Worst Case and the Worst Example: An Agenda for Any Young Lawyer Who Wants to Save the World from Climate Chaos

Wherever you turn with regard to climate change, you\u27ll hear about the worst, and the worst of the worst, and the worst that will happen after that. Young lawyers should put themselves in the right frame of mind to tackle all these worsts that are headed our way. In the interest of keeping it simple, we would suggest a personal strategy for every young lawyer that would entail: (I) Honoring Knowledge and Learning; (II) Protecting Your Institutions and Loving Your Country; (III) Planning and Conducting Your Personal War on Bad Law; and (IV) Rejecting Defeatism and Impossibility Theorems. Let\u27s consider these strategies in order. Knowing your circumstance is followed by the occasion of improving your circumstance. This captures the power of positive thinking. If the flaws in human nature that are so celebrated by pessimists could stop effective action, human progress would have been stanched long ago. Despite all talk of futility, impossibility, and resignation, the entire legal scene is a frenzy of hope, effort, creative initiative, and change. That unwarranted optimism of the human species and of the legal profession appears to have seized momentary control in the rush to protect our world and our climate from unprecedented challenge. It\u27s a nice place to end a legal story. Impossible problems can only succumb to implacable convictions. Humans created the conditions for this climate change catastrophe. Perhaps they can stumble into ultimate triumph

Biodiversity, Baking and Boiling, Endangered Species Act Turning Down the Heat

Today the Earth faces an extinction event on a scale second only to Earth\u27s largest mass extinction, the Permian-Triassic event, which occurred 250 million years ago. Upwards of 70 percent of the Earth\u27s species could be at risk of extinction with a 3.5°C (6.3°F) rise in temperature, which could occur by the end of this century. The driver is global warming, caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. As such, a rational climate policy is needed immediately to prevent the complete collapse of biodiversity. Yet, the United States—the world\u27s largest cumulative contributor to emissions—is in a state of paralysis when it comes to implementing climate solutions. This paralysis arises from a complex of cultural, political, and economic origins. It is perhaps understandable that persons, be they individual humans or corporations, would not respond readily. Humans\u27 ability to fundamentally alter our environs has far outstripped our limited ability to calculate cost/benefit in the abstract and over the long term. On the other hand, there is no excuse for inaction on the part of government. One of the primary purposes of government is social order. Implicit in the organization of society is that at a collective, governmental level we are better at calculating abstract long-term cost/benefit. The government must therefore take definitive steps in the face of the climate crisis. This article begins by providing a brief overview of biodiversity, the threats global warming poses to it, and the economic and social costs that the loss of biodiversity will exact on human society. We then review four key examples of ways in which the Endangered Species Act operates, or should operate, to address global warming and greenhouse gas emissions and confer substantial benefits on species threatened by the climate crisis: the listing process, the section 7 consultation process required of federal agencies, the designation of critical habitat, and the preparation and implementation of recovery plans

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Reconstruction of primary vertices at the ATLAS experiment in Run 1 proton–proton collisions at the LHC

This paper presents the method and performance of primary vertex reconstruction in proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment during Run 1 of the LHC. The studies presented focus on data taken during 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV. The performance has been measured as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing over a wide range, from one to seventy. The measurement of the position and size of the luminous region and its use as a constraint to improve the primary vertex resolution are discussed. A longitudinal vertex position resolution of about 30μm is achieved for events with high multiplicity of reconstructed tracks. The transverse position resolution is better than 20μm and is dominated by the precision on the size of the luminous region. An analytical model is proposed to describe the primary vertex reconstruction efficiency as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing and of the longitudinal size of the luminous region. Agreement between the data and the predictions of this model is better than 3% up to seventy interactions per bunch crossing

Severe early onset preeclampsia: short and long term clinical, psychosocial and biochemical aspects

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy specific disorder commonly defined as de novo hypertension and proteinuria after 20 weeks gestational age. It occurs in approximately 3-5% of pregnancies and it is still a major cause of both foetal and maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide1. As extensive research has not yet elucidated the aetiology of preeclampsia, there are no rational preventive or therapeutic interventions available. The only rational treatment is delivery, which benefits the mother but is not in the interest of the foetus, if remote from term. Early onset preeclampsia (<32 weeks’ gestational age) occurs in less than 1% of pregnancies. It is, however often associated with maternal morbidity as the risk of progression to severe maternal disease is inversely related with gestational age at onset2. Resulting prematurity is therefore the main cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity in patients with severe preeclampsia3. Although the discussion is ongoing, perinatal survival is suggested to be increased in patients with preterm preeclampsia by expectant, non-interventional management. This temporising treatment option to lengthen pregnancy includes the use of antihypertensive medication to control hypertension, magnesium sulphate to prevent eclampsia and corticosteroids to enhance foetal lung maturity4. With optimal maternal haemodynamic status and reassuring foetal condition this results on average in an extension of 2 weeks. Prolongation of these pregnancies is a great challenge for clinicians to balance between potential maternal risks on one the eve hand and possible foetal benefits on the other. Clinical controversies regarding prolongation of preterm preeclamptic pregnancies still exist – also taking into account that preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the Netherlands5 - a debate which is even more pronounced in very preterm pregnancies with questionable foetal viability6-9. Do maternal risks of prolongation of these very early pregnancies outweigh the chances of neonatal survival? Counselling of women with very early onset preeclampsia not only comprises of knowledge of the outcome of those particular pregnancies, but also knowledge of outcomes of future pregnancies of these women is of major clinical importance. This thesis opens with a review of the literature on identifiable risk factors of preeclampsia

Measurements of the pp → ZZ production cross section and the Z → 4ℓ branching fraction, and constraints on anomalous triple gauge couplings at √s = 13 TeV

Four-lepton production in proton-proton collisions, pp -> (Z/gamma*)(Z/gamma*) -> 4l, where l = e or mu, is studied at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1). The ZZ production cross section, sigma(pp -> ZZ) = 17.2 +/- 0.5 (stat) +/- 0.7 (syst) +/- 0.4 (theo) +/- 0.4 (lumi) pb, measured using events with two opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pairs produced in the mass region 60 4l) = 4.83(-0.22)(+0.23) (stat)(-0.29)(+0.32) (syst) +/- 0.08 (theo) +/- 0.12(lumi) x 10(-6) for events with a four-lepton invariant mass in the range 80 4GeV for all opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pairs. The results agree with standard model predictions. The invariant mass distribution of the four-lepton system is used to set limits on anomalous ZZZ and ZZ. couplings at 95% confidence level: -0.0012 < f(4)(Z) < 0.0010, -0.0010 < f(5)(Z) < 0.0013, -0.0012 < f(4)(gamma) < 0.0013, -0.0012 < f(5)(gamma) < 0.0013

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good