Cunningham v. California

In Cunningham v. California, the United States Supreme Court voted 6-3 to invalidate California\u27s determinate sentencing law ( DSL ) as violative of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court held that, notwithstanding the California Supreme Court\u27s determination to the contrary, the DSL conflicted with prior Supreme Court precedent by placing sentence-elevating factfinding within the judge\u27s province, thereby violat[ing] a defendant\u27s right to trial by jury safeguarded by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments

Fighting Terrorism in an Electronic Age: Does the Patriot Act Unduly Compromise Our Civil Liberties?

The USA PATRIOT Act is tremendously controversial, both lauded by law enforcement and decried by civil liberties groups. This iBrief considers two of the Act\u27s communications monitoring provisions, concluding that each compromises civil liberties to a greater degree than is necessary to combat terrorism. Accordingly, Congress should revise the USA PATRIOT Act, bringing it into line with the Constitution

Persistent Contextual Values as Inter-Process Layers

Mobile applications today often fail to be context aware when they also need to be customizable and efficient at run-time. Context-oriented programming allows programmers to develop applications that are more context aware. Its central construct, the so-called layer, however, is not customizable. We propose to use novel persistent contextual values for mobile development. Persistent contextual values automatically adapt their value to the context. Furthermore they provide access without overhead. Key-value configuration files contain the specification of contextual values and the persisted contextual values themselves. By modifying the configuration files, the contextual values can easily be customized for every context. From the specification, we generate code to simplify development. Our implementation, called Elektra, permits development in several languages including C++ and Java. In a benchmark we compare layer activations between threads and between applications. In a case study involving a web-server on a mobile embedded device the performance overhead is minimal, even with many context switches.Comment: 8 pages Mobile! 16, October 31, 2016, Amsterdam, Netherland

A longitudinal study of migration propensities for mixed-ethnic unions in England and Wales

This research was funded by the ESRC under the Understanding Population Trends and Processes (UPTAP) programme (Award Ref: RES-163-25-0045).Most studies investigating residential segregation of ethnic minorities ignore the fact that the majority of adults live in couples. In recent years there has been a growth in the number of mixed-ethnic unions that involve a minority member and a white member. To our knowledge, hardly any research has been undertaken to explicitly examine whether the ethnic mix within households has an impact on the residential mobility of households in terms of the ethnic mix of destination neighbourhoods. Our study addresses this research gap and examines the tendencies of mobility among mixed-ethnic unions in comparison with their co-ethnic peers. We used data from the Longitudinal Study for England and Wales. Our statistical analysis supports the spatial assimilation theory; ethnic minorities move towards less deprived areas and to a lesser extent also towards less ethnically concentrated areas. However, the types of destination neighbourhood of minority people living in mixed-ethnic unions varied greatly with the ethnicity of the ethnic minority partner.PostprintPeer reviewe

Balanced Allocations: A Simple Proof for the Heavily Loaded Case

We provide a relatively simple proof that the expected gap between the maximum load and the average load in the two choice process is bounded by $(1+o(1))\log \log n$, irrespective of the number of balls thrown. The theorem was first proven by Berenbrink et al. Their proof uses heavy machinery from Markov-Chain theory and some of the calculations are done using computers. In this manuscript we provide a significantly simpler proof that is not aided by computers and is self contained. The simplification comes at a cost of weaker bounds on the low order terms and a weaker tail bound for the probability of deviating from the expectation

Genetic structure of the threatened West-Pannonian population of Great Bustard (Otis tarda).

The genetic diversity, population structure and gene flow of the Great Bustards (Otis tarda) living in Austria-Slovakia-West Hungary (West-Pannonian region), one of the few populations of this globally threatened species that survives across the Palaearctic, has been assessed for the first time in this study. Fourteen recently developed microsatellite loci identified one single population in the study area, with high values of genetic diversity and gene flow between two different genetic subunits. One of these subunits (Heideboden) was recognized as a priority for conservation, as it could be crucial to maintain connectivity with the central Hungarian population and thus contribute to keeping contemporary genetic diversity. Current conservation efforts have been successful in saving this threatened population from extinction two decades ago, and should continue to guarantee its future survival

Loading a vapor cell magneto-optic trap using light-induced atom desorption

Low intensity white light was used to increase the loading rate of $^{87}$Rb atoms into a vapor cell magneto-optic trap by inducing non-thermal desorption of Rb atoms from the stainless steel walls of the vapor cell. An increased Rb partial pressure reached a new equilibrium value in less than 10 seconds after switching on the broadband light source. After the source was turned off, the partial pressure returned to its previous value in $1/e$ times as short as 10 seconds.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

A simple and versatile analytical approach for planar metamaterials

We present an analytical model which permits the calculation of effective material parameters for planar metamaterials consisting of arbitrary unit cells (metaatoms) formed by a set of straight wire sections of potentially different shape. The model takes advantage of resonant electric dipole oscillations in the wires and their mutual coupling. The pertinent form of the metaatom determines the actual coupling features. This procedure represents a kind of building block model for quite different metaatoms. Based on the parameters describing the individual dipole oscillations and their mutual coupling the entire effective metamaterial tensor can be determined. By knowing these parameters for a certain metaatom it can be systematically modified to create the desired features. Performing such modifications effective material properties as well as the far field intensities remain predictable. As an example the model is applied to reveal the occurrence of optical activity if the split ring resonator metaatom is modified to L- or S-shaped metaatoms.Comment: 5 figures, 1 tabl

Motional sidebands and direct measurement of the cooling rate in the resonance fluorescence of a single trapped ion

Resonance fluorescence of a single trapped ion is spectrally analyzed using a heterodyne technique. Motional sidebands due to the oscillation of the ion in the harmonic trap potential are observed in the fluorescence spectrum. From the width of the sidebands the cooling rate is obtained and found to be in agreement with the theoretical prediction.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Final version after minor changes, 1 figure replaced; to be published in PRL, July 10, 200

Multipole nonlinearity of metamaterials

We report on the linear and nonlinear optical response of metamaterials evoked by first and second order multipoles. The analytical ground on which our approach bases permits for new insights into the functionality of metamaterials. For the sake of clarity we focus here on a key geometry, namely the split-ring resonator, although the introduced formalism can be applied to arbitrary structures. We derive the equations that describe linear and nonlinear light propagation where special emphasis is put on second harmonic generation. This contribution basically aims at stretching versatile and existing concepts to describe light propagation in nonlinear media towards the realm of metamaterials.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure