Climate Change and Modern State Common Law Nuisance and Trespass Tort Claims

This Comment examines the use of state common law tort claims to address climate change. The aim of this work is not to provide an in-depth examination of these issues, but rather to provide a contextualized and comprehensive overview of some of the most important issues in this field using modern cases actively being litigated. This Comment comes to the conclusion that the future of common law nuisance and trespass claims in the context of climate change is, for now, unclear. Given the national and global implications of climate change, courts may find that isolated states cannot set binding precedents and abate climate change alone. Yet this outcome is hardly assured, and would be a mistake, because state common law claims may potentially help states prepare for climate change in useful ways. This Comment is divided into four Parts. Part I seeks to explain nuisance and trespass tort claims more generally before explaining their use in the context of air pollution. Part II discusses how the courts have treated state common law pollution tort claims in light of the federal environmental regulatory scheme. Part III discusses how court cases featuring common law claims against fossil fuel producers in the last few years have made their way through the courts and the current status and outcomes of these efforts. Finally, Part IV seeks to collect the lessons gleaned from the preceding Parts to discuss the utility of these actions, their downsides, their benefits, and their potential futures

Current Research: Discovery and Recovery of a 14th Century Dugout Canoe on the Red River, Caddo Parish, Louisiana

In June 2017, Jenna Bradley and Robert Cornett were boating down the Red River in northern Caddo Parish, Louisiana, when they noticed an unusual log protruding from a sandy bank near the town of Belcher. After realizing that it was a dugout canoe, they contacted the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and eventually word of the find was transmitted to state archaeologist Chip McGimsey at the Louisiana Division of Archaeology. The following day, Bradley and Cornett led Jeffrey Girard and Jameel Damlouji of the Louisiana Archaeological Society to the site. It was obvious that it was a dugout canoe of comparable size and form to one found in 1983 at the base of a steep cutbank on the east side of a now cut off channel of the Red River approximately 12 km (7 miles) downstream. At the time, the 1983 canoe was thought to be the largest prehistoric watercraft in the Southeastern United States measuring 9.35 m (or 30 ft. 8 inches) long and 56 cm (1 ft. 10 inches) in diameter. The newly discovered canoe is a little larger, measuring 10.2 m long (33.4 ft.) and approximately 60 cm (2.0 ft.) in diameter. Both boats have similar shapes with step-like seats carved into the ends, and both probably are made from cypress logs, although the wood of the recent find has not been identified with certainty

Post-war housing as contemporary home: a case study of residential change in the Kirkwood neighborhood

This study analyzed the ways in which homeowners in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Greensboro, NC responded to changing domestic culture through the adaption of their post-World War II homes. I utilized interviews with long-term residents, field notes, and interior documentation to address and analyze the adaptability of post-war houses for contemporary uses. The interviews provided specific data regarding a timeline of alterations made to each house, major remodeling projects or additions that each homeowner undertook, and historical information regarding the house and community. The interior documentation served as a record of interior changes and additions made to the houses that were not expressed specifically in the interviewing process. This study generated an understanding of the patterns in interior design in the sample of post-war houses studied and the cultural implications of those patterns for the homeowners who participated

The Reduction Of Aggression And Hyperactivity In Profoundly And Moderately Retarded Institutionalized Clients By Increased Physical Exercise

This study describes the effective use of a benign technique, increased exercise, to decrease the aggression and hyperactivity in 9 of 10 profoundly and moderately to severely retarded institutionalized clients

Multi-target genome editing reduces polyphenol oxidase activity in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grains

