Reflections on Seminole Rock: The Past, Present, and Future of Deference to Agency Regulatory Interpretations

Seminole Rock (or Auer) deference has captured the attention of scholars, policymakers, and the judiciary. That is why Notice & Comment, the blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation and the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice, hosted an online symposium from September 12 to September 23, 2016 on the subject. This symposium contains over 20 contributions addressing different aspects of Seminole Rock deference. Topics include: History of Seminole Rock Empirical Examinations of Seminole Rock Understanding Seminole Rock Within Agencies Understanding Seminole Rock as Applied to Tax, Environmental Law, and Criminal Sentencing Why Seminole Rock Matters Should the Supreme Court Overrule Seminole Rock? Would Overruling Seminole Rock Have Unintended Consequences? What Might the Supreme Court Do? What Might Congress Do? The Future of Seminole Roc

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

The Himalayas are among the world’s youngest mountain ranges. In addition to the geologic processes of mountain building and erosion, they are also highly vulnerable to human influenced change, occurring at local, national, regional, and international scales. A photo-elicitation methodology is employed to show how residents perceive those changes from historical perspectives, as well as their current conditions and impacts on their daily lives. Nepal’s Khumbu region has undergone major social and environmental transformations since the 1960s when international trekking first began to influence the area's economy. The current perceptions of Khumbu residents of these changes is assessed through photo-elicitation interviews. Their responses are placed in the historical context of: (i) institutional and political changes, much of which have been driven by national government policies; (ii) social and economic changes, for which the tourism economy has been central; and (iii) environmental changes, reflecting the impacts of resource management and climate change. The mostly positive perceptions of Khumbu residents toward how their region has changed reflects general improvements in the physical and cultural landscapes of the Khumbu over time, as well as its continuing geographic isolation, which has helped to slow the rate of globalization, while also keeping the region a dynamic and popular tourist destination

The Experiment for Space Radiation Analysis: Probing the Earth\u27s Radiation Belts Using a CubeSat Platform

The Experiment for Space Radiation Analysis (ESRA) is the latest of a series of Demonstration and Validation missions built by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the focus on testing a new generation of plasma and energetic particle sensors. The primary motivation for the ESRA payloads is to minimize size, weight, power, and cost while still providing necessary mission data. These new instruments will be demonstrated by ESRA through testing and on-orbit operations to increase their technology readiness level such that they can support the evolution of technology and mission objectives. This project will leverage a commercial off-the-shelf CubeSat avionics bus and commercial satellite ground networks to reduce the cost and timeline associated with traditional DemVal missions. The system will launch as a ride share with the DoD Space Test Program to be inserted in Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and allow observations of the Earth’s radiation belts. The ESRA CubeSat consists of two science payloads and several subsystems: the Wide-field-of-view Plasma Spectrometer, the Energetic Charged Particle telescope, high voltage power supply, payload processor, flight software architecture, and distributed processor module. The ESRA CubeSat will provide measurements of the plasma and energetic charged particle populations in the GTO environment for ions ranging from ~100 eV to ~1000 MeV and electrons with energy ranging from 100 keV to 20 MeV. ESRA will utilize a commercial 12U bus and demonstrate a low-cost, rapidly deployable spaceflight platform with sufficient SWAP to enable efficient measurements of the energetic particle populations in the dynamic radiation belts

The global subject of precarity

Peer reviewedPostprin

Impregnation of healthy nail tissue with optical clearing agents for improved optical coherence tomography imaging

Objectives: The impact of optical tissue clearing on optical coherence tomography (OCT) for nail tissue imaging has not been investigated. This study seeks to compare the effects of an emollient and water on visualization of micromorphology and morphometric outcomes. Materials and methods: Thirty-six healthy nail plates were processed with a fractional CO2 laser, imaged with OCT, and measured with calipers in duplicates. All samples were reassessed after 12-hour long sequential immersion in water and an emollient (Crodamol™ STS). OCT images were evaluated for thickness and scattering signal of the nail. Results: Emollient-impregnation caused stronger scatter responses (P < .0001) and decreased nail thickness (MD 45 μm, P < .0001) measured on OCT. Caliper-derived measurements were not affected by Crodamol™ (MD 11 μm, P = .5538). Hydration increased nail thickness on OCT (MD 49 μm, P < .0001) but reduced thickness measurements taken with calipers (MD 41 μm, P < .0001). Emollient-impregnation improved visualization of onychocytes compared with dry (P = .0209) and hydrated samples (P < .0001), and reduced occurrence of refractive artifacts (P < .0001). Conclusion: The use of an emollient for OCT imaging can enhance nail tissue visualization without significant effects on caliper measurements. Hydration of nails, in contrast with emollient-impregnation, may lead to disagreement between caliper- and OCT-measured nail thickness and should be practiced cautiously

Optical Imaging Visualizes a Homogeneous and Horizontal Band-Like Biodistribution of Large- and Small-Size Hydrophilic Compounds Delivered by Ablative Fractional Laser

The skin barrier generally limits the topical delivery of hydrophilic molecules. Ablative fractional laser (AFL) facilitates cutaneous drug uptake of smaller hydrophilic compounds in several studies. In this imaging-based study, we aim to investigate the cutaneous biodistribution of two different-sized hydrophilic compounds delivered by an ablative fractional CO2 laser at minimally invasive settings. Intact or CO2 AFL-pretreated (2.5 mJ/mb and 5% density) ex vivo porcine skin was topically applied with a large or small hydrophilic compound (fluorescence labeled antibody nivolumab (150,000 g/mol, n = 4) or ATTO 647N (746 g/mol, n = 3)). Samples were incubated for 20 h in a Franz cell setup, whereafter optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to assess laser channel depth, and ex vivo confocal microscopy (EVCM) was used to assess epidermal thickness and cutaneous biodistribution of nivolumab and ATTO 647N. With an EVCM-assessed median epidermal thickness of 70.3 µm and OCT-assessed ablation depth of 31.9 µm, minimally invasive settings enabled shallow penetration into the mid-epidermis. The AFL-assisted uptake of the antibody nivolumab and the smaller compound ATTO 647N showed a similar homogenous and horizontal band-like biodistribution pattern that reached mid-dermis. No uptake of nivolumab or ATTO 647N was observed in intact skin. In conclusion, AFL-induced mid-epidermal laser channels facilitates the cutaneous delivery of two hydrophilic compounds that are distributed in a similar homogeneous and horizontal band-like pattern, irrespective of their molecular size