Digital Commons Network^™

National Security And The Article Ii Shell Game, Heidi Kitrosser

Articles

This essay considers the important but under-explored link between politics and constitutional interpretation in the realm of national security. The school of constitutional interpretation at which it looks is “presidential exclusivity,” which has gone from relative obscurity to prominence in the political branches and in public debate over the past several decades. Exclusivists deem the President to have substantial discretion under Article II of the Constitution to override statutory limits that he believes interfere with his ability to protect national security. The first question that this essay takes up is why exclusivity has come so far over the past several …

Why Did Rating Agencies Do Such A Bad Job Rating Subprime Securities?, Claire Hill

Articles

Why did rating agencies do such a bad job rating subprime securities? The conventional answer draws heavily on the fact that ratings are paid for by the issuers: Issuers could, and do, “buy” high ratings from willing sellers, the rating agencies. The conventional answer cannot be wholly correct or even nearly so. Issuers also pay rating agencies to rate their corporate bond issues, yet very few corporate bond issues are rated AAA. If the rating agencies were selling high ratings, why weren’t high ratings sold for corporate bonds? Moreover, for some types of subprime securities, a particular rating agency’s rating …

Optimal Fines For False Patent Marking, Thomas F. Cotter

Articles

Since January 1, 2010, plaintiffs have filed over three hundred lawsuits under 35 U.S.C. § 292, the false patent marking statute. Fueled in large part by recent Federal Circuit case law embracing an expansive interpretation of the statute, this uptick has alarmed some observers, who fear that patent owners whose products bear the numbers of expired or inapplicable patents could be liable for, literally, billions of dollars in fines. While Congress and the courts consider various responses, one issue that has failed to attract much notice thus far is the question of how to calculate appropriate fines for marking violations. …

A Burkean Perspective On Patent Eligibility, Part Ii: Reflections On The (Counter)Revolution In Patent Law, Thomas F. Cotter

Articles

In 2007, I published an essay in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, titled A Burkean Perspective on Patent Eligibility, in which I discussed how the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Patent and Trademark Office had discarded various doctrines relating to patent eligibility - among them, rules that all patentable inventions must pertain to the technological arts, that they may not read on mental steps, and that patentable processes must effect a physical transformation - in favor of an approach that asked only whether an invention had practical utility and was predictable in …

Climate Change, Carbon Sequestration, And Property Rights, Alexandra B. Klass, Elizabeth J. Wilson

Articles

This Article considers the role of property rights in efforts to sequester underground hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year from power plants and other industrial facilities in order to mitigate climate change. This technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), could provide deep emission cuts, particularly from coal power generation, on a worldwide basis. In order to implement this technology, future CCS operators must be able to access hundreds of millions of acres of "pore space" roughly a kilometer below the earth's surface in which to store CO2 for hundreds to thousands of years. …

If You Build It, They Will Come: Preserving Tribal Sovereignty In The Face Of Indian Casinos & The New Premium On Tribal Membership, Suzianne Painter-Thorne

Articles

This Article considers recent disputes over membership decisions made by American Indian tribal governments. Since Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, Indian casinos have flourished on some tribal reservations. Some argue that the new wealth brought by casinos has increased fights over membership as tribes seek to expel current members or refuse to admit new members. It is difficult to discern whether there are more disputes over tribal enrollment as a consequence of gaming or whether such disputes are now more public because gaming has brought tribes to the forefront of U.S. culture. What is clear is …

Corrosion Protection Properties Of Various Ligand Modified Organic Inorganic Hybrid Coating On Aa 2024-T3, P.C. Rajath Varma, John Cassidy, Mohamed Oubaha, Colette Mcdonagh, John Colreavy, Brendan Duffy

Articles

The inclusion of zirconium precursors to prepare organosilane solgel coatings improves the corrosion protection performance of the coatings on aluminium and steel. The inherent differences in the hydrolysis rates of the silane and zirconium precursors, various ligands were used to control the hydrolysis by decreasing the number of reactive alkoxide group. Hybrid sols were synthesised using 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propylmethacrylate (MAPTMS) and zirconium n-propoxide chelated with organic ligands including different organic acids, acetyl acetone and 2 2’ bipyridyl. The effects of zirconia inclusion on the properties of the coatings were compared on the aerospace alloy AA 2024-T3.

