New tools for determining the light travel time in static, spherically symmetric spacetimes beyond the order G2G^2

This paper is mainly devoted to the determination of the travel time of a photon as a function of the positions of the emitter and the receiver in a large class of static, spherically symmetric spacetimes. Such a function - often called time transfer function - is of crucial interest for testing metric theories of gravity in the solar system. Until very recently, this function was known only up to the second order in the Newtonian gravitational constant $G$ for a 3-parameter family of static, spherically symmetric metrics generalizing the Schwarzschild metric. We present here two procedures enabling to determine - at least in principle - the time transfer function at any order of approximation when the components of the metric are expressible in power series of the Schwarzschild radius of the central body divided by the radial coordinate. These procedures exclusively work for light rays which may be described as perturbations in power series in $G$ of a Minkowskian null geodesic passing through the positions of the emitter and the receiver. It is shown that the two methodologies lead to the same expression for the time transfer function up to the third order in $G$. The second procedure presents the advantage of exclusively needing elementary integrations which may be performed with any symbolic computer program whatever the order of approximation. The vector functions characterizing the direction of light propagation at the points of emission and reception are derived up to the third order in $G$. The relevance of the third order terms in the time transfer function is briefly discussed for some solar system experiments.Comment: 37 pages; published in "Frontiers in Relativistic Celestial Mechanics", vol. 2, ed. by S. M. Kopeikin, Series "De Gruyter Studies in Mathematical Physics 22", 2014. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1304.368

The Classified Information Procedures Act in the Age of Terrorism: Remodeling CIPA in an Offense-Specific Manner

The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) sets the balancing point between the government’s interest in preventing disclosure of classified information with a criminal defendant’s right to exculpatory material. Although CIPA was originally drafted with espionage cases in mind, the statute has become more commonly associated with terrorism prosecutions. This contextual shift has disrupted CIPA’s interest-balancing formulation by altering the governmental interests at stake. CIPA’s discovery burdens on the defendant are ordinarily constitutionally justified by the strong countervailing state interest in preserving vital national-security information. This concern is less salient with terrorism defendants, who are unlikely to possess state secrets. Accordingly, those defendants may require further reciprocity in discovery procedures to keep the statute within constitutional parameters. This Note examines the ill effects of CIPA’s contextual shift and proposes a set of amendments to alleviate those concerns. Chiefly, this Note suggests an offense-specific CIPA, whereby the procedural mechanisms of the statute are tailored to the offense charged. The three core recommendations of this Note are (1) inclusion of defense counsel in the discovery process and clearer standards to govern discoverability; (2) a limited and qualified declassification requirement in select Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases; and (3) bifurcation of admissibility hearings

The Impact of σ(e+e−→hadrons)\sigma(e^+e^-\to {hadrons}) Measurements at Intermediate Energies on the Parameters of the Standard Model

We discuss the impact of precision measurements of $\sigma(e^+e^-\to {hadrons})$ in the center-of-mass range between 3 and 12 GeV, including improvements in the electronic widths of the narrow charmonium and bottonium resonances, on the determination of parameters of the Standard Model. In particular we discuss the impact of potential improvements on the extraction of the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$, on the evaluation of the hadronic contributions to the electromagnetic coupling $\alpha(M_Z)$, and the determination of the charm and bottom quark masses.Comment: 8 page

Protecting Plaintiffs\u27 Sexual Pasts: Coping with Preconceptions Through Discretion

Part I of this Article traces the development of the civil application of Rule 412, the so-called “Rape Shield Rule”. Part II analyzes the inconsistencies within the cases decided under the new civil rule and links those inconsistencies to the language of the rule. It identifies the trends within the cases about what constitutes probative value for purposes of the rule and how courts assess prejudice. The Article concludes that rules of evidence designed to remedy bias of fact finders should not be cast as discretionary. Many of the problems that arise in the interpretation of Rule 412 could be solved, if the civil application of Rule 412 were as specific and nondiscretionary as the criminal rule. Therefore, in Part III, the Article proposes a rule designed to offer such specificity

On-the-fly Table Generation

Many information needs revolve around entities, which would be better answered by summarizing results in a tabular format, rather than presenting them as a ranked list. Unlike previous work, which is limited to retrieving existing tables, we aim to answer queries by automatically compiling a table in response to a query. We introduce and address the task of on-the-fly table generation: given a query, generate a relational table that contains relevant entities (as rows) along with their key properties (as columns). This problem is decomposed into three specific subtasks: (i) core column entity ranking, (ii) schema determination, and (iii) value lookup. We employ a feature-based approach for entity ranking and schema determination, combining deep semantic features with task-specific signals. We further show that these two subtasks are not independent of each other and can assist each other in an iterative manner. For value lookup, we combine information from existing tables and a knowledge base. Using two sets of entity-oriented queries, we evaluate our approach both on the component level and on the end-to-end table generation task.Comment: The 41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieva