New Zealand Calanoid Copepod Invasions: Has Artificial Lake Construction Facilitated Invasions, and are our Coastal Waters Uninvaded?

Non-indigenous species have become a global issue of increasing importance in recent years, with many causing significant environmental and economic damage. Identifying locations vulnerable to invasion allows for focus of management efforts towards prevention of invasions at those locations. In order to determine whether constructed water bodies, such as reservoirs, ornamental lakes or retired mines, are more easily invaded environments than natural water bodies, owing to decreased biotic resistance, the distributions of native and non-indigenous freshwater calanoid copepod species in the North Island were examined. Calanoid copepods in ports and other coastal environments were also examined, in order to determine whether ports are more frequently invaded owing to increased propagule supplies from visiting ships and other sources. The distributions of the native freshwater calanoid copepod species Boeckella hamata, B. propinqua, B. delicata and B. tanea are confined in the North Island of New Zealand to specific technostratigraphic terranes when natural waters only are examined, and as such each species can be considered to have a native range. The recently colonised calanoid copepod species Boeckella minuta (6 locations), Skistodiaptomus pallidus (3 locations) and Sinodiaptomus valkanovi (2 locations) are to date confined to constructed water bodies. Boeckella symmetrica (2 locations) may be confined to constructed water bodies, but the status of one location is unclear. Boeckella triarticulata, a species common in the South Island, is known only from a single farm dam in the North Island. The native species Boeckella hamata, B. propinqua and B. delicata were found to occur in constructed waters, but only B. propinqua was found in constructed water bodies outside their natural ranges (9 locations). Calamoecia lucasi is found in lakes throughout most of the North Island, and is not confined to any one terrane. My results indicate that constructed water bodies are more easily invaded by non-indigenous species than natural water bodies, represents a potential pathway for future invaders to establish, and provides locations for species to spread. In order to determine whether recently established freshwater calanoid copepod species have the potential to spread from their present habitats into other water bodies, the prosomal lengths of non-indigenous calanoid copepod species were measured and compared with those for native species. The results suggest that dietary overlap should prevent the non-indigenous species present to date from spreading into any water bodies with established Boeckella populations, although Sinodiaptomus valkanovi and Boeckella triarticulata could potentially spread to lakes containing only Calamoecia lucasi. Data on the co-occurrences of native freshwater calanoid copepod species support the theory of dietary exclusion, as Boeckella species have not been found to coexist. In order to test whether New Zealand marine environments have been invaded by non-indigenous calanoid copepods, and whether ports have been more regularly invaded than non-port areas, calanoid copepods were sampled from various coastal locations around the North Island. With the possible exception of Sulcanus conflictus, no non-indigenous species were found, indicating that non-indigenous marine calanoid copepod species are not establishing in New Zealand despite a history of invasion elsewhere

The Constitutional Politics of Interpreting Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment

This essay analyzes the Rehnquist Court’s Section 5 cases by first, in Section I, establishing how the Supreme Court has historically assumed the task of interpreting Congress’ power to act under the Fourteenth Amendment. Two periods, Reconstruction and then the mid- 1960s, are examined because they present contrasting views about the scope of what the Fourteenth Amendment and its enforcement section means. Section II then surveys Section 5 cases from the Rehnquist Court in order to illustrate how its jurisprudence mirrors the antifederalist rhetoric established in the post-reconstruction era while, not surprisingly, departing from the principles set forth in the Warren Court’s egalitarian revolution. Section III analyzes the Rehnquist Court’s Section 5 jurisprudence while predicting how the Court is likely to approach deciding Hibbs v. Department of Human Resources, 22 a Ninth Circuit case the Court agreed to decide in the 2002-03 Term. It also concludes that the Court, in Hibbs, is likely to apply an interpretivist construction of Section 5 power that will reaffirm the antifederalist doctrine established in the Reconstruction period and, as a result, reassert judicial supremacy, while missing another opportunity to align constitutional law doctrine with the framer’s more salutary design in creating the Fourteenth Amendment

The Pedagogical Considerations of Using a Constitutional Law Textbook in Political Science

This Review first describes the importance of each consideration by analyzing how a two-volume constitutional law casebook, written by Professor David M. O\u27Brien of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, can be admirably employed to teach the principle that constitutional law is, in fact, politics. Overall, the volumes are excellent undergraduate political science constitutional law texts. However, the casebook volumes have two flaws. First, they do not address the vital question of what is political science?, a query that ought to be routinely asked by anyone teaching public law courses. Second, they omit sufficient explanation of the fundamentals of conducting legal research and writing, including citation style. These criticisms are explored in more detail in the Review\u27s concluding section

Reversals of Precedent and Judicial Policy-Making: How Judicial Conceptions of Stare Decisis in the U.S. Supreme Court Influence Social Change

