Common Carrier Regulation of Telecommunications Contracts and the Private Carrier Alternative

The Communications Act of 1934 requires, among other things, that telephone companies as common carriers make their services available to the general public at affordable rates. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the authority to classify telephone services as common carriers as well as the ability to remove common carrier regulation to promote competition, satisfy consumer demand for individually tailored offerings, and avoid unnecessary regulatory costs. The Authors of this Article believe that the FCC should remove the common carrier regulation from certain long-distance service contracts and that such regulation is consistent with the deregulatory aims of the recent Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Article first reviews the judicial development of the common carrier definition which finds that a communications service is acting as a carrier if it either (1) actually holds out its service indiscriminately to the public or (2) is required to hold itself out because the public interest requires it. The Authors discuss the relatively broad application of this definition to new and existing telephone services in a series of cases. Part I concludes with an examination of recent instances where the FCC has used this definition to reclassify various telecommunications services as private or noncommon carriers/carriage. These instances fall into five categories: (1) satellite transponders, (2) broadcast-related services, (3) private land mobile services, (4) private microwave services, and (5) certain communications services, such as enhanced services and inside wiring. In Part II the Authors describe the growth and importance of individually negotiated telecommunications service contracts to the business operations of many customers. The Article then discusses the application of the private carrier alternative to these contracts. The Authors argue that there is nothing inherent in these contracts which requires that they be designated as common carrier services. The Authors offer several reasons why the FCC should no longer require that the contract services indiscriminately be held out to the public, including some of the potential benefits of removing this regulation. The Authors feel that classifying the service contracts as private would promote competition and innovation, as well as reduce regulatory costs

Common Carrier Regulation of Telecommunications Contracts and the Private Carrier Alternative

The Communications Act of 1934 requires, among other things, that telephone companies as common carriers make their services available to the general public at affordable rates. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the authority to classify telephone services as common carriers as well as the ability to remove common carrier regulation to promote competition, satisfy consumer demand for individually tailored offerings, and avoid unnecessary regulatory costs. The Authors of this Article believe that the FCC should remove the common carrier regulation from certain long-distance service contracts and that such regulation is consistent with the deregulatory aims of the recent Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Article first reviews the judicial development of the common carrier definition which finds that a communications service is acting as a carrier if it either (1) actually holds out its service indiscriminately to the public or (2) is required to hold itself out because the public interest requires it. The Authors discuss the relatively broad application of this definition to new and existing telephone services in a series of cases. Part I concludes with an examination of recent instances where the FCC has used this definition to reclassify various telecommunications services as private or noncommon carriers/carriage. These instances fall into five categories: (1) satellite transponders, (2) broadcast-related services, (3) private land mobile services, (4) private microwave services, and (5) certain communications services, such as enhanced services and inside wiring. In Part II the Authors describe the growth and importance of individually negotiated telecommunications service contracts to the business operations of many customers. The Article then discusses the application of the private carrier alternative to these contracts. The Authors argue that there is nothing inherent in these contracts which requires that they be designated as common carrier services. The Authors offer several reasons why the FCC should no longer require that the contract services indiscriminately be held out to the public, including some of the potential benefits of removing this regulation. The Authors feel that classifying the service contracts as private would promote competition and innovation, as well as reduce regulatory costs

Unconventional carrier-mediated ferromagnetism above room temperature in ion-implanted (Ga, Mn)P:C

Ion implantation of Mn ions into hole-doped GaP has been used to induce ferromagnetic behavior above room temperature for optimized Mn concentrations near 3 at.%. The magnetism is suppressed when the Mn dose is increased or decreased away from the 3 at.% value, or when n-type GaP substrates are used. At low temperatures the saturated moment is on the order of one Bohr magneton, and the spin wave stiffness inferred from the Bloch-law T^3/2 dependence of the magnetization provides an estimate Tc = 385K of the Curie temperature that exceeds the experimental value, Tc = 270K. The presence of ferromagnetic clusters and hysteresis to temperatures of at least 330K is attributed to disorder and proximity to a metal-insulating transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures (RevTex4

Synchronization of organ pipes: experimental observations and modeling

We report measurements on the synchronization properties of organ pipes. First, we investigate influence of an external acoustical signal from a loudspeaker on the sound of an organ pipe. Second, the mutual influence of two pipes with different pitch is analyzed. In analogy to the externally driven, or mutually coupled self-sustained oscillators, one observes a frequency locking, which can be explained by synchronization theory. Further, we measure the dependence of the frequency of the signals emitted by two mutually detuned pipes with varying distance between the pipes. The spectrum shows a broad ``hump'' structure, not found for coupled oscillators. This indicates a complex coupling of the two organ pipes leading to nonlinear beat phenomena.Comment: 24 pages, 10 Figures, fully revised, 4 big figures separate in jpeg format. accepted for Journal of the Acoustical Society of Americ

Towards a common C0-C2 mechanism: a critical evaluation of rate constants for syngas combustion kinetics

Since the pioneering studies of Tsang and Hampson [1], and of Baulch and co-workers [2, 3], the knowledge of elementary combustion kinetics has increased, largely due to more accurate theories, advanced computing facilities and progresses in experimental measurements [4]. However, no effort has been devoted to the collection and reinterpretation of this knowledge after the early 2000s. Starting in February 2017, we have collected and interpreted a very large number of direct and indirect rate constant measurements from the literature, as well as every state of the art theo-retical calculation available for 50 elementary reaction steps involved in H2/CO pyrolysis and combustion. A strong need for reconciling rate constant measurements and theory has emerged from this analysis. A significant number of the indirect measurements of rate constants and theoretical determinations seem, in fact, to disagree beyond the expected accuracy of parame-ters in the syngas subset. This is mostly due to the need for reconciliation of data and theory and the reinterpretation of the raw signals of the measurements with more accurate and better constrained models according to a careful iterative procedure. The joint effort of SMARTCAT partners at Politecnico di Milano, NUI Galway, ELTE Buda-pest and Denmark Technical University together with RWTH Aachen University (DE) and Argonne National Laboratory (USA), aims to propose a fundamentally based state of the art mechanism for syngas combustion, to serve as a reference for the entire combustion kinetics community. Due to many different reasons, models for real fuels available in the literature rely on more or less different C0-C2 subsets. These differences often do not have substantial im-pacts on the overall performances as different rates in the core mechanism are often counter-balanced by different rates in the model subset relating to heavier fuels. This leads to very sim-ilar radical distributions and therefore in similar macroscopic behavior. However, the adoption of a fundamentally based common core mechanism will constitute a substantial thrust to in-crease the robustness of higher molecular weight fuel’s kinetics

Structural differences of ethanol and DME jet flames in a hot diluted coflow

This study compares the flame structure of ethanol and dimethyl ether (DME) in a hot and diluted ox- idiser experimentally and computationally. Experiments were conducted on a Jet in Hot Coflow (JHC) burner, with the fuel jet issuing into a 1250-K coflow at three oxygen levels. Planar measurements using OH-LIF, CH 2 O-LIF, and Rayleigh scattering images reveal that the overall spatial distribution and evolution of OH, CH 2 O, and temperature were quite similar for the two fuels. For both the ethanol and the DME flames, a transitional flame structure occurred as the coflow oxygen level increased from 3% to 9%. This indicates that the flames shift away from the MILD combustion regime. Reaction flux analyses of ethanol and DME were performed with the OPPDIF code, and ethane (C 2 H 6 ) was also included in the analyses for comparison. These analyses reveal that the H 2 /O 2 pathways are very important for both ethanol and DME in the 3% O 2 cases. In contrast, the importance of fuel-specific reactions overtakes that of H 2 /O 2 reactions when fuels are burnt in the cold air or in the vitiated oxidant stream with 9% O 2 . Unsteady laminar flamelet analyses were also performed to investigate the ignition processes and help interpret experimental results. Flamelet equations were solved in time and mixture fraction field, which was pro- vided by non-reactive Large-Eddy Simulation (LES).Jingjing Ye, Paul R. Medwell, Konstantin Kleinheinz, Michael J. Evans, Bassam B. Dally, Heinz G. Pitsc

Questions of fairness and anti-doping in US cycling: The contrasting experiences of professionals and amateurs

The focus of researchers, media and policy on doping in cycling is often limited to the professional level of the sport. However, anti-doping test results since 2001 demonstrate that banned substances are also used by US cyclists at lower levels of the sport, necessitating a broader view of the patterns and motivations of substance use within the sport. In this article, we describe and explain the doping culture that has emerged in domestic US cycling among amateur and semi-professionals. Through analysis of records from sports governing bodies and journalistic reports, we assess the range of violation types and discuss the detection and punishing of riders who were not proven to have intended to cheat but became "collateral damage" in the war on doping. We argue that the phenomenon of doping is more complex than what has been shown to occur in elite sport, as it includes a wider variety of behaviours, situations and motivations. We develop fresh insights by examining cases where doping has been accidental, intrinsically motivated, non-performance enhancing or the result of prescribed medical treatments banned by anti-doping authorities. Such trends call into question the fairness of anti-doping measures, and we discuss the possibility of developing localised solutions to testing and sanctioning amateur athletes