The First Amendment and Homosexual Expression: The Need for an Expanded Interpretation

Homosexuality is today essentially a form of political, social, and moral dissent on par with the best American traditions of dissent and even subversive advocacy.... Those that support criminalization find today in homosexuality what they found before in the family planning of Sanger, the atheism of Darwin, the socialism of Debs, or the Marxist advocacy of the American Communist Party. Ostensibly, the First Amendment guarantees all people freedom of expression of every belief. The free exchange of ideas forms the basis of a democratic government. Only citizens with unhindered access to the famed marketplace of ideas can participate meaningfully in a dialogue and achieve political and social solutions that the community will respect. For this reason, courts balk at even the suggestion of limiting expression that might function as political or social advocacy. Despite the seemingly boundless tolerance our judiciary purports to extend to all ideas, however, courts deny much expression the full protection of the First Amendment because of the expression\u27s form and content. Specifically, courts exclude from protection speech deemed not to contribute significantly to the civil discourse of ideas that the First Amendment seeks to maintain. For example, the Supreme Court has excluded from protection fighting words, obscenity, sexual harassment, and the advocacy of illegal acts. Thus, the Supreme Court has determined that certain classes of speech, although arguably expressive, do not advocate concepts protected by the First Amendment

Systematic Renormalization in Hamiltonian Light-Front Field Theory: The Massive Generalization

Hamiltonian light-front field theory can be used to solve for hadron states in QCD. To this end, a method has been developed for systematic renormalization of Hamiltonian light-front field theories, with the hope of applying the method to QCD. It assumed massless particles, so its immediate application to QCD is limited to gluon states or states where quark masses can be neglected. This paper builds on the previous work by including particle masses non-perturbatively, which is necessary for a full treatment of QCD. We show that several subtle new issues are encountered when including masses non-perturbatively. The method with masses is algebraically and conceptually more difficult; however, we focus on how the methods differ. We demonstrate the method using massive phi^3 theory in 5+1 dimensions, which has important similarities to QCD.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Corrected error in Eq. (11), v3: Added extra disclaimer after Eq. (2), and some clarification at end of Sec. 3.3. Final published versio

Discontinuous Molecular Dynamics for Semi-Flexible and Rigid Bodies

A general framework for performing event-driven simulations of systems with semi-flexible or rigid bodies interacting under impulsive torques and forces is outlined. Two different approaches are presented. In the first, the dynamics and interaction rules are derived from Lagrangian mechanics in the presence of constraints. This approach is most suitable when the body is composed of relatively few point masses or is semi-flexible. In the second method, the equations of rigid bodies are used to derive explicit analytical expressions for the free evolution of arbitrary rigid molecules and to construct a simple scheme for computing interaction rules. Efficient algorithms for the search for the times of interaction events are designed in this context, and the handling of missed interaction events is discussed.Comment: 16 pages, double column revte

A technique for rapid source apportionment applied to ambient organic aerosol measurements from a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG)

We present a rapid method for apportioning the sources of atmospheric organic aerosol composition measured by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry methods. Here, we specifically apply this new analysis method to data acquired on a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG) system. Gas chromatograms are divided by retention time into evenly spaced bins, within which the mass spectra are summed. A previous chromatogram binning method was introduced for the purpose of chromatogram structure deconvolution (e.g., major compound classes) (Zhang et al., 2014). Here we extend the method development for the specific purpose of determining aerosol samples’ sources. Chromatogram bins are arranged into an input data matrix for positive matrix factorization (PMF), where the sample number is the row dimension and the mass-spectra-resolved eluting time intervals (bins) are the column dimension. Then twodimensional PMF can effectively do three-dimensional factorization on the three-dimensional TAG mass spectra data. The retention time shift of the chromatogram is corrected by applying the median values of the different peaks’ shifts. Bin width affects chemical resolution but does not affect PMF retrieval of the sources’ time variations for low-factor solutions. A bin width smaller than the maximum retention shift among all samples requires retention time shift correction. A six-factor PMF comparison among aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS), TAG binning, and conventional TAG compound integration methods shows that the TAG binning method performs similarly to the integration method. However, the new binning method incorporates the entirety of the data set and requires significantly less pre-processing of the data than conventional single compound identification and integration. In addition, while a fraction of the most oxygenated aerosol does not elute through an underivatized TAG analysis, the TAG binning method does have the ability to achieve molecular level resolution on other bulk aerosol components commonly observed by the AMS

Glueballs in a Hamiltonian Light-Front Approach to Pure-Glue QCD

We calculate a renormalized Hamiltonian for pure-glue QCD and diagonalize it. The renormalization procedure is designed to produce a Hamiltonian that will yield physical states that rapidly converge in an expansion in free-particle Fock-space sectors. To make this possible, we use light-front field theory to isolate vacuum effects, and we place a smooth cutoff on the Hamiltonian to force its free-state matrix elements to quickly decrease as the difference of the free masses of the states increases. The cutoff violates a number of physical principles of light-front pure-glue QCD, including Lorentz covariance and gauge covariance. This means that the operators in the Hamiltonian are not required to respect these physical principles. However, by requiring the Hamiltonian to produce cutoff-independent physical quantities and by requiring it to respect the unviolated physical principles of pure-glue QCD, we are able to derive recursion relations that define the Hamiltonian to all orders in perturbation theory in terms of the running coupling. We approximate all physical states as two-gluon states, and use our recursion relations to calculate to second order the part of the Hamiltonian that is required to compute the spectrum. We diagonalize the Hamiltonian using basis-function expansions for the gluons' color, spin, and momentum degrees of freedom. We examine the sensitivity of our results to the cutoff and use them to analyze the nonperturbative scale dependence of the coupling. We investigate the effect of the dynamical rotational symmetry of light-front field theory on the rotational degeneracies of the spectrum and compare the spectrum to recent lattice results. Finally, we examine our wave functions and analyze the various sources of error in our calculation.Comment: 75 pages, 17 figures, 1 tabl

