The Handicapped and Mass Transportation: The Effectiveness of Section 504 in Implementing Equal Access

In an effort to advance the rights of handicapped people to use mass transportation, the Department of Transportation has enacted a series of regulations that required facilities to be updated to allow for effective use by the handicapped, including the non-ambulatory wheelchair bound. As part of these regulations, section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act contained a general clause prohibiting discrimination against the handicapped by recipients of federal funds. The legislative history of the Rehabilitation Act makes it clear that Congress intended the handicapped to be integrated into mainstream society. Imposition of such a dichotomy, moreover runs afoul of the Federal-Aid Highway Act which requires effective use of mass transportation for the handicapped - mobility. While section 504\u27s early history was closely tied with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress, courts, and administrative agencies have increasingly lost sight of the statute\u27s genesis. What began as a humanitarian gesture to give the handicapped substantive statutory equal protection rights has since disintegrated into yet another symbolic law with practically no enforcement muscle behind it. The Supreme Court\u27s conclusion that affirmative action is not generally required in a cause of action based exclusively on section 504 placed an onerous burden on the handicapped. While the DOT regulations, governed in part by section 504, specify the steps which must be taken to make mass transit accessible, federal fund recipients, the MTA in particular, have evidence their reluctance to comply and have been lent an increasingly sympathetic ear by the federal government. Thus, handicapped groups will have to be innovative in finding rights conferred by statutes other than section 504

Induced top Yukawa coupling and suppressed Higgs mass parameters

In the scenarios with heavy top squarks, mass parameters of the Higgs field must be fine-tuned due to a large logarithmic correction to the soft scalar mass. We consider a new possibility that the top Yukawa coupling is small above TeV scale. The large top mass is induced from strong Yukawa interaction of the Higgs with another gauge sector, in which supersymmetry breaking parameters are given to be small. Then it is found that the logarithmic correction to the Higgs soft scalar mass is suppressed in spite of the strong coupling and the fine-tuning is ameliorated. We propose an explicit model coupled to a superconformal gauge theory which realizes the above situation.Comment: RevTeX4 style, 10 pages, 3 figure

Long-range and selective coupler for superconducting flux qubits

We propose a qubit-qubit coupling scheme for superconducting flux quantum bits (qubits), where a quantized Josephson junction resonator and microwave irradiation are utilized. The junction is used as a tunable inductance controlled by changing the bias current flowing through the junction, and thus the circuit works as a tunable resonator. This enables us to make any qubits interact with the resonator. Entanglement between two of many qubits whose level splittings satisfy some conditions, is formed by microwave irradiation causing a two-photon Rabi oscillation. Since the size of the resonator can be as large as sub-millimeters and qubits interact with it via mutual inductance, our scheme makes it possible to construct a quantum gate involving remote qubitsComment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Milling characteristics and distribution of phytic acid and zind in long-, medium- and short-grain rice

Milling and polishing are important operations during the production of white rice. The degree of milling and polishing has a significant effect on the nutritional aspects of white rice, especially on minerals, due to a non-uniform distribution of nutrients in the kernel. Information on the distribution of nutrients in rice will greatly help in understanding the effect of milling and aid in designing procedures that improve technological and sensory properties of rice while retaining its essential nutrients as much as possible. In this study, three kernel shapes (short-, medium- and long-grain) of rice were selected for the study of milling characteristics and distribution of zinc (Zn) and phytic acid using abrasive milling and X-ray fluorescent microscope imaging approaches. Milling characteristics differed with kernel shapes and cultivars. Mass loss (y, %) correlated well with milling duration (x, s) and was fitted using a polynomial equation of y=ax2+bx+c (R2=0.99). Different kernel shapes of rice resulted in different patterns. Breakage in milling increased with longer duration of milling. The relation between breakage (y, %) and milling duration (x, s) fitted the exponential equation y=aebx. Levels of phytic acid, as well as Zn, decreased with prolonged milling. Phytic acid decreased at a higher rate than Zn. The analysis of different milling runs showed that the concentration of phytic acid decreased from the surface region inward, whereas X-ray fluorescent images indicated that the highest concentration of phosphorus was at the interface of the embryo and perisperm. Our results help in understanding the milling characteristics of different rice cultivars. Understanding these characteristics offers opportunities to optimize milling procedures for maximum phytate removal at minimum mineral losses and yield los