The Essential Governmental Function After National League of Cities: Impact of an Essentiality Test on Commuter Rail Transportation

The Supreme Court of the United States held in National League of Cities v. Usery that Congress had exceeded its powers under the commerce clause by enacting the 1974 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. The reasoning behind the decision was that Congress was prohibited from using the commerce clause in areas which states were considered to be performing an essential government function. Because the Supreme Court did not explain precisely what is considered an essential government function, courts have been forced to make case-by-case determinations in deciding these types of cases. One area were these issues are brought to the fore is railroad employee regulation because of the essential nature of commuter rail transportation. This Note provides an examination of the National League case. It then attempts to analyze the essential government function language of the decision and formulate a coherent definition of the term. Finally, it examines the impact of the clear definition on some local regulations of commuter rail transportation

Machine learning research 1989-90

Multifunctional knowledge bases offer a significant advance in artificial intelligence because they can support numerous expert tasks within a domain. As a result they amortize the costs of building a knowledge base over multiple expert systems and they reduce the brittleness of each system. Due to the inevitable size and complexity of multifunctional knowledge bases, their construction and maintenance require knowledge engineering and acquisition tools that can automatically identify interactions between new and existing knowledge. Furthermore, their use requires software for accessing those portions of the knowledge base that coherently answer questions. Considerable progress was made in developing software for building and accessing multifunctional knowledge bases. A language was developed for representing knowledge, along with software tools for editing and displaying knowledge, a machine learning program for integrating new information into existing knowledge, and a question answering system for accessing the knowledge base

Advancing Conjugated Polymer Synthesis Through Catalyst Design

Catalyst-transfer polymerization (CTP) is a living, chain-growth method for synthesizing conjugated polymers, which are attractive materials for organic electronics. What separates CTP from traditional cross-coupling polymerizations is a metal–polymer π-complex that enables the catalyst to stay associated to the growing polymer chain. This association yields polymers with targeted molecular weights, narrow dispersities, and tunable sequences. However, the utility of CTP is limited by a narrow monomer scope, wherein the most desirable polymers remain inaccessible via controlled methods. This thesis aims to advance CTP by designing catalysts capable of widening monomer pairings for block copolymers, exploring ligand electronics in designing an optimal CTP catalyst for previously inaccessible monomers, and optimizing a new user-friendly CTP method. Chapter 1 briefly summarizes CTP with a focus on how understanding polymerization mechanisms can facilitate catalyst design. Specifically, how exploiting the metal-π complex has led to expanded, albeit limited monomer scope, and new copolymer sequences. The major conclusions of chapters 2–5 and our efforts to expand CTP catalyst scope are briefly outlined followed by the implications of this work on future CTP systems. Chapter 2 reports the trials and tribulations of designing a single catalyst to perform two sequential, living polymerizations to access thiophene/olefin block copolymers in a one-pot synthesis. Lessons learned include the influence of catalyst reactive ligand and cocatalyst identity on successful thiophene polymerization as well as the inhibitory nature of olefins on thiophene polymerization, requiring olefin monomer removal to induce a switch-in-mechanisms. While a small amount of copolymer was synthesized, the major products were undesired homopolymer. We attributed these homopolymers to a high-barrier reductive elimination when the catalyst switches mechanisms and subsequent chain-transfer during thiophene polymerization. This work highlights the need to identify conditions that facilitate living behavior for both polymerizations as well as promotes efficient cross-propagation. Chapter 3 describes efforts to design catalysts for CTP that expand monomer scope by tuning ligand electronics to stabilize the metal-π complex. A pyrrolidinyl-based bisphosphine precatalyst was explored in poly(thiophene) and poly(hexylesterthiophene) synthesis and yields polymers with targeted molecular weights as well as high end-group fidelity, suggesting this newly designed catalyst forms a stabilized metal-π complex. While poly(phenylene) synthesis was attempted, gel permeation chromatography revealed a multimodal polymer trace, suggesting multiple catalytic species in the polymerization and an uncontrolled reaction. This catalyst should be further explored in polymerizing previously inaccessible monomers, whose polymerizations are often marred by chain-transfer events. Chapter 4 describes efforts towards developing a more user-friendly CTP. An NHC-ligated palladium precatalyst with a 3–fluoropyridine ligand polymerized electron-rich and electron-poor monomers of the form, Ar–ZnCl-Mg(OPiv)2, in-air via a controlled, chain-growth method. Ongoing work is focused on showing the utility of this method to a broader community in synthesizing relevant materials for organic electronics. Chapter 5 summarizes each chapter and provides an outlook for how these results can be informative for the CTP community. The results in accessing conjugated/olefin block copolymers will inform the design of alternative precatalysts that promote Csp2–Csp3 reductive elimination in copolymerizations. The pyrrolidinyl-based bisphospine precatalyst for CTP will add to the toolbox of catalysts, particularly for electron-deficient polymerizations. Finally, our work in identifying a user-friendly CTP route will aid researchers from a variety of backgrounds in synthesizing conjugated polymers with control over molecular weight open-to-air.PHDChemistryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146125/1/kendrads_1.pd