This article analyzes if Justice Marshall is correct in castigating the Rehnquist Court and asserting that it is destroying the rule of law through its stare decisis jurisprudence. It concludes that Justice Marshall is only partially correct. While the ideological direction of its jurisprudence has shifted to the right, the Court’s behavior in reversing itself is normal and does not endanger the Court’s legitimacy or its faithful adherence to law. A fair assessment of the Rehnquist Court’s precedent cases indicates that they are reversals which were decided in times of natural court instability and rapid membership change. As a result, the Rehnquist Court’s behavior is not that unusual because it is merely re-examining precedent in periods of constitutional “flux” and legal policy change

Sea ice thickness and iceberg distribution in the Southern Ocean

The sea ice thickness distribution, represented by the probability density function (PDF), is critical to Earth's climate system and knowledge of the distribution in the Antarctic is limited. A novel methodology, using an acoustic Doppler current profiler, was developed to measure sea ice draft based on measurements taken from Autosub (an autonomous underwater vehicle). The PDF has been derived for three missions undertaken in the eastern Amundsen Sea during March 2003. The PDFs for all missions were found to have a single mode although there is evidence for variability in mean thickness along the ice front, as the most western mission has a lower mean draft. Geostatistical analyses of the data have allowed the derivation of PDFs to account for the spatial sampling. A factor on the thickness of ice measured is the presence of icebergs within a study region. This thesis reports on work carried out to investigate whether a correction to the sea ice thickness PDF can be made to account for icebergs and over what scale(s) this correction is valid. To answer this question data from Autosub and satellite images were used to investigate whether icebergs were randomly distributed both in open ocean and within sea ice. In conclusion, it was found that icebergs do cluster on the scale of typical Autosub missions (~few km). However, there are differences between icebergs in sea ice compared with open water. Therefore, icebergs should be accounted for in the sea ice thickness PDF

The Pedagogical Considerations of Using a Constitutional Law Textbook in Political Science

This Review first describes the importance of each consideration by analyzing how a two-volume constitutional law casebook, written by Professor David M. O\u27Brien of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, can be admirably employed to teach the principle that constitutional law is, in fact, politics. Overall, the volumes are excellent undergraduate political science constitutional law texts. However, the casebook volumes have two flaws. First, they do not address the vital question of what is political science?, a query that ought to be routinely asked by anyone teaching public law courses. Second, they omit sufficient explanation of the fundamentals of conducting legal research and writing, including citation style. These criticisms are explored in more detail in the Review\u27s concluding section

Did Jesus Survive The Cross?

This study explored whether it was possible for Jesus to survive the crucifixion from a medical and historical perspective. The scope of this thesis is based purely on what is evidentially plausible and more likely. Therefore, the data must reflect whether it was possible for Jesus to survive being crucified. Medical examination and ancient Roman sources were utilized to determine the nature and effectiveness of a Roman crucifixion. Furthermore, several theories concerning how one expires by the crucifixion were included to provide a rounded conclusion. Contrasting hypotheses offered greater insight into refining the question for which this thesis was designed. Finally, this study analyzed other theories and assertions from Muslim beliefs, Jewish thoughts, Christian theists, and apologetic responses to the overall subject of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Upon viewing several texts from Muslim scholars and the Quran, Jewish scholarship, and Christian scholarship, this study concluded that it was medically impossible for Jesus to survive a Roman crucifixion. Upon this realization, the ultimate conclusion supports the authority of Scripture on the matter—namely, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

Oceanographic observations at the Amundsen sea shelf break

Introduction: The continental shelf environment of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas differs markedly from that of the other circumpolar seas, where water temperatures are close to the surface freezing point throughout. In the Amundsen/Bellingshausen sector near-freezing temperatures are encountered only in the upper few hundred metres of the water column. Below this surface layer a broad thermocline trends towards upper Circumpolar Deep Water (uCDW), which is found in a form that is almost unmodified from its off-shelf manifestation (Giulivi and Jacobs, 1996). This means that the ice shelves of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas experience ocean temperatures some three degrees warmer than those experienced by the other Antarctic ice shelves, and the rates of basal melting are correspondingly high (Jacobs et al., 1996)

A Symposium: The Legal and Polticial Implications of Buckley v. Valeo (1976)

One of the most vexing issues in constitutional jurisprudence concerns the political regulation of money and its democratic implications. The resolution of the constitutional question for democracy involves striking a balance between two competing interests: the protection of political liberty under the First Amendment and the legitimate interest government has in preventing money from having a corrosive or corrupting effect on the political system. With its landmark ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, some say that the Supreme Court successfully reconciled these interests and, in fact, strongly preserved the basic ideal of American freedom. Different commentators, however, maintain that the Supreme Court managed to protect neither interest adequately. Still others familiar with campaign finance adopt a more neutral position, implying that Buckley is a sound ruling but nonetheless leaves many key constitutional issues and public policy questions unsettled. To be sure, the range of debate surrounding Buckley illustrates that it is the basis for legal and political controversy