Congress and Deregulation: Federal Legislative Issues Past, Present and Future.

I am Bill Robinson, and I am pinch-hitting for Mark La Fratta. Mark did something that caused him to have to go to Gary, I am not sure what it is. Perhaps, Mr. Brown will be able to tell us later on. In any event, it is a pleasure to be here. A couple of Saturdays ago, I was out sailing in an old boat I have, and we had wonderful winds. We were wasting in an area on the Rappahannock that I was not very familiar with, and we were just about to make our last tide in the fifth of six legs of the race, when we ran aground so badly, and so far, that it looked like one of those photographs after a hurricane, with the boat keeled over. Eventually, somebody came by and yelled over from his boat, It sure is a lot easier standing up at a podium in a courtroom, than what you are doing, is it not, my boy. It was a bailiff in the Federal Judge\u27s Courtroom in Richmond, and the general proposition he used was correct. And, it is with a little trepidation that I come because you all are experts at this, and the panelists are certainly experts, and I am simply going to be introducing them

Three Generations in Type I Compactifications

Generalizing the recent work on three-family Type I compactifications, we classify perturbative Type I vacua obtained via compactifying on the T^6/Z_2 X Z_2 X Z_3 orbifold with all possible Wilson lines. In particular, we concentrate on models with gauge groups containing the Standard Model gauge group SU(3)_c X SU(2)_w X U(1)_Y as a subgroup. All of the vacua we obtain contain D5-branes and are non-perturbative from the heterotic viewpoint. The models we discuss have three-chiral families. We study some of their phenomenological properties, and point out non-trivial problems arising in these models in the phenomenological context.Comment: 16 pages, revtex, minor misprints correcte

Improving the estimation of deep-sea megabenthos biomass: dimension to wet weight conversions for abyssal invertebrates

Deep-sea megafaunal biomass has typically been assessed by sampling with benthic sledges and trawls, but non-destructive methods, particularly photography, are becoming increasingly common. Estimation of individual wet weight in seabed photographs has been achieved using equations obtained from measured trawl-caught specimens for a limited number of taxa. However, a lack of appropriate conversion factors has limited estimation across taxa encompassing whole communities. Here we compile relationships between measured body dimensions and preserved wet weights for a comprehensive catalogue of abyssal epibenthic megafauna, using ~47,000 specimens from the Porcupine Abyssal Plain (NE Atlantic) housed in the Discovery Collections. The practical application of the method is demonstrated using an extremely large dataset of specimen measurements from seabed photographs taken in the same location. We also collate corresponding field data on fresh wet weight, to estimate the impact of fixation in formalin and preservation in industrial denatured alcohol on the apparent biomass. Taxa with substantial proportions of soft tissues lose 35 to 60% of their wet weight during preservation, while those with greater proportions of hard tissues lose 10 to 20%. Our total estimated fresh wet weight biomass of holothurians and cnidarians in the photographic survey was ~20 times the previous estimates of total invertebrate biomass based on trawl catches. This dramatic uplift in megabenthic biomass has significant implications for studies of standing stocks, community metabolism, and numerical modelling of benthic carbon flows

Mirror Energy Differences at Large Isospin Studied through Direct Two-Nucleon Knockout

The first spectroscopy of excited states in Ni52 (Tz=-2) and Co51 (Tz=-3/2) has been obtained using the highly selective two-neutron knockout reaction. Mirror energy differences between isobaric analogue states in these nuclei and their mirror partners are interpreted in terms of isospin nonconserving effects. A comparison between large-scale shell-model calculations and data provides the most compelling evidence to date that both electromagnetic and an additional isospin nonconserving interactions for J=2 couplings, of unknown origin, are required to obtain good agreement. � 2013 American Physical Society

Cosmological Constant, Gauge Hierarchy and Warped Geometry

It is suggested that the mechanism responsible for the resolution of the gauge hierarchy problem within the warped geometry framework can be generalized to provide a new explanation of the extremely tiny vacuum energy density rho_V suggested by recent observations. We illustrate the mechanism with some 5D examples in which the true vacuum energy is assumed to vanish, and rho_V is associated with a false vacuum energy such that rho_V^{1/4} ~ TeV^2/M_{Pl} ~ 10^{-3} eV, where M_{Pl} denotes the reduced Planck mass. We also consider a quintessence-like solution to the dark energy problem.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures, section on quantum corrections added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

An Empirical Study of the Object-Oriented Paradigm and Software Reuse

Little or no empirical validation exists for many of software engineering's basic assumptions. While some of these assumptions are intuitive, the need for scientific experimentation remains clear. Several assumptions are made about the factors affecting software reuse, and in particular, the role of the object-oriented paradigm. This paper describes the preliminary results of a controlled experiment designed to evaluate the impact of the object-oriented paradigm on software reuse. The experiment concludes that (1) the object-oriented paradigm substantially improves productivity, although a significant part of this improvement is due to the effect of reuse, (2) reuse without regard to language paradigm improves productivity, (3) language differences are far more important when programmers reuse than when they do not, and (4) the object-oriented paradigm has a particular affinity to the reuse process

Electromagnetic field correlations near a surface with a nonlocal optical response

The coherence length of the thermal electromagnetic field near a planar surface has a minimum value related to the nonlocal dielectric response of the material. We perform two model calculations of the electric energy density and the field's degree of spatial coherence. Above a polar crystal, the lattice constant gives the minimum coherence length. It also gives the upper limit to the near field energy density, cutting off its $1/z^3$ divergence. Near an electron plasma described by the semiclassical Lindhard dielectric function, the corresponding length scale is fixed by plasma screening to the Thomas-Fermi length. The electron mean free path, however, sets a larger scale where significant deviations from the local description are visible.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure files (.eps), \documentclass[global]{svjour}, accepted in special issue "Optics on the Nanoscale" (Applied Physics B, eds. V. Shalaev and F. Tr\"ager

Oropharyngeal Chlamydia trachomatis in women; Spontaneous clearance and cure after treatment (FemCure)

Objectives: Women attending STI clinics are not routinely tested for oropharyngeal Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) infections. We aimed to assess spontaneous clearance of oropharyngeal CT and cure after antibiotic treatment in women. Methods: Women with vaginal or rectal CT (n=560) were recruited at STI clinics in 2016-2017, as part of the FemCure study (prospective cohort study). We included participants' data from week -1, that is, the diagnosis at initial visit, when clinics applied selective oropharyngeal testing. At week -1, a total of 241 women were oropharyngeally tested (30 positive) and 319 were untested. All FemCure participants provided nurse-collected oropharyngeal samples at study enrolment, that is, week 0, just prior to treatment (n=560), and after treatment at weeks 4 (n=449), 8 (n=433) and 12 (n=427). Samples were tested by nucleic acid amplification test, and at week 0 also by viability testing by viability PCR. Proportions of oropharyngeal CT test results were presented to represent spontaneous clearance and cure. Results: Of 30 women diagnosed with oropharyngeal CT at week -1, fifteen (50%) were negative at week 0 after a median of 9 days, that is, € spontaneous clearance'. At week 0, a total of 560 participants were tested, and 46 (8.8%) were oropharyngeal CT positive; 12 of them (26.1%) had viable CT. Of the 46 positive, 36 women had an oropharyngeal test after treatment; 97.2% (35/36) were negative at week 4, that is, € cure'. Of all women with follow-up visits, the proportion of oropharyngeal CT positive was between 0.5% and 1.6% between weeks 4 and 12. Of those not tested at week -1 (n=319), 8.5% (n=27) were oropharyngeal positive at week 0. Conclusions: The clinical importance of oropharyngeal CT in women is debated. We demonstrated that spontaneous clearance of oropharyngeal CT among women is common; of those who did not clear for CT, three-quarters had non-viable CT. After regular treatment with azithromycin or doxycycline, cure rate (97%) of oropharyngeal CT is excellent. Trial registration number: NCT02694497

Spontaneous clearance of Chlamydia trachomatis accounting for bacterial viability in vaginally or rectally infected women (FemCure)

Objectives: Spontaneous clearance of Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) infections can occur between diagnosis and treatment. We followed CT patien

Characterization of a Mixed Methanotrophic Culture Capable of Chloroethylene Degradation

A consortium of methanotrophs cultured from the St. Joseph's aquifer in Schoolcraft, MI, was found to exhibit similar methane consumption rates as pure cultures of methanotrophs. The methanotrophic consortium resides within a portion of the aquifer contaminated with a mixed waste plume of perchloroethylene (PCE) and its reductive dechlorination products from natural attenuation, trichloroethylene (TCE), cis-dichloroethylene (c-DCE), and vinyl chloride (VC). Oxidation kinetics for TCE, c-DCE, and VC were measured for the mixed methanotroph consortium and compared to reported rate parameters for degradation of these chloroethylene compounds by pure methanotrophic cultures. The results demonstrate that the kinetics of chloroethylene oxidation by the Schoolcraft methanotroph population mimic the degradation rates of pure methanotrophic cultures that primarily express particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO). Molecular and biochemical analyses confirmed that sMMO was not being expressed by these cells. Rather, using competitive reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction, pmoA, a gene encoding one of the polypeptides of the pMMO was found at a level of (1.57 ± 0.10) × 10–17 mol pmoA mRNA/g wet soil in soil slurries and (2.65 ± 0.43) × 10–17 mol pmoA mRNA/μl in groundwater. No expression of mmoX, a gene encoding one of the polypeptides of the sMMO, was detected.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63398/1/ees.2005.22.177.pd