The Back-Door to Prison: Waiver Reform, Blended Sentencing, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The Minnesota innovation, Extended Jurisdiction Juvenile Prosecution (EJJ), allowed judges simultaneously to impose a delinquency disposition and an adult criminal sentence, the execution of which the judge stayed pending successful completion of the delinquency sentence. Podkapacz and Feld analyze the implementation of Minnesota\u27s new EJJ blended sentencing law in Hennepin County, the largest metropolitan county in the state

Bayesian Surprise in Indoor Environments

This paper proposes a novel method to identify unexpected structures in 2D floor plans using the concept of Bayesian Surprise. Taking into account that a person's expectation is an important aspect of the perception of space, we exploit the theory of Bayesian Surprise to robustly model expectation and thus surprise in the context of building structures. We use Isovist Analysis, which is a popular space syntax technique, to turn qualitative object attributes into quantitative environmental information. Since isovists are location-specific patterns of visibility, a sequence of isovists describes the spatial perception during a movement along multiple points in space. We then use Bayesian Surprise in a feature space consisting of these isovist readings. To demonstrate the suitability of our approach, we take "snapshots" of an agent's local environment to provide a short list of images that characterize a traversed trajectory through a 2D indoor environment. Those fingerprints represent surprising regions of a tour, characterize the traversed map and enable indoor LBS to focus more on important regions. Given this idea, we propose to use "surprise" as a new dimension of context in indoor location-based services (LBS). Agents of LBS, such as mobile robots or non-player characters in computer games, may use the context surprise to focus more on important regions of a map for a better use or understanding of the floor plan.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure

Calibration of second-order correlation functions for non-stationary sources with a multi-start multi-stop time-to-digital converter

A novel high-throughput second-order-correlation measurement system is developed which records and makes use of all the arrival times of photons detected at both start and stop detectors. This system is suitable particularly for a light source having a high photon flux and a long coherence time since it is more efficient than conventional methods by an amount equal to the product of the count rate and the correlation time of the light source. We have used this system in carefully investigating the dead time effects of detectors and photon counters on the second-order correlation function in the two-detector configuration. For a non-stationary light source, distortion of original signal was observed at high photon flux. A systematic way of calibrating the second-order correlation function has been devised by introducing a concept of an effective dead time of the entire measurement system.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Observation of sub-Poisson photon statistics in the cavity-QED microlaser

We have measured the second-order correlation function of the cavity-QED microlaser output and observed a transition from photon bunching to antibunching with increasing average number of intracavity atoms. The observed correlation times and the transition from super- to sub-Poisson photon statistics can be well described by gain-loss feedback or enhanced/reduced restoring action against fluctuations in photon number in the context of a quantum microlaser theory and a photon rate equation picture. However, the theory predicts a degree of antibunching several times larger than that observed, which may indicate the inadequacy of its treatment of atomic velocity distributions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Ultrahigh frequency oscillations and multimode dynamics in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers

Includes bibliographical references (page 187).We report the observation of ultrahigh frequency oscillations of up to 240 GHz in optically gain switched vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. These oscillations are shown to be produced by multimode emission through mode competition (10-30 GHz) or mode beating (above 100 GHz). Although these oscillations are not related to the intrinsic modulation bandwidth, some of them could be mistaken for relaxation oscillations, calling for careful interpretation of the results of this type of experiments. The highest frequencies observed for single mode relaxation oscillations were about 9 GHz in agreement with values of modulation bandwidth reported in the literature

Transverse mode dynamics in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers excited by fast electrical pulses

Includes bibliographical references (page 592).We report measurements of the transient multimode dynamics of vertical cavity surface emittin glasers excited by short (100-200 ps rise times, 1 ns duration) electrical pulses. Fast changes on the spatial distribution of the output power and strong mode competition are observed. Numerical simulations show that the observed dynamics are due to the partial overlap of the different transverse modes through spatial hole burning

ATLAS silicon module assembly and qualification tests at IFIC Valencia

ATLAS experiment, designed to probe the interactions of particles emerging out of proton proton collisions at energies of up to 14 TeV, will assume operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in 2007. This paper discusses the assembly and the quality control tests of forward detector modules for the ATLAS silicon microstrip detector assembled at the Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular (IFIC) in Valencia. The construction and testing procedures are outlined and the laboratory equipment is briefly described. Emphasis is given on the module quality achieved in terms of mechanical and electrical stability.Comment: 23 pages, 38 EPS figures, uses JINST LaTeX clas