Consideration of Anticipatory Uses in Decisions on Coastal Development

Between 1849 and 1965, San Francisco Bay shrank from 700 square miles to its present 400 square miles before a halt to piecemeal filling stopped its irreversible destruction. This loss should have been foreseeable. When decision makers work on an ad hoc basis, it is logical that they would look no further than the proposal at hand. Any objections considered were solely from those parties already using the Bay. In Florida, a series of decisions taking fresh waters away from the Everglades National Park now threatens to destroy entirely the ecology of the Everglades. The existence of this threat illustrates why coastal decisions must anticipate conflicting uses, not simply wait for them to arise. First, the applications to divert waters heading for the Everglades for large agricultural and industrial projects were considered one by one without weighing their future impact on the park itself. Second, the objecting users of the fresh water have no interest in protecting future shrimpers using the Gulf of Mexico; yet the shrimp cycle off Florida begins and ends with a trip to reproduce in the special salinitity of the Everglades. Third, there will be no time for corrective action after the decisions are made. Fortunately, the fresh water diverted for adding crops and products had been matched by three full years of rainfall. However, when the next dry year comes to the Everglades the damage to its unique swamp ecology will be the direct result of past failures to build anticipatory uses into decisions in that area. This Article\u27s concentration on these neglected future uses does not mean that they must invariably be given priority over those already existing. Indeed, there are often sound reasons after all considerations are weighed why existing users should be preferred over potential ones. A simple solution would be to establish an inflexible rule that, if any conflicts arise, present activities must prevail. The fallacy here lies in the fact that protecting the user\u27s expectancies is but one aim of a just system; allowing room for satisfaction of new social or economic needs is also an aim which the same system is expected to serve. In short, the law is also expected to take future uses into account. Finally, while this Article urges that bolder steps be taken to make consideration of anticipatory uses routine, the concept itself is far from new. For instance, some state laws, such as Massachusetts\u27 Wetlands Law and Rhode Island\u27s Intertidal Salt Marsh Law, already have halted the indiscriminate filling of tidal marshes. Thus, in a presently unused area, future recreational and commercial fishing activities dependent on a marsh ecology can be preserved. If other resources are to receive the same protection, we must 1) analyze why our present procedures have failed in the past, and 2) provide devices to make routine what has hitherto been crisis-born

Foreword: Law of the Sea Needs for the 1970\u27s

These are exciting times for an ocean lawyer, for the Law of the Sea is in a period of reconstitution; simultaneously, the arena for remaking ocean law also could become the amphitheater for constitutive changes in our international system - or, as is predicted by a coterie of doomsayers, just another ring of an antedelvian circus. Looked at in this light, the following Law of the Seas Symposium can be judged, either by the degree to which its authors follow the Rules of Play for this constitutive period, or by the extent to which they meet the need for new debates before the next United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, presently scheduled for 1973

FMBEM analysis of sound scattering from a damping plate in the near field of a hydrophone.

As part of research into the effect of underwater noise on the communication between an under-ice Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and it’s stationary launch vessel (the Aurora Australis), fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) acoustic modeling was conducted. In particular, a steel damping plate with a complex 3-dimensional structure was modeled (using up to 1.6 x 10 5 boundary elements) and the effect of sound scattering from a pinger near the ship was determined at the receiver hydrophone, which was in close proximity to the damping plate. The direct incident field from the pinger was modeled as a plane wave at a number of incidence angles (to account for the depths to which the hydrophone was lowered) and over a range of frequencies up to the pinger frequency of 10kHz. This paper presents these results and discusses some of the interesting effects observed at the ‘non-unique’ frequencies when using the different methods available to provide stability to the numerical solution. Thus far, the modeling conducted for the damping plate has treated the object as rigid. The FMBEM code being developed at CMST now has the capability to model fully coupled fluid-structure interactions and some initial results from treating the damping plate as elastic are also presented

The development of a fast multipole boundary element method for coupled acoustic and elastic problems

