Sealing and Revealing: Rethinking the Rules Governing Public Access to Information Generated through Litigation

The current law governing public access to information generated through civil litigation is flawed in two ways: (1) while many states and courts in theory require rigorous standards to be met before court documents, including judicially-approved settlement agreements, can be sealed, in practice courts often allow pressure from private parties to trump public interests; and (2) the public\u27s lack of any ability to access unfiled discovery materials deprives the public of information it often has an interest in seeing and permits litigants to enter into secrecy agreements that hide their bad acts. This Article details the deficiencies in the existing regime and then examines in detail several innovative sunshine rules that attempt to restrict certain kinds of litigation secrecy, including the District of South Carolina\u27s prohibition on filing confidential settlements with the court; Texas\u27s Rule 76a, which allows third parties to intervene before courts order certain records to be sealed; and Florida\u27s Sunshine in Litigation Act, which attempts to prohibit settlement agreements that conceal public hazards. In most circumstances, the sunshine rules have not had their desired impact, as litigants seeking secrecy have found ways to contract around them. The Article looks at the lessons to be drawn from these experiences and what states and courts can do to better protect the public\u27s interests in accessing certain types of information generated through civil litigation

Sealing and Revealing: Rethinking the Rules Governing Public Access to Information Generated through Litigation

The current law governing public access to information generated through civil litigation is flawed in two ways: (1) while many states and courts in theory require rigorous standards to be met before court documents, including judicially-approved settlement agreements, can be sealed, in practice courts often allow pressure from private parties to trump public interests; and (2) the public\u27s lack of any ability to access unfiled discovery materials deprives the public of information it often has an interest in seeing and permits litigants to enter into secrecy agreements that hide their bad acts. This Article details the deficiencies in the existing regime and then examines in detail several innovative sunshine rules that attempt to restrict certain kinds of litigation secrecy, including the District of South Carolina\u27s prohibition on filing confidential settlements with the court; Texas\u27s Rule 76a, which allows third parties to intervene before courts order certain records to be sealed; and Florida\u27s Sunshine in Litigation Act, which attempts to prohibit settlement agreements that conceal public hazards. In most circumstances, the sunshine rules have not had their desired impact, as litigants seeking secrecy have found ways to contract around them. The Article looks at the lessons to be drawn from these experiences and what states and courts can do to better protect the public\u27s interests in accessing certain types of information generated through civil litigation

A significant problem with using the Amati relation for cosmological purposes

We consider the distribution of many samples of gamma-ray bursts when plotted in a diagram with their bolometric fluence (Sbolo) versus the observed photon energy of peak spectral flux (E peak, obs). In this diagram, all bursts that obey the Amati relation (a luminosity relation where the total burst energy has a power-law relation to E peak, obs) must lie above some limiting line, although observational scatter is expected to be substantial. We confirm that early bursts with spectroscopic redshifts are consistent with this Amati limit. But we find that the bursts from BATSE, Swift, Suzaku, and Konus are all greatly in violation of the Amati limit, and this is true whether or not the bursts have measured spectroscopic redshifts. That is, the Amati relation has definitely failed. In the S bolo-E peak, obs diagram, wefind that every satellite has a greatly different distribution. This requires that selection effects are dominating these distributions, which we quantitatively identify. For detector selections, the trigger threshold and the threshold for the burst to obtain a measured E peak, obs combine to make a diagonal cutoff with the position of this cutoff varying greatly detector to detector. For selection effects due to the intrinsic properties of the burst population, the distribution of E peak, obs makes bursts with low and high values rare, while the fluence distribution makes bright bursts relatively uncommon. For a detector with a high threshold, the combination of these selection effects serves to allow only bursts within a region along the Amati limit line to be measured, and these bursts will then appear to follow an Amati relation. Therefore, the Amati relation is an artifact of selection effects within the burst population and the detector. As such, the Amati relation should not be used for cosmological tasks. This failure of the Amati relation is in no way prejudicial against the other luminosity relations. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved

Thermal receptivity of free convective flow from a heated vertical surface: linear waves