Electrochemical analysis and salt spray …

Public Consensus As Constitutional Authority, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Barry Friedman's new book The Will of the People attempts to dissolve constitutional law's countermajoritariand ifficulty by showing that, in practice,t he Supreme Court does only what the public will tolerate. His account succeeds if "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the threat that courts will run the country in ways that contravene majority preference, but not if the "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the need to explain the legitimate sources of judicial authority in cases where decisions do contravene majority preference. Friedman's book does not pursue the second possibility, and may suggest that doing so is unimportant, in part because …

Constitutional Theology: The Revival Of Whig History In American Public Law, William J. Novak

Articles

One of the things I admire about the profession of history is that there are no admissions requirements. Like being a novelist or a member of Congress, the door is open to almost anyone who wants to try their hand at the art or craft. In a world of an increasingly specialized division of professional labor, that is a relatively rare and special thing. Though I teach in a law school, for example, I would be in trouble if I tried to pass myself off as a lawyer. Though I could perhaps irritatingly refer to myself as a doctor owing …

Gendered Imprisonment In Japan: An Examination Of Imprisonment For Stimulant Drug Offenses, Christopher W. Mullins, Garrett Grothoff

Articles

Japan is well known as a society that has not only low crime rates but also for using incarceration sparingly, sending few convicted offenders to prison. Yet, certain crimes, such as drug offenses, receive little leniency in the Japanese criminal justice system. Johnson (1996b) found empirical support for both a chivalry and evil woman effect in the system’s treatment of female drug offenders. This paper reexamines and extends the core issues in Johnson’s (1996b) exploration of women’s imprisonment in Japan. It traces the patterns in female incarceration where data is available from the post-war period until 2004. It specifically examines …

The Maximal Pure Spectrum Of An Abelian Group, Brendan Goldsmith, Ruediger Goebel

Articles

This paper introduces the notion of the maximal pure spectrum of an Abelian group - this is the set of isomorphism classes of maximal proper pure subgroups - and focuses on the situation in which this spectrum is small. The converse situation is also examined i.e. given a collection of isomorphism classes of groups, can one find an Abelian group having precisely this collection as its maximal pure spectrum. Finally, it is shown that in some familiar situations, the answers to these questions may be undecidable.

Importance Of The Tail In Truck Weight Modeling For Bridge Assessment, Eugene J. Obrien, Bernard Enright, Abraham Getachew

Articles

To predict characteristic extreme traffic load effects, simulations are sometimes performed of bridge loading events. To generalize the truck weight data, statistical distributions are fitted to histograms of weight measurements. This paper is based on extensive WIM measurements from two European sites and shows the sensitivity of the characteristic traffic load effects to the fitting process. A semi-parametric fitting procedure is proposed: direct use of the measured histogram where there are sufficient data for this to be reliable and parametric fitting to a statistical distribution in the tail region where there are less data. Calculated characteristic load effects are shown …

Corrosion Protection Properties Of Various Ligand Modified Organic Inorganic Hybrid Coating On Aa 2024-T3, Rajath Varma, John Cassidy, Mohamed Oubaha, Colette Mcdonagh, John Colreavy, Brendan Duffy

Articles

The inclusion of zirconium precursors to prepare organosilane solgel coatings improves the corrosion protection performance of the coatings on aluminium and steel. The inherent differences in the hydrolysis rates of the silane and zirconium precursors, various ligands were used to control the hydrolysis by decreasing the number of reactive alkoxide group. Hybrid sols were synthesised using 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propylmethacrylate (MAPTMS) and zirconium n-propoxide chelated with organic ligands including different organic acids, acetyl acetone and 2 2’ bipyridyl. The effects of zirconia inclusion on the properties of the coatings were compared on the aerospace alloy AA 2024-T3. Electrochemical analysis and salt spray …

Applying Geographic Information Systems To Support Strategic Environmental Assessment: Opportunities And Limitations In The Context Of Irish Land-Use Plans, Ainhoa Gonzalez, Alan Gilmer, Ronan Foley, John Sweeney, John Fry

Articles

The strengthening of spatial database infrastructures, further promoted by the INSPIRE Directive adopted in 2007, has led to an increased use of spatial data in planning and decision-making. Given that land-use plans are intrinsically spatial, such evidence and approaches can significantly benefit plan-making. A spatial framework could especially support the specific Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) aspects of the plan-making process. Spatial tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are particularly well-placed to support the environmental integration sought in SEA by providing evidence through the spatial assessment of multiple environmental datasets. Moreover, GIS bring the opportunity to augment conventional assessment techniques …

Bent Sms Fiber Structure For Temperature Measurement, Qiang Wu, Yuliya Semenova, Agus Hatta, Pengfei Wang, Gerald Farrell

Articles

We have proposed a temperature sensor fabricated using a bent SMS fiber structure. Our experimental results show, that by comparison to a sensor based on a straight SMS fiber structure, this temperature sensor has a much higher sensitivity of 31.97 pm/°C over a temperature range from 20 to 80 °C based on the measurement of the mean 3 dB wavelength shift and offers a resolution of 0.1 °C for temperature range from 45 to 80 °C when demodulated by a simple ratiometric interrogation technique.

