This Article discusses how state public utility law presents a barrier to the siting of new high voltage transmission lines to serve renewable resources, and how states could approach its evolution in order to preserve a role for state regulators in a new energy economy in which renewable energy will play a significant role. The traditional approach to determining the "public interest" in siting transmission lines is well on its way to obsolescence. Two developments over the past fifteen years have begun to challenge this paradigm. First, policies at the federal level and in many states have encouraged increased competition in generation, contributing to de-monopolization of the bulk power side of the industry. Second, the increased emphasis on environmental, energy independence, and other public policy objectives, has resulted in a dramatically increased demand for renewable energy, particularly given heightened attention to climate change. Given that wind power -- the most economically viable renewable resource on a bulk power basis -- is feasible predominantly in locations far removed from, load centers, the demand for new multistate transmission facilities has been brought clearly into focus. After an introduction in Part I, Part II describes the existing arrangements in several resource rich Western states for siting new transmission lines, and the coexistence of those arrangements with a conventional understanding of the public interest in determining need and addressing environmental concerns under traditional state transmission siting laws. Part III discusses transmission issues related to the competitive wholesale market and increased attention to climate change and highlights how federal law has expanded to accommodate some of these concerns. Part IV emphasizes the need for a new definition of the public interest which might better reflect these new market circumstances and opportunities, and highlights the two main barriers to this: 1) legislative and/or regulatory inertia and 2) an outdated cost-allocation model. The public interest under most state siting statutes is sufficiently capacious to give regulators some flexibility to evolve, but in other instances legislative action may be needed. In addition, the state cost-of-service ratemaking model must evolve to a more regional approach to allocating the costs of new transmission.


Textual analysis of microbial genomes reveals footprints of their early evolution of the genomes. It is shown that distributions frequency occurrence of words less than nine letters in genomes have widths that are many times those of Poisson distributions. This phenomenon suggests a simple biologically plausible model for the growth of genomes: the genome first grows randomly to an initial length of approximately one thousand nucleotides (1 kb), or about one thousandth of its final length, thereafter mainly grows by random short segmental duplication. We show that using duplicated segments averaging around 25 b, model sequences generated in this model possess statistical properties characteristic of present day genomes. Both the initial length and the duplicated segment length support an RNA world at the time duplication began.


Bioreduction has been proposed as an on-farm storage facility for fallen stock prior to final
disposal in accordance with the Animal By-Products Regulations, ABPR (EC 1069/2009). In
order for bioreduction to be approved under the legislation it must be shown to be biosecure.
Therefore, the main aim of this thesis was to assess the risk of pathogen proliferation in the
liquor and bioaerosols generated under operational and simulated breakdown scenarios.
Secondary objectives consisted of improving the technology and included: determining the
efficacy of commercial accelerants in catalysing the bioreduction process; the use of the
carbon footprint to identify potential environmental improvements in future vessel designs;
and identifying the main physicochemical parameters and enzyme activity associated with
bioreduction, in order to more fully understand the underlying biodegradation processes
occurring within the vessels.
A range of microbiological and molecular techniques were employed to analyse pathogen
survival and assess microbial communities and included; traditional culturing, bioaerosol
analysis, 16S rRNA sequencing and automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis
(ARISA). Carbon footprints were analysed using ISO14040 Life Cycle Assessment
guidelines, greenhouse gas emissions using a portable gas meter and physicochemical and
enzyme assays using standard techniques, often based on soil or compost protocols in the
absence of specific bioreduction methods.
Whilst there is always room for vessel design improvement such as using solar energy and
determining loading capacity to reduce foaming, the technology has repeatedly shown to
reduce the volume of waste to be ultimately disposed and has gained favour within the
livestock industries. Bioreduction has also shown to be biosecure in both laboratory and field
settings and under both optimal and sub-optimal conditions. The lack of pathogen
proliferation and dispersal meets the requirements of the ABPR for the storage of fallen
stock. Therefore, it is recommended that the regulations are updated to include bioreduction
for both pig and sheep carcasses.


Retrosternal reconstruction shows an increased rate of postoperative nonsurgical complications and a slightly increased mortality compared to posterior mediastinal reconstruction. Radionuclid transit through the gastric tube is significantly longer in either way of reconstruction compared to normal controls. Tracer retention is significantly increased after retrosternal reconstruction. This however has no impact on the patients' quality of life. We therefore recommend posterior mediastinal reconstruction provided that curative resection is definitely achieved in order to avoid possible complications by local recurrence. In the palliative situation we prefer the retrosternal route of reconstruction as the functional disadvantages had no negative effect on quality of life and the general disadvantages seem to be neglectable in this situation. The same is true if adjuvant radiation of the tumor bed is planned. Pyloroplasty in our opinion is not necessary. The presternal route of reconstruction is underrepresented in the literature. In our experience it has no indication.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate intradiskal pressure (IDP) in the C6-7 intervertebral disk (IVD) after destabilization and distraction-fusion of the C5-C6 vertebrae.

SAMPLE
7 cadaveric C4-T1 vertebral specimens with no evidence of IVD disease from large-breed dogs.

PROCEDURES
Specimens were mounted in a custom-made 6 degrees of freedom spinal loading simulator so the C5-C6 and C6-C7 segments remained mobile. One specimen remained untreated and was used to assess the repeatability of the IDP measurement protocol. Six specimens underwent 3 sequential configurations (untreated, partial diskectomy of the C5-6 IVD, and distraction-fusion of the C5-C6 vertebrae). Each construct was biomechanically tested under neutral, flexion, extension, and right-lateral bending loads. The IDP was measured with a pressure transducer inserted into the C6-7 IVD and compared between the nucleus pulposus and annulus fibrosus and across all 3 constructs and 4 loads.

RESULTS
Compared with untreated constructs, partial diskectomy and distraction-fusion of C5-C6 decreased the mean ± SD IDP in the C6-7 IVD by 1.3 ± 1.3% and 0.8 ± 1.3%, respectively. During motion, the IDP remained fairly constant in the annulus fibrosus and increased by 3.8 ± 3.0% in the nucleus pulposus. The increase in IDP within the nucleus pulposus was numerically greatest during flexion but did not differ significantly among loading conditions.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Distraction-fusion of C5-C6 did not significantly alter the IDP of healthy C6-7 IVDs. Effects of vertebral distraction-fusion on the IDP of adjacent IVDs with degenerative changes, such as those in dogs with caudal cervical spondylomyelopathy, warrant investigation.


The scavenging village chicken is important to millions of smallholders in Ethiopia, as in other less-economically developed countries, for its contribution to the economic, nutritional and social well-being of farmers, especially women and children. Infectious diseases are frequently cited as the greatest constraint to village chicken production, and in Ethiopia, most mortality is attributed to seasonal outbreaks of Newcastle disease (ND). This study conducted four cross-sectional surveys over an 18-month period in two geographically distinct regions of Ethiopia, to examine a range of bacterial, viral and parasitic infections in randomly-selected village chickens, and to look at their 6-month survival rate. The two chicken populations of the different regions were found to be different in terms of their population dynamics and phenotypic characteristics, and these may be driven by farmer demands, which are dictated by the local economic and cultural value placed on specific qualities in the chickens. Over the course of the study, no large outbreaks were observed in the eight villages which took part in the study, and only 9 out of 1280 birds (0.7%) were found to be serologically positive for ND. However, even in the absence of large outbreaks, around 20% of the birds in the study were reported to have died of disease within the 6-month follow-up period, and a further 13% lost to predation. Both location and seasonal variation influenced a bird's fate, as did farmer decisions, such as choosing birds with specific characteristics to sell or eat. Rather than large outbreaks, the rainy season appeared to be associated with increased small-scale losses, and a variety of signs were described, suggesting several pathogens may be involved. No single infection measured at the time of sampling was a good predictor of subsequent death from disease; instead different pathogens appeared to be important in each region, and reduced the probability of survival through a variety of mechanisms. Positive correlations between Pasteurella and Salmonella, and between Marek's disease and parasitic diseases were identified, but fewer birds than expected were identified with pathogens from both these groups, perhaps suggesting a decreased chance of survival for co-infected birds. Strong seasonal variation in prevalence was not observed for any of the infections in the study, suggesting that seasonal rises in disease mortality are unlikely to be attributable to a single infection, but other factors may play a role, including an increased probability of co-infection. This makes it difficult to prioritise control strategies for individual diseases; instead development programmes may find broad-based strategies, such as improving hygiene and chick management may be more beneficial to minimise the small-scale losses. Programmes also need to be tailored to local needs rather than assuming a blanket strategy will work equally well for all farmers or regions. Any development strategies to control single diseases should consider potential impacts on non-target infections, due to the existence of multiple interactions between pathogens in this system.


