Guardianship Actions Against Individuals Who Have Selected an Agent as Power of Attorney: When Should the Court Say No?

This article discusses the need for guardianship for presumably incapacitated individuals who already have designated someone to have their power of attorney or to be their healthcare representative. Noting that the privacy and liberty of an individual will be affected by appointing a guardian, the author proposes that guardians not be unnecessarily appointed when currently in-place representatives already fulfill needed services

Risk Management of Low Air Void Asphalt Concrete Mixtures

Various forms of asphalt pavement distress, such as rutting, shoving and bleeding, can be attributed, in many cases, to low air voids in the mixtures during production and placement. The occurrence of low air void contents during plant production may originate as a result of an accidental increase in binder content or mix fines (or both). When low air voids are encountered during production, the specifying agency must decide whether to require the material that has already been placed to be removed and replaced or whether it can be left in place with a reduction in pay. Consequently, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) initiated this research project to develop a decision-support tool for dealing with such events that is based on projected rutting performance of the pavement system. The study was conducted along three paths. In the first, INDOT sponsored two pavement test sections at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) Test Track. The second path involved testing mixes in the INDOT Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT) Facility. In both cases, mixtures were produced in local hot mix plants by either increasing the fines content or the binder content. The NCAT test sections included low void mixes in the surface course only and performance was measured by the progression of rutting. Significant rutting developed in the low void mixes. The results suggested that removal be considered for mixtures with air voids below 2.75% but that no pay adjustment was necessary for air voids above this level. However, the NCAT results were limited to one pavement structure, one set of materials, one climate and low voids in the surface mix only. In the APT, low air void mixtures were placed in either the surface or the intermediate course and different materials were used. The pavement response (permanent deformation of the top pavement layers) resulting from repetitive APT wheel passes was measured using a laser based system. Lastly, a simplified mechanistic analysis, using a software program called QRSS (Quality Related Specification Software) was used in an attempt to simulate the effects of low void mixtures on pavement performance and service life with different materials in different pavement layers and under different traffic loads. The results of these efforts were used along with engineering judgment to formulate the desired decision-support tool

An extremal problem for the Bergman kernel of orthogonal polynomials

Let $\Gamma \subset \mathbb C$ be a curve of class $C(2,\alpha)$. For $z_{0}$ in the unbounded component of ${\mathbb C}\setminus \Gamma$, and for $n=1,2,...$, let $\nu_n$ be a probability measure with supp$(\nu_{n})\subset \Gamma$ which minimizes the Bergman function $B_{n}(\nu,z):=\sum_{k=0}^{n}|q_{k}^{\nu}(z)|^{2}$ at $z_{0}$ among all probability measures $\nu$ on $\Gamma$ (here, $\{q_{0}^{\nu},\ldots,q_{n}^{\nu}\}$ are an orthonormal basis in $L^2(\nu)$ for the holomorphic polynomials of degree at most $n$). We show that $\{\nu_{n}\}_n$ tends weak-* to $\hat\delta_{z_{0}}$, the balayage of the point mass at $z_0$ onto $\Gamma$, by relating this to an optimization problem for probability measures on the unit circle. Our proof makes use of estimates for Faber polynomials associated to $\Gamma$.Comment: To appear in Constructive Approximatio

Observation of the fine structure for rovibronic spectral lines in visible part of emission spectra of D2D_2

For the first time in visible part of the $D_2$ emission spectrum the pseudo doublets representing partly resolved fine structure of rovibronic lines have been observed. They are characterized by splitting values about 0.2 cm$^{-1}$ and relative intensity of the doublet components close to 2.0. It is shown that they are determined by triplet splitting in lower rovibronic levels of various $^3\Lambda_g^\pm \to c^3\Pi_u^-$ electronic transitions. It is proposed to use an existence of such partly resolved fine structure patterns for identification of numerous unassigned spectral lines of the $D_2$ molecule coming from great variety of triplet "gerade" electronic states to vibro-rotational levels of the $c^3\Pi_u^-$ state.Comment: 6 pages, including 2 figures and 1 table; submitted to Phys.Rev.Let

Pluripotential Theory and Convex Bodies: A Siciak-Zaharjuta theorem

We work in the setting of weighted pluripotential theory arising from polynomials associated to a convex body $P$ in $({\bf R}^+)^d$. We define the {\it logarithmic indicator function} on ${\bf C}^d$: $$H_P(z):=\sup_{ J\in P} \log |z^{ J}|:=\sup_{ J\in P} \log[|z_1|^{ j_1}\cdots |z_d|^{ j_d}]$$ and an associated class of plurisubharmonic (psh) functions: $$L_P:=\{u\in PSH({\bf C}^d): u(z)- H_P(z) =0(1), \ |z| \to \infty \}.$$ We first show that $L_P$ is not closed under standard smoothing operations. However, utilizing a continuous regularization due to Ferrier which preserves $L_P$, we prove a general Siciak-Zaharjuta type-result in our $P-$setting: the weighted $P-$extremal function $$V_{P,K,Q}(z):=\sup \{u(z):u\in L_P, \ u\leq Q \ \hbox{on} \ K\}$$ associated to a compact set $K$ and an admissible weight $Q$ on $K$ can be obtained using the subclass of $L_P$ arising from functions of the form $\frac{1}{deg_P(p)}\log |p|$ (appropriately normalized)