Mr. Smith, Welcome to Washington

In the often heated debate over campaign finance reform, few events have generated more heat than Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's selection of Professor Bradley A. Smith for a GOP seat on the Federal Election Commission. Critics called Smith, a noted expert on campaign finance, "unfit" to serve, his selection "an insult." Someone on the FEC with his views, said one critic, is "unthinkable." Given that opposition, President Clinton has thus far refused to nominate Smith. In response, the GOP has put a hold on Clinton's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations. What is Smith's "crime"? In his scholarly writings, he has challenged the conventional wisdom by arguing that past campaign finance reforms have made the system worse and that most proposed reforms would do the same--and, more important, would violate the First Amendment. He urges an end to limits on both contributions and spending--but with full disclosure. Although Smith's critics call him "radical," their attack has raised a question: Just who is the radical? For in case after case, the courts have been on Smith's side, not on the side of his critics. Indeed, what his critics plainly fear is that Smith, on the FEC, will not be "radical" enough, will not press the "robust enforcement" the courts have repeatedly struck down. For his part, Smith has said he will enforce the law, but he will not waste the tax-payers' money pursuing unconstitutional enforcement theories. His selection is a breath of fresh air that should bring needed balance to the campaign finance debate

Exploring the importance of sulfate transporters and ATP sulphurylases for selenium hyperaccumulation\u2014a comparison of Stanleya pinnata and Brassica juncea (Brassicaceae)

Selenium (Se) hyperaccumulation, the capacity of some species to concentrate Se to levels upwards of 0.1% of dry weight, is an intriguing phenomenon that is only partially understood. Questions that remain to be answered are: do hyperaccumulators have one or more Se-specific transporters? How are these regulated by Se and sulfur (S)? In this study, hyperaccumulator Stanleya pinnata was compared with related non-hyperaccumulator Brassica juncea with respect to S-dependent selenate uptake and translocation, as well as for the expression levels of three sulfate/selenate transporters (Sultr) and three ATP sulphurylases (APS). Selenium accumulation went down ~10-fold with increasing sulfate supply in B. juncea, while S. pinnata only had a 2\u20133-fold difference in Se uptake between the highest (5 mM) and lowest sulfate (0 mM) treatments. The Se/S ratio was generally higher in the hyperaccumulator than the non-hyperaccumulator, and while tissue Se/S ratio in B. juncea largely reflected the ratio in the growth medium, S. pinnata enriched itself up to 5-fold with Se relative to S. The transcript levels of Sultr1;2 and 2;1 and APS1, 2, and 4 were generally much higher in S. pinnata than B. juncea, and the species showed differential transcript responses to S and Se supply. These results indicate that S. pinnata has at least one transporter with significant selenate specificity over sulfate. Also, the hyperaccumulator has elevated expression levels of several sulfate/selenate transporters and APS enzymes, which likely contribute to the Se hyperaccumulation and hypertolerance phenotype

Building a Better World: An Ecosystemic Approach to Education, Culture, Health, Environment and Quality of Life

Quality of life, natural and man-made environments, physical, social and mental well-being are currently undermined by all sorts of hazards and injuries; political, economical, social and cultural disarray normalise atrocious behaviours and violence throughout the world. Considering the multiple problems of difficult settlement or solution in our times, current environmental, social, cultural, educational, political and economic policies and practices are examined in view of new paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom. A multidimensional ecosystemic approach and planning model integrate into a dynamic configuration four dimensions of being-in-the- world (intimate, interactive, social and biophysical), as they induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and reorganise for change.education; culture; public policies; environment; ecosystems

Building new frontiers: An ecosystemic approach to development, culture, education, environment and quality of life