Into the Big League - Conventions, Football, and the Color Line in New Orleans

This article examines the relationship between the struggle for African American civil rights and efforts to expand tourism, conventions, and spectator sports in New Orleans, Louisiana, between 1954 and 1969. Drawing on previously neglected archival sources and personal interviews, it considers how the pressure to maintain New Orleans\u27s progressive image as an urbane tourist destination required abandoning Jim Crow customs and embracing the growing national commitment to racial progress. It argues that an unlikely coalition of civil rights activists, tourism interests, municipal officials, and a small segment of New Orleans\u27s old-line social establishment adopted a tourism-related rhetoric to counter the city\u27s dominant discourses of racist resistance to change. By the late 1960s, New Orleans\u27s white leaders agreed that they could no longer countenance overt racial discrimination if New Orleans was to maintain a favorable tourist image

Microstructural Transformation of Cold-Sprayed GRCop-42 for Rocket Engine Combustion Chamber Liners

Rocket engines have always relied on high-conductivity copper liners to protect structural components from extreme thermal loads produced by combustion. Forged NARloy-Z has been the material of choice for decades but increasing cost of its constituent silver and high waste in the machining process has reduced the alloy’s cost effectiveness. Aerojet Rocketdyne wants to determine the viability of cold-spray additively manufactured GRCop-42 as a replacement alloy to reduce liner cost. Screening tests were performed to observe the microstructural development and microhardness changes of cold-sprayed GRCop-42 after being subjected to multiple stages of the typical heat treatment of a combustion chamber liner. Two batches of samples with different cold-spray parameters were given one of four treatments: as-sprayed, HIPed, HIPed and annealed at 1700℉, and HIPed and annealed at 1800℉. Statistical analysis of hardness data concluded a reduction in mean hardness from 197HV to 119HV after HIPing and an additional reduction to 86HV after the annealing treatment. The temperature of the annealing was statistically insignificant. Optical microscopy revealed ‘healing’ of former powder boundaries after annealing treatment, indicated by the boundaries no longer being preferentially etched. These heat treatment effects suggest an increase in yield strength and low-cycle fatigue life, with fewer crack propagating, high-energy boundaries present. No reliable data could be collected on particle coarsening due to natural particle size variance

Response to Intervention and Implementing Early Math Intervention Programs

The Response to Intervention (RtI) model has transformed the methodology behind education and the way teachers instruct their students. This model focuses on giving students the instruction they need before the gap between them and their peer\u27 increases. This model was created using a three tier system. All students within a school receive instruction at one of these tiers. Many intervention programs have been created to help teachers instruct students at each of these tiers and in each content area. Unfortunately for teachers it can be overwhelming to decide which of these programs are going to make the biggest difference for their students. This project focuses on three mathematical intervention programs and their success with student

Celestial Timepiece: Randy Souther Interviewed by Caroline Marquette and Tanya Tromble-Giraud

An interview with the creator of the website Celestial Timepiece discussing Joyce Carol Oates\u27s literary career and the web project documenting that career. The interview was the basis for a chapter in the Joyce Carol Oates volume of the Cahiers de L’Herne—a French monographic series dedicated to the critical appraisal of world-renowned authors, and providing texts, letters, testimonies, and photographs as well as scholarly work by specialists in the subject. The aim of the series is to offer in-depth reference books on major authors and thus to contribute to a better understanding of the authors and their work in France and worldwide

Keynote

J. Mark Souther, Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State UniversityFrom Exhibition to Conversation: Digital Storytelling and the Elusive Community

A US$35 Million \u27Hole in the Ground\u27: Metropolitan Fragmentation and Cleveland\u27s Unbuilt Downtown Subway

In the 1940s–1950s, Cleveland, Ohio, transit officials and a varied coalition of allies sought to construct a subway to distribute riders throughout downtown. Through two unsuccessful campaigns in the 1950s, the subway planning debate highlights the gradual erosion of downtown’s preeminence and corresponding rise of suburbia. It also sheds light on interest-based rifts within the downtown business establishment and across the social landscape of metropolitan Cleveland. More than transit history, the author argues, the mid-century Cleveland subway battles afford a close look at friction between influential leaders and ordinary citizens as well as competing place-based visions of the metropolitan future

“The Best Things in Life Are Here” in “The Mistake on the Lake”: Narratives of Decline and Renewal in Cleveland

Historians have devoted ample attention to the urban crisis, but few have explored symbolic actions to manage attitudes toward metropolitan change. In the 1980s, Cleveland, Ohio, experienced what many politicians and business and civic leaders called a “comeback.” To understand the images and narratives constructed during this intended renaissance, it is necessary to examine earlier campaigns to revivify Cleveland and its reputation. This article traces three such campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the better-known 1980s renaissance, and examines the tension between acceptance and rejection of these images and narratives. This interplay paralleled a tension between decline and renewal that has been a hallmark of the post–World War II American city