Airports, Air Pollution, and Contemporaneous Health

Airports are some of the largest sources of air pollution in the United States. We demonstrate that daily airport runway congestion contributes significantly to local pollution levels and contemporaneous health of residents living nearby and downwind from airports. Our research design exploits the fact that network delays originating from large airports on the East Coast increase runway congestion in California, which in turn increases daily pollution levels around California airports. Using the component of California air pollution driven by airport congestion, we find that carbon monoxide (CO) leads to significant increases in hospitalization rates for asthma, respiratory, and heart related emergency room admissions that are an order of magnitude larger than conventional estimates: A one standard deviation increase in daily pollution levels leads to an additional $1 million in hospitalization costs for respiratory and heart related admissions for the 6 million individuals living within 10km (6.2 miles) of the 12 largest airports in California. While infants and the elderly are more sensitive to air pollution, we also find significant relationships for the adult population. The health impacts are driven by CO, not NO2 or O3, and occur at levels far below existing EPA mandates. Our results suggest there may be sizable morbidity benefits from lowering the existing CO standard.

Nuclear thermodynamics from chiral low-momentum interactions

We investigate the thermodynamic equation of state of isospin-symmetric nuclear matter with microscopic nuclear forces derived within the framework of chiral effective field theory. Two- and three-body nuclear interactions constructed at low resolution scales form the basis for a perturbative calculation of the finite-temperature equation of state. The nuclear force models and many-body methods are benchmarked against bulk properties of isospin-symmetric nuclear matter at zero temperature, which are found to be well reproduced when chiral nuclear interactions constructed at the lowest resolution scales are employed. The calculations are then extended to finite temperatures, where we focus on the liquid-gas phase transition and the associated critical point. The Maxwell construction is applied to construct the physical equation of state, and the value of the critical temperature is determined to be T_c =17.2-19.1 MeV, in good agreement with the value extracted from multifragmentation reactions of heavy ions.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. v3 matches published versio

Sneaking Around in the Legal Profession: Interjurisdictional Unauthorized Practice by Transactional Lawyers

The quiet clubbiness that once characterized the practice of law in the United States is rapidly disappearing as new realities announce their clamorous arrival. Evaporating at a great rate—judging speed of change in historical terms—are many traditionally accepted and functionally important features of the legal profession of another day. Disappearing or dead are such sturdy former fixtures as the exclusivity of traditional bar self-policing. Also gone is the at-one-time widely acknowledged hegemony of the American Bar Association as the exclusive source of lawyer code pronouncements on lawyer disciplinary regulation. Courts, under the thrall of bar associations, at one time claimed the exclusive right to regulate lawyers. Although one still finds the rhetoric of judicial exclusivity, the reality is that lawyer regulation is increasingly found in the form of legislation or administrative regulation, some of which is sought out by lawyer organizations themselves. Efforts of an older time to develop a strong and widely shared moral sense across the professional community seem to have been abandoned as a bar project, particularly in metropolitan areas. The bar seems to have retreated, if sometimes reluctantly, from activities that seemed at the time, and which seem now, to be aimed more at protecting lawyer self-interest rather than at protecting clients or the public. Some, but hardly all, of the transformations accompanying the rapid pace of change in the American legal profession are applaudable developments. Wearing my own sentiments on my sleeve (and I suspect I am not alone), I do not regret the passing over of such dysfunctional features of the traditional bar, such as the conspiracy of silence, under which lawyers tacitly agreed not to sue or serve as expert witness against other lawyers; the non-enforcement of lawyer codes -- with the trendy code intended merely to serve, as one media critic has put it, as lip service to our better selves ; and hypocritical differentiation in such matters as bar discipline (i.e. winking at the faults of lawyers in large firms, while focusing on largely victimless offenses, such as advertising and solicitation by small-time practitioners); and character determinations in bar-admission committees that seemed to have a class, race, or gender-based bias

Die islamische Welt und das christliche Europa zur Zeit Heinrichs V.:Machtverschiebungen und institutionelle Neuansätze

