The Marsh Trilogy: The Virginia Supreme Court Examines the Freedom of Information Act

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act ( the Act or the Virginia Act ) requires that all meetings of public bodies be open to the public. One of the purposes of the Act is to ensure to the people ... free entry to meetings of public bodies wherein the business of the people is beifig conducted. In three cases decided March 12, 1982, the Virginia Supreme Court examined some of the exceptions to this general requirement provided by the Act in section 2.1-344 of the Virginia Code. This section provides the specific purposes for which executive or closed meetings may be held and the procedure for closing meetings for these purposes

New Mechanism of Flavor Symmetry Breaking from Supersymmetric Strong Dynamics

We present a class of supersymmetric models in which flavor symmetries are broken dynamically, by a set of composite flavon fields. The strong dynamics that is responsible for confinement in the flavor sector also drives flavor symmetry breaking vacuum expectation values, as a consequence of a quantum-deformed moduli space. Yukawa couplings result as a power series in the ratio of the confinement to Planck scale, and the fermion mass hierarchy depends on the differing number of preons in different flavor symmetry-breaking operators. We present viable non-Abelian and Abelian flavor models that incorporate this mechanism.Comment: 24 pp. LaTe

The 1964 Iowa corn yield test

The results of the Iowa Corn Yield Test are published as an aid to Iowa farmers in selecting corn hybrids adapted to their farms. This is the forty-fifth consecutive year for the Iowa Corn Yield Test since its beginning in 1920 and the fifth consecutive year in which a picker-sheller has been used to harvest a majority of the test fields. Two-year averages are presented in tables 1-6 for both high and normal plant populations for each district. This is the second year of the district arrangement shown in fig. 1 and the second year in which all hybrids are compared at both high and normal plant populations at each location. The presentation of data on the hybrids tested does not imply approval or endorsement by the authors or by the agencies sponsoring or conducting the test

Naturalness and Higgs Decays in the MSSM with a Singlet

The simplest extension of the supersymmetric standard model - the addition of one singlet superfield - can have a profound impact on the Higgs and its decays. We perform a general operator analysis of this scenario, focusing on the phenomenologically distinct scenarios that can arise, and not restricting the scope to the narrow framework of the NMSSM. We reexamine decays to four b quarks and four tau's, finding that they are still generally viable, but at the edge of LEP limits. We find a broad set of Higgs decay modes, some new, including those with four gluon final states, as well as more general six and eight parton final states. We find the phenomenology of these scenarios is dramatically impacted by operators typically ignored, specifically those arising from D-terms in the hidden sector, and those arising from weak-scale colored fields. In addition to sensitivity of m_Z, there are potential tunings of other aspects of the spectrum. In spite of this, these models can be very natural, with light stops and a Higgs as light as 82 GeV. These scenarios motivate further analyses of LEP data as well as studies of the detection capabilities of future colliders to the new decay channels presented.Comment: 3 figures, 1 appendix; version to appear in JHEP; typos fixed and additional references and acknowledgements adde

Application of remote sensing to state and regional problems

The author has identified the following significant results. The Lowndes County data base is essentially complete with 18 primary variables and 16 proximity variables encoded into the geo-information system. The single purpose, decision tree classifier is now operational. Signatures for the thematic extraction of strip mines from LANDSAT Digital data were obtained by employing both supervised and nonsupervised procedures. Dry, blowing sand areas of beach were also identified from the LANDSAT data. The primary procedure was the analysis of analog data on the I2S signal slicer

Dilaton as the Higgs boson

We propose a model where the role of the electroweak Higgs field is played by the dilaton. The model contains terms which explicitly violate gauge invariance, however it is shown that this violation is fictitious, so that the model is a consistent low energy effective theory. In the simplest version of the idea the resulting low energy effective theory is the same as the top mode standard model.Comment: 6 pages, v2 with expanded discussio

The 1963 Iowa corn yield test

The results of the Iowa Corn Yield Test are published as an aid to Iowa farmers in selecting corn hybrids adapted to their farms. This is the forty-fourth consecutive year for the Iowa Corn Yield Test since its beginning in 1920 and the fourth consecutive year in which a picker-sheller has been used to harvest a majority of the test fields. Additional data are presented this year for high plant populations in tables 1, 6 and 12. The maturity trials at Ankeny and Kanawha include 2-, 3- and 4- year information for the first time. Soil fertility information of test fields is included for 1963. The presentation of data does not imply approval or endorsement of any of the hybrids tested b y the authors or by the agencies sponsoring or conducting the test

The introduction, deployment and impact of assistant practitioners in diagnostic radiography in Scotland

This article describes the outcomes of an evaluation of the impact of introducing Assistant Practitioners (AP) roles into imaging departments in 13 of the 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. Between 2006 and 2009 some 34 individuals were trained as APs in diagnostic radiography with 33 subsequently taking up AP posts. In 2010 NHS Education for Scotland commissioned an evaluation of the impact brought about through introduction of the diagnostic imaging AP role in imaging departments. The research found that a minority of the managers had considered the workforce implications of introducing the new roles or the supervisory arrangements that would be required. In some sites implementation of the roles had resulted in the release of radiographers for additional training and higher level activities, but in others financial constraints had limited such initiatives. Managers believed that APs had helped maintain or improve service capacity and quality