What’s Shakin’? Ladra v. New Dominion, LLC: A Case of Consequence for the Hydraulic Fracturing Industry and Those Affected by Induced Seismicity

This analysis is accompanied by a study of a 2015 ruling of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, Ladra v. New Dominion, LLC. The case considered the possibility of a private tort action by homeowners against the operators of injection wells proceeding within the state’s judicial system, rather than simply being subject to review by a state regulatory agency. The court ultimately decided that the case would be allowed to continue within the judicial system instead of in front of a regulatory agency. This case, while not providing a “silver bullet” precedent with which future claimants can automatically win their cases against parties involved in fracking and waste disposal, does demonstrate that these claims are viable and ought to be dealt with in proper courts of law, rather than through administrative agencies. Section II of this case note contains a brief overview of the hydraulic fracturing process and the state of fracking in Oklahoma, the site of this note’s principal case (Ladra v. New Dominion). Section III provides a history of the case and its central issues. Section IV discusses the ruling given, as well as the validity of the arguments made before the court. Section V examines the likelihood of success for the plaintiff Ladra and other homeowners seeking damages from the operators of injection wells due to earthquake-related harm done to their property or person. This section primarily assesses whether a preponderance of the evidence standard can be achieved when alleging that fracking activities caused earthquakes that resulted in property damage, and uses the arguments presented in the lower court during Ladra v. New Dominion as an example. Section VI considers the significance of the decision and what effect it may have on the hydraulic fracturing industry

Poly Pelletizer: Recycled Pet Pellets From Water Bottles

Plastic water bottles comprise a large amount of waste worldwide. The goal of the Poly Pelletizer project is to create a system that will turn water bottles into polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pellets compatible with extruders to produce 3-D printer lament, along with other recycling applications.The system promotes a sustainable solution to plastic pollution by giving manufactures, particularly in developing nations, the means to produce their own bulk materials using waste plastic. Shrinking industrial recycling processes to a workbench scale gives individuals the ability to convert excess bottles into seemingly limitless products. The system works by using a dual heating and pressure system to both evenly mix and melt the plastic before pushing the resin through a die. The Poly Pelletizer successfully created pellets using various mixtures of virgin PET and shredded water bottles

Perspectives on Traceability and BSE Testing in the U.S. Beef Industry

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Measuring the Lifetime of Trapped Sleptons Using the General Purpose LHC Detectors

In supergravity where the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) decays to the gravitino with a naturally long lifetime (10^4 - 10^8). However, cosmological constraints favour charged sleptons with lifetimes below a year as the natural NLSP candidate. For this scenario we report a method to accurately determine the slepton lifetime and SUSY cross-section from observation of the decays of sleptons trapped in the material comprising the main detector (ATLAS, CMS). A measurement of the lifetime to 5% is possible after 3 years at nominal luminosity and running conditions. This method is sensitive to the cosmologically preferred stau lifetime of ~37 days and does not require the use of ancillary trapping volumes

Staging polemics: Charles Palissot, Voltaire, and the theatrical event in eighteenth-century France

This dissertation explores the exciting world of eighteenth-century French dramatic writing, performance and criticism from the point of view of the theatrical spectator. Instead of focusing on one single genre or writer, I assemble the textual creation, performance, and criticism of certain “polemical” plays into what I term a “theatrical event.” This optic provides a holistic vision of theater and an accurate view of how drama underwent noticeable change due to playwrights’ political associations, public reactions to performance, and the emerging power of the periodical press. In sum, this project differs from previous studies by focusing on the increasing rhetorical and tangible significance of the theatrical spectator, and more specifically, on how he or she altered normative, established processes in dramatic writing, performance, and criticism. In the first three chapters of this dissertation, I closely examine Charles Palissot’s Les Philosophes, Voltaire’s l’Ecossaise (1760), and atypical critical reactions to both polemical comedies. Here, I focus on the way partisan dramatists and their cohorts fashioned “theatrical events” through pre-performance strategies, narrative effects, and performative ruses. Then, I inquire as to why critics emphasized audience reactions to and participation in performance, rather than summarizing the play’s narrative or weighing in on traditional literary subjects. Switching gears from a more synchronic study to a more diachronic analysis, in chapter four, I highlight a few “theatrical events” from the last years of the Ancien Régime in order to show how playwrights and critics borrowed both processes and themes from the original Palissot/Voltaire affair of 1760. With clear pictures of specific moments and more general shifts in theater history and criticism, this dissertation aims to reassess the way we think about dramatic production during the pre-Revolutionary period in France

