Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The Standing Rock Sioux’s effort to enjoin the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permitting of an oil pipeline was stifled by the United States District Court of the District of Columbia. In denying the preliminary injunction, the court held that the Tribe failed to show that the Corps violated the National Historic Preservation Act, and that the Tribe’s belated effort to litigate was futile after failing to participate in the consultation process

Oregon Natural Desert Association v. Jewell

In Oregon Natural Desert Association v. Jewell, the Ninth Circuit invalidated the BLM’s environmental review, finding that the agency based its approval of a wind-energy development on inaccurate scientific analysis. In negating the BLM’s action, the court held that flawed data and indefensible reasoning were discordant with NEPA’s central tenets. Furthermore, the court did not hold the BLM responsible for addressing a distinct environmental issue that was not brought to its attention during the public comment period

Barriers and Bridges: An Action Plan for Overcoming Obstacles and Unlocking Opportunities for African American Men in Pittsburgh

Among the region's residents, Pittsburgh's African American men have historically and disproportionately faced unprecedented barriers to economic opportunities. This study, supported by The Heinz Endowments, focuses on structural barriers that contribute to persistent racial disparities in the Pittsburgh region. Structural barriers are obstacles that collectively affect a group disproportionately and perpetuate or maintain stark disparities in outcomes. Structural barriers can be policies, practices, and other norms that favor an advantaged group while systematically disadvantaging a marginalized group. A community touched by racebased structural barriers can be identified by the racial and economic stratification of its residents; Pittsburgh, like many large cities in the United States, fits that description

Great Basin Resource Watch v. Bureau of Land Management

In Great Basin Resource Watch v. Bureau of Land Management, the Ninth Circuit invalidated the BLM’s environmental review, finding that the agency based its approval of a mining project on unsupported reasoning, inaccurate information, and deficient analysis. In negating the action, the court held that the BLM failed to take the hard look required by the National Environmental Policy Act

Analysis of a method for precisely relating a seafloor point to a distant point on land

A study of the environmental constraints and engineering aspects of the acoustic portion of a system for making geodetic ties between undersea reference points and others on land is described. Important areas in which to make such observations initially would be from the California mainland out to oceanic points seaward of the San Andreas fault, and across the Aleutian Trench. The overall approach would be to operate a GPS receiver in a relative positioning (interferometric) mode to provide the long range element of the baseline determination (10 to 1,000 km) and an array of precision sea floor acoustic transponders to link the locally moving sea surface GPS antenna location to a fixed sea floor point. Analyses of various environmental constrants (tides, waves, currents, sound velocity variations) lead to the conclusion that, if one uses a properly designed transponder having a remotely controllable precise retransmission time delay, and is careful with regard to methods for installing these on the sea floor, one should, in many ocean locations, be able to achieve sub-decimeter overall system accuracy. Achievements of cm accuracy or better will require additional understanding of time and space scales of variation of sound velocity structure in the ocean at relevant locations

Gauge dependence of effective action and renormalization group functions in effective gauge theories

The Caswell-Wilczek analysis on the gauge dependence of the effective action and the renormalization group functions in Yang-Mills theories is generalized to generic, possibly power counting non renormalizable gauge theories. It is shown that the physical coupling constants of the classical theory can be redefined by gauge parameter dependent contributions of higher orders in $\hbar$ in such a way that the effective action depends trivially on the gauge parameters, while suitably defined physical beta functions do not depend on those parameters.Comment: 13 pages Latex file, additional comments in section

Approach to a rational rotation number in a piecewise isometric system

We study a parametric family of piecewise rotations of the torus, in the limit in which the rotation number approaches the rational value 1/4. There is a region of positive measure where the discontinuity set becomes dense in the limit; we prove that in this region the area occupied by stable periodic orbits remains positive. The main device is the construction of an induced map on a domain with vanishing measure; this map is the product of two involutions, and each involution preserves all its atoms. Dynamically, the composition of these involutions represents linking together two sector maps; this dynamical system features an orderly array of stable periodic orbits having a smooth parameter dependence, plus irregular contributions which become negligible in the limit.Comment: LaTeX, 57 pages with 13 figure

Interacting fermions and domain wall defects in 2+1 dimensions

We consider a Dirac field in 2+1 dimensions with a domain wall like defect in its mass, minimally coupled to a dynamical Abelian vector field. The mass of the fermionic field is assumed to have just one linear domain wall, which is externally fixed and unaffected by the dynamics. We show that, under some general conditions on the parameters, the localized zero modes predicted by the Callan and Harvey mechanism are stable under the electromagnetic interaction of the fermions

Method and system for measuring sound velocity

A method and system for determining the speed of sound in a fluidic medium by determining the travel time of an acoustical signal a predetermined distance in a fluidic medium by generating a cyclical reference signal of a predetermined frequency and transmitting a portion of the reference signal through the medium. The transmitted portion of the reference signal is received after travelling a predetermined distance in the fluidic medium. The cycles of the cyclical reference signal are counted during the period of time between the transmitting and receiving of the portion of the reference signal wherein the travel time of the portion of the reference signal, is the number of cycle counts divided by the frequency. The speed of the acoustical signal through the fluidic medium is a function of the path length divided by the travel time

Geometric representation of interval exchange maps over algebraic number fields

We consider the restriction of interval exchange transformations to algebraic number fields, which leads to maps on lattices. We characterize renormalizability arithmetically, and study its relationships with a geometrical quantity that we call the drift vector. We exhibit some examples of renormalizable interval exchange maps with zero and non-zero drift vector, and carry out some investigations of their properties. In particular, we look for evidence of the finite decomposition property: each lattice is the union of finitely many orbits.Comment: 34 pages, 8 postscript figure