Introduction: Polyphenol oxidases (PPO) are dual activity metalloenzymes that catalyse the production of quinones. In plants, PPO activity may contribute to biotic stress resistance and secondary metabolism but is undesirable for food producers because it causes the discolouration and changes in flavour profiles of products during post-harvest processing. In wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), PPO released from the aleurone layer of the grain during milling results in the discolouration of flour, dough, and end-use products, reducing their value. Loss-of-function mutations in the PPO1 and PPO2 paralogous genes on homoeologous group 2 chromosomes confer reduced PPO activity in the wheat grain. However, limited natural variation and the proximity of these genes complicates the selection of extremely low-PPO wheat varieties by recombination. The goal of the current study was to edit all copies of PPO1 and PPO2 to drive extreme reductions in PPO grain activity in elite wheat varieties. Results: A CRISPR/Cas9 construct with one single guide RNA (sgRNA) targeting a conserved copper binding domain was used to edit all seven PPO1 and PPO2 genes in the spring wheat cultivar ‘Fielder’. Five of the seven edited T1 lines exhibited significant reductions in PPO activity, and T2 lines had PPO activity up to 86.7% lower than wild-type. The same construct was transformed into the elite winter wheat cultivars ‘Guardian’ and ‘Steamboat’, which have five PPO1 and PPO2 genes. In these varieties PPO activity was reduced by >90% in both T1 and T2 lines. In all three varieties, dough samples from edited lines exhibited reduced browning. Discussion: This study demonstrates that multi-target editing at late stages of variety development could complement selection for beneficial alleles in cropbreeding programs by inducing novel variation in loci inaccessible to recombinatio

Observations of volcanic clouds in their first few days of atmospheric residence: The 1992 eruptions of crater peak, Mount Spurr volcano, Alaska

Satellite SO2 and ash measurements of Mount Spurr’s three 1992 volcanic clouds are compared with ground‐based observations to develop an understanding of the physical and chemical evolution of volcanic clouds. Each of the three eruptions with ratings of volcanic explosivity index three reached the lower stratosphere (14 km asl), but the clouds were mainly dispersed at the tropopause by moderate to strong (20–40 m/s) tropospheric winds. Three stages of cloud evolution were identified. First, heavy fallout of large (\u3e500 μm) pyroclasts occurred close to the volcano (vent) during and immediately after the eruptions, and the cloud resembled an advected gravity current. Second, a much larger, highly elongated region marked by a secondary‐mass maximum occurred 150–350 km downwind in at least two of the three events. This was the result of aggregate fallout of a bimodal size distribution including fine (\u3c25 \u3eμm) ash that quickly depleted the solid fraction of the volcanic cloud. For the first several hundred kilometers, the cloud spread laterally, first as an intrusive gravity current and then by wind shear and diffusion as downwind cloud transport occurred at the windspeed (during the first 18–24 h). Finally, the clouds continued to move through the upper troposphere but began decreasing in areal extent, eventually disappearing as ash and SO2 were removed by meteorological processes. Total SO2 in each eruption cloud increased by the second day of atmospheric residence, possibly because of oxidation of coerupted H2S or possibly because of the effects of sequestration by ice followed by subsequent SO2 release during fallout and desiccation of ashy hydrometeors. SO2 and volcanic ash travelled together in all the Spurr volcanic clouds. The initial (18–24 h) area expansion of the clouds and the subsequent several days of drifting were successfully mapped by both SO2 (ultraviolet) and ash (infrared) satellite imagery

Optical Variability and Colour Behaviour of 3C 345

The colour behaviour of blazars is a subject of much debate. One argument is that the BL Lac objects show bluer-when-brighter chromatism while the flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) display redder-when-brighter trend. Base on a 3.5-year three-colour monitoring programme, we studied the optical variability and colour behaviour of one FSRQ, 3C 345. There is at least one outburst in this period. The overall variation amplitude is 2.640 mags in the $i$ band. Intra-night variability was observed on two nights. The bluer-when-brighter and redder-when-brighter chromatisms were simultaneously observed in this object when using different pairs of passbands to compute the colours. The bluer-when-brighter chromatism is a shared property with the BL Lacs, while the redder-when-brighter trend is likely due to two less variable emission features, the Mg\,{\sc ii} line and the blue bump, at short wavelengths. With numerical simulations, we show that some other strong but less variable emission lines in the spectrum of FSRQs may also significantly alter their colour behaviour. Then the colour behaviour of an FSRQ is linked not only to the emission process in the relativistic jet, but also to the redshift, the passbands used for computing the colour and the strengths of the less variable emission features relative to the strength of the non-thermal continuum.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by MNRA