The Lost Generation: Environmental Regulatory Reform in the Era of Congressional Abdication

Congress constructed the entirety of the modern federal environmental regulatory system between 1970 and 1990. However, due to ever increasing political polarization and gridlock, Congress has abdicated its responsibility as the primary national environmental policymaker over the past 25 years. Since 1990, no major environmental legislation has been enacted, leading to a growing sense that the federal system has become stagnated and obsolescent. Since the mid-1990s, concerns over the effectiveness, inefficiencies, and under-inclusiveness of the federal system have led to a robust reform movement seeking to build the next generation of environmental regulation. Because of Congress\u27s inability to enact environmental legislation, however, such reform efforts have largely centered on numerous, primarily voluntary executive branch reinvention initiatives at EPA. Congress\u27s failure to support these efforts, through legislation or otherwise, has severely undermined the ability of these efforts to achieve meaningful success, leading to a lost generation of environmental regulatory reform. This Article surveys the most widely promoted and analyzed of the next generation environmental regulatory reform proposals and calls on Congress to accept reform advocates\u27 challenge to improve and modernize a severely outdated regulatory system

Tort Liability of Labor Unions for Picket Line Assaults

This article will discuss whether tort actions against unions for picket line assaults are preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, and if not preempted, what forums are available to hear such actions. This article will also examine the theories that have been used to hold unions liable for the assaults committed by their picketers. Included in this discussion will be an analysis of the policy considerations offered in support of the various theories of liability

Antecedents and Outcomes of End User Computing Competence

The tremendous proliferation of end user computing (EUC) in the workplace over the past few decades is cause for concern in public and private organizations. Computer use has moved from individuals working with dumb terminals in centralized networks to individuals operating personal computers, just as powerful as yesterday\u27s mainframe. The end user has had to evolve and will continue evolving as well; from someone with low level technical skills to someone with a high level of technical knowledge and information managerial skills. Because EUC continues growing more sophisticated, end users must not only maintain a level of competence, but prepare for the next generation of computing technology. Doing so will enable organizations to continue enjoying the positive benefits of EUC success. Research indicates that EUC success may depend on end user competence. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test an integrated model of EUC success, the results of this study show that computer training, education level, beliefs about computer systems and the ability to operate them lead to end user computing competence. Additionally, results show that computer system use, a factor in achieving EUC success, is an outcome of end user computing competence. The overall conclusions drawn from this study is that the Air Force organization may be able to improve its efforts to successfully use computing technology, however it appears individual personnel have the competence to do so already. There may be additional underlying factors contributing to the lack of significant computing success, the discovery of which is a prospect for future research

Setting a Higher Standard: Judicial Review of Federal Affirmative Action in the Wake of Adarand

Symposium - The Role of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the Civil Rights Movemen

Report on the United States Small Business Administration

Americals small business concerns operate in our huge economic complex, along side some very large economic giants. In this economic environment, these small businesses ere sometimes confronted with many problems. Foremost among the problems that small business faces are management weakness-involving the lack of management ability, and financial weakness relating to the lack of adequate capital and credit

Fabrication end Deployment Testing of Meter Solar Sail Quadrants for a Scaleable Square Solar Sail Ground Test System

In order for solar sail propulsion technologies to be considered as a viable option for a wide range of near term practical missions a predictable, stable, reliable, manufactureable, scaleable, and cost effective system must be developed and tested first on earth and then on orbit. The design and development of a Scaleable Square Solar Sail System (S^4) is well underway a t AEC-Able Engineering Co. Inc., and the design and production of the Solar Sails for this system is being carried out by SRS Technologies. In April and May of 2004 a single quadrant 10-meter system was tested at NASA LARC's vacuum chamber and a four quadrant 20-meter system has been designed and built for deployment and testing in the Spring of 2005 at NASA/Glenn Research Center's Plumb Brook Facility. SRS has developed an effective and efficient design for triangular sail quadrants that are supported are three points and provide a flat reflective surface with a high fill factor. This sail design is robust enough for deployments in a one atmosphere, one gravity environment and incorporates several advanced features including adhesiveless seaming of membrane strips, compliant edge borders to allow for film membrane cord strain mismatch without causing wrinkling and low mass (3% of total sail mass) ripstop. This paper will outline the sail design and fabrication process, the lessons learned and the resulting mature production, packaging and deployment processes that have been developed. It will also highlight the scalability of the equipment and processes that were developed to fabricate and package the sails. Based on recent experience, SRS is confidant that flight worthy solar sails in the 40-120-meter size range with areal density in the 4-5g/sq m (sail minus structure) range can be produced with existing technology. Additional film production research will lead to further reductions in film thickness to less than 1 micron enabling production of sails with areal densities as low as 20 g/sq m using the current design resulting in a system areal density of as low as 5.3g/sq m. These areal densities are low enough to allow nearly all of the Solar Sail missions that have been proposed by the scientific community and the fundamental technology required to produce these sails has been demonstrated on the ground test sails that have recently been built. These demonstrations have shown that the technology is mature enough to build sails needed to support critical science missions. Solar Sails will be an enabling technology for NASA's Vision for Space Exploration by allowing communication satellite orbits that can maintain continuous communication with the polar regions of the Moon and Mars and to support solar weather monitoring to provide early warning of solar flares and storms that could threaten the safety of astronauts and other spacecraft

