Welfare Reform: California Meets the Challenge

California\u27s welfare reform program, which included the Welfare Reform Act of 1971, constituted one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching, as well as controversial, social reforms in the history of the State. In its July 1972 issue the Pacific Law Journal published an article, authored by Senator Anthony Beilenson and Larry Agran, which presented the viewpoint of those opposed to many of the major provisions of the welfare reform program. The following article presents the viewpoint of those supporting that program. The authors were intimately involved in the planning, legislative negotiations, implementation, and litigation relating to the welfare reform program. Herein, they summarize the program, major provisions of the Welfare Reform Act, and discuss several of the significant court actions challenging those provisions

Direct measurement of molecular stiffness and damping in confined water layers

We present {\em direct} and {\em linear} measurements of the normal stiffness and damping of a confined, few molecule thick water layer. The measurements were obtained by use of a small amplitude (0.36 $\textrm{\AA}$), off-resonance Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) technique. We measured stiffness and damping oscillations revealing up to 7 layers separated by 2.56 $\pm$ 0.20 $\textrm{\AA}$. Relaxation times could also be calculated and were found to indicate a significant slow-down of the dynamics of the system as the confining separation was reduced. We found that the dynamics of the system is determined not only by the interfacial pressure, but more significantly by solvation effects which depend on the exact separation of tip and surface. Thus ` solidification\rq seems to not be merely a result of pressure and confinement, but depends strongly on how commensurate the confining cavity is with the molecule size. We were able to model the results by starting from the simple assumption that the relaxation time depends linearly on the film stiffness.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, will be submitted to PR

Energy of the Conduction Band in Near Critical Point Fluids

The study of the evolution of the conduction band in dense gases and supercritical fluids near the critical point has been complicated by a lack of precise experimental measurements. Both photoemission from an electrode immersed in the fluid and field ionization of a molecule doped into the fluid have been used to probe solvent density effects on the energy of an excess electron as a function of fluid number density and temperature. In this perspective, we present recent experimental results that show a strong critical point effect on the minimumconduction band energy near the critical density and temperature of a fluid.We also discuss the recent development of a new theoretical model that advances our understanding of the density and temperature dependence of the conduction band minimumin near critical point fluids