Through Fault of Their Own—Applying Bonner Mall\u27s Extraordinary Circumstances Test to Heightened Standard of Review Clauses

Since 2001, the federal circuit courts of appeals have remained split on the propriety of enforcing heightened standard of review clauses contained in arbitration agreements governed by the Federal Arbitration Act (the FAA ). After reviewing the history of arbitral awards and the text, structure, and legislative history of the FAA as well as the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s interpretation of the FAA, this Note proposes a resolution to the heightened-review circuit split, which is consistent with the FAA\u27s proarbitration policy and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. This Note\u27s proposed resolution would require courts to reject heightened-review clauses through application of the extraordinary circumstances test that the U.S. Supreme Court developed hi U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v Bonner Mall Partnership. This Note argues that the adoption of Bonner Malts extraordinary circumstances test will protect judicial integrity and preserve arbitration as a viable litigation alternative for the entire legal conununity

Electricity load profile classification using Fuzzy C-Means method

This paper presents the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering method. The FCM technique assigns a degree of membership for each data set to several clusters, thus offering the opportunity to deal with load profiles that could belong to more than one group at the same time. The FCM algorithm is based on minimising a c-means objective function to determine an optimal classification. The simulation of FCM was carried out using actual sample data from Indonesia and the results are presented. Some validity index measurements was carried out to estimate the compactness of the resulting clusters or to find the optimal number of clusters for a data set

The romance with Melville and American literary history

textThis dissertation traces the historical emergence of what I call the romance with Melville during the postwar moment and argues that its striking endurance demands that we rethink the relationship between the discipline’s past and present. For the enduring vitality of the romance with Melville throughout the twentieth century points to deep continuities across major cuts in the discipline’s history. These continuities that the romance makes visible suggest that the discipline’s past is not so monolithically invested in masculinism, nationalism, and racism as many dominant voices have claimed it was, and also that the discipline’s present has not broken with its predecessors as completely as many had thought. I begin with a chapter that introduces the prevalence of the romance with Melville in American literary history, interrogates why Melville’s work lends itself so readily to this hermeneutic move, and articulates how the persistence of this move upsets the authoritative histories of American literary studies. My second chapter describes how Melville’s final story Billy Budd elicited a remarkably explicit transatlantic conversation about the affective and political ramifications of postwar heteronormativity. Chapter 3 examines C.L.R. James’s conversation with postwar Americanists about Moby-Dick, a conversation in which James sought to galvanize the critical community to fight the anti-democratic Cold War immigration laws under which James himself was being deported. My final chapter analyzes Ralph Ellison’s use of Moby-Dick, “Bartleby,” “Benito Cereno,” and The Confidence-Man to argue that American literature is fundamentally concerned with and informed by issues of racial injustice and inequality. In both his literary criticism and his fiction, Ellison, I argue, used Melville’s writing to criticize the racial negligence of American literary critics and to reflect on the ironies of his own abiding loyalty to white canonical writers like Melville. When one follows the various permutations of the romance with Melville in this moment and attends to the contestations it facilitated, one finds a rich, politically multivalent critical discourse that in many important but unacknowledged ways lays the groundwork for the political desires and textual attachments that continue to animate American literary studies.Englis

Chronic Stress Potentiates The Response To Intra-Bed Nucleus Of The Stria Terminalis (bnst) Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase Activating Peptide (pacap) Infusion.

Chronic or repeated exposure to stressful stimuli can result in several maladaptive consequences, including increased anxiety-like behaviors and altered peptide expression in brain structures involved in emotion. Among these structures, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) has been implicated in emotional behaviors as well as regulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. In rodents, chronic variate stress (CVS) has been shown to increase BNST pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) and its cognate PAC1 receptor transcript, and BNST PACAP signaling may mediate the maladaptive changes associated with chronic stress. In order to determine whether chronic stress would potentiate the behavioral and/or endocrine response to subthreshold BNST PACAP infusion, rats were exposed to a 7 day CVS paradigm previously shown to upregulate BNST PAC1 receptor transcripts; control rats were not stressed. Twenty-four hours following the last stressor, stressed and control rats were bilaterally infused into the BNST with 0.5 µg PACAP. Startle response to intra-BNST PACAP infusion was assessed post-infusion in Experiment 1. In Experiments 2 and 3, blood was sampled via a tail nick 30 min following PACAP infusion to assess the corticosterone response to PACAP following CVS. We found an increase in startle amplitude and an increase in plasma corticosterone levels 30 minutes following BNST PACAP infusion only in rats that had been previously exposed to CVS. These results were likely mediated via PAC1 receptors, as equimolar infusion of the VPAC1/2 receptor ligand vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) had no effect on plasma corticosterone levels. These results suggest that repeated exposure to stressors sensitizes the neural circuits underlying the behavioral and endocrine responses to BNST PACAP infusion and BNST PACAP/PAC1 receptor signaling likely plays a critical role in mediating stress responses

Generating electrospray from a ferrofluid

An electrospray device for generating electrospray from a ferrofluid. The electrospray device includes an emitter, an extraction electrode, and a magnet. The emitter is configured to receive a ferrofluidic liquid. The extraction electrode includes an aperture and is positioned a first distance from the emitter. The magnet generates a magnetic field in a first direction toward the emitter. The magnetic field causes Rosensweig instability in the ferrofluidic liquid, and generates a ferrofluidic peak in the ferrofluidic liquid. The magnet is positioned a second distance from the emitter, and the emitter is positioned between the extraction electrode and the magnet. The ferrofluidic liquid is biased at a first electrical potential and the extraction electrode is biased at a second electrical potential. A difference between the first electrical potential and the second electrical potential is sufficient to generate an electric field at the ferrofluidic peak that generates electrospray from the ferrofluidic peak.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1144/thumbnail.jp

