Federal Numeric Nutrient Criteria in Florida: When Cooperative Federalism Goes Rogue

This Comment contends that the task of finding the equilibrium between the nutrients for each water body to sustain aquatic life, without adding excessive nutrients that will impair the aquatic ecosystem can only be achieved by maintaining a balanced federal/state partnership in the cooperative federalist system upon which the Clean Water Act was built. This partnership, however, has slowly eroded during the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempts to regulate nutrient pollution through numeric nutrient criteria in the State of Florida. In a perfect world with unlimited resources, the EPA would work with the states to develop and implement controls necessary to prevent nutrient pollution entirely. However, due to limited resources, the EPA must set out a priority to balance both preventative and detective methods to diagnose and mitigate pollution. An overreliance on preventative measures will be too resource intensive and may actually inflict the damage it is trying to prevent by requiring regulation of all waters rather than a strategic focus on impaired water bodies. The EPA’s desire to implement independently applicable numeric nutrient criteria, a numeric threshold triggering regulation which applies regardless of water impairment, is a prime example that will be explored in this Comment

Lamarckian Illusions

In recent years the term ‘Lamarckian evolution’ has become a household name for processes that do not follow classical Mendelian pattern of inheritance, and it is seen as a relevant complement to Darwinism. In this article I argue that bringing back Lamarck is unjustified and misleading

Transnational Families in Crisis: An Analysis of the Domestic Violence Rule in E.U. Free Movement Law

This Essay analyzes a concrete rule of European law that has emerged to address the problem of domestic violence within certain transnational families. The domestic violence rule is found in Article 13 of the European Community Free Movement Directive (the Directive), legislation that governs the rights of E.U. citizens and their family members to enter and reside in other E.U. Member States.6 The rule affects the rights of a discrete group: non-E.U. ( third-country national ) family members of migrant E.U. citizens, that is, E.U. citizens who have moved to another E.U. Member State (the host State ) to exercise residence rights there. In order to make moving within the European Union easier and more attractive to E.U. citizens, the Directive, permits third-country nationals to reside in the host State with their migrant E.U. national family members. For example, this legislation permits a Spanish national to live and work in France, and authorizes his Bolivian wife to live in France with him. As will be discussed further, infra, the domestic violence rule of the Directive permits the third-country national to retain that right of residence in the host State even in the event of a divorce, if she has experienced domestic violence

Transnational Families in Crisis: An Analysis of the Domestic Violence Rule in E.U. Free Movement Law

This Essay analyzes a concrete rule of European law that has emerged to address the problem of domestic violence within certain transnational families. The domestic violence rule is found in Article 13 of the European Community Free Movement Directive (the Directive), legislation that governs the rights of E.U. citizens and their family members to enter and reside in other E.U. Member States.6 The rule affects the rights of a discrete group: non-E.U. ( third-country national ) family members of migrant E.U. citizens, that is, E.U. citizens who have moved to another E.U. Member State (the host State ) to exercise residence rights there. In order to make moving within the European Union easier and more attractive to E.U. citizens, the Directive, permits third-country nationals to reside in the host State with their migrant E.U. national family members. For example, this legislation permits a Spanish national to live and work in France, and authorizes his Bolivian wife to live in France with him. As will be discussed further, infra, the domestic violence rule of the Directive permits the third-country national to retain that right of residence in the host State even in the event of a divorce, if she has experienced domestic violence

Monitoring the Impact of Health Reform on Americans 50-64: Medicaid Expansion and Marketplace Implementation Increased Health Coverage

This survey shows that the share of 50- to 64-year-olds without health insurance fell between December 2013 and March 2014. In states that expanded their Medicaid programs, a greater share of previously uninsured adults gained coverage, particularly among groups that have traditionally faced barriers to obtaining it. The survey also found that the newly insured differed in key ways from those who reported being insured for all of the past 12 months. On average, more were low income, and more reported that they had had trouble paying medical bills. This paper is part of a series that looks at the experience of 50- to 64-year-olds during the first open enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Demographics, Activity, and Habitat Selection of the Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene c. carolina) in West Virginia