High-Resolution Analysis Products to Support Severe Weather and Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Threat Assessments over Florida

The Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) located at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC)/Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) implemented an operational configuration of the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) Data Analysis System (ADAS), as well as the ARPS numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Operational, high-resolution ADAS analyses have been produced from this configuration at the National Weather Service in Melbourne, FL (NWS MLB) and the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) over the past several years. Since that time, ADAS fields have become an integral part of forecast operations at both NWS MLB and SMG. To continue providing additional utility, the AMU has been tasked to implement visualization products to assess the potential for supercell thunderstorms and significant tornadoes, and to improve assessments of short-term cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning potential. This paper and presentation focuses on the visualization products developed by the AMU for the operational high-resolution ADAS and AR.PS at the NWS MLB and SMG. The two severe weather threat graphics implemented within ADAS/ARPS are the Supercell Composite Parameter (SCP) and Significant Tornado Parameter (SIP). The SCP was designed to identify areas with supercell thunderstorm potential through a combination of several instability and shear parameters. The SIP was designed to identify areas that favor supercells producing significant tornadoes (F2 or greater intensity) versus non-tornadic supercells. Both indices were developed by the NOAAINWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and were normalized by key threshold values based on previous studies. The indices apply only to discrete storms, not other convective modes. In a post-analysis mode, the AMU calculated SCP and SIP for graphical output using an ADAS configuration similar to the operational set-ups at NWS MLB and SMG. Graphical images from ADAS were generated every 15 minutes for 13 August 2004, the day that Hurricane Charley approached and made landfall on the Florida peninsula. Several tornadoes struck the interior of the Florida peninsula in advance of Hurricane Charley's landfall during the daylight hours of 13 August. Since SPC had previously examined this case using SCP and SIP graphics generated from output of the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model, this day served as a good benchmark to compare and validate the high-resolution ADAS graphics against the smoother RUC analyses, which serves as background fields to the ADAS analyses. The ADAS-generated SCP and STP graphics have been integrated into the suite of products examined operationally by NWS MLB forecasters and are used to provide additional guidance for assessment of the near-storm environment during convective situations

Priority Information Needs for Band-tailed Pigeons, Zenaida Doves, White-tipped Doves and Scaly-naped Pigeons

Table of Contents Executive Summary............................i Introduction............................1 Status of band-tailed pigeons, Zenaida doves, white-tipped doves and scaly-naped pigeons............................2 Priority Information Needs............................7 Priority 1. Reliable demographics of band-tailed pigeons............................8 Priority 2. Association of food availability with abundance and distribution of band-tailed pigeons............................9 Priority 3. Status assessment of white-tipped doves in south Texas to determine distribution, population abundance and biology............................10 Priority 4. Population and harvest data collected annually for Zenaida doves and scaly-naped pigeons............................11 Priority 5. Adaptive harvest strategy for Zenaida doves and scaly-naped pigeons............................12 Measuring Success............................13 Literature Cited............................14 Appendix A: 2010 Strategy Development Participants............................16 Figure 1. Distribution of Pacific Coast and Interior band-tailed pigeons in North America............................2 Figure 2. Abundance indices for the Pacific Coast and Interior populations of band-tailed pigeons based on results from the North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Mineral Site Survey............................3 Figure 3. Distribution of white-tipped doves in North and Central America............................4 Figure 4. Trend in estimated white-tipped doves harvested per hunter and per hunter-day during the September 4-day special white-winged dove season in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 1986–2009............................5 Figure 5. Estimated density of scaly-naped pigeons on Puerto Rico in 1986 –2010............................6 Figure 6. Estimated density of Zenaida doves on Puerto Rico in 1986 –2010............................