Climate Change and Dam Owner Liability in Rhode Island

Increasing precipitation associated with climate change is affecting dam operation and hazards in Rhode Island. Flooding caused by increased precipitation or extreme weather events can cause dam failure or upstream or downstream flooding, resulting in loss of life and property. These losses can result in liability, which may vary based on the dam owner and its purpose. This study assists dam owners and the public in understanding the potential liabilities that may arise as a result of flooding from extreme weather events. Section one provides a background of dam hazards in Rhode Island in the context of climate change. Section two introduces the statutory, common law, and constitutional claims that may be brought against a dam owner after a flood. Section three applies these potential liabilities to illustrate how they may apply to different types of dams and dam owners. Section four evaluates Rhode Island law in the context of state laws from the northeast region, focusing on the application of statutory liability, strict liability and negligence standards, and liability for drawdown

Legal Issues Affecting Blue Carbon Projects on Publicly-Owned Coastal Wetlands

Coastal wetlands play an important role in sequestering atmospheric carbon, but these ecosystems are under threat from sea level rise, land use conversion, and other causes. Restoration projects in coastal wetlands can provide a range of benefits for habitat and ecosystems, including by increasing sequestration of “blue carbon.” Coastal wetland restoration projects that effectively sequester carbon and meet the requirements of the voluntary carbon market can generate tradeable carbon offsets, which have a monetary value and can be used to finance all or part of the restoration needed to generate them. Blue carbon offsets thus represent a promising tool to promote effective restoration and maintenance projects on threatened and degraded coastal wetlands. Agencies must be confident that they will not violate the law before they commit to deployment of blue carbon offset projects on public coastal wetlands. Federal, state, and tribal agencies are critical partners in wetlands restoration projects because they control a substantial portion of the nation’s coastal wetlands. However, land management agencies may justifiably worry about violating their legal mandates if they participate in wetland restoration projects funded through blue carbon offsets. In the absence of past models of successful blue carbon offset projects on public lands, and without explicit authorization for this activity, agency staff can benefit from an analytical framework to understand what legal issues may occur in a blue carbon offset project and how to design projects to avoid legal problems to the extent possible. This study begins to provide that framework by identifying legal considerations for blue carbon offset projects on public coastal wetlands. Agencies are faced with the difficult challenge of both complying with all relevant laws and satisfying the conditions necessary to qualify projects for offsets under voluntary standards. Key conditions for offset markets with legal implications include: (i) additionality – the project must actually sequester carbon; (ii) permanence – the project must provide the promised sequestration benefit over a long time period; and (iii) unambiguous ownership – the entity registering the carbon offset must be the only one able to reasonably claim it. Each of these three core conditions may result in potential legal issues when applied to blue carbon-financed restoration projects on public coastal wetlands. Based on an evaluation of representative federal, state, and tribal law, this study divides these legal issues into two broad categories: (i) title and property rights; and (ii) legal authority

Renewable Energy Prices in State-Level Feed-in Tariffs: Federal Law Constraints and Possible Solutions

State legislatures and state utility commissions trying to attract renewable energy projects are considering feed-in tariffs, which obligate retail utilities to purchase electricity from renewable producers under standard arrangements specifying prices, terms, and conditions. The use of feed-in tariffs simplifies the purchase process, provides revenue certainty to generators, and reduces the cost of financing generating projects. However, some argue that federal law--including the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) and the Federal Power Act of 1935 (FPA)--constrain state-level feed-in tariffs. This report seeks to reduce the legal uncertainties for states contemplating feed-in tariffs by explaining the constraints imposed by federal statutes. It describes the federal constraints, identifies transaction categories that are free of those constraints, and offers ways for state and federal policymakers to interpret or modify existing law to remove or reduce these constraints. This report proposes ways to revise these federal statutes. It creates a broad working definition of a state-level feed-in tariff. Given this definition, this report concludes there are paths to non-preempted, state-level feed-in tariffs under current federal law

µChemLab: twenty years of developing CBRNE detection systems with low false alarm rates

