Protecting America\u27s Cultural and Historical Patrimony

This Article suggests the procedures which the authors believe would effectively regulate the legal export of art works and be consistent with other foreign trade policies, while not unduly restricting free trade nor discouraging cultural exchange

Siting Issues for Solar Thermal Power Plants with Small Community Applications

Technologies for solar thermal plants are being developed to provide energy alternatives for the future. Implementation of these plants requires consideration of siting issues as well as power system technology. While many conventional siting considerations are applicable, there is also a set of unique siting issues for solar thermal plants. Early experimental plants will have special siting considerations. The siting issues associated with small, dispersed solar thermal power plants in the 1 to 10 MWe power range for utility/small community applications are considered. Some specific requirements refer to the first 1 MWe engineering experiment for the Small Power Systems Applications (SPSA) Project. The siting issues themselves are discussed in three categories: (1) system resource requirements, (2) environmental effects on the system, and (3) potential impact of the plant on the environment. Within these categories, specific issues are discussed in a qualitative manner. Examples of limiting factors for some issues are taken from studies of other solar systems

Sludge and Ordeals

Is there an argument for behaviorally informed deregulation? In 2015, the United States government imposed 9.78 billion hours of paperwork burdens on the American people. Many of these hours are best categorized as “sludge,” understood as friction, reducing access to important licenses, programs, and benefits. Because of the sheer costs of sludge, rational people are effectively denied life-changing goods and services. The problem is compounded by the existence of behavioral biases, including inertia, present bias, and unrealistic optimism. A serious deregulatory effort should be undertaken to reduce sludge through automatic enrollment, greatly simplified forms, and reminders. At the same time, sludge can promote legitimate goals. First, it can protect program integrity, which means that policymakers might have to make difficult tradeoffs between (1) granting benefits to people who are not entitled to them and (2) denying benefits to people who are entitled to them. Second, it can overcome impulsivity, recklessness, and self-control problems. Third, it can prevent intrusions on privacy. Fourth, it can serve as a rationing device, ensuring that benefits go to people who most need them. Fifth, it can help public officials to acquire valuable information, which they can use for important purposes. In most cases, however, these defenses of sludge turn out to be far more attractive in principle than in practice. For sludge, a form of cost-benefit analysis is essential, and it will often demonstrate the need for a neglected form of deregulation: sludge reduction. For both public and private institutions, “Sludge Audits” should become routine, and they should provide a foundation for behaviorally informed deregulation. Various suggestions are offered for new action by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which oversees the Paperwork Reduction Act; for courts; and for Congress

Portunes: analyzing multi-domain insider threats

The insider threat is an important problem in securing information systems. Skilful insiders use attack vectors that yield the greatest chance of success, and thus do not limit themselves to a restricted set of attacks. They may use access rights to the facility where the system of interest resides, as well as existing relationships with employees. To secure a system, security professionals should therefore consider attacks that include non-digital aspects such as key sharing or exploiting trust relationships among employees. In this paper, we present Portunes, a framework for security design and audit, which incorporates three security domains: (1) the security of the computer system itself (the digital domain), (2) the security of the location where the system is deployed (the physical domain) and (3) the security awareness of the employees that use the system (the social domain). The framework consists of a model, a formal language and a logic. It allows security professionals to formally model elements from the three domains in a single framework, and to analyze possible attack scenarios. The logic enables formal specification of the attack scenarios in terms of state and transition properties

Active microwave users working group program planning

A detailed programmatic and technical development plan for active microwave technology was examined in each of four user activities: (1) vegetation; (2) water resources and geologic applications, and (4) oceanographic applications. Major application areas were identified, and the impact of each application area in terms of social and economic gains were evaluated. The present state of knowledge of the applicability of active microwave remote sensing to each application area was summarized and its role relative to other remote sensing devices was examined. The analysis and data acquisition techniques needed to resolve the effects of interference factors were reviewed to establish an operational capability in each application area. Flow charts of accomplished and required activities in each application area that lead to operational capability were structured

Being Omnipresent To Be Almighty: The Importance of The Global Web Evidence for Organizational Expert Finding

Modern expert nding algorithms are developed under the assumption that all possible expertise evidence for a person is concentrated in a company that currently employs the person. The evidence that can be acquired outside of an enterprise is traditionally unnoticed. At the same time, the Web is full of personal information which is sufficiently detailed to judge about a person's skills and knowledge. In this work, we review various sources of expertise evidence out-side of an organization and experiment with rankings built on the data acquired from six dierent sources, accessible through APIs of two major web search engines. We show that these rankings and their combinations are often more realistic and of higher quality than rankings built on organizational data only

Taxation of Virtual Assets

The development of vast social networks through Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games has created in-game communities in which virtual assets have real-world values. The question has thus arisen whether such virtual assets are legal subjects of taxation. This iBrief will detail and discuss the various exclusions to taxable income, and analyze their application to the possibility of creating potential tax liability based on in-kind exchanges of virtual assets

Effects of selctive lesions of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis on working memory in rats.

The nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) of the rat brain is analogous to the nucleus basalis of Meynert found in humans. Alzheimer's disease patients have working memory impairments, which may be attributable to damage to the basal nucleus of Meynert. Excitotoxins such as quisqualic and ibotenic acid have been previously used to make lesions of the NBM in research animals. NBM lesions made with ibotenic or quisqualic acid are known to impair working memory. However, in addition to damaging the cholinergic neurons of the NBM, the lesions made by these excitotoxins also destroy cells of other nearby structures, and it is unclear whether the impairments found are due to damage to the NBM or to surrounding non-cholinergic structures. With the recent advent ofthe highly selective immunotoxin 192 IgG-saporin, it may be possible to determine if lesions involving only the cortically projecting NBM cholinergic neurons impair working memory. The current experiment tests the hypothesis that selective lesions of cholinergic neurons of the NBM impair working memory. To test this hypothesis, a delayed non-matching-to-position-task was used as a test for working memory. Results of this experiment provide novel evidence of the involvement of the cholinergic neurons of the NBM in working memory and will contribute to our understanding of the cognitive impairments seen in Alzheimer's disease.Michelle Marie NobleButt, Allen.EDuong,TaihungHermann,DouglasSheets, VirgilMaster of ArtsDepartment of PsychologyCunningham Memorial library, Terre Haute,Indiana State UniversityILL-ETD-039MastersTitle from document title page. Document formatted into pages: contains 46 p.: ill. Includes abstract and appendix

"Distortion in Land Price Information---Mechanism in Sales Comparables and Appraisal Value Relation---"

This paper investigates the nature and magnitude of distortion in land price information publicly available in Japan, especially in the Published Land Price of the Japanese Government. After examining characteristics of various land price information in Japan, we construct hedonic price indexes based on both actual transaction prices and Published Land Prices, and compare them to find possible distortion in the governmental price information. We find a large and systematic discrepancy between actual transaction prices and Published Land Prices, suggesting serious problems in the governmental information system. We also consider possibility of structural change in the Japanese real estate markets, and examine its effect on price indexes.