The Effects of Age-related Differences in State Estimation on Sensorimotor Control of the Arm in School-age Children

Previous research examining sensorimotor control of arm movements in school-age children has demonstrated age-related improvements in performance. A unifying, mechanistic explanation of these improvements is currently lacking. This dissertation systematically examined the processes involved in sensorimotor control of the arm to investigate the hypothesis that improvements in performance can be attributed, in part, to developmental changes in state estimation, defined as estimates computed by the central nervous system (CNS) that specify current and future hand positions and velocities (i.e., hand `state'). A series of behavioral experiments were employed in which 5- to 12-year-old children and adults executed goal-directed arm movements. Experiment 1 demonstrated that improvements in proprioceptive functioning resulted in an increased contribution of proprioception to the multisensory estimate of hand position, suggesting that the CNS of children flexibly integrates redundant sensorimotor feedback based on the accuracy of the individual inputs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that improvements in proprioceptive functioning for localizing initial hand position reduced the directional variability of goal-directed reaching, suggesting that improvements in static state estimation contribute to the age-related improvements in performance. Relying on sensory feedback to provide estimates of hand state during movement execution can result in erroneous movement trajectories due to delays in sensory processing. Research in adults has suggested that the CNS circumvents these delays by integrating sensory feedback with predictions of future hand states (i.e., dynamic state estimation), a finding that has not been investigated in children. Experiment 3 demonstrated that young children utilized delayed and unreliable state estimates to make on-line trajectory modifications, resulting in poor sensorimotor performance. Last, Experiment 4 hypothesized that if improvements in state estimation drive improvements in sensorimotor performance, then exposure to a perturbation that simulated the delayed and unreliable dynamic state estimation in young children would cause the adults to perform similarly to the young children (i.e., eliminating age-related improvements in performance). Results from this study were equivocal. Collectively, the results from these experiments: 1) characterized a developmental trajectory of state estimation across 5- to 12-year-old children; and, 2) demonstrated that the development of state estimation is one mechanism underlying the age-related improvements in sensorimotor performance

Self-regenerating nanotips for low-power electric propulsion (EP) cathodes

Spindt-type field-emission cathodes for use in electric propulsion (EP) systems having self-assembling nanostructures that can repeatedly regenerate damaged cathode emitter nanotips. A nanotip is created by applying a negative potential near the surface of a liquefied base metal to create a Taylor cone converging to a nanotip, and solidifying the Taylor cone for use as a field-emission cathode. When the nanotip of the Taylor cone becomes sufficiently blunted or damaged to affect its utility, the base metal is re-liquefied by application of a heat source, a negative potential is reapplied to the surface of the base metal to recreate the Taylor cone, and a new nanotip is generated by solidifying the base metal.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1015/thumbnail.jp

Fluid Flow, Thermal History, and Diagenesis of the Cambrian-Ordovician Arbuckle Group and Overlying Units in South-Central Kansas

A diagenetic study of the Cambrian-Ordovician Arbuckle Group to the Middle Pennsylvanian Cherokee Group in south-central Kansas produced evidence of regional advective fluid flow and more localized fracture-controlled fluid flow affecting porosity. Late-stage megaquartz, baroque dolomite, and calcite produced high homogenization temperatures (86-144C), greater than can be explained by burial, necessitating hydrothermal fluids. Fluid inclusion salinities evolved from connate to those influenced by evaporites. Homogenization temperatures and 18O in baroque dolomite suggest warmer fluids stratigraphically shallower. The 87Sr/86Sr values indicate a regional advective aquifer during baroque dolomite precipitation, which may have been more locally controlled during calcite precipitation. Ouachita tectonism caused tectonically valved and gravity-driven fluid flow sourced from the Anadarko basin and possibly involved sandstone aquifers or basement. Mechanisms of ancient fluid flow appear to contrast with the modern system, which is separated internally by seal facies. The ancient aquifer system was vertically connected during migration of hydrothermal fluids

The Record of American Democracy, 1984 - 1990

Governmen

Sleep quality influences subsequent motor skill acquisition

While the influence of sleep on motor memory consolidation has been extensively investigated, its relation to initial skill acquisition is less well understood. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of sleep quality and quantity on subsequent motor skill acquisition in young adults without sleep disorders. Fifty-five healthy adults (mean age = 23.8 years; 34 women) wore actigraph wristbands for 4 nights, which provided data on sleep patterns before the experiment, and then returned to the laboratory to engage in a motor sequence learning task (explicit 5-item finger sequence tapping task). Indicators of sleep quality and quantity were then regressed on a measure of motor skill acquisition (Gains Within Training, GWT). Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO; i.e., the total amount of time the participants spent awake after falling asleep) was significantly and negatively related to GWT. This effect was not because of general arousal level, which was measured immediately before the motor task. Conversely, there was no relationship between GWT and sleep duration or self-reported sleep quality. These results indicate that sleep quality, as assessed by WASO and objectively measured with actigraphy before the motor task, significantly impacts motor skill acquisition in young healthy adults without sleep disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).Accepted manuscrip