USING RIGHTS OF FIRST REFUSAL FOR FARMLAND RETENTION

How can rights of first refusal protect prime agricultural land? This paper develops a theory for valuing rights of first refusal based on compensation for foreclosing future demand, information asymmetry, and advance purchase of market share. A procedure is developed for governments to use these rights to prevent conversion.Land Economics/Use,

To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law

Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate their decisions via smartphones and other “smart” devices. They envision a legal utopia in which every fact pattern is assigned society’s preferred legal treatment in real time. But regulation is a dynamic process; regulated parties react to law. They change their behavior to pursue their preferred outcomes— which often diverge from society’s—and they will continue to do so under personalized law: They will provide regulators with incomplete or inaccurate information. They will attempt to manipulate the algorithms underlying personalized laws by taking actions intended to disguise their true characteristics. Personalized law can also (unintentionally) encourage regulated parties to act in socially undesirable ways, a phenomenon known as moral hazard. Moreover, regulators seeking to combat these dynamics will face significant constraints. Regulators will have imperfect information, both because of privacy concerns and because regulated parties and intermediaries will muddle regulators’ data. They may lack the authority or the political will to respond to regulated parties’ behavior. The transparency requirements of a democratic society may hinder their ability to thwart gamesmanship. Concerns about unintended consequences may further lower regulators’ willingness to personalize law. Taken together, these dynamics will limit personalized law’s ability to optimally match facts to legal outcomes. Personalized law may be a step forward, but it will not produce the utopian outcomes that some envision

The whole rock Sm-Nd \u27age\u27 for the 2825 Ma Ikkattoq gneisses (Greenland) is 800 Ma too young: Insights into Archaean TTG petrogenesis

The Ikkattoq gneisses of the Archaean gneiss complex in the Nuuk region, southern West Greenland, are the orthogneiss component within the amphibolite facies Tre Brodre terrane. They have mostly granodioritic compositions, with a small amount of quartz diorite. Sm-Nd isotopic data for a quartz diorite and five granodiorite Ikkattoq gneiss samples from within 5 km of the Ikkattoq (fjord) type locality yielded a regression with a slope equivalent to 2005 +/- 52 Ma (MSWD = 0.72). Regardless of the low MSWD, this cannot be the true age of the Ikkattoq gneisses, because all Ikkattoq gneisses yield U-Pb zircon dates of c. 2825 Ma and they are cut by the undeformed 2560 Ma Qorqut granite complex. This anomalously young regression \u27age\u27 resulted instead from mixing of different Nd components, indicating that the Ikkattoq gneisses are derived from mixed source materials. Taking the true age of the Ikkattoq gneisses as 2825 Ma from U-Pb zircon dating, the range of initial epsilon(Nd) in the Ikkattoq gneisses is -7.1 to -1.8. The negative initial epsilon(Nd) values mean that older, light rare earth enriched, sialic crust contributed to the igneous precursors of the Ikkattoq gneisses. This Nd evidence for contribution of older sialic crust is supported by positive epsilon(Sr) values for the Ikkattoq gneisses. With epsilon(Nd) values as low as -7.1 this older crustal component has to be Eoarchaean. The presence of scarce quartz diorites (low SiO(2), high MgO) suggests that ultramafic rocks (upper mantle?), metasomatised by the passage of fluids or silicic melts, were another contributing source. The Ikkattoq gneisses are proposed as a complex suite incorporating material derived from melting of much older sialic crust and probably upper mantle. The intercalation of tectonostratigraphic terranes during collisional orogeny at c. 2720 Ma destroyed the architecture of this 2825 Ma magmatic system, and the Ikkattoq gneisses now form a slice tectonically isolated from their source region. In terms of trace element parameters, the Ikkattoq gneisses resemble Phanerozoic volcanic arc granites. Thus an Andean-style arc setting for the generation of the Ikkattoq gneiss precursors is possible. Other Archaean TTG suites of the Nuuk region are generally thought to represent predominantly juvenile additions to the crust. In the broadest sense they do, because isotopic work over the past 30 years has demonstrated that they do not represent wholesale recycling of considerably older crust. However in detail, within these broadly juvenile suites, a contribution from older crust can be detected. Thus, c. 3000 Ma type-Nuk gneisses from around Nuuk town show a spread in epsilon(Nd) values down to -1.7. In this case, the likely older crustal component was 3230 Ma quartz diorite that occurs as enclaves in the c. 3000 Ma suite. Thus to a lesser or greater degree, some Meso- to Neoarchaean TTG suites in the Nuuk region display the same internal complexities and evidence for mixed sources as modem arc suites developed near the margins of older crust. (C) 2008 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved

