Constitutional Review of State Eminent Domain Legislation: \u3cem\u3eHawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff\u3c/em\u3e

The State of Hawaii has a unique land ownership problem directly affecting many of the state\u27s homeowners: a handful of people own a large percentage of the land available for residential housing. Consequently, a significant proportion of homeowners rent, under long-term leases, the land on which their homes are built. In 1967 the Hawaii legislature took action to break up this concentration of ownership by enacting the Land Reform Act. The legislature declared that such ownership was a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of Hawaii\u27s citizens because of its significant contribution to the spiraling inflation of land values. To alleviate the problem, the Act authorized a redistribution of the fees simple from the few landowner/lessors to the many homeowner/lessees, using the power of eminent domain. Since, at first blush, it appeared that the State of Hawaii was merely transferring private property from one private per son to another in defiance of the public use requirement of eminent domain, serious doubts were raised as to the constitutionality of the Act. The United States Supreme Court, however, had no trouble concluding that the Act was a constitutional exercise of the eminent domain power. The Court gave complete deference to the Hawaii legislature\u27s determination of public use by classifying the Act as ordinary socio-economic legislation enacted pursuant to the state\u27s police power. By focusing on the breadth of a state\u27s police power and on the deferential standard of review, the Court successfully avoided an independent examination of public use, a traditional judicial function. This Note will demonstrate that the Supreme Court\u27s deference to the Hawaii legislature\u27s public use determination was an unwarranted departure from case precedent and that the Court should have decided the case on the merits. This Note also will argue that the minimum rationality standard generally used to review socio-economic legislation is inappropriate in state eminent domain cases because only the state\u27s power is considered, while the interests of the condemnees are ignored

Nonlinear dielectric response at the excess wing of glass-forming liquids

We present nonlinear dielectric measurements of glass-forming glycerol and propylene carbonate applying electrical fields up to 671 kV/cm. The measurements extend to sufficiently high frequencies to allow for the investigation of the nonlinear behavior in the regime of the so-far mysterious excess wing, showing up in the loss spectra of many glass formers as a second power law at high frequencies. Surprisingly, we find a complete lack of nonlinear behavior in the excess wing, in marked contrast to the alpha-relaxation where, in agreement with previous reports, a strong increase of dielectric constant and loss is found.Comment: 8 pages (including 3 pages Supplementary Information), 4 + 1 figures. Revised according to suggestions of referee

VLA Imaging of the Disk Surrounding the Nearby Young Star TW Hya

The TW Hya system is perhaps the closest analog to the early solar nebula. We have used the Very Large Array to image TW Hya at wavelengths of 7mm and 3.6 cm with resolutions 0.1 arcseconds (about 5 AU) and 1.0 arcseconds (about 50 AU), respectively. The 7mm emission is extended and appears dominated by a dusty disk of radius larger than 50 AU surrounding the star. The 3.6 cm emission is unresolved and likely arises from an ionized wind or gyrosynchrotron activity. The dust spectrum and spatially resolved 7mm images of the TW Hya disk are fitted by a simple model with temperature and surface density described by radial power laws, $T(r)\propto r^{-0.5}$ and $\Sigma(r) \propto r^{-1}$. These properties are consistent with an irradiated gaseous accretion disk of mass $\sim0.03~{\rm M_{\odot}}$ with an accretion rate $\sim10^{-8}~{\rm M_{\odot}yr^{-1}}$ and viscosity parameter $\alpha = 0.01$. The estimates of mass and mass accretion rates are uncertain as the gas-to-dust ratio in the TW Hya disk may have evolved from the standard interstellar value.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter

Metastable states and information propagation in a 1D array of locally-coupled bistable cells

We study the effect of metastable states on the relaxation process (and hence information propagation) in locally coupled and boundary-driven structures. We first give a general argument to show that metastable states are inevitable even in the simplest of structures, a wire. At finite temperatures, the relaxation mechanism is a thermally assisted random walk. The time required to reach the ground state and its life time are determined by the coupling parameters. These time scales are studied in a model based on an array of quantum dots.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Applied Physic

Neutron activation analysis traces copper artifacts to geographical point of origin

Impurities remaining in the metallic copper are identified and quantified by spectrographic and neutron activation analysis. Determination of the type of ore used for the copper artifact places the geographic point of origin of the artifact

Speeding Up Computer Simulations: The Transition Observable Method

A method is presented which allows for a tremendous speed-up of computer simulations of statistical systems by orders of magnitude. This speed-up is achieved by means of a new observable, while the algorithm of the simulation remains unchanged.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures Submitted to Phys.Rev.E (August 1999) Replacement due to some minor change

Two-stage Kondo effect in a four-electron artificial atom

An artificial atom with four electrons is driven through a singlet-triplet transition by varying the confining potential. In the triplet, a Kondo peak with a narrow dip at drain-source voltage V_ds=0 is observed. The low energy scale V_ds* characterizing the dip is consistent with predictions for the two-stage Kondo effect. The phenomenon is studied as a function of temperature T and magnetic field B, parallel to the two-dimensional electron gas. The low energy scales T* and B* are extracted from the behavior of the zero-bias conductance and are compared to the low energy scale V_ds* obtained from the differential conductance. Good agreement is found between kT* and |g|muB*, but eV_ds* is larger, perhaps because of nonequilibrium effects.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Added labels on Fig. 3f and one referenc