Little is known about the eastern box turtle, Terrapene c. carolina, in West Virginia. The purpose of this study was to compare demographic data between two populations of box turtles, to determine which environmental parameter(s) influence activity patterns, and to describe the optimal habitat of the box turtles at two study sites (Lake and State Park) at Beech Fork Wildlife Management Area. I observed male-skewed sex ratios and low numbers of juveniles in both populations. Male turtles were larger than females in carapace length, but females were larger in carapace height. Turtles at the Lake site exhibited greater body mass and carapace height due to more food and shelter availability. Turtles were most likely found active in the morning hours due to cooler air temperatures, but warmer substrate temperatures. Optimal box turtle habitat conditions at the study site were mixed hardwood forests with nearby fields and 1st order streams

Diffusive behavior of a greedy traveling salesman

Using Monte Carlo simulations we examine the diffusive properties of the greedy algorithm in the d-dimensional traveling salesman problem. Our results show that for d=3 and 4 the average squared distance from the origin is proportional to the number of steps t. In the d=2 case such a scaling is modified with some logarithmic corrections, which might suggest that d=2 is the critical dimension of the problem. The distribution of lengths also shows marked differences between d=2 and d>2 versions. A simple strategy adopted by the salesman might resemble strategies chosen by some foraging and hunting animals, for which anomalous diffusive behavior has recently been reported and interpreted in terms of Levy flights. Our results suggest that broad and Levy-like distributions in such systems might appear due to dimension-dependent properties of a search space.Comment: accepted in Phys. Rev.

Monitoring the Impact of Health Care Reforms on Americans 50-64: Awareness and Coverage Expectations

This survey found widespread awareness among Americans ages 50 to 64 about the new health insurance Marketplace that had been created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Those with the most to gain from the ACA -- the uninsured and those with nongroup (individual) insurance -- expressed the greatest interest in using the Marketplace to learn about new coverage options. Most of those already insured expected to keep their same source of coverage in 2014, whereas the uninsured had mixed expectations. This paper is part of a series that looks at the experiences of 50- to 64-year-olds during the ACA's first open enrollment period

Effects of baryons on weak lensing peak statistics

Upcoming weak-lensing surveys have the potential to become leading cosmological probes provided all systematic effects are under control. Recently, the ejection of gas due to feedback energy from active galactic nuclei (AGN) has been identified as major source of uncertainty, challenging the success of future weak-lensing probes in terms of cosmology. In this paper we investigate the effects of baryons on the number of weak-lensing peaks in the convergence field. Our analysis is based on full-sky convergence maps constructed via light-cones from $N$-body simulations, and we rely on the baryonic correction model of Schneider et al. (2019) to model the baryonic effects on the density field. As a result we find that the baryonic effects strongly depend on the Gaussian smoothing applied to the convergence map. For a DES-like survey setup, a smoothing of $\theta_k\gtrsim8$ arcmin is sufficient to keep the baryon signal below the expected statistical error. Smaller smoothing scales lead to a significant suppression of high peaks (with signal-to-noise above 2), while lower peaks are not affected. The situation is more severe for a Euclid-like setup, where a smoothing of $\theta_k\gtrsim16$ arcmin is required to keep the baryonic suppression signal below the statistical error. Smaller smoothing scales require a full modelling of baryonic effects since both low and high peaks are strongly affected by baryonic feedback.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, JCAP accepte

Monitoring the Impact of Health Reform on Americans 50-64: Use of Insurance Marketplaces

This survey found that 9 out of 10 Americans ages 50 to 64 were aware of the new health insurance Marketplace that had been created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The survey found that, despite widespread awareness of the Marketplace among this age group, relatively few who knew about the Marketplace were interested in using it to acquire new coverage. The survey also found that 50- to 64-year-olds' use of the Marketplace varied widely by health insurance status and income. This paper is part of a series that looks at the experiences of 50- to 64-year-olds during the ACA's first open enrollment period