Municipal Solid Waste Flow Control in the Post-Carbone World

Garbage will always ultimately be the government\u27s problem. Evolving environmental standards and state and federal policies will continue to require reasoned responses from local governments and municipal solid waste flow control is a vital cog in many jurisdictions\u27 solid waste management solutions. Without flow control of some form, governments\u27 ability to plan and provide for the most environmentally sound and economically acceptable solutions will wane, leaving the public vulnerable to the vagaries of a private market that does not have a duty to protect the public health and safety. The Carbone decision has blunted one of the local governments chief weapons-legislative flow control-and it appears Congress will not supply an adequate answer for many solid waste systems. More than ever, alternatives to legislative flow control will be needed to enable municipalities to fulfill their solid waste duties, to comply with federal and state mandates, and to provide workable, environmentally-sound, long-term solid waste programs serving the interests of the public health and safety. Local governments must act soon by examining these options and deciding which will best serve the public

What’s Sex (Composition) Got to Do with It? The Importance of Sex Composition of Gangs for Female and Male Members’ Offending and Victimization

Sex composition of groups has been theorized in organizational sociology and found in prior work to structure female and male members’ behaviors and experiences. Peer group and gang literature similarly finds that the sex gap in offending varies across groups of differing sex ratios. Drawing on this and other research linking gang membership, offending, and victimization, we examine whether sex composition of gangs is linked to sex differences in offending in this sample, further assess whether sex composition similarly structures females’ and males’ victimization experiences, and if so, why. Self-report data from gang members in a multi-site, longitudinal study of 3,820 youths are employed. Results support previous findings about variations in member delinquency by both sex and sex composition of the gang and also indicate parallel variations in members’ victimization. These results are further considered within the context of facilitating effects such as gender dynamics, gang characteristics, and normative orientation

Ecopedagogy: Learning How to Participate in Ecological Consciousness

This paper is the result of an inquiry into ecological consciousness through a participatory paradigm. The dialectical relationship between institutionalized education and consciousness is central to this inquiry’s focus. This exploration into ecological consciousness has lead to the following question: How can institutionalized education be designed, delivered, and experienced in a way that nurtures ecological intelligence, ecological consciousness, and more importantly, ecological activism? The ‘sense of self ‘is a central theme within the paper, and led to the conception of intraearthal and interearthal relationships as a way of communicating our need to identify as being in Earth. The author utilizes an arts-based approach of integrating photography as a means for exploring and communicating the topic. The paper arrives at the conclusion of the vital nature of an ecopedagogy that is highly experiential by design and delivery. The overall inquiry also leads to a place of acknowledging the challenges of nurturing an ecological sense of self within modern sociocultural contexts that can be systemically ecocidal

X-RAY CHARACTERIZATION OF PLATINUM GROUP METAL CATALYSTS

Platinum group metals (PGMs) are used extensively as catalysts, employed in several sectors of the world energy economy. Fuel cells employing PGM catalysts show promise as power sources in the proposed hydrogen economy, using alcohols as hydrogen storage media. Currently, the most economically important application for PGMs is for the mitigation of emissions from internal combustion engines via catalytic converters. In all applications, efficient use of these expensive metals to fabricate robust catalysts is of the utmost importance. Understanding the catalyst structure/property relationship is the key to the improvement of existing catalysts and the discovery of new catalysts. For example, catalyst particle size can have profound effects on catalyst activity, as in the case of gold nanoparticles. Catalyst particle size control and stability is also important for the efficient use of PGM metals and catalyst deactivation prevention. The challenge is to identify and characterize structural features and determine if and how these features may relate to catalytic properties. The ultimate goal is to simultaneously measure catalyst structural characteristics and catalytic properties under operando conditions, unambiguously establishing the structure/property link. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) are important techniques used for the characterization of PGM catalysts. Microstructural information such as crystallite size, as small as ~ 1 nm, and microstrain can be obtained from Bragg diffraction peak shapes in X-ray diffraction patterns, and long range crystal structure information is found in the intensities and positions of these peaks. In contrast, X-ray absorption spectroscopy provides information about the chemical state and local structure of selected atoms. From the average nearest neighbor coordination numbers, crystallite sizes can also be inferred, with particularly high sensitivity in the sub-nm size range. Electron microscopy complements information obtained from both XRD and XAS. With aberration-corrected HAADF, particles ranging from sub-nm-size down to clusters of a few atoms and isolated single-atoms can be routinely imaged. A challenge to the interpretation of these images is the characterization of mixed atomic species, in this case, palladium and lanthanum. In this work we show for the first time that quantitative chemical identification of atomically-dispersed mixtures of palladium and lanthanum in an industrially relevant catalyst (palladium on lanthanum-stabilized gamma-alumina) can be obtained through image intensity analysis. Using these techniques we have characterized the state of bimetallic fuel cell catalysts, ex situ, and have examined the state of Pd catalysts under operando CO oxidation conditions

Rectangle Visibility Numbers of Graphs

Very-Large Scale Integration (VLSI) is the problem of arranging components on the surface of a circuit board and developing the wired network between components. One methodology in VLSI is to treat the entire network as a graph, where the components correspond to vertices and the wired connections correspond to edges. We say that a graph G has a rectangle visibility representation if we can assign each vertex of G to a unique axis-aligned rectangle in the plane such that two vertices u and v are adjacent if and only if there exists an unobstructed horizontal or vertical channel of finite width between the two rectangles that correspond to u and v. If G has such a representation, then we say that G is a rectangle visibility graph. Since it is likely that multiple components on a circuit board may represent the same electrical node, we may consider implementing this idea with rectangle visibility graphs. The rectangle visibility number of a graph G, denoted r(G), is the minimum k such that G has a rectangle visibility representation in which each vertex of G corresponds to at most k rectangles. In this thesis, we prove results on rectangle visibility numbers of trees, complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and (1,n)-hilly graphs, which are graphs where there is no path of length 1 between vertices of degree n or more

International investment law and media disputes: a complement to WTO law

The author suggests that international investment law is a potentially powerful legal tool to protect freedom of expression, at least for foreign-owned media companies