Numerical techniques are used to study the receptivity to small-amplitude thermal disturbances of the boundary layer flow of air which is induced by a heated vertical flat plate. The fully elliptic nonlinear, time-dependent Navier–Stokes and energy equations are first solved to determine the steady state boundary-layer flow, while a linearised version of the same code is used to determine the stability characteristics. In particular we investigate (i) the ultimate fate of a localised thermal disturbance placed in the region near the leading edge and (ii) the effect of small-scale surface temperature oscillations as means of understanding the stability characteristics of the boundary layer. We show that there is a favoured frequency of excitation for the time-periodic disturbance which maximises the local response in terms of the local rate of heat transfer. However the magnitude of the favoured frequency depends on precisely how far from the leading edge the local response is measured. We also find that the instability is advective in nature and that the response of the boundary layer consists of a starting transient which eventually leaves the computational domain, leaving behind the large-time time-periodic asymptotic state. Our detailed numerical results are compared with those obtained using parallel flow theory

Nuclear import of Avian Sarcoma Virus integrase is facilitated by host cell factors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Integration of retroviral DNA into the host cell genome is an obligatory step in the virus life cycle. In previous reports we identified a sequence (amino acids 201–236) in the linker region between the catalytic core and C-terminal domains of the avian sarcoma virus (ASV) integrase protein that functions as a transferable nuclear localization signal (NLS) in mammalian cells. The sequence is distinct from all known NLSs but, like many, contains basic residues that are essential for activity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our present studies with digitonin-permeabilized HeLa cells show that nuclear import mediated by the NLS of ASV integrase is an active, saturable, and ATP-dependent process. As expected for transport through nuclear pore complexes, import is blocked by treatment of cells with wheat germ agglutinin. We also show that import of ASV integrase requires soluble cellular factors but does not depend on binding the classical adapter Importin-α. Results from competition studies indicate that ASV integrase relies on one or more of the soluble components that mediate transport of the linker histone H1.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results are consistent with a role for ASV integrase and cytoplasmic cellular factors in the nuclear import of its viral DNA substrate, and lay the foundation for identification of host cell components that mediate this reaction.</p

Time-reversal symmetry breaking in circuit-QED based photon lattices

Breaking time-reversal symmetry is a prerequisite for accessing certain interesting many-body states such as fractional quantum Hall states. For polaritons, charge neutrality prevents magnetic fields from providing a direct symmetry breaking mechanism and similar to the situation in ultracold atomic gases, an effective magnetic field has to be synthesized. We show that in the circuit QED architecture, this can be achieved by inserting simple superconducting circuits into the resonator junctions. In the presence of such coupling elements, constant parallel magnetic and electric fields suffice to break time-reversal symmetry. We support these theoretical predictions with numerical simulations for realistic sample parameters, specify general conditions under which time-reversal is broken, and discuss the application to chiral Fock state transfer, an on-chip circulator, and tunable band structure for the Kagome lattice.Comment: minor revisions, version published in PRA; 19 pages, 13 figures, 2 table

Hedging in Field Theory Models of the Term Structure

We use path integrals to calculate hedge parameters and efficacy of hedging in a quantum field theory generalization of the Heath, Jarrow and Morton (HJM) term structure model which parsimoniously describes the evolution of imperfectly correlated forward rates. We also calculate, within the model specification, the effectiveness of hedging over finite periods of time. We use empirical estimates for the parameters of the model to show that a low dimensional hedge portfolio is quite effective.Comment: 18 figures, Invited Talk, International Econophysics Conference, Bali, 28-31 August 200

Anthropogenic controls on overwash deposition: Evidence and consequences

Accelerated sea level rise and the potential for an increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to climate change threaten the vitality and habitability of barrier islands by lowering their relative elevation and altering frequency of overwash. High-density development may further increase island vulnerability by restricting delivery of overwash to the subaerial island. We analyzed pre-Hurricane Sandy and post-Hurricane Sandy (2012) lidar surveys of the New Jersey coast to assess human influence on barrier overwash, comparing natural environments to two developed environments (commercial and residential) using shore-perpendicular topographic profiles. The volumes of overwash delivered to residential and commercial environments are reduced by 40% and 90%, respectively, of that delivered to natural environments. We use this analysis and an exploratory barrier island evolution model to assess long-term impacts of anthropogenic structures. Simulations suggest that natural barrier islands may persist under a range of likely future sea level rise scenarios (7-13mm/yr), whereas developed barrier islands will have a long-term tendency toward drowning