No Child Left Behind: The Adam Walsh Act and Pennsylvania Juvenile Sex Offenders

At a White House ceremony on July 27, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. At the ceremony, the President hailed the Walsh Act as being comprehensive and an important part of the “solemn responsibility” of lawmakers to protect children. Indeed, the Walsh Act is the latest in a series of federal legislation, dating back to the 1980s, which aims to protect the public, and children in particular, from becoming victims of sexual crimes. The public’s fear of the rapist and the child molester led to a great increase in the criminal penalties for sexual crimes throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the imposition of federal laws focusing on these crimes. And at a time when television shows such as “To Catch a Predator” receive millions of viewers, it is clear that the nation’s fear of those who would commit sexual crimes against children, and the desire that they be brought to justice, remains at a fever pitch. By passing the Walsh Act, Congress and the President responded to a national outcry that children were not safe from sex offenders

Impure Thoughts on Inelastic Dark Matter

The inelastic dark matter scenario was proposed to reconcile the DAMA annual modulation with null results from other experiments. In this scenario, WIMPs scatter into an excited state, split from the ground state by an energy delta comparable to the available kinetic energy of a Galactic WIMP. We note that for large splittings delta, the dominant scattering at DAMA can occur off of thallium nuclei, with A~205, which are present as a dopant at the 10^-3 level in NaI(Tl) crystals. For a WIMP mass m~100GeV and delta~200keV, we find a region in delta-m-parameter space which is consistent with all experiments. These parameters in particular can be probed in experiments with thallium in their targets, such as KIMS, but are inaccessible to lighter target experiments. Depending on the tail of the WIMP velocity distribution, a highly modulated signal may or may not appear at CRESST-II.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Numerical simulations of rotating sunspots

A numerical model of idealized, axisymmetric, rotating sunspots is presented. The model contains a compressible plasma described by the nonlinear MHD equations, with density and temperature gradients simulating the upper layer of the sun’s convection zone. The solution forms a central flux tube in the cylindrical numerical domain, with convection cells pushing the magnetic field to the axis. When the numerical domain is rotated with a constant angular velocity, the umbra rotates as a rigid body while the surrounding convection cells show a swirling, vortical flow. As a result, the azimuthal velocity and magnetic field have their maximum values close to the flux tube, inside the innermost convection cell

Candidate Technologies for the Integrated Health Management Program

The purpose of this report is to assess Vehicle Health Management (VHM) technologies for implementation as a demonstration. Extensive studies have been performed to determine technologies which could be implemented on the Atlas and Centaur vehicles as part of a bridging program. This paper discusses areas today where VHM can be implemented for benefits in reliability, performance, and cost reduction. VHM Options are identified and one demonstration is recommended for execution

Enron and the Special Purpose Entity. Use or Abuse? The Real Problem - The Real Focus

In December of 2001, Enron Corporation filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; one of the largest corporate bankruptcy filings at that time. When the investigations commenced and the tangled Enron web was unraveled, it was discovered that Enron had perpetrated a very sophisticated form of accounting fraud through its repeated use of what are referred to as Special Purpose Entities (“SPEs”). In their most basic forms, SPEs are business entities formed for the purpose of conducting a well specified activity such as construction of a gas pipeline, or collection of a specific group of accounts receivable. However, because of their complex nature, SPEs can be used to manipulate a corporation’s financial results, which was the primary use for which Enron employed the SPE structure. As a result, the investment and financial community has cast a dark cloud over the special purpose entity, depicting the SPE as an inherently evil structure whose only purpose is to defraud, obfuscate and manipulate a company’s financial results. The purpose of this piece is to challenge this assumption and conclusion as incorrect. This article shows how the SPE abuse Enron perpetrated was neither an indictment of the SPE or the accounting regime under which Enron was operating, but of individuals who intentionally ran afoul of the accounting and disclosure rules that were in existence at the time. The article shows how the problem with Enron did not lie with any SPE accounting “loopholes”, but with Enron intentionally violating both the letter and the spirit of generally accepted accounting principles as they related to SPEs. The article then looks at the accounting reforms enacted in response to Enron’s practices and attempts to show how those reforms miss the mark, as they are incorrectly focused on SPE use rather than SPE abuse. Finally, the article proposes some alternative approaches that are aimed at focusing more narrowly on the actual problem of SPE abuse. It has been a challenging endeavor, as little has been written on this specific area due to its complexity. But its complexity is what has piqued my curiosity and interest

Quantitative multielement analysis using high energy particle bombardment

Charged particles ranging in energy from 0.8 to 4.0 MeV are used to induce resonant nuclear reactions, Coulomb excitation (gamma X-rays), and X-ray emission in both thick and thin targets. Quantitative analysis is possible for elements from Li to Pb in complex environmental samples, although the matrix can severely reduce the sensitivity. It is necessary to use a comparator technique for the gamma-rays, while for X-rays an internal standard can be used. A USGS standard rock is analyzed for a total of 28 elements. Water samples can be analyzed either by nebulizing the sample doped with Cs or Y onto a thin formvar film or by extracting the sample (with or without an internal standard) onto ion exchange resin which is pressed into a pellet

Let Sleeping Regs Lie: A Diatribe on Regulation A\u27s Futility Before and After the J.O.B.S. Act

Did Congress do the right thing when it attempted to revise Regulation A through Title IV of the J.O.B.S. Act or was their legislative effort an exercise in futility?On April 4 2012, President Obama signed into law the J.O.B.S. (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. The Act’s intent is to ease the regulatory burden on smaller companies when issuing securities in both private and public offerings. This paper’s specific focus is on the Act’s Title IV. Title IV makes revisions to Regulation A, a private securities offering exemption promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933.A big problem with Regulation A historically is that the provisions were burdensome, costly, and time consuming. In addition to a Federal component that required the issuer to file an offering statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Regulation A also requires that the issuer meet filing requirements within each state jurisdiction in which the issuer planned on offering its securities. The heavy compliance burden was coupled with the fact that the most you could raise through a Regulation A offering was $5 million. As a result, Regulation A has historically been all but dormant in use. The J.O.B.S. Act’s Title IV has sought to remedy this by making several changes to Regulation A; the most noteworthy of which involves raising the offering ceiling from$5 million to $50 million. The question then is will this be enough to offset the compliance burdens that historically have kept issuers from using Regulation A. This paper takes a critical look at the changes to Regulation A mandated under the J.O.B.S. Act and concludes that Congress missed the mark yet again with its Regulation A revisions.Congress should have left Regulation A alone as a poorly conceived regulation that was flawed at its initial inception. Not quite an exposé, this paper calls to task Congress’ legislative thought process in the area of securities offering exemptions and seeks to hold them accountable for creating a revised offering exemption without regard for its potential end users