Is There a Federal Definitions Power?

Although the Supreme Court decided United States v. Windsor on equal protection grounds, that case also raised important and recurring questions about federal power. In particular, defenders of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) argued that Congress may always define the terms used in federal statutes, even if its definition concerns a matter reserved to the States. As the DOMA illustrates, federal definitions concerning reserved matters that depart from state law may impose significant burdens on state governments and private citizens alike. This Article argues that there is no general, freestanding federal definitions power and that sometimes—as with marriage—federal law must incorporate state law definitions

Some International Constitutional Aspects of the Palestine Case

Cardiac tissue engineering via the use of stem cells is the future for repairing impaired heart function that results from a myocardial infarction. Developing an optimised platform to support the stem cells is vital to realising this, and through utilising new smart materials such as conductive polymers we can provide a multi-pronged approach to supporting and stimulating the stem cells via engineered surface properties, electrical, and electromechanical stimulation. Here we present a fundamental study on the viability of cardiac progenitor cells on conductive polymer surfaces, focusing on the impact of surface properties such as roughness, surface energy, and surface chemistry with variation of the polymer dopant molecules. The conductive polymer materials were shown to provide a viable support for both endothelial and cardiac progenitor cells, while the surface energy and roughness were observed to influence viability for both progenitor cell types. Characterising the interaction between the cardiac progenitor cells and the conductive polymer surface is a critical step towards optimising these materials for cardiac tissue regeneration, and this study will advance the limited knowledge on biomaterial surface interactions with cardiac cells

Organ-specific features of natural killer cells.

Natural killer (NK) cells can be swiftly mobilized by danger signals and are among the earliest arrivals at target organs of disease. However, the role of NK cells in mounting inflammatory responses is often complex and sometimes paradoxical. Here, we examine the divergent phenotypic and functional features of NK cells, as deduced largely from experimental mouse models of pathophysiological responses in the liver, mucosal tissues, uterus, pancreas, joints and brain. Moreover, we discuss how organ-specific factors, the local microenvironment and unique cellular interactions may influence the organ-specific properties of NK cells

Insights from applying different assessment methods for metals resource use

Society’s increasing metal demand raises a number of concerns. In the shorter term, there may be risks to for constraints on expanding extraction to meet a rapidly increasing demand, causing supply disruptions and price volatility which especially affects import-dependent regions. The ongoing transition to renewable electricity production based on wind and sun and to electrified vehicles may even be delayed because of lack of required metals. In the longer term, continued extraction depends on decreasingly concentrated ores and may risk to eventually cause depletion. Metal use is also associated with significant environmental impacts, through life cycle energy use and locally from mining. The social impacts of so-called conflict minerals are undisputable. Companies and public policy makers wishing to act on these concerns are faced with a multitude of issues and potential solutions, such as circular economy, may involve trade-offs between different issues and consequently require decisions on what issues to prioritize. Ex-ante assessments can offer such decision-makers the opportunity to study potential implications of different actions before-hand. However, it may be challenging to discern the purpose of the multitude of methods that exist and what aspects of metal resources they in fact address. Furthermore, can methods be used in a complementary way or are they overlapping? Are they appropriate for any context? This contribution aims to present insights gained from having applied a selection of different assessments methods to study how circular economy solutions affect metal use. The methods are life cycle assessment, criticality assessment, dynamic material flow analysis and circularity indicators. All are applied for studying various aspects of circular economy solutions for electric traction motors in passenger cars – an essential part of the drivetrain of all types of electric vehicles and one that requires several metals such as iron, copper, aluminium and rare earth elements. The methods have been applied in separate studies performed over several years (Huisman et al. 2017, André and Ljunggren 2020, Løvik et al 2021, Jerome et al. 2022) and have pointed to different potential actions to take for decision makers. In this contribution, the studies will be presented and compared to illustrate typical questions addressed regarding metal resource use and differences and similarities between methods. This may support a discussion on what methods to apply in what contexts as well as what methods to apply in a complementary manner, what methods to further integrate and what methods to develop. The goal is to support a purposive and more comprehensive and assessment of actions to reduce concerns about society’s metal resource use. References: André, H. and Ljunggren, M. (2020) Supply disruption and depletion impacts in a company context: the case of a permanent magnet electric traction motor, in André, H. (2020) Assessing Mineral Resource Scarcity in a Circular Economy Context. Chalmers Tekniska Hogskola (Sweden). Jerome, A., Helander, H., Ljunggren, M., & Janssen, M. (2022). Mapping and testing circular economy productlevel indicators: A critical review. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 178, 106080. Løvik, A., Marmy, C., Ljunggren, M., Kushnir, D., Huisman, J., Bobba, S., Maury, T., Ciuta, T., Garbossa, E., Mathieux, F. and Wäger, P., Material composition trends in vehicles: critical raw materials and other relevant metals., EUR 30916 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76- 45213-3 (online), doi:10.2760/351825 (online), JRC126564. Huisman, J., Leroy, P., Tertre, F., Ljunggren Söderman, M., Chancerel, P., Cassard, D., Løvik, A. N., Wäger, P., Kushnir, D., Rotter, V.S., Mählitz, P., Herreras, L., Emmerich, J., Hallberg, A., Habib, H., Wagner, M., Downes, S. (2017), Prospecting Secondary Raw Materials in the Urban Mine and mining wastes (ProSUM) - Final Report, ISBN: 978-92-808-9060-0 (print), 978-92-808-9061-7 (electronic), December 21, 2017, Brussels, Belgium

