The Track Record on Takings Legislation: Lessons from Democracy\u27s Laboratories

This report by the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, entitled The Track Record on Takings Legislation: Lessons from Democracy\u27s Laboratories, examines the experiences of Florida, Oregon, and several other states with legislation implementing the property rights agenda. The report is the first comprehensive effort to systematically identify and evaluate the on-the-ground consequences of so-called takings compensation laws. The major findings of the report are that the takings agenda has undermined community protections by forcing a roll back of existing legal rules and/or by exerting a chilling effect on new legislative activity, special interests such as developers and timber companies have been the primary beneficiaries of takings legislation, the takings laws have fomented and exacerbated neighbor-neighbor conflicts over land use issues, the takings agenda has conferred large windfalls on certain owners either in the form of taxpayer-funded awards or special exemptions from the rules that apply to the rest of the community, and the property rights agenda has undermined the democratic process. Contrary to a common argument made by proponents of this type of legislation, requiring the government to pay to regulate does not lead government officials to make a more nuanced appraisal of the costs and benefits of regulations, apparently because the salience of fiscal costs to government officials far outweighs the relatively more diffuse political benefits of community and homeowner protection

Assessment of Neuropsychological Trajectories in Longitudinal Population-Based Studies of Children

This paper provides a strategy for the assessment of brain function in longitudinal cohort studies of children. The proposed strategy invokes both domain-specific and omnibus intelligence test approaches. In order to minimise testing burden and practice effects, the cohort is divided into four groups with one-quarter tested at 6-monthly intervals in the 0–2-year age range (at ages 6 months, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 years) and at annual intervals from ages 3–20 (one-quarter of the children at age 3, another at age 4, etc). This strategy allows investigation of cognitive development and of the relationship between environmental influences and development at each age. It also allows introduction of new domains of function when age-appropriate. As far as possible, tests are used that will provide a rich source of both longitudinal and cross-sectional data. The testing strategy allows the introduction of novel tests and new domains as well as piloting of tests when the test burden is relatively light. In addition to the recommended tests for each age and domain, alternative tests are described. Assessment methodology and knowledge about child cognitive development will change over the next 20 years, and strategies are suggested for altering the proposed test schedule as appropriate

Horne v. Department of Agriculture: Expanding Per Se Takings While Endorsing State Sovereign Ownership of Wildlife

In Horne v. Department of Agriculture, the Supreme Court expanded its so-called per se analysis under the Takings Clause to government actions impairing possession of personal property. The Court decided that a New Deal era agricultural program effected a taking by requiring raisin growers to turn over a portion of their crops in certain years to a governmental body that disposes of the raisins in noncompetitive markets. The raisin marketing program, which by law only persists with continuing support from the raisin industry itself, aims to control the market supply of raisins, and thereby elevate and stabilize the prices received by raisin growers. Despite the unusual character of the program, a majority of the Court ruled that certain dissident raisin growers were entitled to prevail on their theory that government appropriations of personal property interests in raisins were governed by the same per se takings rule that applies to government appropriations of real property. The Court\u27s analysis of the takings issue is problematic for a number of reasons , including 1) the fact that these particular plaintiffs, who were proceeding in the capacity of raisin handlers, were not the actual owners of the raisins at issue, and therefore could not legitimately claim a taking of their private property; 2) the Court\u27s modern precedents and traditional practice support the idea that government has broader latitude in controlling personal property than real property, contradicting the Court\u27s new per se rule; 3) there was a substantial question as to whether the program imposed an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation, given the significant offsetting benefits growers received from this price support system; and 4) the Court failed to give the government the opportunity to defend the conditions imposed on raisin growers by showing that that the conditions satisfied the standards articulated in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard. Each of these issues provided a proper basis for affirming the Ninth Circuit\u27s rejection of the takings argument. Nevertheless, Chief Justice John Roberts\u27 majority opinion either ignored or skimmed over all these issues and applied a per se takings rule to this context. Figuring out the implications of the Horne decision for drug forfeiture laws, unwholesome food recalls, and animal cruelty statutes has been left to other days and other cases. The Horne decision did include an unexpected result of considerable benefit to government defendants, however: the Court distinguished the raisin marketing program from a similar program involving oysters that it upheld against a takings challenge in a 1929 decision. The Chief Justice explained that, unlike raisins, oysters were public property. The Court thereby ratified the venerable but somewhat misunderstood doctrine of sovereign ownership of wildlife. States employ this doctrine, inherited from England and nearly universally adopted by American states, to uphold wildlife conservation regulations and defeat claims of private ownership. Often referred to as the wildlife trust, the doctrine is the kind of background principle of property law that the Court recognized as defeating claims of takings in its 1992 decision of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission. In this article we examine the Horne decision in some detail. Although the case does extend the Court\u27s takings jurisprudence to an uncertain extent by applying the per se analysis to personal property, we think the long-term ramifications of the decision lie in the Court\u27s recognition of the sovereign ownership of wildlife. That doctrine not only will defeat private takings claims but should sanction affirmative regulation of wildlife and protection for its habitat, authorize government actions to recover damages against those harming wildlife and wildlife habitat, and reinforce public standing to enforce the wildlife trust

