2,664 research outputs found
When Statutory Regimes Collide:Will Wisconsin Right to Life and Citizens United Invalidate Federal Tax Regulation of Campaign Activity?
In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life (2007) and Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010), the United States Supreme Court dramatically reduced the ability of Congress to regulate campaign finance activities of corporations and others active in elections. Many of the same activities are still subject to restrictions by the Internal Revenue Code, which regulates the type and amount of political campaign activities that certain nonprofits exempt under federal tax law can engage in.
In the wake of the campaign finance decisions, the constitutionality of the tax law’s restrictions on campaign activity is now being challenged in the lower courts. This Article analyzes the two recent campaign finance decisions and campaign finance precedents more broadly to determine how, if at all, the Roberts’ Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence is likely to alter existing tax law jurisprudence in the area of campaign activity. It finds that, for the most part, tax law constitutional doctrines have developed independently of other areas of First Amendment free speech law. Based upon an analysis of the distinctive tax law doctrines, the Article concludes that the tax law provision prohibiting section 501(c)(3) charities from engaging in campaigns is likely to withstand challenges arguing that the provision prevents these nonprofits from engaging in protected political speech. However, there is some likelihood that the tax law prohibition is vulnerable to constitutional attack under traditional doctrines of vagueness or overbreadth due to the lack of precision of the terms of the political prohibition, as these have been elaborated by the IRS and the courts to date
Language of Lullabies: The Russification and De-Russification of the Baltic States
This article argues that the laws for promotion of the national languages are a legitimate means for the Baltic states to establish their cultural independence from Russia and the former Soviet Union
Network synchronization: Optimal and Pessimal Scale-Free Topologies
By employing a recently introduced optimization algorithm we explicitely
design optimally synchronizable (unweighted) networks for any given scale-free
degree distribution. We explore how the optimization process affects
degree-degree correlations and observe a generic tendency towards
disassortativity. Still, we show that there is not a one-to-one correspondence
between synchronizability and disassortativity. On the other hand, we study the
nature of optimally un-synchronizable networks, that is, networks whose
topology minimizes the range of stability of the synchronous state. The
resulting ``pessimal networks'' turn out to have a highly assortative
string-like structure. We also derive a rigorous lower bound for the Laplacian
eigenvalue ratio controlling synchronizability, which helps understanding the
impact of degree correlations on network synchronizability.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figs, submitted to J. Phys. A (proceedings of Complex
Networks 2007
Cosmic censorship and spherical gravitational collapse with tangential pressure
We study the spherical gravitational collapse of a compact object under the
approximation that the radial pressure is identically zero, and the tangential
pressure is related to the density by a linear equation of state. It turns out
that the Einstein equations can be reduced to the solution of an integral for
the evolution of the area radius. We show that for positive pressure there is a
finite region near the center which necessarily expands outwards, if collapse
begins from rest. This region could be surrounded by an inward moving one which
could collapse to a singularity - any such singularity will necessarily be
covered by a horizon. For negative pressure the entire object collapses
inwards, but any singularities that could arise are not naked. Thus the nature
of the evolution is very different from that of dust, even when the ratio of
pressure to density is infinitesimally small.Comment: 16 pages, Latex file, two figures, uses epsf.st
On the ground-state properties of antiferromagnetic half-integer spin chains with long-range interactions
The Lieb-Shultz-Mattis theorem is extended to Heisenberg chains with
long-range interactions. We prove that the half-integer spin chain has no gap,
if it possesses unique ground state and the exchange decays faster than the
inverse-square of distance between spins. The results can be extended to a wide
class of one-dimensional models.Comment: 3 pages, RevTeX
Citizen Science Daten und Praktiken – (Konflikt-)Potentiale für bürger*innenbasierte Datenströme und neue Formen urbaner Entscheidungsfindung
