Evidentiary Privileges and the Exclusion of Derivative Evidence: Commentary and Analysis

Invocation of an evidentiary privilege traditionally meant that the confidential communications of a holder were protected from disclosure during judicial, administrative, or legislative proceedings. This model of evidentiary privilege law does not take into account information gathered from unauthorized preproceeding disclosures of otherwise privileged communications. A minority of courts seem willing to exclude this derivative evidence with little or no explanation. These courts may unwittingly base their decision on privacy concepts recently proposed as one of the modern justifications for the existence of evidentiary privilege in law. Courts confronted with this issue analyze it in confusingly, and often contrastingly, different manners

Empirical determination of convection parameters in white dwarfs. I. Whole earth telescope obsevations of EC14012-1446

We report on an analysis of 308.3 hr of high-speed photometry targeting the pulsating DA white dwarf EC14012-1446. The datawere acquiredwith theWhole Earth Telescope during the 2008 international observing run XCOV26. The Fourier transform of the light curve contains 19 independent frequencies and numerous combination frequencies. The dominant peaks are 1633.907, 1887.404, and 2504.897μHz. Our analysis of the combination amplitudes reveals that the parent frequencies are consistent with modes of spherical degree l=1. The combination amplitudes also provide m identifications for the largest amplitude parent frequencies. Our seismology analysis, which includes 2004–2007 archival data, confirms these identifications, provides constraints on additional frequencies, and finds an average period spacing of 41 s. Building on this foundation, we present nonlinear fits to high signal-to-noise light curves from the SOAR 4.1 m, McDonald 2.1 m, and KPNO 2 m telescopes. The fits indicate a time-averaged convective response timescale of τ0 = 99.4 ± 17 s, a temperature exponent N = 85±6.2, and an inclination angle of θi = 32. ◦ 9 ± 3° 2. We present our current empirical map of the convective response timescale across the DA instability strip

2006 Whole Earth Telescope observations of GD358 : a new look at the prototype DBV

We report on the analysis of 436.1 hr of nearly continuous high-speed photometry on the pulsating DB white dwarf GD358 acquired with the Whole Earth Telescope (WET) during the 2006 international observing run, designated XCOV25. The Fourier transform (FT) of the light curve contains power between 1000 and 4000 μHz, with the dominant peak at 1234 μHz. We find 27 independent frequencies distributed in 10 modes, as well as numerous combination frequencies. Our discussion focuses on a new asteroseismological analysis of GD358, incorporating the 2006 data set and drawing on 24 years of archival observations. Our results reveal that, while the general frequency locations of the identified modes are consistent throughout the years, the multiplet structure is complex and cannot be interpreted simply as l =l modes in the limit of slow rotation. The high-k multiplets exhibit significant variability in structure, amplitude and frequency. Any identification of the m components for the high-k multiplets is highly suspect. The k = 9 and 8 modes typically do show triplet structure more consistent with theoretical expectations. The frequencies and amplitudes exhibit some variability, but much less than the high-k modes. Analysis of the k = 9 and 8 multiplet splittings from 1990 to 2008 reveal a long-term change in multiplet splittings coinciding with the 1996 sforzando event, where GD358 dramatically altered its pulsation characteristics on a timescale of hours. We explore potential implications, including the possible connections between convection and/or magnetic fields and pulsations.We suggest future investigations, including theoretical investigations of the relationship between magnetic fields, pulsation, growth rates, and convection