Wetting phenomena in membrane distillation: Mechanisms, reversal, and prevention

Membrane distillation (MD) is a rapidly emerging water treatment technology; however, membrane pore wetting is a primary barrier to widespread industrial use of MD. The primary causes of membrane wetting are exceedance of liquid entry pressure and membrane fouling. Developments in membrane design and the use of pretreatment have provided significant advancement toward wetting prevention in membrane distillation, but further progress is needed. In this study, a broad review is carried out on wetting incidence in membrane distillation processes. Based on this perspective, the study describes the wetting mechanisms, wetting causes, and wetting detection methods, as well as hydrophobicity measurements of MD membranes. This review discusses current understanding and areas for future investigation on the influence of operating conditions, MD configuration, and membrane non-wettability characteristics on wetting phenomena. Additionally, the review highlights mathematical wetting models and several approaches to wetting control, such as membrane fabrication and modification, as well as techniques for membrane restoration in MD. The literature shows that inorganic scaling and organic fouling are the main causes of membrane wetting. The regeneration of wetting MD membranes is found to be challenging and the obtained results are usually not favorable. Several pretreatment processes are found to inhibit membrane wetting by removing the wetting agents from the feed solution. Various advanced membrane designs are considered to bring membrane surface non-wettability to the states of superhydrophobicity and superomniphobicity; however, these methods commonly demand complex fabrication processes or high-specialized equipment. Recharging air in the feed to maintain protective air layers on the membrane surface has proven to be very effective to prevent wetting, but such techniques are immature and in need of significant research on design, optimization, and pilot-scale studies. Keywords: Membrane distillation; Membrane wetting; Hydrophobicity; Pretreatment; Membrane modification; Revie

Developing a Robust Geologic Conceptual Model Using Pseudo 3-D P-Wave Seismic Reflection Data

As part of a multiscale hydrogeophysical and modeling study, a pseudo three-dimensional (3-D) seismic surveywas conducted over a contaminant plume at P area, Savannah River site (South Carolina), to enhance the existing geologicmodel by resolving uncertainties in the lithostratigraphic sequence. The geometry of the dissolved phase trichloroethylene plume, based on initial site characterization, appears to be confined to a narrow corridor within the Eocene sand overlying a clay unit approximately 25m(82 ft) below land surface. Processing the seismic data as a 3-D data volume instead of a series of closely spaced two-dimensional lines allowed for better interpretation of the target horizons, the lower clay, and the sand above the clay. Calibrating the seismic data with existing borehole geophysical logs, core data as well as vertical seismic profiling (VSP) data allowed the seismic data to be inverted from two-way travel-time to depth, thereby facilitating full integration of the seismic data into a solid earth model that is the basic part of a site conceptual model. The outcome was the production of realistic horizon surface maps that show that two channel complexes are located on the section, which are not present in the conceptual model, and that the upper and middle clays are not laterally continuous as previously thought. The geometry of the primary channel has been transposed over the map view of the plume to investigate potential relationships between the shape of the plume and the presence of the channel

Two-divisibility of the coefficients of certain weakly holomorphic modular forms

We study a canonical basis for spaces of weakly holomorphic modular forms of weights 12, 16, 18, 20, 22, and 26 on the full modular group. We prove a relation between the Fourier coefficients of modular forms in this canonical basis and a generalized Ramanujan tau-function, and use this to prove that these Fourier coefficients are often highly divisible by 2.Comment: Corrected typos. To appear in the Ramanujan Journa

Corrections to the universal behavior of the Coulomb-blockade peak splitting for quantum dots separated by a finite barrier

Building upon earlier work on the relation between the dimensionless interdot channel conductance g and the fractional Coulomb-blockade peak splitting f for two electrostatically equivalent dots, we calculate the leading correction that results from an interdot tunneling barrier that is not a delta-function but, rather, has a finite height V and a nonzero width xi and can be approximated as parabolic near its peak. We develop a new treatment of the problem for g much less than 1 that starts from the single-particle eigenstates for the full coupled-dot system. The finiteness of the barrier leads to a small upward shift of the f-versus-g curve at small values of g. The shift is a consequence of the fact that the tunneling matrix elements vary exponentially with the energies of the states connected. Therefore, when g is small, it can pay to tunnel to intermediate states with single-particle energies above the barrier height V. The correction to the zero-width behavior does not affect agreement with recent experimental results but may be important in future experiments.Comment: Title changed from ``Non-universal...'' to ``Corrections to the universal...'' No other changes. 10 pages, 1 RevTeX file with 2 postscript figures included using eps

BMQ

BMQ: Boston Medical Quarterly was published from 1950-1966 by the Boston University School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals