Brief of Scholars of the History and Original Meaning of the Fourth Amendment as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner, Carpenter v. United States, No. 16-402 (U.S. Aug. 14, 2017)

Obtaining and examining cell site location records to find a person is a “search” in any normal sense of the word — a search of documents and a search for a person and her personal effects. It is therefore a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment in that it constitutes “examining,” “exploring,” “looking through,” “inquiring,” “seeking,” or “trying to find.” Nothing about the text of the Fourth Amendment, or the historical backdrop against which it was adopted, suggests that “search” should be construed more narrowly as, for example, intrusions upon subjectively manifested expectations of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.Entrusting government agents with unfettered discretion to conduct searches using cell site location information undermines Fourth Amendment rights. The Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches.” The Framers chose that language deliberately. It reflected the insecurity they suffered at the hands of “writs of assistance,” a form of general warrant that granted state agents broad discretion to search wherever they pleased. Such arbitrary power was “unreasonable” to the Framers, being “against the reason of the common law,” and it was intolerable because of its oppressive impact on “the people” as a whole. As emphasized in one of the seminal English cases that inspired the Amendment, this kind of general power to search was “totally subversive of the liberty of the subject.” James Otis’s famous speech denouncing a colonial writ of assistance similarly condemned those writs as “the worst instrument of arbitrary power,” placing “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” Thus, although those who drafted and ratified the Fourth Amendment could not have anticipated cellphone technology, they would have recognized the dangers inherent in any state claim of unlimited authority to conduct searches for evidence of criminal activity. Cell site location information provides insight into where we go and what we do. Because this information is constantly generated and can be retrieved by the government long after the activities it memorializes have taken place, unfettered government access to cell site location information raises the specter of general searches and undermines the security of “the people.

Spiritual Formation among Doctoral Psychology Students in Explicitly Christian Programs

How does training in an explicitly Christian doctoral program in clinical psychology affect students\u27 faith development? Two studies are reported that consider students\u27 locus of control, spiritual perceptions, and religious behaviors over the course of training. The first study involved 157 students from 5 doctoral programs who completed questionnaires at the beginning and end of an academic year. A number of changes were reported from the beginning to the end of the year, including increased internal locus of control, decreased awareness of God. decreased church attendance, and decreased ratings on the importance of religion. A number of differences between cohorts were also observed, with flrst-year students affirming more spiritual attributions, religious problem-solving, and religious behaviors than students in other cohorts. The second study included 140 first- and second-year students from 4 doctoral programs. Changes were reported over the academic year, including increased disappointment with God and fatigue, and decreased church attendance, personal prayer, and importance of religion. No differences between first and second-year students were observed. Various possible explanations are offered for these findings, including eroding of faith, enhanced self-efficacy, rearraging faith, and fatigue

Spaceborne Photonics Institute

This report describes in chronological detail the development of the Spaceborne Photonics Institute as a sustained research effort at Hampton University in the area of optical physics. This provided the research expertise to initiate a PhD program in Physics. Research was carried out in the areas of: (1) modelling of spaceborne solid state laser systems; (2) amplified spontaneous emission in solar pumped iodine lasers; (3) closely simulated AM0 CW solar pumped iodine laser and repeatedly short pulsed iodine laser oscillator; (4) a materials spectroscopy and growth program; and (5) laser induced fluorescence and atomic and molecular spectroscopy

Prototype effect and the persuasiveness of generalizations

An argument that makes use of a generalization activates the prototype for the category used in the generalization. We conducted two experiments that investigated how the activation of the prototype affects the persuasiveness of the argument. The results of the experiments suggest that the features of the prototype overshadow and partly overwrite the actual facts of the case. The case is, to some extent, judged as if it had the features of the prototype instead of the features it actually has. This prototype effect increases the persuasiveness of the argument in situations where the audience finds the judgment more warranted for the prototype than for the actual case (positive prototype effect), but decreases persuasiveness in situations where the audience finds the judgment less warranted for the prototype than for the actual case (negative prototype effect)

Adaptation-Based Programming in Haskell

We present an embedded DSL to support adaptation-based programming (ABP) in Haskell. ABP is an abstract model for defining adaptive values, called adaptives, which adapt in response to some associated feedback. We show how our design choices in Haskell motivate higher-level combinators and constructs and help us derive more complicated compositional adaptives. We also show an important specialization of ABP is in support of reinforcement learning constructs, which optimize adaptive values based on a programmer-specified objective function. This permits ABP users to easily define adaptive values that express uncertainty anywhere in their programs. Over repeated executions, these adaptive values adjust to more efficient ones and enable the user's programs to self optimize. The design of our DSL depends significantly on the use of type classes. We will illustrate, along with presenting our DSL, how the use of type classes can support the gradual evolution of DSLs.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

Physiological basis and image processing in functional magnetic resonance imaging: Neuronal and motor activity in brain

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is recently developing as imaging modality used for mapping hemodynamics of neuronal and motor event related tissue blood oxygen level dependence (BOLD) in terms of brain activation. Image processing is performed by segmentation and registration methods. Segmentation algorithms provide brain surface-based analysis, automated anatomical labeling of cortical fields in magnetic resonance data sets based on oxygen metabolic state. Registration algorithms provide geometric features using two or more imaging modalities to assure clinically useful neuronal and motor information of brain activation. This review article summarizes the physiological basis of fMRI signal, its origin, contrast enhancement, physical factors, anatomical labeling by segmentation, registration approaches with examples of visual and motor activity in brain. Latest developments are reviewed for clinical applications of fMRI along with other different neurophysiological and imaging modalities

Analysis of multichannel internet communication.

A novel method employing machine-based learning to identify messages related to other messages is described and evaluated. This technique may enable an analyst to identify and correlate a small number of related messages from a large sample of individual messages. The classic machine learning techniques of decision trees and naive Bayes classification are seeded with few (or no) messages of interest and 'learn' to identify other related messages. The performance of this approach and these specific learning techniques are evaluated and generalized