Poetry and Psychiatry

In this volume, Professor Ljunggren introduces the Symbolists and their feverish expectations in detail. Theirs was a time when for a brief moment everything seemed possible. Then came the rude awakening, best described in Bely’s powerful prose masterpiece Petersburg, which serves as the connective thread and recurrent point of reference throughout this collection. Written in the early 1910s, just before the world war that was to culminate in the so-called October Revolution, Bely’s novel portrays the collective experience of the Symbolists as an attempted political parricide. Many of the essays included in this volume are appearing in English for the first time

A Modular Curve of Level 9 and the Class Number One Problem

In this note we give an explicit parametrization of the modular curve associated to the normalizer of a non-split Cartan subgroup of level 9. We determine all integral points of this modular curve. As an application, we give an alternative solution to the class number one problem.Comment: 18 page

Battery as a service: Analysing multiple reuse and recycling loops

This study investigates the effects on new product demand and raw materials from the growth of a company\u27s product-service system (PSS), using dynamic material flow analysis. The PSS involves multiple reuse and recycling of lithium-ion battery subpacks for mining equipment. While effects differ over time, 13% of new subpacks and 13–59% of primary material demand is reduced within the PSS until 2050. Supply of subpacks for reuse surpasses demand, limiting displacement of new subpacks. Reuse increases battery self-sufficiency and has limited effects on primary material demand when recycling is efficient, but more so when recycling is less efficient. Thus, if efficient recycling is unachievable, reuse becomes more important for raw material self-sufficiency in the PSS. Reusing batteries could lead to European recycled content targets not being reached in time. Thus, such targets are challenging to balance with policy goals for reuse and pose risks for companies relying on extensive reuse

The resource potentials of circular loops: a case study of batteries in the mining sector

The circular economy (CE) is seen as a key concept for reducing environmental pressures and bringing forth more sustainable production and consumption practices (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017). To plan for and enable CE solutions, such as reuse and recycling strategies, it is critical to have knowledge of the future demand of products and materials, and how this matches the future supply of secondary sources. The timing, quantity, and geographical spread of resource flows determine the feasibility of CE solutions. To ensure that resource use is optimized it is important to have knowledge of these dynamics over time. Here, we use dynamic stock and flow (DSF) modelling to analyze the potentials of circular product and material flows at the company level, using lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) in the underground mining (UGM) sector as a case study. The case study is a company that sells battery driven UGM equipment and provides LiBs as a service. The LiBs are modular, can be set up in different configurations, and be used in several different machine types with varying energy capacity requirements. As a result, the LiBs can be given additional lifecycles (second, third, or fourth lives) in the different machines, before being recycled at end of life. The study is the first, to the authors knowledge, to use DSF modelling to analyze the resource-related effects of implementing a CE solution at the company level. The results are specific to the sector but also point to more generalizable insights about opportunities and limitations of the CE from a resource perspective