The Supreme Court as Guardian of the Environment: The \u3cem\u3eMetropolitan Edison\u3c/em\u3e Decision in Perspective

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the National Environmental Policy Act does not require the consideration of psychological health impacts resulting from the fear of an accident at a nuclear generating facility. This Comment places the Court\u27s recent decision within the framework of past decisions which have excluded the courts as arbiters of substantive questions of environmental policy. By eliminating from environmental regulation the broad policy issues manifested by public fear of the proposed activity, the Court has strengthened the effectiveness of the regulatory scheine as a tool for the protection of the physical environment

Bereidingswijzen en reacties van aethylthioaethyn

In the first chapter of this thesis a short review of data pertaining to the influence of the ethylthio group on the ground states of organis molecules and on the transition states of reacting molecules is given. ... Zie: Summar

107— Investigating the Promise of Lignocellulosic Biofuels: Rice Husks as Non-Human Feedstocks

The Earth has endured years of damage caused by an overuse of fossil fuels. Many are combating the damage with alternative energy. Biofuels represent an economical and often overlooked alternative to fossil fuels. Efforts have been geared toward the use of human food sources such as sugarcane (first generation biofuel). Although first generation biofuels aid in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, they lead to increasing food prices which negatively impacts developing countries. This research focuses on the production of second generation biofuels which relies on non-human food sources which exceed first generation biofuels in that they do not take away from a food source. This project specifically focuses on the use of rice husks as a biofuel feedstock. Second generation biofuels are also relatively inexpensive. The outermost layer that is separated from the rice grains during the milling process is usually thrown away as a waste product. Rice husks are ideal as a biofuel feedstock, because they cheap if not free, and they have the power to curb greenhouse gas emissions. For this project, an ionic liquid (1- Butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride) was used for the pretreatment of the rice husks to yield glucose. Glucose quantification methods applied include refractometry, and DNS analyses

Doping Dependence of Polaron Hopping Energies in La(1-x)Ca(x)MnO(3) (0<= x<= 0.15)

Measurements of the low-frequency (f<= 100 kHz) permittivity at T<= 160 K and dc resistivity (T<= 430 K) are reported for La(1-x)Ca(x)MnO(3) (0<= x<= 0.15). Static dielectric constants are determined from the low-T limiting behavior of the permittivity. The estimated polarizability for bound holes ~ 10^{-22} cm^{-3} implies a radius comparable to the interatomic spacing, consistent with the small polaron picture established from prior transport studies near room temperature and above on nearby compositions. Relaxation peaks in the dielectric loss associated with charge-carrier hopping yield activation energies in good agreement with low-T hopping energies determined from variable-range hopping fits of the dc resistivity. The doping dependence of these energies suggests that the orthorhombic, canted antiferromagnetic ground state tends toward an insulator-metal transition that is not realized due to the formation of the ferromagnetic insulating state near Mn(4+) concentration ~ 0.13.Comment: PRB in press, 5 pages, 6 figure

Approaches for rule discovery in a learning classifier system

To fill the increasing demand for explanations of decisions made by automated prediction systems, machine learning (ML) techniques that produce inherently transparent models are directly suited. Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs), a family of rule-based learners, produce transparent models by design. However, the usefulness of such models, both for predictions and analyses, heavily depends on the placement and selection of rules (combined constituting the ML task of model selection). In this paper, we investigate a variety of techniques to efficiently place good rules within the search space based on their local prediction errors as well as their generality. This investigation is done within a specific LCS, named SupRB, where the placement of rules and the selection of good subsets of rules are strictly separated in contrast to other LCSs where these tasks sometimes blend. We compare a Random Search, (1,λ)-ES and three Novelty Search variants. We find that there is a definitive need to guide the search based on some sensible criteria, i.e. error and generality, rather than just placing rules randomly and selecting better performing ones but also find that Novelty Search variants do not beat the easier to understand (1,λ)-ES

Bildungsberatung aus tiefenpsychologischer Perspektive

Ausgehend von einem entwicklungspsychologischen Verständnis von Bildung werden die Grundideen einer tiefenpsychologisch- orientierten Bildungsberatung an einem Fallbeispiel illustriert