A Technological Dream Turned Legal Nightmare

The U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) provides precise positioning information to anyone in the world, regardless of nationality, as long as they have access to an inexpensive receiver. However, in managing and providing the GPS for no charge, the United States may have opened itself to worldwide tort exposure. This Note analyzes U.S. liability for negligently operating the GPS under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) in four categories. First, this Note examines the transformation of the GPS from its domestic military beginnings to its current role as the foremost radionavigation technique in history and as a vital tool to civilians across the world. Relying on historical data and the GPS\u27s rapid expansion, this Note establishes how negligent GPS operation by the United States could harm a non-American outside of the United States. Second, this Note addresses the applicability of the FTCA\u27s foreign country exception to a lawsuit arising from negligent GPS operation. This second section argues that the foreign country exception should probably not prevent the lawsuit from progressing. Third, this Note surveys and analyzes U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals caselaw to determine the applicability of the FTCA\u27s discretionary function exception to this lawsuit. It then reveals the crucial issues relevant to a GPS lawsuit under the FTCA\u27s discretionary function exception. This Note concludes by stating that Congress should exempt the GPS from FTCA liability because of the devastating effect unparalleled global liability would have on the planet\u27s preeminent navigational device

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved