In Defense of Specialized Theft Statutes

This essay is an invited contribution to a symposium hosted by the New England Law Review in celebration of Stuart Green’s important book 13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle. As we note, Professor Green’s argument is so reasonable and executed in such elegant prose, there is little call for anything other than praise. Nevertheless, in the spirit of academic exchange, we challenge Professor Green’s skepticism of specialized theft statutes. Relying on retributivist theories of criminal punishment, we argue that specialized theft statutes have an important role to play in contemporary criminal law by educating the public about the necessary commitments that must be maintained in order to facilitate emerging fields of art, technology, and commerce and by guarding the boundaries of those enterprises. In the process, we propose an “enterprise theory” of theft that justifies criminal prohibition as a tool to defend vulnerable social enterprises ranging from retail sales to copyright

Experience of compassion-based practice in mindfulness for health for individuals with persistent pain

Purpose of the Study Research indicates that acquiring compassion is an integral part to positive outcomes to Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI), yet there is both theoretic and empirical literature suggesting that people with persistent pain are more likely to experience challenges and distress when engaging compassion-based practices. Mindfulness for Health is a standardised MBI for people with persistent pain and health conditions. This study sought to explore the positive, neutral and difficult experiences of compassion-based practice and meditation for participants in Mindfulness for Health to further understand implications and risks for participants of MBI’s. Method and Design A qualitative design using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was applied to explore how participants understood of the experience of compassion-based practice and the meaning they gave to it. Eight participants who had completed the Mindfulness for Health from four separate groups were interviewed about their experience. Results Five master themes were identified ‘turning away from self-with-pain’, ‘self-with-pain experienced as shameful’, ‘facilitating change’, ‘turning towards self-with-pain’, and ‘accepting self’. Participants identified both perceived positive changes and difficult emotional experiences during the meditation practice, which they related to the context of compassion in their past and present life. Conclusions Developing compassion is an important part of Mindfulness for Health, which is salient for participants as both a challenging and potentially valuable experience. Acquisition of mindfulness skills, supporting group dynamics and modelling compassion are understood as helpful in overcoming personal barriers and challenging experiences. Further research is needed to understand processes involved and explore the experience of non-completers

Quota discarding and distributive justice: The case of the under-10m fishing fleet in Sussex, England

Marine fish discarding has become a contentious environmental issue, but little attention has been paid to the moral grievances that sometimes underlie discarding practices. This article explores such a moral grievance through a case study of the under-10. m fishery in Sussex, England, where discarding of cod (Gadus morhua) has become a highly charged issue, skippers blaming it on unjust quota allocations. The moral claim to a greater quota allocation is analysed using two conceptions of distributive justice, entitlement and desert. The conclusion reached is that the under-10. m fleet's entitlement arguments for a higher quota are weaker than their desert arguments, but that entitlement arguments weigh more heavily than desert arguments with government when it allocates quota

Linking Heterogeneous Biodiversity Information Systems on the GRID: the GRAB Prototype

In the field of biodiversity informatics a wide range of diverse databases and tools already exists. The challenge is to integrate such resources in order to support scientists wishing to explore complex problems of relevance to biodiversity, and to create new resources where necessary. In this paper we outline the relevance of biodiversity informatics requirements to the future development of the GRID, identifying the main issues that need to be addressed in this area. We present GRAB (GRid And Biodiversity), which is a prototype demonstrator illustrating how one particular biodiversity-related task, namely bioclimatic modelling, can be supported in a Globus-based environment. We also describe a much larger-scale GRID application project that is just commencing (BiodiversityWorld) in which a flexible problem-solving environment is to be built for full-scale investigations by scientists working in a number of biodiversity research areas

Utilizing Pipeline Quality and Facility Sustainability to Optimize Crude Oil Supply Chains

In this paper, the distribution center (DC) model shown in Shapiros Modeling the Supply Chain is modified to show optimal locations to place small and large refineries based on transportation distances, refinery building costs, and the costs associated with refinery sustainability and pipeline quality. Though this model was originally used to determine the optimal locations to place distribution centers based on transportation distances and the size of the distribution centers, this model was modified to allow the use of different costs associated with the quality condition of the pipeline and the costs of sustaining an environmentally friendly facility. The case used to prove the model is the Indonesian oil industry due to how an increase in efficiency and excess capacity could provide another viable country to supply oil to the United States. The outputs of this paper are efficiency frontiers that show how the costs of pipeline quality and facility sustainability affect the overall costs of the Indonesian oil industry and a model that can be used to evaluate the oil industries in other countries

Chiral extrapolation of lattice data for B-meson decay constant

The B-meson decay constant fB has been calculated from unquenched lattice QCD in the unphysical region. For extrapolating the lattice data to the physical region, we propose a phenomenological functional form based on the effective chiral perturbation theory for heavy mesons, which respects both the heavy quark symmetry and the chiral symmetry, and the non-relativistic constituent quark model which is valid at large pion masses. The inclusion of pion loop corrections leads to nonanalytic contributions to fB when the pion mass is small. The finite-range regularization technique is employed for the resummation of higher order terms of the chiral expansion. We also take into account the finite volume effects in lattice simulations. The dependence on the parameters and other uncertainties in our model are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 3 Postscript figures, accepted for publication in EPJ

Open-Source Conceptual Sizing Models for the Hyperloop Passenger Pod

Hyperloop is a new mode of transportation proposed as an alternative to California's high speed rail project, with the intended benefits of higher performance at lower overall costs. It consists of a passenger pod traveling through a tube under a light vacuum and suspended on air bearings. The pod travels up to transonic speeds resulting in a 35 minute travel time between the intended route from Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of the two variants outlined, the smaller system includes a 1.1 meter tall passenger capsule traveling through a 2.2 meter tube at 700 miles per hour. The passenger pod features water-based heat exchangers as well as an on-board compression system that reduces the aerodynamic drag as it moves through the tube. Although the original proposal looks very promising, it assumes that tube and pod dimensions are independently sizable without fully acknowledging the constraints of the compressor system on the pod geometry. This work focuses on the aerodynamic and thermodynamic interactions between the two largest systems; the tube and the pod. Using open-source toolsets, a new sizing method is developed based on one-dimensional thermodynamic relationships that accounts for the strong interactions between these sub-systems. These additional considerations require a tube nearly twice the size originally considered and limit the maximum pod travel speed to about 620 miles per hour. Although the results indicate that Hyperloop will need to be larger and slightly slower than originally intended, the estimated travel time only increases by approximately five minutes, so the overall performance is not dramatically affected. In addition, the proposed on-board heat exchanger is not an ideal solution to achieve reasonable equilibrium air temperatures within the tube. Removal of this subsystem represents a potential reduction in weight, energy requirements and complexity of the pod. In light of these finding, the core concept still remains a compelling possibility, although additional engineering and economic analyses are markedly necessary before a more complete design can be developed