I remember Richelieu: Is anything secure anymore?

Petraeus-gate, hacked nude celebrity photos in the cloud and the recent use of a search and seizure warrant in the United States of America to seek production of customer email contents on an extraterritorial server raises important issues for the supposably safe storage of data on the World Wide Web. Not only may there be nowhere to hide in cyberspace but nothing in cyberspace may be private. This paper explores the legal and technical issues raised by the these matters with emphasis on the courts decision “In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation” and the subsequent upholding of that decision in it concludes with suggestions for ‘safe’ storage of data

Tariff scares: Trade policy uncertainty and foreign market entry by Chinese firms

We estimate how a rise in uncertainty about future tariff rates impacts firm decisions to enter into and exit from export markets. Using Chinese customs transactions between 2000-2009, we exploit time variation in product-level trade policy and find that Chinese firms are less likely to enter new foreign markets and more likely to exit from established foreign markets when their products are subject to increased trade policy uncertainty. Our analysis is based on the phenomenon of ``tariff echoing" -- after a tariff hike in one country, another country is likely to raise its tariff on the same product. Overall, we find that if there had been no trade policy uncertainty created by the use of contingent tariffs, Chinese entry into foreign markets would have been roughly 2 percent higher per year. We use our model to counterfactually estimate how much entry by Chinese firms over 2001-2009 was due to future trade policy certainty provided by membership in the WTO

Theoretical study of the OH-initiated atmospheric oxidation mechanism of perfluoro methyl vinyl ether, CF_3OCF=CF_2

Product formation in the reaction of perfluorinated methyl vinyl ether, CF_3OCF=CF_2, with OH radicals is studied theoretically using the M06-2X/aug-cc-pVTZ and CCSD(T) levels of theory. The stable end-products in an oxidative atmosphere are predicted to be perfluorinated methyl formate, CF_3OCFO, and fluorinated glycolaldehyde, CFOCF_2OH, both with CF_2O as coproduct. The prediction of glycolaldehyde as a product contrasts with experimental data, which found perfluoro glyoxal, CFOCFO, instead. The most likely explanation for this apparent disagreement is conversion of CFOCF_2OH to CFOCFO, e.g. by multiple catalytic agents present in the reaction mixture, wall reactions, and/or photolysis. The formation routes for the glyoxal product proposed in earlier work appear unlikely, and are not supported by theoretical or related experimental work

Research and investigation of geology, mineral, and water resources of Maryland

The authors have identified the following significant results. Field work in Baltimore County revealed that the signature returns of serpentinitic and nonserpentinitic rocks correlates with the vegetation cover and land use pattern. In Maryland Piedmont, bedrock lithology and structure are enhanced only to the extent that land use is geologically dictated. Two prominent sets of linear features are detected on ERTS-1 imagery at N 45 deg E and N 20 deg E. Beaches of Chesapeake Bay are classified as broad and narrow beaches based on the width of the backshore zone. It is shown by comparing historical shorelines of Ocean City, from the inlet to the Maryland-Delaware line that reversal zones of erosion and accretion occur at different locations for different periods. High reflectance levels (high marsh-high topographic areas) for the lower Eastern Shore are found to be distributed as two distinct trending linear ridge systems. Observations of MSS band 5 dated 9 April 1974 exhibited an unique sedimentation pattern for Chesapeake Bay. Following a 1.5 inch rainfall, heavy concentration of suspended sediments is observed on the imagery, particularly in the area of the turbidity maximum

Detection of human influence on a new, validated 1500-Year temperature reconstruction

Climate records over the last millennium place the twentieth-century warming in a longer historical context. Reconstructions of millennial temperatures show a wide range of variability, raising questions about the reliability of currently available reconstruction techniques and the uniqueness of late-twentieth-century warming. A calibration method is suggested that avoids the loss of low-frequency variance. A new reconstruction using this method shows substantial variability over the last 1500 yr. This record is consistent with independent temperature change estimates from borehole geothermal records, compared over the same spatial and temporal domain. The record is also broadly consistent with other recent reconstructions that attempt to fully recover low-frequency climate variability in their central estimate. High variability in reconstructions does not hamper the detection of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, since a substantial fraction of the variance in these reconstructions from the beginning of the analysis in the late thirteenth century to the end of the records can be attributed to external forcing. Results from a detection and attribution analysis show that greenhouse warming is detectable in all analyzed high-variance reconstructions (with the possible exception of one ending in 1925), and that about a third of the warming in the first half of the twentieth century can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The estimated magnitude of the anthropogenic signal is consistent with most of the warming in the second half of the twentieth century being anthropogenic

Parámetros estructurales de las viviendas de adobe (Cusco, Perú) para la evaluación del desempeño sísmico

En este trabajo se evalúan las propiedades estructurales de las construcciones de adobe en Cusco, Perú, para ser usadas como parámetros en la evaluación de la capacidad y del riesgo sísmico. Las propiedades geométricas (tipología) de las viviendas de adobe han sido determinadas a través de encuestas de campo en un trabajo anterior. Con la información recopilada se creó una base de datos resaltando la media, desviación estándar y funciones de distribución de probabilidad (FDP) de cada uno de los parámetros como la altura de la vivienda, ancho de muros, dimensiones de los adobes, etc. La ciudad del Cusco ha sido seleccionada para este estudio por ser una de las ciudades con mayor cantidad de viviendas de tierra en el Perú, país con intensa actividad sísmica. La información sobre el comportamiento sísmico de las construcciones de adobe ha sido obtenida a través de ensayos experimentales realizados en la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). Los resultados de estos ensayos han permitido desarrollar expresiones para el cálculo de la deriva (capacidad de deformación) y del período de vibración de las viviendas de adobe. En base a estas ecuaciones, la capacidad sísmica de las viviendas de tierra del Cusco ha sido calculada y usada en una reciente propuesta probabilística de la estimación de pérdidas por terremotos basada en desplazamientos (acrónimo DBELA). Esta metodología plantea la generación de una población aleatoria de viviendas siguiendo la información estadística de las propiedades geométricas. Luego, la capacidad estructural de cada vivienda aleatoria es calculada (capacidad de desplazamiento vs. período de vibración) y comparada con la demanda sísmica, obteniéndose de esta forma probabilidades de daños (curvas de vulnerabilidad).This paper looks at the structural properties of adobe buildings in Cusco, Peru, for use in seismic performance and seismic risk assessment. The geometrical properties (typology) of adobe dwellings from Cusco have been established according to a building-by-building survey. Cusco has been chosen for this study as, according to the national census, around 80% of the building stock in this town is constructed with adobe. Furthermore, this region of the country is relatively seismically active and thus seismic risk assessment studies are warranted. Additional structural information of adobe buildings has been obtained from experimental tests carried out at the Catholic University of Peru. These tests have allowed the inter-storey drift capacity and the period of vibration of adobe buildings to be derived. A database containing the principal geometrical properties of 30 dwellings has been created which has allowed the mean, standard deviation and probability density functions (PDF) to be defined for each parameter such as storey height, wall length, etc. These properties are of use in a recently proposed probabilistic displacement-based earthquake loss assessment method (DBELA) which generates random populations of buildings based on this input data. The structural capacity of each random building is then predicted based on structural mechanics principles, and by comparing this capacity with the demand from earthquakes, estimates of the probability of damage can be made