Taking Issue with Takings: Has the Washington State Supreme Court Gone Too Far?

The Washington State Supreme Court has expressed concern for local governments\u27 potential financial liability under the taking clauses of the federal and state constitutions. Accordingly, the court adopted a comprehensive framework to analyze regulatory challenges and mitigate the chilling effect of potential financial liability. The court, however, went too far in its zeal to promote innovative land-use measures. Its broadly inclusive insulation doctrine allows little room for any regulatory takings. Because the insulation doctrine fails to meet a federal minimum of constitutionality, the doctrine must be relaxed to comport with precedent. To prevent the return of the chilling effect, the court must make substantive and procedural changes to state taking law to provide for an identification of the interests protected by the taking clause and an expedited review process for taking claims

Arithmetic complexity via effective names for random sequences

We investigate enumerability properties for classes of sets which permit recursive, lexicographically increasing approximations, or left-r.e. sets. In addition to pinpointing the complexity of left-r.e. Martin-L\"{o}f, computably, Schnorr, and Kurtz random sets, weakly 1-generics and their complementary classes, we find that there exist characterizations of the third and fourth levels of the arithmetic hierarchy purely in terms of these notions. More generally, there exists an equivalence between arithmetic complexity and existence of numberings for classes of left-r.e. sets with shift-persistent elements. While some classes (such as Martin-L\"{o}f randoms and Kurtz non-randoms) have left-r.e. numberings, there is no canonical, or acceptable, left-r.e. numbering for any class of left-r.e. randoms. Finally, we note some fundamental differences between left-r.e. numberings for sets and reals

Methods for identifying surgical wound infection after discharge from hospital: a systematic review.

Background: Wound infections are a common complication of surgery that add significantly to the morbidity of patients and costs of treatment. The global trend towards reducing length of hospital stay post-surgery and the increase in day case surgery means that surgical site infections (SSI) will increasingly occur after hospital discharge. Surveillance of SSIs is important because rates of SSI are viewed as a measure of hospital performance, however accurate detection of SSIs post-hospital discharge is not straightforward. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of methods of post discharge surveillance for surgical wound infection and undertook a national audit of methods of post-discharge surveillance for surgical site infection currently used within United Kingdom NHS Trusts. Results: Seven reports of six comparative studies which examined the validity of post-discharge surveillance methods were located; these involved different comparisons and some had methodological limitations, making it difficult to identify an optimal method. Several studies evaluated automated screening of electronic records and found this to be a useful strategy for the identification of SSIs that occurred post discharge. The audit identified a wide range of relevant post-discharge surveillance programmes in England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland; however, these programmes used varying approaches for which there is little supporting evidence of validity and/or reliability. Conclusion: In order to establish robust methods of surveillance for those surgical site infections that occur post discharge, there is a need to develop a method of case ascertainment that is valid and reliable post discharge. Existing research has not identified a valid and reliable method. A standardised definition of wound infection ( e. g. that of the Centres for Disease Control) should be used as a basis for developing a feasible, valid and reliable approach to defining post discharge SSI. At a local level, the method used to ascertain post discharge SSI will depend upon the purpose of the surveillance, the nature of available routine data and the resources available

Contribution of solitons to enhanced rogue wave occurrence in shallow depths: a case study in the southern North Sea

The shallow waters off the coast of Norderney in the southern North Sea are characterised by a higher frequency of rogue wave occurrences than expected. Here, rogue waves refer to waves exceeding twice the significant wave height. The role of nonlinear processes in the generation of rogue waves at this location is currently unclear. Within the framework of the Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation, we investigated the discrete soliton spectra of measured time series at Norderney to determine differences between time series with and without rogue waves. For this purpose, we applied a nonlinear Fourier transform (NLFT) based on the Korteweg–de Vries equation with vanishing boundary conditions (vKdV-NLFT). At measurement sites where the propagation of waves can be described by the KdV equation, the solitons in the discrete nonlinear vKdV-NLFT spectrum correspond to physical solitons. We do not know whether this is the case at the considered measurement site. In this paper, we use the nonlinear spectrum to classify rogue wave and non-rogue wave time series. More specifically, we investigate if the discrete nonlinear spectra of measured time series with visible rogue waves differ from those without rogue waves. Whether or not the discrete part of the nonlinear spectrum corresponds to solitons with respect to the conditions at the measurement site is not relevant in this case, as we are not concerned with how these spectra change during propagation. For each time series containing a rogue wave, we were able to identify at least one soliton in the nonlinear spectrum that contributed to the occurrence of the rogue wave in that time series. The amplitudes of these solitons were found to be smaller than the crest height of the corresponding rogue wave, and interaction with the continuous wave spectrum is needed to fully explain the observed rogue wave. Time series with and without rogue waves showed different characteristic soliton spectra. In most of the spectra calculated from rogue wave time series, most of the solitons clustered around similar heights, but the largest soliton was outstanding, with an amplitude significantly larger than all other solitons. The presence of a clearly outstanding soliton in the spectrum was found to be an indicator pointing towards the enhanced probability of the occurrence of a rogue wave in the time series. Similarly, when the discrete spectrum appears as a cluster of solitons without the presence of a clearly outstanding soliton, the presence of a rogue wave in the observed time series is unlikely. These results suggest that soliton-like and nonlinear processes substantially contribute to the enhanced occurrence of rogue waves off Norderney.</p

Fractionation of lead in soil by isotopic dilution and sequential extraction

‘Reactivity’ or ‘lability’ of lead is difficult to measure using traditional methods. We investigated the use of isotopic dilution with 204Pb to determine metal reactivity in four soils historically contaminated with contrasting sources of Pb, including (i) petrol-derived Pb, (ii) Pb/Zn minespoil, (iii) long-term sewage sludge application and (iv) 19th century urban waste disposal; total soil Pb concentrations ranged from 217 to 13 600 mg kg–1. A post-spike equilibration period of 3 days and suspension in 5.0 × 10–4 M ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid provided reasonably robust conditions for measuring isotopically exchangeable Pb. However, in acidic organic soils a dilute Ca(NO3)2 electrolyte may be preferable to avoid mobilisation of ‘non-labile’ Pb. Results showed that the reactive pool of soil Pb can be a large proportion of the total soil lead content but varies with the original Pb source. A comparison of isotopic exchangeability with the results of a sequential extraction procedure showed that (isotopically) ‘non-labile’ Pb may be broadly equated with ‘residual’ Pb in organic soils. However, in mineral soils the ‘carbonate’ and ‘oxide-bound’ Pb fractions included non-labile forms of Pb. The individual isotopic signatures of labile and non-labile Pb pools suggested that, despite prolonged contact with soil, differences between the lability of the original contaminant and the native soil Pb may remain