Morphometric Changes In Semicircular Canal Shape Within Theropoda (Dinosauria: Saurischia) And Their Dietary Implications

heropods were a suborder of dinosaurs that displayed a large variety of dietary preferences throughout the Mesozoic and into the Cenozoic as modern birds. Being ancestrally carnivorous, many of the large-bodied early theropods were hypercarnivorous; however, members of Theropoda diversified their diets into omnivory and herbivory. Modern vertebrates with different dietary preferences have different spatial sensitivities to changes in head and body movement. In order to test if theropod diet plays a major role in the rostral (RSC), caudal (CSC), and lateral (LSC) semicircular canal shape, therizinosaurs, tyrannosaurids, ratites, an allosaurid, an ornithomimid, and a phorusrhacid were analyzed via 2D Geometric Morphometrics to see if their cross-sectional semicircular canal shapes differed based on the respective diets of each taxa. Each canal sensed the pitch (RSC), roll (CSC), and yaw (LSC) movements of the head and would allow for head and body to compensate for the movement in order to maintain balance. This study applied a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to test for shape change among the semicircular canals of carnivorous, herbivorous, and omnivorous dinosaurs and bird canals. Neither the LSCs nor the CSCs showed patterns that could be interpreted as diet-based groupings among all of the species tested. The RSC graphs, however, clustered the taxa into separate groups based on their trophic level. The PCA demonstrated that the cross-sectional shapes of dinosaurs, ratites, and phorusrhacids are based off of diet (PC1) and the angularity of each shape (PC2). Grouping the taxa by diet and shape angularity implies that there is a spatial sensitivity difference among the dataset based around the diet/foraging strategy of each dinosaur and bird. The ANOVA attempted to assess the amount of variation between the carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores; however, the herbivores failed tests for normality and equality of variance. This indicates that variation among the levels of diet could not be measured. A normality and variance failure implies that the shapes of the herbivores RSCs were statistically different from the rest of the taxa sampled; however, a larger dataset should be retested to confirm that the failure did not come from sampling bias. The clustering of the carnivores show a difference between dinosaurs that are thought to be predaceous carnivores (Alioramus, Allosaurus, and Gorgosaurus) and those that are thought to be scavengers or opportunistically carnivorous (Tyrannosaurus). Llallawavis, a phorusrhacid, plotted near the omnivores even though it is assumed to be a carnivore. One interpretation of this result is that Llallawavis was more of an opportunistic carnivore than an active predator. The omnivores (ostrich, emu, Falcarius, and Struthiomimus) grouped together in both axes of the RSC. Falcarius fell out closer to the carnivores in both axes while still maintaining a close proximity to the other omnivores. This pattern is interpreted as being an evolutionary holdover from Falcarius’ carnivorous ancestry and not an indication of a carnivorous basal therizinosaur; dentition and postcranial anatomy support this interpretation based on the denticle density and size as well as the pubis in the pelvic girdle. The herbivores (cassowary, Nothronychus, and Erlikosaurus) grouped separately from the rest of the specimens in the dataset. The cassowary plotted closer to the omnivores along the y-axis; however, this was expected due to it supplementing its frugivorous diet with insects and arthropods. Nothronychus and the cassowary plotted next to each other supporting a specialized diet for Nothronychus; however, no other interpretations for Nothronychus could be made outside of herbivory. Erlikosaurus grouped further away from Nothronychus and the cassowary by itself implying that it may be closest to a true herbivore out of all of the organisms in the study

Simulating the Common Envelope Phase Using Moving-Mesh Hydrodynamics

Common envelope evolution (CEE) is a phase in the evolution of a binary system where a giant star and a smaller companion share a gaseous envelope, and is responsible for the formation of many systems of astrophysical interest. Despite its importance, CEE is not well understood due to the diverse physics involved. Astronomers have roughly modeled CEE using conserved quantities such as energy, but progress has been limited by uncertainties in the contributions of various energy sources. Thus, 3-D numerical simulations must be brought to bear. Here two methodologies are commonly employed, each of which comes with its own set of advantages: smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and Eulerian grid codes. A hybrid of these methods known as the moving-mesh code has been developed in an attempt to capture the best characteristics of each. We use the moving-mesh solver MANGA, which has recently been improved with the inclusion of physics modules relevant to CEE. We begin this work with an introduction to CEE in Chapter 1. We go through a step-by-step description of its four stages and summarize observations of transients that are thought to result from binary interactions. We then present an overview of simulation techniques in Chapter 2, showing how aspects of smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and Eulerian methods are implemented into moving-mesh schemes. We begin our numerical studies of CEE using MANGA in Chapter 3 and show that the ejection of the envelope is aided by the inclusion of hydrogen recombination and tidal forces. CEE simulations to date have neglected hydrodynamic interactions at the surface of the companion. As such, we discuss our development of moving boundary conditions in Chapter 4 and show how they can be used to model the companion object. We show that the orbital eccentricity is affected by the size of the companion through hydrodynamic torques. Finally, we describe our implementation of magnetohydrodynamics in Chapter 5. We find rapid amplification of a toroidal magnetic field at the onset of CEE, which is thought to assist in the formation of nebulae