Slots in the City: A Critical Look at the Balance of Decision-Making Power in Gaming Legislation

This Note focuses on the ability of local governmental bodies and local actors to become involved when a state seeks to introduce casino-based gaming or license additional casino properties. Traditionally, states retain the power to make most gaming-related decisions, sometimes only allowing simple yes or no voter referenda. This note argues that an increased role for local actors in bringing gaming to cities will best protect the interests of the people most affected by casinos. Part I provides a brief background of gambling in America and the key aspects of gaming-enabling legislation in various states. Part II discusses local government law and theory. Part III examines aspects of casino gambling that highlight the importance of local involvement in the legislative and regulatory process. It also discusses case studies of commercial casino development in Philadelphia and Detroit. Part IV compares the introduction of gaming in the two cities to better understand the successful introduction of casinos in Detroit. The Note concludes that the capability for local actors to help guide the healthy development of gambling necessarily requires that state enabling legislation reserves a role for local governments and voters in the process of introducing and licensing gaming operations in their municipality

Slots in the City: A Critical Look at the Balance of Decision-Making Power in Gaming Legislation

This Note focuses on the ability of local governmental bodies and local actors to become involved when a state seeks to introduce casino-based gaming or license additional casino properties. Traditionally, states retain the power to make most gaming-related decisions, sometimes only allowing simple yes or no voter referenda. This note argues that an increased role for local actors in bringing gaming to cities will best protect the interests of the people most affected by casinos. Part I provides a brief background of gambling in America and the key aspects of gaming-enabling legislation in various states. Part II discusses local government law and theory. Part III examines aspects of casino gambling that highlight the importance of local involvement in the legislative and regulatory process. It also discusses case studies of commercial casino development in Philadelphia and Detroit. Part IV compares the introduction of gaming in the two cities to better understand the successful introduction of casinos in Detroit. The Note concludes that the capability for local actors to help guide the healthy development of gambling necessarily requires that state enabling legislation reserves a role for local governments and voters in the process of introducing and licensing gaming operations in their municipality

Non-U.S. Funders of Media Assistance Projects

Examines support for independent media by government agencies, foundations, and multi-national groups outside the U.S. and provides a list of active donors in the field. Explores the effectiveness of media assistance efforts

Radio Observations of 4079 Quasars

Using the NVSS radio catalog, we have searched for radio emission from 4079 quasars taken from the 1996 version of the Veron-Cetty and Veron (1996) quasar catalog. The comparison resulted in the positive detection of radio emission from 799 quasars. Of these, 168 are new radio detections. Examination of the radio luminosities shows a dramatic increase in the fraction of radio-loud quasars from the current epoch to z=0.5 and a gradual decline beyond z=1.0. Inspection of the radio-loud fraction as a function of M_B shows little dependence fainter than M_B=-29.5.Comment: 25 pages, including 9 figures and 1 tabl

Some tree-level string amplitudes in the NSR formalism

We calculate tree level scattering amplitudes for open strings using the NSR formalism. We present a streamlined symmetry-based and pedagogical approach to the computations, which we first develop by checking two-, three-, and four-point functions involving bosons and fermions. We calculate the five-point amplitude for massless gluons and find agreement with an earlier result by Brandt, Machado and Medina. We then compute the five-point amplitudes involving two and four fermions respectively, the general form of which has not been previously obtained in the NSR formalism. The results nicely confirm expectations from the supersymmetric $F^4$ effective action. Finally we use the prescription of Kawai, Lewellen and Tye (KLT) to compute the amplitudes for the closed string sector.Comment: 40+8 pages; v2: references added; v3: additional field theory checks made; published version; v4: minor corrections; results unchange

Understanding residents’ capacities to support evacuated populations : A study of earthquake and tsunami evacuation for Napier Hill, Napier, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Due to a large regional subduction zone (the Hikurangi subduction zone) and localised faults, Napier City located on the East Coast of Aotearoa/New Zealand is vulnerable to earthquake and tsunami events. On feeling a long or strong earthquake people will need to evacuate immediately inland or to higher ground to avoid being impacted by a tsunami, of which the first waves could start to arrive within 20 minutes (based on the Hikurangi earthquake and tsunami scenario presented in Power et al., 2018). Napier Hill is one such area of higher land, and it is estimated that up to 12,000 people could evacuate there in the 20 minutes following a long or strong earthquake. To understand the capacity of Napier Hill residents to support evacuees, three focus groups were held with a diverse sample of residents from Napier Hill on 21 and 22 July 2019. A follow up email was sent to all participants a week after the focus groups, containing a link to a short six question survey, which was completed by 68 people, most of whom were additional to the focus group attendees. Data from the focus groups and the survey was analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis. The findings highlight that in general people were happy to host evacuees and offer support if they were in a position to do so. However, key issues in being able to offer support included the likely lack of resources available after a disaster, ranging from basic needs though to agency support. The research findings will directly inform Napier City Council and Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group’s planning for future readiness and response by providing valuable insights for evacuation planningfalseWellingtonHawke's Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Grou

Pointless Hyperelliptic Curves

In this paper we consider the question of whether there exists a hyperelliptic curve of genus g which is defined over but has no rational points over for various pairs . As an example of such a result, we show that if p is a prime such that is also prime then there will be pointless hyperelliptic curves over of every genus