Temperature Performance Of A Macrobending Single-Mode Fiber-Based Refractometer, Pengfei Wang, Yuliya Semenova, Qiang Wu, Zie Zheng, Gerald Farrell

Articles

The temperature dependence of polarization-dependent loss (PDL) for a macrobending standard single-mode fiber (SMF28) is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The experimental results show an overall agreement with the proposed theoretical model over a temperature range from 0 C to 70 C. An SMF28-based edge filter is used as an example regarding temperature- dependent PDL performance. It is shown that the temperature variations have a significant influence on the polarization dependence of macrobending loss, and further impact on such a fiber bend loss edge filter used in a wavelength measurement application. It is also concluded that by using the proposed …

A Liquid Crystal Coated Tapered Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometer, Ginu Rajan, Sunish Mathews, Gerald Farrell, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

An experimental investigation on liquid crystal coated tapered photonic crystal fiber (PCF) interferometer is presented in this paper. The interferometer is fabricated by tapering a small section of a PCF by collapsing the air holes and thinning down the air hole collapsed region to a micron size. Several interferometers are fabricated from different types of photonic crystal fibers and the temperature dependence studies are carried out to select an intrinsically temperature insensitive interferometer that can be used with liquid crystal (LC) materials. The properties of the LC materials to be used with the tapered PCF interferometers are also discussed. Temperature …

Experimental Analysis And Demonstration Of A Low Cost Fibre Optic Temperature Sensor System For Engineering Applications, Ginu Rajan, Yuliya Semenova, Jinesh Mathew, Gerald Farrell

Articles

An epoxy packaged surface mountable fibre temperature sensor for engineering applications is presented in this paper. The temperature sensor is based on a macro-bend single-mode fibre loop employed in a ratiometric power measurement scheme and has a linear characteristic with temperature at a fixed wavelength and bend radius. The sensor head consists of a single turn of a bare bend sensitive single-mode fibre with an applied absorption coating. The temperature of the sensor head is varied up to 80 0C and the linearity of the response is studied with different applied absorption coatings. The sensor head is packaged in a …

Simple Design Technique For A Triangular Fbg Filter Based On A Linearly Chirped Grating, Qiang Wu, Gerald Farrell, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

A novel and simple design technique for triangular spectrum response of fibre Bragg grating (FBG) is presented based on a linear chirped grating. It is shown that this method is fast and can give a straightforward solution to meet a design target. The numerical simulation examples verified the effectiveness of the design method. A general approach to design for multichannel triangular spectral responses for FBG filters is proposed, which provides a solution that achieves a minimum change of refractive index for the fibre.

Macular Pigment And Its Contribution To Visual Performance And Experience, James Loughman, Peter Davison, John Nolan, Mukunda Akkali, Stephen Beatty

Articles

There is now a consensus, based on histological, biochemical and spectral absorption data, that the yellow colour observed at the macula lutea is a consequence of the selective accumulation of dietary xanthophylls in the central retina of the living eye. Scientifi c research continues to explore the function(s) of MP in the human retina, with two main hypotheses premised on its putative capacity to (1) protect the retina from (photo)-oxidative damage by means of its optical fi ltration and/or antioxidant properties, the so-called protective hypothesis and (2) infl uence the quality of visual performance by means of selective short wavelength …

Evaluation Of The Potential Of Raman Microspectroscopy For Prediction Of Chemotherapeutic Response To Cisplatin In Lung Adenocarcinoma, Haq Nawaz, Franck Bonnier, Peter Knief, Orla Howe, Fiona Lyng, Aidan Meade, Hugh Byrne

Articles

The study of the interaction of anticancer drugs with mammalian cells in vitro is important to elucidate the mechanisms of action of the drug on its biological targets. In this context, Raman spectroscopy is a potential candidate for high throughput, noninvasive analysis. To explore this potential, the interaction of cis-Diamminedichloroplatinum (II) (Cisplatin) with a human lung adenocarcinoma cell line (A549) was investigated using Raman microspectroscopy. The results were correlated with parallel measurements from the MTT cytotoxicity assay, which yielded an IC50 value of 1.2±0.2 μM. To further confirm the spectral results, Raman spectra were also acquired from DNA extracted from …

Solar Simulated Radiation Induced Cell Death Depends On Spectral Distribution And Irradiance But Not Output Delivery, Alanna Maguire, Fiona Lyng, James Walsh

Articles

Photo biological investigations are dependent on calibration and characterisation to determine the relevance of an artificial irradiator to the study at hand. The importance of this has been voiced in the literature. However, the importance of output delivery is relatively unknown. The biological relevance of a high energy, rapidly pulsing solar simulator was investigated using the clonogenic assay and was found to be reciprocity law compliant despite an exaggerated UV irradiance in excess of 1600 Wm-2 delivered per pulse. In fact, it was found to be the least cytotoxic irradiator compared to a second solar simulator and a UVB fluorescent …