Während der Herrschaftszeit Heinrichs V. wurden die Voraussetzungen für die Neujustierung der christlich-islamischen Mächtekonstellation geschaffen. Hierzu gehört die Entstehung des neuartigen Instituts der geistlichen Ritterorden, die einerseits für das militärische Überleben der Kreuzfahrerherrschaften von entscheidender Bedeutung war, andererseits aber eine neue Form christlichen Ordenslebens begründete, deren Einfluss auf die sich herausbildende ritterliche Kultur kaum zu überschätzen ist. Die Kreuzzüge wirkten als ein wesentlicher Stimulus für das ritterliche Ethos: Ab dem hohen Mittelalter waren Angehörige des niederen wie des hohen Adels, einschließlich der europäischen Monarchen, Angehörige einer kämpfenden militia Christi. Mit dieser Eingliederung der Herrscher in eine zumindest partiell egalitäre Adelsgesellschaft war eine Relativierung des exklusiven Gottesgnadentums der Könige und Kaiser verbunden, was wiederum auf die Neubestimmung des Verhältnisses von regnum und sacerdotium verweist, die sich während der Herrschaft der Salier vollzog. Dieser Entwicklung stand die zeitgleiche Entstehung der Bewegung der Almohaden gegenüber, die zu einer religiösen Neubesinnung auf islamischer Seite führte, die in der Levante mit Nur ad-Din und den Ayyubiden verbunden war. Die Kreuzzüge und die damit verbundene ritterliche Kultur waren wesentliche Elemente der europäischen politischen Kultur des späteren Mittelalters.The institutional foundations for a readjustment of the relationship between Islamic and Christian powers were laid during the reign of Emperor Henry V. With the emergence of the Christian military orders, a completely new form of monastic life came into being. They were indispensable for the military survival of the crusader states; on the other hand, this new form of religious life had momentous consequences for the emergence of chivalry. The crusades provided a powerful stimulus for the development of a chivalric ethos: From the high Middle Ages onwards, members both of the lower and of the higher nobility, including ruling monarchs, saw themselves as belonging to a fighting community, a militia Christi. The absorption of rulers into a partly egalitarian aristocratic culture tended to diminish the divine right of kings and emperors, which was linked to the changing interrelationship of regnum and sacerdotium during the reign of the Salian dynasty. On the Islamic side, this change was matched by a religious revival associated with the movement of the Almohads, and later by Nur ad-Din and the Ayyubids. Crusades and chivalric culture, which were stimulated decisively by developments taking place in this period, turned out to be characteristic elements of European political culture during the later medieval period

Der Dortmunder Totenbund Heinrichs II. und die Reform der futuwwa durch den Bagdader Kalifen al-Nāṣir:Überlegungen zu einer vergleichenden Geschichte mittelalterlicher Institutionen

In the middle ages, political rulers began to use religious institutions in new ways to legitimize their rule. The German king Henry II was the first to establish a new kind of confraternity, of which he became a member himself, together with his wife, the Saxon duke and several bishops. The participants incurred mutual obligations, both liturgical and charitable. The earliest comparable Islamic parallel is the reform of the futuwwa by the caliph al-Nasir. Also in this case, the ruler became a member of a particular religious organization, distinct from the umma at large. However, futuwwa brotherhoods had existed before, but only after the breakdown of Seljuk power had the caliph been in a position to make himself a master of such organizations, using them to promote his religious standing in the wider Sunni world. The relative chances of stability of the institutions depended on many factors, such as ideas concerning the role of monarchs within the respective religious communities, as well as regarding their relationship with political elites. A careful contextualized comparison shows that in western Christianity reciprocal relations of monarchs and other believers were more in line with religious tradition than in Sunni Islam, where it was far more difficult to present the ruler as a member of particular religious confraternities. It becomes evident that the history of political institutions cannot be written without putting them into the wider religious and social context

Herrschergedenken bei den Karolingern und Abbasiden

Unterschiedliche Praktiken des Herrschergedenkens bei christlichen und islamischen Herrschern gehen auf den jeweiligen Entwicklungsstand der „transzendentalen Logik“ zurück, d. h. auf die jeweiligen Annahmen über Möglichkeiten, transzendente Phänomene durch religiöse Praktiken zu beeinflussen. Zu berücksichtigen ist auch der unterschiedliche Ausprägungsgrad von Institutionen: Im Frankenreich existierten in spätantiker Tradition Klöster, die als Grablegen genutzt werden konnten. In frühislamischer Zeit gab es vergleichbare Institutionen nicht; erst später bildeten sich mit den Madrasas Institutionen heraus, die von einer Gemeinschaft getragen wurden und somit die Aufsicht über dort erfolgte Bestattungen übernehmen konnten. Erst die Grabmadrasa schuf die Voraussetzung für kontinuierliches Herrschergedenken, das sich als „soziale Institution“ bezeichnen lässt. Es zeigt sich, dass Formen der Erinnerung an Verstorbene keineswegs anthropologische Konstanten sind, sondern dass jeweils der kulturelle und religiöse Kontext zu berücksichtigen ist. Im Islam entwickelten sich solche Praktiken erst spät, mutmaßlich unter der Einwirkung außerislamischer Vorstellungen, die allerdings, wie in der klassischen islamischen Kultur üblich, unter der Hand islamisiert wurden. Der Blick auf kulturelle Unterschiede kann dabei helfen, die Verabsolutierung von Praktiken der jeweils eigenen Kultur zu vermeiden und zu einer differenzierteren Sicht der historischen Entwicklung zu gelangen.Different practices of commemorating Christian and Islamic rulers are due to different stages of development of the respective „transcendental logic“, i.e. assumptions regarding the possibility to influence transcendental phenomena by religious performance. It is also important to note the different degree of institutionalization: In the Frankish world, there were – as in late antiquity – monasteries that could be used for royal burials. In early Islam there were no comparable institutions. It was only later that the institution of madrasas developed, which were sustained by communities that could also care for burials. The institutionalized madrasa provided the precondition for ongoing practices of commemorating dead rulers. The comparison shows that practices commemorating the dead should not be taken for granted; their development depended on the respective cultural and religious context. In Islam, such practices emerged only at a later stage, possibly influenced by non-Islamic customs, which were tacitly islamicized, as was usual in classical Islamic culture. Pinpointing cultural differences can help to avoid generalizing developments in one’s own culture, clarifying the reasons of different developments