Municipal Corporations - Financial Powers - Power to Expend Public Funds in Aid of Industry

Taxpayers and voters of Frostburg, Maryland, sought to restrain the holding of an election under enabling legislation to obtain authority both to issue municipal bonds and to devote the proceeds to acquiring a site and contributing to the cost of construction of a building for sale to a private manufacturing company. The chancellor issued an injunction against the holding of such election on the ground that the enabling act, in authorizing the use of public funds for private purposes, was unconstitutional. On appeal, held, reversed. The location of new industry in furnishing employment and increasing the financial well being of the community serves a public purpose. City of Frostburg v. Jenkins, (Md. 1957) 136 A. (2d) 852

Real Property - Adverse Possession - Between Cotenants

C. V. James and his wife and children owned certain property as tenants in common. In 1931 defendant Fallon recovered a judgment against C. V. James, and the land was sold by a sheriff under execution. Fallon became the purchaser at the sheriff\u27s sale and was issued a sheriff\u27s deed purporting to convey the entire interest in the property. Thereafter he was in the actual, visible, distant, hostile, exclusive, continuous and uninterrupted possession of the land and paid all taxes thereon. Plaintiffs, the wife and children of James, brought this action to determine the ownership of the property. Fallon claimed title by adverse possession under an eighteen-year statute of limitations. The lower court held that the plaintiffs, as tenants in common, were the owners of a ¼ interest in the land and that defendant had claim only to the ¾ interest formerly owned by the judgment debtor. On appeal, held, affirmed. The sheriff\u27s deed passed to defendant only such interest as was owned by the judgment debtor, making him a tenant in common with plaintiffs. The statute of limitations does not begin to run against cotenants until an ouster of the cotenants has been established, and under the facts presented Fallon did nothing amounting to an ouster. Fallon v. Davidson, (Colo. 1958) 320 P. (2d) 976

Contribution of Non-native Galliforms to Annual Variation in Biomass of British Birds

Millions of individuals of two species of non-native galliform birds, the Common Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) and Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) are released into the British countryside annually in late summer, supplementing established breeding populations of these two species. The biomass of birds involved in these releases has been compared to the British breeding bird biomass. However, the validity of this comparison is compromised because the biomass of wild birds varies across the year due to reproduction, mortality and migration. How the biomass of Common Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges compares to that of other British bird species in late summer, or across the whole year, is currently unknown. Here, we produce estimates of how British bird biomass varies across the year, to assess the contribution of the two non-native galliforms to this variation. We show that overall British bird biomass is probably lowest around the start of the breeding season in April, and peaks in late summer and autumn. We estimate that around a quarter of British bird biomass annually is contributed by Common Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges, and that at their peak in August these two species represent about half of all wild bird biomass in Britain

Future Interests - Rule Against Perpetuities - Recent Statutory Amendment in New York

After 128 years of criticism and confusion and enormous amounts of litigation, New York has amended its statutory rule against perpetuities. The old rule provided that the absolute power of alienation could not be suspended for longer, than two lives in being at the creation of the estate plus a minority exception in some cases. Under the new rule the absolute power of alienation can be suspended for a period measured by any number of lives in being at the creation of the estate so long as they are not so designated or so numerous as to make proof of their end unreasonably difficult. There is, however, still no period in gross provided for in the New York statutes. N.Y. Sess. Laws 1958 (McKinney) chapters 152 and 153

Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss

The magnitude of the impacts of human activities on global biodiversity has been documented at several organizational levels. However, although there have been numerous studies of the effects of local-scale changes in land use (e.g. logging) on the abundance of groups of organisms, broader continental or global-scale analyses addressing the same basic issues remain largely wanting. None the less, changing patterns of land use, associated with the appropriation of increasing proportions of net primary productivity by the human population, seem likely not simply to have reduced the diversity of life, but also to have reduced the carrying capacity of the environment in terms of the numbers of other organisms that it can sustain. Here, we estimate the size of the existing global breeding bird population, and then make a first approximation as to how much this has been modified as a consequence of land-use changes wrought by human activities. Summing numbers across different land-use classes gives a best current estimate of a global population of less than 100 billion breeding bird individuals. Applying the same methodology to estimates of original land-use distributions suggests that conservatively this may represent a loss of between a fifth and a quarter of pre-agricultural bird numbers. This loss is shared across a range of temperate and tropical land-use types

Image analysis methods for quantifying structural variation in cluster molecular dynamics

Inspired by methods of remote sensing image analysis, we analyze structural variation in cluster molecular dynamics (MD) simulations through a unique application of the principal component analysis (PCA) and Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC). The PCA analysis characterizes the geometric shape of the cluster structure at each time step, yielding a detailed and quantitative measure of structural stability and variation at finite temperature. Our PCC analysis captures bond structure variation in MD, which can be used to both supplement the PCA analysis as well as compare bond patterns between different cluster sizes. Relying only on atomic position data, without requirement for a priori structural input, PCA and PCC can be used to analyze both classical and ab initio MD simulations for any cluster composition or electronic configuration. Taken together, these statistical tools represent powerful new techniques for quantitative structural characterization and isomer identification in cluster MD

Mapping biodiversity value worldwide: combining higher-taxon richness from different groups

Maps of large-scale biodiversity are urgently needed to guide conservation, and yet complete enumeration of organisms is impractical at present. One indirect approach is to measure richness at higher taxonomic ranks, such as families. The difficulty is how to combine information from different groups on numbers of higher taxa, when these taxa may in effect have been defined in different ways, particularly for more distantly related major groups. In this paper, the regional family richness of terrestrial and freshwater seed plants, amphibians, reptiles and mammals is mapped worldwide by combining: (i) absolute family richness; (ii) proportional family richness; and (iii) proportional family richness weighted for the total species richness in each major group. The assumptions of the three methods and their effects on the results are discussed, although for these data the broad pattern is surprisingly robust with respect to the method of combination. Scores from each of the methods of combining families are used to rank the top five richness hotspots and complementary areas, and hotspots of endemism are mapped by unweighted combination of range-size rarity scores