Clean Air, Clean Processes? The Struggle over Air Pollution Law in the People\u27s Republic of China

This Article commences in Part I by introducing law-making in China before reconstructing the drafting process and attendant political battles leading up to the revision of China\u27s principal air pollution law in 1995 – which, as Ackerman and Hassler observed with reference to the United States, can be every bit as messy as the soiled air such efforts are intended to address. Part II then examines the institutional factors that ultimately are critical to an understanding of why the 1995 APPCL, as promulgated, fell well short of its original authors\u27 objectives but set in motion a process that over time has led to the realization of at least some of these legislative goals through the 2000 APPCL. The Article concludes by suggesting the implications of these institutional considerations for environmental law and legislative development more generally in the PRC

Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence from a Field Experiment

This paper presents the results of a randomized field experiment that provided information about key Social Security features to older workers. The experiment was designed to examine whether it is possible to affect individual behavior using a relatively inexpensive informational intervention about the provisions of a public program and to explore the mechanisms underlying the behavior change. We find that our relatively mild intervention (sending an informational brochure and an invitation to a web-tutorial) increased labor force participation one year later by 4 percentage points relative to the control group mean of 74 percent. (JEL C93, D12, H55

Buzz Baum: The art of cell shape

The People\u27s Republic of China (PRC) suffers greatly from problems of air pollution that also have global implications. This Article examines the PRC\u27s efforts in recent years to address the question of air quality legislatively. It uses a detailed analysis of the process through which China has developed national air pollution law to assess the impact of institutional design on such efforts and to consider Chinese legal development more generally

Local Area Signal-to-Noise Ratio (LASNR) algorithm for Image Segmentation

Many automated image-based applications have need of finding small spots in a variably noisy image. For humans, it is relatively easy to distinguish objects from local surroundings no matter what else may be in the image. We attempt to capture this distinguishing capability computationally by calculating a measurement that estimates the strength of signal within an object versus the noise in its local neighborhood. First, we hypothesize various sizes for the object and corresponding background areas. Then, we compute the Local Area Signal to Noise Ratio (LASNR) at every pixel in the image, resulting in a new image with LASNR values for each pixel. All pixels exceeding a pre-selected LASNR value become seed pixels, or initiation points, and are grown to include the full area extent of the object. Since growing the seed is a separate operation from finding the seed, each object can be any size and shape. Thus, the overall process is a 2-stage segmentation method that first finds object seeds and then grows them to find the full extent of the object. This algorithm was designed, optimized and is in daily use for the accurate and rapid inspection of optics from a large laser system (National Ignition Facility (NIF), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA), which includes images with background noise, ghost reflections, different illumination and other sources of variation

The Effect of Natural Mulches on Crop Performance, Weed Suppression and Biochemical Constituents of Catnip and St. John\u27s Wort

Because of expanding markets for high-value niche crops, opportunities have increased for the production of medicinal herbs in the USA. An experiment was conducted in 2001 and 2002 near Gilbert, IA, to study crop performance, weed suppression, and environmental conditions associated with the use of several organic mulches in the production of two herbs, catnip (Nepeta cataria L.) and St. John\u27s wort (Hypericum perforatum L. ‘Helos’). Treatments were arranged in a completely randomized design and included a positive (hand-weeded) control, a negative (nonweeded) control, oat straw, a flax straw mat, and a nonwoven wool mat. Catnip plant height was significantly greater in the oat straw than the other treatments at 4 wk through 6 wk in 2001; at 4 to 8 wk in 2002, catnip plant height and width was significantly lower in the negative control compared with the other treatments. Catnip yield was significantly higher in the flax straw mat than all other treatments in 2001. In 2002, St. John\u27s wort yields were not statistically different in any treatments. All weed management treatments had significantly fewer weeds than the non-weeded rows in 2002. Total weed density comparisons in each crop from 2 yr showed fewer weeds present in the flax straw and wool mat treatments compared with positive control plots. There was no significant weed management treatment effect on the concentration of the target compounds, nepetalactone in catnip and pseudohypericin–hypericin in St. John\u27s wort, although there was a trend toward higher concentrations in the flax straw treatment

Effects of hippocampal damage on reward threshold and response rate during self-stimulation of the ventral tegmental area in the rat

The main purpose of this study was to explore the role of the hippocampus in motivated behavior. Rats with bilateral excitotoxic lesions of the hippocampus and controls were trained to lever press for electrical stimulation of the ventral tegmental area. Rate intensity functions were generated from an ascending and descending series of current intensities. Lesion-induced changes in sensitivity to reward were distinguished from enhancements in motor output by calculating reward thresholds and maximal response rates from the rate-intensity functions. Rats with hippocampal damage showed lower reward thresholds and higher maximal response rates than controls. These results provide further evidence of hippocampal modulation of the nucleus accumbens, suggesting that lesions of this structure enhance sensitivity to reward and increase motor output

Creating number states in the micromaser using feedback

We use the quantum theory of feedback developed by Wiseman and Milburn [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 548 (1993)] and Wiseman [Phys. Rev. A 49, 2133 (1994)] to investigate the photon-number noise properties of the micromaser with direct detection feedback. We find that the feedback can significantly reduce the amount of noise in the photon number. Under the right conditions the feedback locks the systems onto a number state. As opposed to other schemes in the past [P. Meystre, Opt. Lett. 12, 669 (1987); J. Krause, M. O. Scully, and H. Walther, Phys. Rev. A 36, 4547 (1987)], we can fix the number states to which the system evolves. We also simulate the micromaser using the quantum-trajectories method and show that these results agree with the quantum theory of feedback. We show that the noise of quantum island states [P. Bogar, J. A. Bergou, and M. Hillary, Phys. Rev. A 50, 754 (1994)] can be significantly reduced by the feedback