Investigation Of The Influence Of High Risk Human Papillomavirus On The Biochemical Composition Of Cervical Cancer Cells Using Vibrational Spectroscopy, Kamila Ostrowska, Alison Malkin, Aidan Meade, John O'Leary, Cara Martin, Cathy Spillane, Hugh Byrne, Fiona Lyng

Articles

The main aetiology of cervical cancer is infection with high risk human papillomavirus (HPV). Cervical cancer is almost 100% curable if detected in the early stages. Thus, information about the presence and levels of HPV in patient samples has high clinical value. As current screening methods, such as the Pap smear test, are highly subjective and in many cases show low sensitivity and specificity, new supportive techniques are desirable to improve the quality of cervical cancer screening. In this study, vibrational spectroscopic techniques (Raman and Fourier Transform Infra Red absorption) have been applied to the investigation of four cervical cancer …

Silver Nanoparticle Polymer Composite Based Humidity Sensor, Aoife Power, Tony Betts, John Cassidy

Articles

Silver nanoparticles were synthesised by a chemical reduction process in order to produce an aqueous colloidal dispersion. The resulting colloids were then characterised by a combination of UV-Vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy and the nanoparticles were found to have an average diameter of 20–22 nm. The Ag/polymer nanocomposites were then applied to platinum interdigital electrodes as sensor coatings and the capability of the resulting sensor as a humidity detector investigated. With the application of 1 V, a current developed which was found to be directly proportional to humidity levels. The sensor gives a reversible, …

From Permutahedron To Aassociahedron, Colum Watt, Thomas Brady

Articles

For each finite real reflection group $W$, we identify a copy of the type-$W$ simplicial generalised associahedron inside the corresponding simplicial permutahedron. This defines a bijection between the facets of the generalised associahedron and the elements of the type $W$ non-crossing partition lattice which is more tractable than previous such bijections. We show that the simplicial fan determined by this associahedron coincides with the Cambrian fan for $W$.

The Similarity Problem For Indefinite Sturm-Liouville Operators With Periodic Coefficients, Aleksey Kostenko

Articles

We investigate the problem of similarity to a self-adjoint operator for $J$-positive Sturm-Liouville operators $L=\frac{1}{\omega}(-\frac{d^2}{dx^2}+q)$ with $2\pi$-periodic coefficients $q$ and $\omega$. It is shown that if 0 is a critical point of the operator $L$, then it is a singular critical point. This gives us a new class of $J$-positive differential operators with the singular critical point 0. Also, we extend the Beals and Parfenov regularity conditions for the critical point $\infty$ to the case of operators with periodic coefficients.

Evaluation Of Phase Change Materials For Thermal Regulation Enhancement Of Building Integrated Photovoltaics, A. Hasan, Sarah Mccormack, M. Huang, Brian Norton

Articles

Regulating the temperature of building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) using phase change materials (PCMs) reduces the loss of temperature dependent photovoltaic (PV) efficiency. Five PCMs were selected for evaluation all with melting temperatures 25 ± 4 C and heat of fusion between 140 and 213 kJ/kg. Experiments were conducted at three insolation intensities to evaluate the performance of each PCM in four different PV/PCM systems. The effect on thermal regulation of PV was determined by changing the (i) mass of PCM and (ii) thermal conductivities of the PCM and PV/PCM system. A maximum temperature reduction of 18 C was achieved for …

Simulation Procedure For The Co-Optimization Of Photovoltaic Water Pumping Systems., Brian Norton

Articles

Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV)-powered centrifugal water pumping systems have been modelled based on field experience and analysis of long-term measured performance of several installed PV-powered water pumping systems. This paper presents detailed modelling of a PV array, an inverter, a three-phase induction motor, a centrifugal pump, a well, a storage tank, an overflow controller, and an integrated reverse osmosis desalination unit. The component models were validated using both laboratory measurements and long-term monitored data. All system components have been modelled separately, and the system was modelled in TRNSYS. The models are capable of simulating grid-connected, diesel-powered, and PV-powered water pumping systems, …

Managing An Unstable Housing Market, Brendan Williams, Brian Hughes, Declan Redmond

Articles

Abstract
In this paper it is intended to place the recent experience of the Irish housing market in the context of economic and property market cycles, how these interact over a property cycle and lessons from recent policy experience including interventions in the housing area. In spatial terms the current
housing market can be seen as the result of an ad-hoc development led urban growth pattern which contributed to a dispersed development pattern with problems in oversupply. It is clear that alternative options exist to this approach and that evidence based management systems in terms of planning, development and financial …

The Truth About Haiti, Irwin P. Stotzky

Articles

No abstract provided.