DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION - INHERITANCE THROUGH ILLEGITIMATE CHILD - IOWA STATUTE

This action involved a determination of the heirs of A, a widow, whose deceased husband, B, was an illegitimate child. Three sets of claimants asked for her estate: the legitimate descendants of B\u27s mother, the legitimate descendants of B\u27s father, and the state of Iowa, the domicile of the deceased. The district court awarded the property to the state, as uninherited property, on the ground that the other claimants could not take through an illegitimate. On appeal, reversed. An Iowa statute provided that an illegitimate child could inherit from his mother, and from his father, when recognized in a certain manner, and also provided that his mother, and his father, if recognized, could inherit from such illegitimate. The conclusion of the court was that this statute should be construed to provide for more than mutual inheritance between illegitimates and their parents; it means that an illegitimate\u27s blood is inheritable and next of kin can claim through him. Therefore, the descendants of B\u27s mother were awarded one-half the estate, and, since the court found the proper recognition between B and his father, the descendants of B\u27s father took the other half. In re Clark\u27s Estate, (Iowa, 1940) 290 N. W. 13

TRUSTS - CONSTRUCTIVE TRUSTS - PREFERENTIAL CLAIM AGAINST BANK\u27S ASSETS FOR DEPOSITS MADE AFTER HOPELESS INSOLVENCY

On proclamation by the governor of the so-called bank holiday, the Union Guardian Trust Company was closed as of February 11, 1933. The evidence showed that within nine months of closing the company had made provision for obtaining $2,500,000 by pledging assets, had received loans amounting to$12,000,000 from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and was conferring frequently with the officers of· that agency to negotiate an additional $44,000,000 loan. Under the authority of emergency legislation passed after the bank holiday, a conservator was appointed. By the plan of reorganization all the assets of the company were set aside in a fund designated as a depositors\u27 and creditors\u27 trust fund for liquidation by a trustee for the benefit of creditors. Plaintiffs seek to establish a preferential claim against the assets on the theory that the trust company\u27s acceptance of their deposits while insolvent created a trust ex male-ficio in favor of the plaintiffs. The lower court gave judgment for plaintiffs. On appeal, held, reversed. The trust company was not hopelessly or irretrievably insolvent when it accepted the deposits. Union Guardian Trust Co. v. Emery, 292 Mich. 394, 290 N. W. 841 (1940)

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS - DEBT LIMITATIONS - VALIDITY OF REVENUE FINANCING BONDS

The state of Ohio created a building authority to which it transferred for a period of twenty-five years certain hospitals and public land. In return the authority promised to repair the hospitals and to construct a number of new buildings. Bonds to the amount of $7,500,000 were issued by the authority on a resolution pledging the income to be derived from the property pursuant to a twenty-three year rent and bond retirement agreement with the department of welfare. The department promised to charge its patients enough to meet these obligations, and to make payment possible a statute was passed allowing the department to retain the money collected from pay patients instead of turning it in as state revenues. The bonds expressly provided that payment was to be fulfilled by the faith and credit of the authority and was not to be a charge against the general credit of the state, which had a constitutional provision limiting state indebtedness to$750,000. In case of default, a receiver could be appointed to collect the rent. An action in mandamus was brought against the secretary of state to compel him to attest the bonds. On demurrer, it was held that bonds issued on the basis of such a resolution and contract with the department of welfare constitute an indebtedness of the state. Writ denied. State ex rel. Public Institutional Building Authority v. Griffith, 135 Ohio St. 604, 22 N. E. (2d) 200 (1939)

TAXATION - PRIVILEGE TAX ON FOREIGN CORPORATIONS - DUE PROCESS AND COMMERCE CLAUSES - VALIDITY OF FORMULA

The state of Texas levied an annual franchise tax on all corporations, both foreign and domestic, authorized to do business within the state. The tax was assessed on the basis of the amount of the total capital stock which was allocable to Texas, the allocation being based on the proportion that Texas gross receipts bore to total gross receipts. This formula, as applied to the Ford Motor Company, gave the statutory base of $23,000,000 on which Ford paid the tax under protest. The evidence showed that the Ford Motor Company had only an assembly plant in Texas worth$3,000,000, that auto parts were shipped in, assembled, and sold in intrastate commerce. The circuit court of appeals affirmed the district court\u27s judgment upholding the tax against the claim that it burdened interstate commerce and taxed property outside the state. On certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, held, the formula was constitutional because it fairly measured the value added to the privilege of doing intrastate business by use of property outside the state. Judgment affirmed. Justices Black and Douglas concurred in the result. Justice McReynolds dissented. Ford Motor Co. v. Beauchamp, 308 U.S. 331, 60 S. Ct. 273 (1939)

Utah Water Quality- Utah Ground Water

Ground water is important to the economic and physical well-being of the people of Utah. About 95% of Utah\u27s fresh water is ground water. It provides more than 70% of the state\u27s drinking water and is a major source of water for agriculture and irrigation

Pesticide Movement in Response to Furrow Irrigation and Pesticide Parameters

Production of adequate supplies of food and fiber currently requires that pesticides be used to limit crop losses from insects, pathogens, weeds and other pests. The term pesticide refers to a large number ofchemical compounds. Pesticides include acaricides, fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, nematicides, algicides, arboricides, zoocides, and many more

Utah Water Quality- Fertilizer Impact on Groundwater in Utah

Water quality has become the focal point of many decisions involving crop production. Crop production depends on specific inputs including fertilizer application. Without proper fertilization a farmer cannot achieve maximum economic returns. Crop yields in Utah have been increased over 50% by nitrogen fertilizer application alone. However, increasing nitrogen application beyond that needed for optimum economic return does more harm than good. This is especially true when groundwater concerns are addressed

Fertilizer Impact on Groundwater in Utah

Water quality has become the focal point of many decisions involving crop production. Crop production depends on specific inputs including fertilizer application. Without proper fertilization a farmer cannot achieve maximum economic returns. Crop yields in Utah have been increased over 50% by nitrogen fertilizer application alone. However, increasing nitrogen application beyond that needed for optimum economic return does more harm than good. This is especially true when groundwater concerns are ressed

Ice Formation on Kaolinite: Insights from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The formation of ice affects many aspects of our everyday life as well as technologies such as cryotherapy and cryopreservation. Foreign substances almost always aid water freezing through heterogeneous ice nucleation, but the molecular details of this process remain largely unknown. In fact, insight into the microscopic mechanism of ice formation on different substrates is difficult to obtain even via state-of-the-art experimental techniques. At the same time, atomistic simulations of heterogeneous ice nucleation frequently face extraordinary challenges due to the complexity of the water-substrate interaction and the long timescales that characterize nucleation events. Here, we have investigated several aspects of molecular dynamics simulations of heterogeneous ice nucleation considering as a prototypical ice nucleating material the clay mineral kaolinite, which is of relevance in atmospheric science. We show via seeded molecular dynamics simulations that ice nucleation on the hydroxylated (001) face of kaolinite proceeds exclusively via the formation of the hexagonal ice polytype. The critical nucleus size is two times smaller than that obtained for homogeneous nucleation at the same supercooling. Previous findings suggested that the flexibility of the kaolinite surface can alter the time scale for ice nucleation within molecular dynamics simulations. However, we here demonstrate that equally flexible (or non flexible) kaolinite surfaces can lead to very different outcomes in terms of ice formation, according to whether or not the surface relaxation of the clay is taken into account. We show that very small structural changes upon relaxation dramatically alter the ability of kaolinite to provide a template for the formation of a hexagonal overlayer of water molecules at the water-kaolinite interface, and that this relaxation therefore determines the nucleation ability of this mineral