through the provision of multiple ecosystem services. However, GI contributions to urban resilience will not be realized until it is more fully mainstreamed in the built environment and design professions. Here, we interrogate five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI: (1) design standards; (2) regulatory pathways; (3) socio-economic considerations; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. Methods include a literature review, case studies, and interviews with resilience managers. We propose a people-centred and context-dependent approach to advance effective implementation of GI in urban planning. We highlight two underlying currents that run across all of the challenges–(1) the role of political will as a pre-condition for tackling all challenges holistically; and (2) the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving public support, harnessing funding, and maintaining and monitoring GI in the long term. Highlights: • The effective implementation of GI is context-specific and should adhere to the basic principles of appropriate technology. • Continuous community engagement is needed to ensure the inclusivity and multi-functionality of GI. • Challenges to successful GI are intersectional and therefore cannot be addressed singly in isolation