George J. Mitchell: Maine\u27s Environmental Senator

The State of Maine is blessed with a history of impressive and respected politicians. Among others, the list includes James Blaine, Margaret Chase Smith, and Edmund S. Muskie. The State now must add the name of George J. Mitchell to these ranks. A native son of Waterville, Maine, he attended Bowdoin College, Georgetown University Law Center, and eventually catapulted himself into one of the most powerful political positions in the United States government when he was elected as majority leader of the United States Senate. During his tenure as majority leader, he helped to redefine the position through his strong work ethic, sense of fairness, and orientation toward results in the Senate. This Comment summarizes some of those results through an environmental lens, focusing on Mitchell\u27s contributions to federal environmental legislation in the late 1980s. As Mitchell served in the Senate for fourteen years, six as the majority leader, he sponsored or cosponsored countless pieces of legislation. Environmental protection, however, always was a focus of his public service. In that vein, this Comment canvasses Senator Mitchell\u27s influence on the provisions of the Water Quality Act of 1987, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, three major legislative accomplishments aimed at protecting the environment. This Comment analyzes those provisions of each Act for which Senator Mitchell fought most ardently and discusses the different tactics and strategies he employed to secure passage of each of these important bills. Finally, this Comment is a tribute to a Maine native who dedicated his life to public service. This Author recognizes that no one Senator could be solely responsible for any of these three pieces of environmental legislation. Nonetheless, only a few Senators held the key to passage of each of these acts. George J. Mitchell was one of the those Senators. Senator Mitchell\u27s contributions to environmental law can be understood only by viewing his Senate career in context. First, Mitchell served as a Federal District Court Judge for the District of Maine

The biology of the winter steelhead of the Willamette River, Oregon,

1 p. Review produced for HC 441: Science Colloquium: Willamette River Environmental Health, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon , Spring term, 2004.A print copy of the reviewed title is available through the UO Libraries under the call number: SCA OrColl SH11.O795 no.

Justice Kennedy and the Environment: Property, States\u27 Rights, and a Persistent Search for Nexus

Justice Anthony Kennedy, now clearly the pivot of the Roberts Court, is the Court\u27s crucial voice in environmental law cases. Kennedy\u27s central role was never more evident than in the two most celebrated environmental cases of the last few years, Kelo v. City of New London and Rapanos v. United States, as he supplied the critical vote in both. Kennedy has in fact been the needle of the Supreme Court\u27s environmental law compass since his nomination in 1988. Although he wrote surprisingly few environmental law opinions over his first eighteen years on the Court, Kennedy was in the majority an astonishing ninety-six percent of the time (as compared to his generic record of being in the majority slightly over sixty percent of the time). This article examines Kennedy\u27s environmental law record on the Court, as well as his preceding thirteen years on the Ninth Circuit. The article evaluates all of the environmental law cases in which he wrote an opinion over those three decades and catalogues his voting record in all Supreme Court cases in which he participated. One striking measure of Kennedy\u27s influence is that he has written just one environmental dissent while on the Court, and that was on states\u27 rights grounds, one of his chief priorities. We believe that Kennedy is considerably more interested in allowing trial judges to resolve cases on the basis of context than in establishing broadly-applicable doctrine. That is, he is a doctrinal minimalist. By consistently demanding a demonstrated nexus between doctrine and facts, he has shown an intolerance for elevating abstract philosophy over concrete justice. And, despite his unassailable devotion to states\u27 rights, Kennedy has been quite willing to find federal preemption when it serves deregulation purposes. On the other hand, he is far from an anti-regulatory zealot, although he prefers only one level of governmental regulation. At what might be close to the mid-point in his Court career-and with his power perhaps at its zenith-Justice Kennedy is clearly not someone any litigant can ignore. We hope this article gives both environmental litigants and academics a fertile resource to till. Although Kennedy\u27s environmental record has been sparse until lately, he may be receptive to environmental claims if they are factually well-grounded and do not conflict with his overriding concern for states\u27 rights. The article concludes with some comparisons between Kennedy and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Locating Complex Roots of Quintic Polynomials

Since there are no general solutions to polynomials of degree higher than four, high school and college students only infrequently investigate quintic polynomials. Additionally, although students commonly investigate real roots of polynomials, only infrequently are complex roots – and, more particularly, the location of complex roots – investigated. This paper considers features of graphs of quintic polynomials and uses analytic constructions to locate the functions’ complex roots. Throughout, hyperlinked dynamic applets are provided for the student reader to experientially participate in the paper. This paper is an extension to other investigations regarding locating complex roots (Bauldry, Bossé, & Otey, 2017)

Visualizing Complex Roots

Avoiding complex geometric and analytic constructions, this paper considers techniques for visualizing the location of complex roots of quadratic, cubic, and quartic real polynomial functions. This provides teachers and students of mathematics with a better understanding of the nature of these functions and their respective real and complex roots

Rechnungslegung von Finanzinstrumenten im Zuge der Finanzmarktkrise

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ATLAS: a framework for large scale automated mapping and localization

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-207).This thesis describes a scalable robotic navigation system that builds a map of the robot's environment on the fly. This problem is also known as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The SLAM problem has as inputs the control of the robot's motion and sensor measurements to features in the environment. The desired output is the path traversed by the robot (localization) and a representation of the sensed environment (mapping). The principal contribution of this thesis is the introduction of a framework, termed Atlas, that alleviates the computational restrictions of previous approaches to SLAM when mapping extended environments. The Atlas framework partitions the SLAM problem into a graph of submaps, each with its own coordinate system. Furthermore, the framework facilitates the modularity of sensors, map representations, and local navigation algorithms by encapsulating the implementation specific algorithms into an abstracted module. The challenge of loop closing is handled with a module that matches submaps and a verification procedure that trades latency in loop closing with a lower chance of incorrect loop detections inherent with symmetric environments. The framework is demonstrated with several datasets that map large indoor and urban outdoor environments using a variety of sensors: a laser scanner, sonar rangers, and omni-directional video.by Michael Carsten Bosse.Ph.D