Gas Chromatography (GC) is routinely used in the laboratory to temporally separate chemical mixtures into their constituent components for improved chemical identification. This paper will provide a overview of more than twenty years of development of one-dimensional field-portable micro GC systems, highlighting key experimental results that illustrate how a reduction in false alarm rate (FAR) is achieved in real-world environments. Significantly, we will also present recent results on a micro two-dimensional GC (micro GCxGC) technology. This ultra-small system consists of microfabricated columns, NanoElectroMechanical System (NEMS) cantilever resonators for detection, and a valve-based stop-flow modulator. The separation of a 29-component polar mixture in less than 7 seconds is demonstrated along with peak widths in the second dimension ranging from 10-60 ms. For this system, a peak capacity of just over 300 was calculated for separation in about 6 s. This work has important implications for field detection, to drastically reduce FAR and significantly improve chemical selectivity and identification. This separation performance was demonstrated with the NEMS resonator and bench scale FID. But other detectors, suitably fast and sensitive can work as well. Recent research has shown that the identification power of GCxGC-FID can match that of GC-MS. This result indicates a path to improved size, weight, power, and performance in micro GCxGC systems outfitted with relatively non-specific, lightweight detectors. We will briefly discuss the performance of possible options, such as the pulsed discharge helium ionization detector (PDHID) and miniature correlation ion mobility spectrometer (mini-CIMS)

P. falciparum and P. vivax Epitope-Focused VLPs Elicit Sterile Immunity to Blood Stage Infections

In order to design P. falciparum preerythrocytic vaccine candidates, a library of circumsporozoite (CS) T and B cell epitopes displayed on the woodchuck hepatitis virus core antigen (WHcAg) VLP platform was produced. To test the protective efficacy of the WHcAg-CS VLPs, hybrid CS P. berghei/P. falciparum (Pb/Pf) sporozoites were used to challenge immunized mice. VLPs carrying 1 or 2 different CS repeat B cell epitopes and 3 VLPs carrying different CS non-repeat B cell epitopes elicited high levels of anti-insert antibodies (Abs). Whereas, VLPs carrying CS repeat B cell epitopes conferred 98% protection of the liver against a 10,000 Pb/Pf sporozoite challenge, VLPs carrying the CS non-repeat B cell eptiopes were minimally-to-non-protective. One-to-three CS-specific CD4/CD8 T cell sites were also fused to VLPs, which primed CS-specific as well as WHcAg-specific T cells. However, a VLP carrying only the 3 T cell domains failed to protect against a sporozoite challenge, indicating a requirement for anti-CS repeat Abs. A VLP carrying 2 CS repeat B cell epitopes and 3 CS T cell sites in alum adjuvant elicited high titer anti-CS Abs (endpoint dilution titer \u3e1x106) and provided 80–100% protection against blood stage malaria. Using a similar strategy, VLPs were constructed carrying P. vivax CS repeat B cell epitopes (WHc-Pv-78), which elicited high levels of anti-CS Abs and conferred 99% protection of the liver against a 10,000 Pb/Pv sporozoite challenge and elicited sterile immunity to blood stage infection. These results indicate that immunization with epitope-focused VLPs carrying selected B and T cell epitopes from the P.falciparum and P. vivax CS proteins can elicit sterile immunity against blood stage malaria. Hybrid WHcAg-CS VLPs could provide the basis for a bivalent P. falciparum/P. vivax malaria vaccine

Redox cycling metals: Pedaling their roles in metabolism and their use in the development of novel therapeutics

Essential metals, such as iron and copper, play a critical role in a plethora of cellular processes including cell growth and proliferation. However, concomitantly, excess of these metal ions in the body can have deleterious effects due to their ability to generate cytotoxic reactive oxygen species (ROS). Thus, the human body has evolved a very well-orchestrated metabolic system that keeps tight control on the levels of these metal ions. Considering their very high proliferation rate, cancer cells require a high abundance of these metals compared to their normal counterparts. Interestingly, new anti-cancer agents that take advantage of the sensitivity of cancer cells to metal sequestration and their susceptibility to ROS have been developed. These ligands can avidly bind metal ions to form redox active metal complexes, which lead to generation of cytotoxic ROS. Furthermore, these agents also act as potent metastasis suppressors due to their ability to up-regulate the metastasis suppressor gene, N-myc downstream regulated gene 1. This review discusses the importance of iron and copper in the metabolism and progression of cancer, how they can be exploited to target tumors and the clinical translation of novel anti-cancer chemotherapeutics

Mammalian sex determination—insights from humans and mice

Disorders of sex development (DSD) are congenital conditions in which the development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomical sex is atypical. Many of the genes required for gonad development have been identified by analysis of DSD patients. However, the use of knockout and transgenic mouse strains have contributed enormously to the study of gonad gene function and interactions within the development network. Although the genetic basis of mammalian sex determination and differentiation has advanced considerably in recent years, a majority of 46,XY gonadal dysgenesis patients still cannot be provided with an accurate diagnosis. Some of these unexplained DSD cases may be due to mutations in novel DSD genes or genomic rearrangements affecting regulatory regions that lead to atypical gene expression. Here, we review our current knowledge of mammalian sex determination drawing on insights from human DSD patients and mouse models

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article