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"An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by Congress. Acts can affect only individual entities (called private laws), or the general public (public laws). For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both houses with a majority, then be either signed into law by the president of the United States or receive congressional override against a presidential veto. Public law, private law, designation Private Law 86-407 Public Law 86-90 (STATUTE-073-1-2), Page 212 In the United States, Acts of Congress are designated as either public laws, relating to the general public, or private laws, relating to specific institutions or individuals. Since 1957, all Acts of Congress have been designated as "Public Law X-Y" or "Private Law X-Y", where X is the number of the Congress and Y refers to the sequential order of the bill (when it was enacted). For example, P. L. 111-5 (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) was the fifth enacted public law of the 111th United States Congress. Public laws are also often abbreviated as Pub. L. No. X-Y. When the legislation of those two kinds is proposed, it is called public bill and private bill respectively. Usage The word "act", as used in the term "Act of Congress", is a common, not a proper noun. The capitalization of the word "act" (especially when used standing alone to refer to an act mentioned earlier by its full name) is deprecated by some dictionaries and usage authorities.Bartleby.com 2Infoplease.comCambridge.comMerriam- Webster.comEncyclopædia Britannica However, the Bluebook requires "Act" to be capitalized when referring to a specific legislative act.The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 20th ed., Rule R8(c)(ii) (Cambridge: The Harvard Law Review Association, 2015), 92. The United States Code capitalizes "Act". The term "Act of Congress" is sometimes used in informal speech to indicate something for which getting permission is burdensome. For example, "It takes an Act of Congress to get a building permit in this town." Promulgation (United States) An act adopted by simple majorities in both houses of Congress is promulgated, or given the force of law, in one of the following ways: # Signature by the president of the United States, # Inaction by the president after ten days from reception (excluding Sundays) while the Congress is in session, or # Reconsideration by the Congress after a presidential veto during its session. (A bill must receive a majority vote in both houses to override a president's veto.) The president promulgates Acts of Congress made by the first two methods. If an act is made by the third method, the presiding officer of the house that last reconsidered the act promulgates it.See , "Promulgation of laws". Under the United States Constitution, if the president does not return a bill or resolution to Congress with objections before the time limit expires, then the bill automatically becomes an act; however, if the Congress is adjourned at the end of this period, then the bill dies and cannot be reconsidered (see pocket veto). In addition, if the President rejects a bill or resolution while the Congress is in session, a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Congress is needed for reconsideration to be successful. Promulgation in the sense of publishing and proclaiming the law is accomplished by the president, or the relevant presiding officer in the case of an overridden veto, delivering the act to the archivist of the United States., "Promulgation of laws". After the archivist receives the act, he or she provides for its publication as a slip law and in the United States Statutes at Large., Little and Brown's' edition of laws and treaties; slip laws; Treaties and Other International Acts Series; admissibility in evidence"., "Statutes at Large; contents; admissibility in evidence". Thereafter, the changes are published in the United States Code. Through the process of judicial review, an Act of Congress that violates the Constitution may be declared unconstitutional by the courts. The judicial declaration of an act's unconstitutionality does not remove the law from the statute books; rather, it prevents the law from being enforced. However, future publications of the act are generally annotated with warnings indicating that the statute is no longer valid law. See also * Legislation * List of United States federal legislation for a list of prominent Acts of Congress. * Procedures of the United States Congress * Act of Parliament * Coming into force * Enactment * Federal Register References External links * http://bensguide.gpo.gov/6-8/glossary.html *Act of Congress "
"In engineering, the Miller cycle is a thermodynamic cycle used in a type of internal combustion engine. The Miller cycle was patented by Ralph Miller, an American engineer, US patent 2817322 dated Dec 24, 1957. The engine may be two- or four-stroke and may be run on diesel fuel, gases, or dual fuel. This type of engine was first used in ships and stationary power-generating plants, and is now used for some railway locomotives such as the GE PowerHaul. It was adapted by Mazda for their KJ-ZEM V6, used in the Millenia sedan, and in their Eunos 800 sedan (Australia) luxury cars. More recently, Subaru has combined a Miller-cycle flat-4 with a hybrid driveline for their concept "Turbo Parallel Hybrid" car, known as the Subaru B5-TPH, and Nissan has introduced a small three-cylinder engine with variable intake valve timing that claims to operate an Atkinson cycle at low load (thus the lower power density is not a handicap), or a Miller cycle when under light boost in the low-pressure, supercharged variant, returning to regular (and either suction or more strongly supercharged), more power-dense Otto cycle operation at higher loads. In the latter example, the particular nature of the Miller cycle permits the supercharged version to not only be moderately more powerful, but also claim better, almost diesel-like fuel economy with lower emissions than the (simpler, cheaper) suction-intake one - in contrast to the usual situation of supercharging causing significantly increased fuel consumption. Overview A traditional reciprocating internal combustion engine