Title III of the Bioterrorism Act: Sacrificing U.S. Trade Relations in the Name of Food Security

Part I examines in detail the two conflicting laws that are the basis of this Comment—Title III of the Bioterrorism Act and the SPS Agreement—focusing on those portions of Title III that adversely impact international trade. Part I also presents the WTO case EC Measures Concerning Meat and Meat Products (Hormones), the first food regulation case disputed in the WTO system for a violation of the SPS Agreement. This case clarified the two major principles of the SPS Agreement that are explored in this Comment: the prohibition on discrimination and the obligation to support trade–restrictive measures with an analytical risk assessment. As such, it will be used as a tool to explain these principles and illustrate how a WTO member could successfully dispute Title III’s compliance with the SPS Agreement. Part II of this Comment analyzes Title III’s conformity with the SPS Agreement. This Part establishes that Title III is subject to the SPS Agreement because it is a sanitary measure designed to protect human life and health from the threat of deliberate food contamination. Part II then argues that, while motivated by the real threat of bioterrorism, Title III nonetheless violates the nondiscrimination principle of Article 2.3 of the SPS Agreement by discriminating against foreign imports. Part II also argues that Title III violates Article 5 of the SPS Agreement because it is a trade restrictive regulation that is not based on a supportive risk assessment. Finally, Part II asserts that, because Title III exempts a large number of direct-to-consumer food sources from its administration, its overall ability to provide bioterrorism protection is significantly diminished. This presents the question: if Title III fails to achieve its stated purpose, can it ever comply with the risk assessment principle of the Agreement? Part III concludes that Title III of the Bioterrorism Act violates two key provisions of the SPS Agreement. Because the Bioterrorism Act as written specifically requires the trade-restrictive measures in question, Title III should be rejected in its entirety to remain consistent with U.S. trade obligations under the WTO. This Part then evaluates the implications of Title III’s breach of the SPS Agreement. If the United States retains the measure, it risks an adverse decision from the dispute settlement system of the WTO. In closing, Part III recommends that the United States collaborate with international trading partners in the future to achieve a global bioterrorism solution that is sensitive to trade considerations

Non-linear optomechanical measurement of mechanical motion

Precision measurement of non-linear observables is an important goal in all facets of quantum optics. This allows measurement-based non-classical state preparation, which has been applied to great success in various physical systems, and provides a route for quantum information processing with otherwise linear interactions. In cavity optomechanics much progress has been made using linear interactions and measurement, but observation of non-linear mechanical degrees-of-freedom remains outstanding. Here we report the observation of displacement-squared thermal motion of a micro-mechanical resonator by exploiting the intrinsic non-linearity of the radiation pressure interaction. Using this measurement we generate bimodal mechanical states of motion with separations and feature sizes well below 100~pm. Future improvements to this approach will allow the preparation of quantum superposition states, which can be used to experimentally explore collapse models of the wavefunction and the potential for mechanical-resonator-based quantum information and metrology applications.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, extensive supplementary material available with published versio

Hydrodynamic Equation for the Breakdown of the Quantum Hall Effect in a Uniform Current

The hydrodynamic equation for the spatial and temporal evolution of the electron temperature T_e in the breakdown of the quantum Hall effect at even-integer filling factors in a uniform current density j is derived from the Boltzmann-type equation, which takes into account electron-electron and electron-phonon scatterings. The derived equation has a drift term, which is proportional to j and to the first spatial derivative of T_e. Applied to the spatial evolution of T_e in a sample with an abrupt change of the width along the current direction, the equation gives a distinct dependence on the current direction as well as a critical relaxation, in agreement with the recent experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 1 Postscript figure, corrected equations, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 70 (2001) No.