The Unruh-deWitt Detector and the Vacuum in the General Boundary formalism

We discuss how to formulate a condition for choosing the vacuum state of a quantum scalar field on a timelike hyperplane in the general boundary formulation (GBF) using the coupling to an Unruh-DeWitt detector. We explicitly study the response of an Unruh-DeWitt detector for evanescent modes which occur naturally in quantum field theory in the presence of the equivalent of a dielectric boundary. We find that the physically correct vacuum state has to depend on the physical situation outside of the boundaries of the spacetime region considered. Thus it cannot be determined by general principles pertaining only to a subset of spacetime.Comment: Version as published in CQ

Path Integrals, Density Matrices, and Information Flow with Closed Timelike Curves

Two formulations of quantum mechanics, inequivalent in the presence of closed timelike curves, are studied in the context of a soluable system. It illustrates how quantum field nonlinearities lead to a breakdown of unitarity, causality, and superposition using a path integral. Deutsch's density matrix approach is causal but typically destroys coherence. For each of these formulations I demonstrate that there are yet further alternatives in prescribing the handling of information flow (inequivalent to previous analyses) that have implications for any system in which unitarity or coherence are not preserved.Comment: 25 pages, phyzzx, CALT-68-188

Paradigms, possibilities and probabilities: Comment on Hinterecker et al. (2016)

Hinterecker et al. (2016) compared the adequacy of the probabilistic new paradigm in reasoning with the recent revision of mental models theory (MMT) for explaining a novel class of inferences containing the modal term “possibly”. For example, the door is closed or the window is open or both, therefore, possibly the door is closed and the window is open (A or B or both, therefore, possibly(A & B)). They concluded that their results support MMT. In this comment, it is argued that Hinterecker et al. (2016) have not adequately characterised the theory of probabilistic validity (p-validity) on which the new paradigm depends. It is unclear how p-validity can be applied to these inferences, which are anyway peripheral to the theory. It is also argued that the revision of MMT is not well motivated and its adoption leads to many logical absurdities. Moreover, the comparison is not appropriate because these theories are defined at different levels of computational explanation. In particular, revised MMT lacks a provably consistent computational level theory that could justify treating these inferences as valid. It is further argued that the data could result from the non-colloquial locutions used to express the premises. Finally, an alternative pragmatic account is proposed based on the idea that a conclusion is possible if what someone knows cannot rule it out. This account could be applied to the unrevised mental model theory rendering the revision redundant

A Fungal Effector With Host Nuclear Localization and DNA-Binding Properties Is Required for Maize Anthracnose Development

Plant pathogens have the capacity to manipulate the host immune system through the secretion of effectors. We identified 27 putative effector proteins encoded in the genome of the maize anthracnose pathogen Colletotrichum graminicola that are likely to target the host’s nucleus, as they simultaneously contain sequence signatures for secretion and nuclear localization. We functionally characterized one protein, identified as CgEP1. This protein is synthesized during the early stages of disease development and is necessary for anthracnose development in maize leaves, stems, and roots. Genetic, molecular, and biochemical studies confirmed that this effector targets the host’s nucleus and defines a novel class of double-stranded DNA-binding protein. We show that CgEP1 arose from a gene duplication in an ancestor of a lineage of monocot-infecting Colletotrichum spp. and has undergone an intense evolution process, with evidence for episodes of positive selection. We detected CgEP1 homologs in several species of a grass-infecting lineage of Colletotrichum spp., suggesting that its function may be conserved across a large number of anthracnose pathogens. Our results demonstrate that effectors targeted to the host nucleus may be key elements for disease development and aid in the understanding of the genetic basis of anthracnose development in maize plants.Fil: Vargas, Walter Alberto. Universidad de Salamanca; España. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sanz Martín, José M.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Rech, Gabriel E.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Armijos Jaramillo, Vinicio D.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Rivera Rodriguez, Lina Patricia. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Echeverria, María de Las Mercedes. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ArgentinaFil: Díaz Mínguez, José M.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Thon, Michael R.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Sukno, Serenella A.. Universidad de Salamanca; Españ