THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF TAKING A SPORTS FRANCHISE BY EMINENT DOMAIN AND THE NEED FOR FEDERAL LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FRANCHISE RELOCATION

In 1985, two cities were in proceedings to each take over a sports franchises located within their respective cities. However, a number of constitutional limitations may prevent a city from taking sports franchises. This Note examines the constitutional public use, just compensation,right to travel and commerce clause limitations as applied to the taking of sports franchises by eminent domain. This Note concludes that eminent domain is an improper method of protecting cities\u27 interests in preventing the relocation of sports franchises. Consequently, it suggests that only carefully drawn federal legislation can protect a city\u27s interest in keeping its sports franchises without subjecting franchises to nonuniform and discriminatory treatment

Surface micromachined membranes for tunnel transducers

We have developed low-temperature surface micromachining procedures for the fabrication of suspended SiO2/Si3N4 membranes. This fabrication method was integrated with electron beam lithography, anisotropic ion etching, and electroplating to construct electrostatically deflectable tunnel transducers. We show the structures and some preliminary measurements on the performance of these monolithic devices

Precaution, governance and the failure of medical implants: the ASR(TM) hip in the UK

Hip implants have provided life-changing treatment, reducing pain and improving the mobility and independence of patients. Success has encouraged manufacturers to innovate and amend designs, engendering patient hopes in these devices. However, failures of medical implants do occur. The failure rate of the Articular Surface Replacement metal-on-metal hip system, implanted almost 100,000 times world-wide, has re-opened debate about appropriate and timely implant governance. As commercial interests, patient hopes, and devices’ governance converge in a socio-technical crisis, we analyse the responses of relevant governance stakeholders in the United Kingdom between 2007 and 2014. We argue that there has been a systemic failure of the governance system entrusted with the safety of patients fitted with medical implants. Commercial considerations of medical implants and the status quo of medical implant governance have been given priority over patient safety despite the availability of significant failure data in an example of uncertainty about what constitutes appropriate precautionary action

The Hankie Probe: A Materialistic Approach to Mobile UX Research

Mobile user experience (UX) research can benefit from unexplored opportunities from theory and practice. Contemporary sociology has developed sophisticated understandings of mobilities that can expand the scope of mobile HCI research. At the same time, we need to extend the scope of mobile experience beyond its current main foci on the portable device and moments of experience. We report the interim results of exploratory pilot studies of a fabric based probe that has been developed to extend the scope of mobile experience research both theoretically and in the range of insights that can be collected in mobile user studies. We report our initial experiences with a 'hankie' (handkerchief) probe that aims to gather rich usage and experience insights for early stages of design

Seeing the light – finding the poetic content of design objects

This paper presents the process and initial results of a research through design project attempting to understand the poetic qualities of design objects. This exploration forms part of a PhD study addressing design artefacts as poetic objects - objects that both embed and conjure memory, association and imagination. The research examines the ways in which design objects can be poetic and how designers actively and knowingly use objects to poetic effect. It is proposed that the poetic content of design artefacts can be located on a continuum ranging from the experiential - relating to how we perceive things - to the reflective and cultural. What unites these levels is the capacity of design objects to reveal and change our way of looking at things. The practice uses the design of lighting as a vehicle for exploring the poetic meaning of designed objects more generally. Starting with the notion that lights do more than provide light, the current phase of practice examines the ways in which luminaires can mediate how we perceive and experience light and explores, in particular, the more nuanced and ephemeral qualities of light that escape conscious attention

Does text structure/summarization instruction facilitate learning from expository text?

The work upon which this publication is based was performed pursuant to Contract no. NIE-400-81-0030 of the National Institute of Educatio

The Cepheid Distance Scale: recent progress in fundamental techniques

This review examines progress on the Pop I, fundamental-mode Cepheid distance scale with emphasis on recent developments in geometric and quasi-geometric techniques for Cepheid distance determination. Specifically I examine the surface brightness method, interferometric pulsation method, and trigonometric measurements. The three techniques are found to be in excellent agreement for distance measures in the Galaxy. The velocity p-factor is of crucial importance in the first two of these methods. A comparison of recent determinations of the p-factor for Cepheids demonstrates that observational measures of p and theoretical predictions agree within their uncertainties for Galactic Cepheids.Comment: An invited review at the Santa Fe, NM, conference -- Stellar Pulsation: Challenges for Theory and Observation; May 31-June 5, 2009 10 pages, 8 figure

Decoherence of spin echoes

We define a quantity, the so-called purity fidelity, which measures the rate of dynamical irreversibility due to decoherence, observed e.g in echo experiments, in the presence of an arbitrary small perturbation of the total (system + environment) Hamiltonian. We derive a linear response formula for the purity fidelity in terms of integrated time correlation functions of the perturbation. Our relation predicts, similarly to the case of fidelity decay, faster decay of purity fidelity the slower decay of time correlations is. In particular, we find exponential decay in quantum mixing regime and faster, initially quadratic and later typically gaussian decay in the regime of non-ergodic, e.g. integrable quantum dynamics. We illustrate our approach by an analytical calculation and numerical experiments in the Ising spin 1/2 chain kicked with tilted homogeneous magnetic field where part of the chain is interpreted as a system under observation and part as an environment.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure