Coexistence in stochastic spatial models

In this paper I will review twenty years of work on the question: When is there coexistence in stochastic spatial models? The answer, announced in Durrett and Levin [Theor. Pop. Biol. 46 (1994) 363--394], and that we explain in this paper is that this can be determined by examining the mean-field ODE. There are a number of rigorous results in support of this picture, but we will state nine challenging and important open problems, most of which date from the 1990's.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AAP590 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Reducing Disposable Bag Use

Plastic shopping bags were introduced to the consumer market about 25 years ago. Since then, they’ve become-literally-a ubiquitous part of the American landscape. Every year, between 500 billion and one trillion disposable plastic shopping bags are consumed worldwide. In the United States, 100 billion plastic bags are used each year, costing retailers $4 billion, which is passed on to the consumer in the price of goods

Vol. 11, No. 9, Jun. 9, 2005: Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News

published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Bottom-Up Organizing: HERE in New Haven & Boston

[Excerpt] HERE is a union in the process of change. After decades of cooperative relations with management, the union\u27s national leaders were rudely awakened when the major hotel chains jumped on the union-busting bandwagon in the late 1970s: contract concessions were demanded, organizing drives were vigorously opposed, and programs were implemented to weaken existing locals. HERE has responded with a newfound militance, demonstrated in strikes in New York, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Monterey, California. To stem the decline in the union\u27s membership, Vincent Sirabella, the innovative and politically progressive head of HERE\u27S New Haven Local 217 since 1957, was promoted to Director of Organization in 1983 by HERE President Edward Hanley

Call The Question: Will the Greater Washington Region Collaborate and Invest to Solve Its Affordable Housing Shortage?

A group of public and private sector stakeholders concerned about housing affordability in the Greater Washington region began to meet in June 2014 to discuss how to solve the shortage of affordable housing. These stakeholders, the Greater Washington Housing Leaders Group (GWHLG), seek to elevate and broaden the housing affordability conversation among public-sector, business and civic leaders, as well as residents around the region, so that everyone understands the need to address this crisis before it has negative impacts on both the local economy and our quality of life. This conversation must address the need for housing affordable to residents at all income levels in communities across the region in order for employers to have access to employees and for workers to be able to work in close proximity to their jobs. Low-income housing needs data as referenced in this publication refers to households making less than 80 percent of the area median income (area median income for the Greater Washington region is approximately $109,000 in 2015). These families include people working as teachers, police, fire personnel, local government, secretarial, construction, retail, health, hospitality, and entry level employees

A new conflict rule for securitization and other cross-border assignments : a potential threat from Europe

One of the dangers of harmonisation and unification processes taking place within the framework of the EU is that they may result in the codification of the lowest common denominator. This is precisely what is threatening to happen in respect of assignment. Referring the transfer of receivables by way of assignment to the law of the assignor’s residence, as article 13 of the Proposal does, would be opting for the most conservative solution and would for many Member States be a step backward rather than forward. A conflict rule referring assignment to the law of the assignor's residence is too rigid to do justice to the dynamic nature of assignments in cross-border transactions and it is unjustly one-sided. It offers no real advantages when compared to other conflict rules; it even has serious disadvantages which make the conflict rule unsuitable for efficient assignment-based cross-border transactions. It is not unconceivable that this conflict rule would even be contrary to the fundamental freedoms of the ECTreaty. The Community legislators in particular should be careful not to needlessly adopt rules which create insurmountable obstacles for cross-border business where choice-of-law by the parties would perfectly do. Community legislation has a special responsibility to create a smooth legal environment for single market transactions