This thesis presents a dual fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for modelling 3D acoustic coupled fluid-structure interaction problems in the frequency domain. Boundary integral representations are used to represent both the exterior fluid and interior elastic solid domains and the fast multipole method is employed to accelerate the calculations in both domains. The dual FMBEM yields a similar solution accuracy to the conventional models, while its solution times and memory requirements are substantially reduced

The Effect of Variability on the Estimation of Quasar Black Hole Masses

We investigate the time-dependent variations of ultraviolet (UV) black hole mass estimates of quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). From SDSS spectra of 615 high-redshift (1.69 < z < 4.75) quasars with spectra from two epochs, we estimate black hole masses, using a single-epoch technique which employs an additional, automated night-sky-line removal, and relies on UV continuum luminosity and CIV (1549A) emission line dispersion. Mass estimates show variations between epochs at about the 30% level for the sample as a whole. We determine that, for our full sample, measurement error in the line dispersion likely plays a larger role than the inherent variability, in terms of contributing to variations in mass estimates between epochs. However, we use the variations in quasars with r-band spectral signal-to-noise ratio greater than 15 to estimate that the contribution to these variations from inherent variability is roughly 20%. We conclude that these differences in black hole mass estimates between epochs indicate variability is not a large contributer to the current factor of two scatter between mass estimates derived from low- and high-ionization emission lines.Comment: 76 pages, 15 figures, 2 (long) tables; Accepted for publication in ApJ (November 10, 2007

Spectral Variability of Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II: The C IV Line

We examine the variability of the high-ionizaton C IV line in a sample of 105 quasars observed at multiple epochs by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find a strong correlation between the change in the C IV line flux and the change in the line width, but no correlations between the change in flux and changes in line center and skewness. The relation between line flux change and line width change is consistent with a model in which a broad line base varies with greater amplitude than the line core. The objects studied here are more luminous and at higher redshift than those normally studied for variability, ranging in redshift from 1.65 to 4.00 and in absolute r-band magnitude from roughly -24 to -28. Using moment analysis line-fitting techniques, we measure line fluxes, centers, widths and skewnesses for the C IV line at two epochs for each object. The well-known Baldwin Effect is seen for these objects, with a slope beta = -0.22. The sample has a median intrinsic Baldwin Effect slope of beta = -0.85; the C IV lines in these high-luminosity quasars appear to be less responsive to continuum variations than those in lower luminosity AGN. Additionally, we find no evidence for variability of the well known blueshift of the C IV line with respect to the low-ionization Mg II line in the highest flux objects, indicating that this blueshift might be useful as a measure of orientation.Comment: 52 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Small-volume resuscitation with hyperoncotic albumin: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials

Background Small-volume resuscitation can rapidly correct hypovolemia. Hyperoncotic albumin solutions, long in clinical use, are suitable for small-volume resuscitation; however, their clinical benefits remain uncertain. Methods Randomized clinical trials comparing hyperoncotic albumin with a control regimen for volume expansion were sought by multiple methods, including computer searches of bibliographic databases, perusal of reference lists, and manual searching. Major findings were qualitatively summarized. In addition, a quantitative meta-analysis was performed on available survival data. Results In all, 25 randomized clinical trials with a total of 1,485 patients were included. In surgery, hyperoncotic albumin preserved renal function and reduced intestinal edema compared with control fluids. In trauma and sepsis, cardiac index and oxygenation were higher after administration of hydroxyethyl starch than hyperoncotic albumin. Improved treatment response and renal function, shorter hospital stay and lower costs of care were reported in patients with liver disease receiving hyperoncotic albumin. Edema and morbidity were decreased in high-risk neonates after hyperoncotic albumin administration. Disability was reduced by therapy with hyperoncotic albumin in brain injury. There was no evidence of deleterious effects attributable to hyperoncotic albumin. Survival was unaffected by hyperoncotic albumin (pooled relative risk, 0.95; 95% confidence interval 0.78 to 1.17). Conclusion In some clinical indications, randomized trial evidence has suggested certain benefits of hyperoncotic albumin such as reductions in morbidity, renal impairment and edema. However, further clinical trials are needed, particularly in surgery, trauma and sepsis