The Verkhovna Rada Should Establish Courts of Limited Jurisdiction with Both Civil and Criminal Jurisdiction as Part of Ukrainian Judicial Reform

This article offers suggestions to the Ukraine Parliament on how to create an effective small claims court that addresses misdemeanor criminal cases, preliminary hearings and limited damages civil jurisdiction. The paper is one of nine papers presented by American judges offering prototype blueprints for the three basic levels of courts in Ukraine. Three judges addressed appeals, three judges addressed general jurisdiction courts, and this paper was one of the three papers addressing limited jurisdiction courts. The papers were written at the request of the National Judicial College and USAid.gov to guide Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen their judiciary. The author is a Tennessee municipal judge and a Native American appellate jurist

Electric Power Resource Shuffling and Subnational Carbon Regulation: Looking Upstream for a Solution

Resource shuffling occurs when different subnational approaches to carbon regulation create variations in the costs of production across jurisdictions. California is the most aggressive jurisdiction in the United States to address climate change and has adopted a cap & trade program for its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This Article addresses the resource shuffling issue presented by California\u27s cap-and-trade program and evaluates the merits of various legal and regulatory solutions to the problem

Electric Power Resource Shuffling and Subnational Carbon Regulation: Looking Upstream for a Solution

The potential for shuffling in wholesale power markets thwarts California’s ability to meet its AB 32 GHG emission reduction goals, and may even lead to emissions increases. Yet, as California’s efforts illustrate, resource shuffling is extremely difficult to regulate at the state level. Short of California aggressively reducing its emissions limits to reflect the leakage problem of shuffling, the state is incapable of solving the problem on its own. As states follow California’s lead in crafting their own approaches to regulating GHG emissions, national solutions will be necessary to address the problem of resource shuffling, given interstate markets in wholesale electric power. Undoubtedly EPA can play a role, but its flexible approach to state carbon regulation suggests it is likely to leave the management of shuffling largely to states. Moreover, without some ability to preempt states the EPA too is ill-equipped to address shuffling. This Article has argued that the superior solution to resource shuffling lies upstream, in the electric power markets managed by FERC. For subnational carbon emissions regulation to meet its goals, it must be recognized that shuffling is a problem created by pricing practices in upstream interstate power markets. The ultimate solution to this problem lies with the federal regulators who manage these markets, not with individual states

Rapid metabolic pathway assembly and modification using serine integrase site-specific recombination

Synthetic biology requires effective methods to assemble DNA parts into devices and to modify these devices once made. Here we demonstrate a convenient rapid procedure for DNA fragment assembly using site-specific recombination by ϕC31 integrase. Using six orthogonal attP/attB recombination site pairs with different overlap sequences, we can assemble up to five DNA fragments in a defined order and insert them into a plasmid vector in a single recombination reaction. ϕC31 integrase-mediated assembly is highly efficient, allowing production of large libraries suitable for combinatorial gene assembly strategies. The resultant assemblies contain arrays of DNA cassettes separated by recombination sites, which can be used to manipulate the assembly by further recombination. We illustrate the utility of these procedures to (i) assemble functional metabolic pathways containing three, four or five genes; (ii) optimize productivity of two model metabolic pathways by combinatorial assembly with randomization of gene order or ribosome binding site strength; and (iii) modify an assembled metabolic pathway by gene replacement or addition

On the Dissection of Rectangles into Right-Angled Isosceles Triangles

AbstractWe consider the problem of dissecting a rectangle or a square into unequal right-angled isosceles triangles. This is regarded as a generalization of the well-known and much-solved problem of dissecting such figures into unequal squares. There is an analogous “electrical” theory but it is based on digraphs instead of graphs and has an appropriate modification of Kirchhoff's first law. The operation of reversing all edges in the digraph is found to be of great help in the construction of “perfect” dissected squares

The 1:1 resonance in Extrasolar Systems: Migration from planetary to satellite orbits

We present families of symmetric and asymmetric periodic orbits at the 1/1 resonance, for a planetary system consisting of a star and two small bodies, in comparison to the star, moving in the same plane under their mutual gravitational attraction. The stable 1/1 resonant periodic orbits belong to a family which has a planetary branch, with the two planets moving in nearly Keplerian orbits with non zero eccentricities and a satellite branch, where the gravitational interaction between the two planets dominates the attraction from the star and the two planets form a close binary which revolves around the star. The stability regions around periodic orbits along the family are studied. Next, we study the dynamical evolution in time of a planetary system with two planets which is initially trapped in a stable 1/1 resonant periodic motion, when a drag force is included in the system. We prove that if we start with a 1/1 resonant planetary system with large eccentricities, the system migrates, due to the drag force, {\it along the family of periodic orbits} and is finally trapped in a satellite orbit. This, in principle, provides a mechanism for the generation of a satellite system: we start with a planetary system and the final stage is a system where the two small bodies form a close binary whose center of mass revolves around the star.Comment: to appear in Cel.Mech.Dyn.Ast

Quantum dot emission from site-controlled ngan/gan micropyramid arrays

InxGa1−xN quantum dots have been fabricated by the selective growth of GaN micropyramid arrays topped with InGaN/GaN quantum wells. The spatially, spectrally, and time-resolved emission properties of these structures were measured using cathodoluminescence hyperspectral imaging and low-temperature microphotoluminescence spectroscopy. The presence of InGaN quantum dots was confirmed directly by the observation of sharp peaks in the emission spectrum at the pyramid apices. These luminescence peaks exhibit decay lifetimes of approximately 0.5 ns, with linewidths down to 650 me