In the November elections, the citizens of three states resoundingly defeated initiatives aimed at curtailing reproductive rights. In Colorado, a proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution would have given the same legal rights to fertilized eggs as to living persons. This amendment, which was rejected by a wide margin, would have had broad ramifications for abortion rights, the use of cont...

This paper studies the outcome of the amendment voting procedure based on a potentially incomplete binary relation. We assume that the decision-maker evaluates candidates in a list and iteratively updates her choice by comparing the status-quo to the next candidate. With a complete binary relation, it is known that the final selected candidate belongs to the “top cycle.” In reality however, not...

Biochar (pyrolyzed biomass) amendment to soils has been shown to have a multitude of positive effects, e.g., on crop yield, soil quality, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. So far the majority of studies have focused on agricultural systems, typically with relatively low species diversity and annual cropping schemes. How biochar amendment affects plant communities in more complex and d...