uses four strokes, of which two can be considered high-power: the compression stroke (high power flow from crankshaft to the charge) and power stroke (high power flow from the combustion gases to crankshaft). In the Miller cycle, the intake valve is left open longer than it would be in an Otto-cycle engine. In effect, the compression stroke is two discrete cycles: the initial portion when the intake valve is open and final portion when the intake valve is closed. This two- stage intake stroke creates the so-called "fifth" stroke that the Miller cycle introduces. As the piston initially moves upwards in what is traditionally the compression stroke, the charge is partially expelled back out through the still-open intake valve. Typically, this loss of charge air would result in a loss of power. However, in the Miller cycle, this is compensated for by the use of a supercharger. The supercharger typically will need to be of the positive-displacement (Roots or screw) type due to its ability to produce boost at relatively low engine speeds. Otherwise, low-rpm power will suffer. Alternatively, a turbocharger can be used for greater efficiency, if low rpm operation is not required, or supplimented with electric motors. In the Miller-cycle engine, the piston begins to compress the fuel-air mixture only after the intake valve closes; and the intake valve closes after the piston has traveled a certain distance above its bottom-most position: around 20 to 30% of the total piston travel of this upward stroke. So in the Miller cycle engine, the piston actually compresses the fuel-air mixture only during the latter 70% to 80% of the compression stroke. During the initial part of the compression stroke, the piston pushes part of the fuel-air mixture through the still-open intake valve, and back into the intake manifold. =Charge temperature= The charge air is compressed using a supercharger (and cooled by an intercooler) to a pressure higher than that needed for the engine cycle, but filling of the cylinders is reduced by suitable timing of the inlet valve. Thus the expansion of the air and the consequent cooling take place in the cylinders and partially in the inlet. Reducing the temperature of the air/fuel charge allows the power of a given engine to be increased without making any major changes such as increasing the cylinder/piston compression relationship. When the temperature is lower at the beginning of the cycle, the air density is increased without a change in pressure (the mechanical limit of the engine is shifted to a higher power). At the same time, the thermal load limit shifts due to the lower mean temperatures of the cycle. Doug Woodyard "Pounder's Marine Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines" (Ninth Edition), 2009 This allows ignition timing to be advanced beyond what is normally allowed before the onset of detonation, thus increasing the overall efficiency still further. An additional advantage of the lower final charge temperature is that the emission of NOx in diesel engines is decreased, which is an important design parameter in large diesel engines on board ships and power plants. =Compression ratio= Efficiency is increased by having the same effective compression ratio and a larger expansion ratio. This allows more work to be extracted from the expanding gases as they are expanded to almost atmospheric pressure. In an ordinary spark ignition engine at the end of the expansion stroke of a wide open throttle cycle, the gases are at around five atmospheres when the exhaust valve opens. Because the stroke is limited to that of the compression, still some work could be extracted from the gas. Delaying the closing of the intake valve in the Miller cycle in effect shortens the compression stroke compared to the expansion stroke. This allows the gases to be expanded to atmospheric pressure, increasing the efficiency of the cycle. =Supercharger losses= The benefits of using positive-displacement superchargers come with a cost due to parasitic load. About 15 to 20% of the power generated by a supercharged engine is usually required to do the work of driving the supercharger, which compresses the intake charge (also known as boost). =Major advantage/drawback= The major advantage of the cycle is that the expansion ratio is greater than the compression ratio. By intercooling after the external supercharging, an opportunity exists to reduce NOx emissions for diesel, or knock for spark ignition engine. However, multiple tradeoffs on boosting system efficiency and friction (due to the larger displacement) need to be balanced for every application. Summary of the patent The overview given above may describe a modern version of the Miller cycle, but it differs in some respects from the 1957 patent. The patent describes "a new and improved method of operating a supercharged intercooled engine". The engine may be two-cycle or four-cycle and the fuel may be diesel, dual fuel, or gas. It is clear from the context that "gas" means gaseous fuel and not gasoline. The pressure-charger shown in the diagrams is a turbocharger, not a positive-displacement supercharger. The engine (whether four-stroke or two-stroke) has a conventional valve or port layout, but an additional "compression control valve" (CCV) is in the cylinder head. The servo mechanism, operated by inlet manifold pressure, controls the lift of the CCV during part of the compression stroke and releases air from the cylinder to the exhaust manifold. The CCV would have maximum lift at full load and minimum lift at no load. The effect is to produce an engine with a variable compression ratio. As inlet manifold pressure goes up (because of the action of the turbocharger) the effective compression ratio in the cylinder goes down (because of the increased lift of the CCV) and vice versa. This "will insure proper starting and ignition of the fuel at light loads". Atkinson-cycle engine A similar delayed valve-closing method is used in some modern versions of Atkinson cycle engines, but without the supercharging. These engines are generally found on hybrid electric vehicles, where efficiency is the goal, and the power lost compared to the Miller cycle is made up through the use of electric motors. References Category:Thermodynamic cycles "