The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Second Year Reports

The city of Milwaukee is often called a laboratory for experimentation with parental school choice. Milwaukee is home to the first urban school voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), which has grown over the past 18 years to enroll 19,069 students in 124 different private schools 2007-08. A total of 58 public charter schools operate within the city’s boundaries, enrolling 17,549 students last year. Even students in the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system have a variety of magnet, community, open enrollment, and even inter-district school choice options available to them, so long as transportation funding holds out. When one thinks of school choice in America, one thinks of Milwauke

United Nations Financing of the Law of the Sea Preparatory Commission: May the United States Withhold Payment?

In this Note, the legal basis of the United States position will be evaluated. After an overview of the events surrounding the controversy, the sources of the General Assembly\u27s budgetary and apportioning authority and the United Nations\u27 budget procedures will be considered. There will follow a discussion of an International Court of Justice advisory opinion upon which both the United States and its opponents rely. Finally, the financial arrangement between the United Nations and the Preparatory Commission (Commission) will be examined in light of the formal relationship between those two bodies

Evening Methane Emission Pulses from a Boreal Wetland Correspond to Convective Mixing in Hollows

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of methane flux from boreal wetlands makes prediction and up-scaling challenging, both within and among wetland systems. Drivers of methane production and emissions are also highly variable, making empirical model development difficult and leading to uncertainty in methane emissions estimates from wetlands. Previous studies have examined this problem using point-scale (static chamber method) and ecosystem-scale (flux tower methods) measurements, but few studies have investigated whether different processes are observed at these scales. We analyzed methane emissions from a boreal fen, measured by both techniques, using data from the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study. We sought to identify driving processes associated with methane emissions at two scales and explain diurnal patterns in emissions measured by the tower. The mean methane emission rates from flux chambers were greater than the daytime, daily mean rates measured by the tower, but the nighttime, daily mean emissions from the tower were often an order of magnitude greater than emissions recorded during the daytime. Thus, daytime measurements from either the tower or chambers would lead to a biased estimate of total methane emissions from the wetland. We found that the timing of nighttime emission events was coincident with the cooling and convective mixing within hollows, which occurred regularly during the growing season. We propose that diurnal thermal stratification in shallow pools traps methane by limiting turbulent transport. This methane stored during daytime heating is later released during evening cooling due to convective turbulent mixing