Reasoning and interacting with dynamic environments is a fundamental problem in AI, but it becomes extremely challenging when actions can trigger cascades of cross-dependent events. We introduce a new supervised learning setup called {\em Cascade} where an agent is shown a video of a physically simulated dynamic scene, and is asked to intervene and trigger a cascade of events, such that the system reaches a"counterfactual"goal. For instance, the agent may be asked to"Make the blue ball hit the red one, by pushing the green ball". The agent intervention is drawn from a continuous space, and cascades of events makes the dynamics highly non-linear. We combine semantic tree search with an event-driven forward model and devise an algorithm that learns to search in semantic trees in continuous spaces. We demonstrate that our approach learns to effectively follow instructions to intervene in previously unseen complex scenes. It can also reason about alternative outcomes, when provided an observed cascade of events.


The role of experts in society, from ancient philosophers to contemporary scientific advisors has been debated since antiquity. The founder of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus, argued that the role of scientists in society is to address only scientific issues. This paper provides the seven principles that are the foundation of Ruckelshaus Effect. It also describes direct and indirect consequences of Ruckelshaus Effect including the Evolution of Best Available Science (BAS) and Metrics for Evaluation of Scientific Claims (MESC) derived from it that are based on five principles (open-mindedness, skepticism, universal scientific principles, transparency, and reproducibility) and include three pillars (reliability standardization of science in terms of its maturity, and areas outside the purview of science). This paper also addresses the relationship between the Ruckelshaus Effect, risk analysis (assessment, management and communication), and the evolution of regulatory science as a new scientific discipline.


The integration of research evidence into clinical practice is a complex process, which can be slow and difficult.1 As a general practitioner, trying to keep up-to-date across a wide spectrum of clinical conditions often seems overwhelming. However, in the past year, setting up a monthly multidisciplinary journal club has led to significant progress in several clinical areas. Collective problem solving and adding " Establish an action plan" to the traditional 5-step model of evidence-based medicine have enabled our primary healthcare team to move from evidence to action, fast-tracking through the stages from awareness to adherence.1–3

Here I describe an example from 1 of our journal clubs and reflect on some key factors that have facilitated change in our clinical practice.

We chose a clinical problem that we all recognised: poorly controlled asthma. The trigger case was Matt, a likeable somewhat chaotic teenager with moderate asthma, who despite a thorough understanding of his condition, a written action plan, and an interest in team sports, overused his blue inhaler (salbutamol) while forgetting to take the brown inhaler (corticosteroid). This resulted in him experiencing exercise-induced symptoms, upper-respiratory-tract-infection–related asthma exacerbations leading to absence from school, and regular night wakening.

We wanted to know how common this problem was: a brief audit of our practice showed that around 20% of our patients with asthma who were prescribed maintenance inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) were using ⩾12 blue short-acting β agonist (SABA) inhalers each year—equivalent to >6 puffs/day. We were surprised and disappointed that so many of our asthmatic patients were not as well controlled as we had thought.

Therefore we asked: In patients with asthma who have failed to engage with their recommended management plan and who overuse inhaled SABA and underuse ICSs, what interventions can improve symptom control and adherence?

A …


A social and culturological simulation study was made into motivation structure of young male patients during the initial period of their heterosexual intercourse in the series of 957 anonymously tested patients. It can be stated with sufficient certainty that in the initial period of sex intercourse, in major proportion of youths under the influence of more experienced young women there are quickly formed basic psychological motivational stereotypes of sex behaviour. This appeared to directly influence both their married life and nonmarital sex relations including those in which they come to be infected with a venereal disease.