Self-Consistent Theory of Halo Mergers

The rate of merging of dark-matter halos is an absolutely essential ingredient for studies of both structure and galaxy formation. Remarkably, however, our quantitative understanding of the halo merger rate is still quite limited, and current analytic descriptions based upon the extended Press-Schechter formalism are fundamentally flawed. We show that a mathematically self-consistent merger rate must be consistent with the evolution of the halo abundance in the following sense: The merger rate must, when inserted into the Smoluchowski coagulation equation, yield the correct evolution of the halo abundance. We then describe a numerical technique to find merger rates that are consistent with this evolution. We present results from a preliminary study in which we find merger rates that reproduce the evolution of the halo abundance according to Press-Schechter for power-law power spectra. We discuss the limitations of the current approach and outline the questions that must still be answered before we have a fully consistent and correct theory of halo merger rates.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Version with full resolution figures available at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~abenson/Papers/smoluchow.pd

Taking ACTION to reduce pain: ACTION study rationale, design and protocol of a randomized trial of a proactive telephone-based coaching intervention for chronic musculoskeletal pain among African Americans

Abstract Background Rates of chronic pain are rising sharply in the United States and worldwide. Presently, there is evidence of racial disparities in pain treatment and treatment outcomes in the United States but few interventions designed to address these disparities. There is growing consensus that chronic musculoskeletal pain is best addressed by a biopsychosocial approach that acknowledges the role of psychological and environmental factors, some of which differ by race. Methods/Design The primary aim of this randomized controlled trial is to test the effectiveness of a non-pharmacological, self-regulatory intervention, administered proactively by telephone, at improving pain outcomes and increasing walking among African American patients with hip, back and knee pain. Participants assigned to the intervention will receive a telephone counselor delivered pedometer-mediated walking intervention that incorporates action planning and motivational interviewing. The intervention will consist of 6 telephone counseling sessions over an 8–10 week period. Participants randomly assigned to Usual Care will receive an informational brochure and a pedometer. The primary outcome is chronic pain-related physical functioning, assessed at 6 months, by the revised Roland and Morris Disability Questionnaire, a measure recommended by the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT). We will also examine whether the intervention improves other IMMPACT-recommended domains (pain intensity, emotional functioning, and ratings of overall improvement). Secondary objectives include examining whether the intervention reduces health care service utilization and use of opioid analgesics and whether key contributors to racial/ethnic disparities targeted by the intervention mediate improvement in chronic pain outcomes Measures will be assessed by mail and phone surveys at baseline, three months, and six months. Data analysis of primary aims will follow intent-to-treat methodology. Discussion We will tailor our intervention to address key contributors to racial pain disparities and examine the effects of the intervention on important pain treatment outcomes for African Americans with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01983228. Registered 6 November 2013

Taking ACTION to reduce pain: ACTION study rationale, design and protocol of a randomized trial of a proactive telephone-based coaching intervention for chronic musculoskeletal pain among African Americans

Abstract Background Rates of chronic pain are rising sharply in the United States and worldwide. Presently, there is evidence of racial disparities in pain treatment and treatment outcomes in the United States but few interventions designed to address these disparities. There is growing consensus that chronic musculoskeletal pain is best addressed by a biopsychosocial approach that acknowledges the role of psychological and environmental factors, some of which differ by race. Methods/Design The primary aim of this randomized controlled trial is to test the effectiveness of a non-pharmacological, self-regulatory intervention, administered proactively by telephone, at improving pain outcomes and increasing walking among African American patients with hip, back and knee pain. Participants assigned to the intervention will receive a telephone counselor delivered pedometer-mediated walking intervention that incorporates action planning and motivational interviewing. The intervention will consist of 6 telephone counseling sessions over an 8–10 week period. Participants randomly assigned to Usual Care will receive an informational brochure and a pedometer. The primary outcome is chronic pain-related physical functioning, assessed at 6 months, by the revised Roland and Morris Disability Questionnaire, a measure recommended by the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT). We will also examine whether the intervention improves other IMMPACT-recommended domains (pain intensity, emotional functioning, and ratings of overall improvement). Secondary objectives include examining whether the intervention reduces health care service utilization and use of opioid analgesics and whether key contributors to racial/ethnic disparities targeted by the intervention mediate improvement in chronic pain outcomes Measures will be assessed by mail and phone surveys at baseline, three months, and six months. Data analysis of primary aims will follow intent-to-treat methodology. Discussion We will tailor our intervention to address key contributors to racial pain disparities and examine the effects of the intervention on important pain treatment outcomes for African Americans with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01983228. Registered 6 November 2013