Quality of life, natural and man-made environments, physical, social and mental well-being are currently undermined by all sorts of hazards and injuries; political, economical, social and cultural disarray normalise atrocious behaviours and violence throughout the world. Considering the multiple problems of difficult settlement or solution in our times, current environmental, social, cultural, educational, political and economic policies and practices are examined in view of new paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom. A multidimensional ecosystemic approach and planning model for the diagnosis and prognosis of quality of life integrate into a dynamic configuration four dimensions of being-in-the- world (intimate, interactive, social and biophysical), as they induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and reorganise for change, enhancing connexions and sealing ruptures. Development and evaluation of teaching programmes, research projects and public policies benefit from a deep understanding of the events, providing a critical comprehensive four-dimensional framework and planning model for effective and responsible action.education; culture; public policies; environment; ecosystems

Living better in a better world: Guidance and counselling in an ecosystemic model of culture

Diagnosis and prognosis of current problems take into account the connections (assets) and ruptures (deficits) between the different dimensions of being-in-the-world, mutually entangled as donors and recipients: intimate; interactive; social and biophysical. Guidance and counselling consider the complex and dynamic configurations formed by the intertwining of the different dimensions, as they combine to produce the events. Cultural and epistemic backgrounds, subject-object relationships, assumptions and conflicts, are examined by heuristic-hermeneutic processes, as new support structures emerge in the socio-cultural learning niches. Problems related to education, culture, ethics, physical, social and mental well-being, natural and man-made environment are treated as ecosystemic configurations, not as separate objects of separate programmes. Values, goals, and principles are considered in the transition from a non-ecosystemic to an ecosystemic model of culture. The proposal presents not only a descriptive position, but also a normative position, a framework for the development and evaluation of public policies and research and teaching programmes, critically inquiring into the prevailing assumptions of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom.education; culture; environment; ecosystemic; guidance; counselling

“The Right to the City” An Ecosystemic Approach to Better Cities, Better Life

Urbanism is a focus on cities and urban areas, their geography, economies, politics, social characteristics, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the built environment; it is linked to various aspects of quality of life: education, culture, justice, labour, environment, health, safety, housing, leisure, transport, consumption. This year, the United Nations proposed the following questions for the citizens of the world: What is the best thing about your city? What's the worst thing about your city? What do you want the authorities to do about it? What can you do about it? It is a clear attempt to foster civic participation and personal engagement, but to make things happen it is necessary to create active socio-cultural niches at many societal levels.Urbanism; politics; education; culture; justice

Topological gauge fixing

We implement the metric-independent Fock-Schwinger gauge in the abelian quantum Chern-Simons field theory defined in ${\mathbb R}^3$. The expressions of the various components of the propagator are determined. Although the gauge field propagator differs from the Gauss linking density, we prove that its integral along two oriented knots is equal to the linking number

Testing the Technicolor Interpretation of CDF's Dijet Excess at the LHC

Under the assumption that the dijet excess seen by the CDF Collaboration near 150 Gev in Wjj production is due to the lightest technipion of the low-scale technicolor process $\rho_T \rightarrow W \pi_T$, we study its observability in LHC detectors with 1--20 inverse femtobarns of data. We describe interesting new kinematic tests that can provide independent confirmation of this LSTC hypothesis. We find that cuts similar to those employed by CDF, and recently by ATLAS, cannot confirm the dijet signal. We propose cuts tailored to the LSTC hypothesis and its backgrounds at the LHC that may reveal $\rho_T \rightarrow \ell\nu jj$. Observation of the isospin-related channel $\rho^{pm}_T \rightarrow Z \pi^{pm}_T \rightarrow \ell^+ \ell^- jj$ and of $\rho^{pm}_T \rightarrow WZ$ in the three lepton plus neutrino and dilepton plus dijet modes will be important confirmations of the LSTC interpretation of the CDF signal. The $Z\pi_T$ channel is experimentally cleaner than $W\pi_T$ and its rate is known from $W\pi_T$ by phase space. It can be discovered or excluded with the collider data expected in 2012. The $WZ \rightarrow 3\ell\nu$ channel is cleanest of all and its rate is determined from $W\pi_T$ and the LSTC parameter $\sin\chi$. This channel and $WZ \rightarrow \ell^+\ell^- jj$ are discussed as a function of $\sin\chi$.Comment: 24 pages, 24 figure