Das Potenzial von Citizen Science ist über die Wissenschaft hinaus bekannt, z.B. in der Bereitstellung von Daten für amtliche Informationssysteme, bei der Schließung räumlicher und zeitlicher Datenlücken oder zur besseren Beteiligung der Öffentlichkeit am wissenschaftlichen und politischen Diskurs. Gleichzeitig wird über die Legitimität von Citizen Science debattiert, im engeren Sinne in Bezug auf Datenqualität, im weiteren Sinne hinsichtlich ihres Potenzials, bestehende Entscheidungssysteme in Frage zu stellen oder Lücken darin aufzuzeigen. In diesem Cabin Talk wird anhand von Real-Life-Szenarien durchgespielt und reflektiert, welche Potentiale bürger*innenbasierte Datenströme in der urbanen Klimawandelanpassung und Grünraumplanung haben, wie diese durch latente Macht- und Zielkonflikte zwischen beteiligten Akteur*innen beeinflusst werden und welche rechtlichen Grundlagen die Situation bestimmen
Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Fluxes: New Constraints and Implications
We apply new upper limits on neutrino fluxes and the diffuse extragalactic
component of the GeV gamma-ray flux to various scenarios for ultra high energy
cosmic rays and neutrinos. As a result we find that extra-galactic top-down
sources can not contribute significantly to the observed flux of highest energy
cosmic rays. The Z-burst mechanism where ultra-high energy neutrinos produce
cosmic rays via interactions with relic neutrinos is practically ruled out if
cosmological limits on neutrino mass and clustering apply.Comment: 10 revtex pages, 9 postscript figure
Crowdsourcing EO datasets to improve cloud detection algorithms and land cover change
Involving citizens in science is gaining considerable traction of late. With positive examples
(e.g. Geo-Wiki, FotoQuest Austria), a number of projects are exploring the options to engage
the public in contributing to scientific research, often by asking participants to collect some
data or validate some results. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA), with extensive experience in crowdsourcing and gamification, has joined Sinergise,
Copernicus Masters 2016 winners, to engage the public in an initiative involving ESA’s
Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
Sentinel-2 imagery offers high revisit times and sufficient resolution for land change
detection applications. Unfortunately, simple (but fast) algorithms often fail due to many
false-positives: changes in clouds are perceived as land changes. The ability to discriminate
of cloudy pixels is thus crucial for any automatic or semi-automatic solutions that detect land
change.
A plethora of algorithms to distinguish clouds in Sentinel-2 data are available. However,
there is a need for better data on where and when clouds occur to help improve these
algorithms. To overcome this current gap in the data, we are engaging the public in this task.
Using a number of tools, developed at IIASA, and Sentinel Hub services, which provide fast
access to the entire global archive of Sentinel-2 data, the aim is to obtain a large data
resource of curated cloud classifications. The resulting dataset will be published as open
data and made available through Geopedia platform.
The gamified process will start by asking users if there are clouds on a small image (e.g. 8x8
pixels at the highest Sentinel-2 resolution of 10 m/px), which will provide us with a screening
process to pinpoint cloudy areas, employing Picture Pile crowdsourcing game from IIASA.
The next step will involve a more detailed workflow, as users will get a slightly larger image
(e.g. 64x64 pixels) and will then be asked to delineate different types of clouds: opaque
clouds (nothing is seen through the clouds), thick clouds (where the surface is still
discernible through the clouds), and thin clouds (where the surface is unequivocally covered
by a cloud); the rest of the image will be implicitly cloud-free. The resulting data will be
made available through the Geopedia portal, both for exploring and downloading. This
paper will demonstrate this process and show some results from a crowdsourcing campaign.
The approach will also allow us to collect other datasets in a rapid and efficient manner. For
example, using a slightly modified configuration, a similar workflow could be used to obtain
a manually curated land cover classification data set, which could be used as training data
for machine learning algorithms
A Bisognano-Wichmann-like Theorem in a Certain Case of a Non Bifurcate Event Horizon related to an Extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om Black Hole
Thermal Wightman functions of a massless scalar field are studied within the
framework of a ``near horizon'' static background model of an extremal R-N
black hole. This model is built up by using global Carter-like coordinates over
an infinite set of Bertotti-Robinson submanifolds glued together. The
analytical extendibility beyond the horizon is imposed as constraints on
(thermal) Wightman's functions defined on a Bertotti-Robinson sub manifold. It
turns out that only the Bertotti-Robinson vacuum state, i.e. , satisfies
the above requirement. Furthermore the extension of this state onto the whole
manifold is proved to coincide exactly with the vacuum state in the global
Carter-like coordinates. Hence a theorem similar to Bisognano-Wichmann theorem
for the Minkowski space-time in terms of Wightman functions holds with
vanishing ``Unruh-Rindler temperature''. Furtermore, the Carter-like vacuum
restricted to a Bertotti-Robinson region, resulting a pure state there, has
vanishing entropy despite of the presence of event horizons. Some comments on
the real extreme R-N black hole are given
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