Application of pressurized liquid nitrogen inside parametric-amplifier structures for input-noise-temperature improvement

Pressurized liquid nitrogen inside parametric amplifier structures for input, noise, and temperature improvement

The Fourth Circuit\u27s Doube-Edged Sword : Eviscerating the Right to Present Mitigating Evidence and Beheading the Right to the Assistance of Counsel

Even before the sea change of Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court recognized not only an indigent’s right to the assistance of counsel in capital cases, but also his right to the effective assistance of counsel in capital cases. Since those auspicious beginnings, the Court has dramatically broadened the right to present mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of a capital trial, thereby increasing the need for the guiding hand of counsel in capital sentencing. Thus, it is particularly tragic that the Fourth Circuit’s swiftly evolving approach to the prejudice prong of the ineffective assistance of counsel standard precludes capital defendants from winning ineffective assistance of counsel claims in the very cases where informed and effective assistance would have been most likely to have made a difference. According to the Fourth Circuit, all psychologically based mitigating evidence is a “two-edged sword,” because “although ‘evidence of a defendant’s mental impairment may diminish his blameworthiness for his crime,’ it also may ‘indicate that there is a probability that he will be dangerous in the future.” Thus for habeas petitioners in the Fourth Circuit, the possibility, however remote, that a jury would focus on dangerousness rather than culpability precludes ever winning an ineffective assistance of counsel based upon the failure to present psychologically-based mitigating evidence, no matter how compelling the neglected evidence is, or how derelict counsel was in failing to present that evidence. As this Article will demonstrate, the double-edged sword doctrine is wrong-headed in several respects. This Article hopes to persuade the reader that despite its newness, it is a doctrine already ripe for overruling—or reversal, if necessary. Part I briefly describes the capital defendant’s right to have available mitigating evidence presented to the sentencing body; the real dimensions of this right can properly be understood only by considering both the breadth of the abstract right to present mitigating evidence and the limitations imposed by the interaction of that right with the ineffective assistance of counsel doctrine. Part II describes how the Fourth Circuit’s double-edged sword doctrine departs from established doctrine and diminishes established rights. Part III presents the conceptual and empirical fallacies of the Fourth Circuit’s approach

Universal four-body states in heavy-light mixtures with positive scattering length

The number of four-body states known to behave universally is small. This work adds a new class of four-body states to this relatively short list. We predict the existence of a universal four-body bound state for heavy-light mixtures consisting of three identical heavy fermions and a fourth distinguishable lighter particle with mass ratio $\kappa \gtrsim 9.5$ and short-range interspecies interaction characterized by a positive s-wave scattering length. The structural properties of these universal states are discussed and finite-range effects are analyzed. The bound states can be experimentally realized and probed utilizing ultracold atom mixtures.Comment: 5 page

Climbing Mount Scalable: Physical-Resource Requirements for a Scalable Quantum Computer

The primary resource for quantum computation is Hilbert-space dimension. Whereas Hilbert space itself is an abstract construction, the number of dimensions available to a system is a physical quantity that requires physical resources. Avoiding a demand for an exponential amount of these resources places a fundamental constraint on the systems that are suitable for scalable quantum computation. To be scalable, the effective number of degrees of freedom in the computer must grow nearly linearly with the number of qubits in an equivalent qubit-based quantum computer.Comment: LATEX, 24 pages, 1 color .eps figure. This new version has been accepted for publication in Foundations of Physic

Physical-resource demands for scalable quantum computation

The primary resource for quantum computation is Hilbert-space dimension. Whereas Hilbert space itself is an abstract construction, the number of dimensions available to a system is a physical quantity that requires physical resources. Avoiding a demand for an exponential amount of these resources places a fundamental constraint on the systems that are suitable for scalable quantum computation. To be scalable, the number of degrees of freedom in the computer must grow nearly linearly with the number of qubits in an equivalent qubit-based quantum computer.Comment: This paper will be published in the proceedings of the SPIE Conference on Fluctuations and Noise in Photonics and Quantum Optics, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1--4, 200

Pre-Play communication with forgone costly messages: experimental evidence on forward induction

We study communication in a two-player coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria. Prior research demonstrates that efficient coordination is difficult without communication but obtains regularly with (mandatory) costless pre-play messages. In a laboratory experiment, we modify communication by making the sending of messages optional and costly. Even small costs dramatically reduce message use, but efficient coordination of actions occurs with similar frequency to that observed under costless communication. Our results can be accounted for by Govindan and Wilson's formalization of forward induction (GW-FI), which selects, among the pure-strategy equilibrium outcomes, the one in which efficiency is achieved without communication. Consistent with the introspective character of GW-FI, the fraction of players who achieve efficient coordination by forgoing the use of reasonably costly optional messages is substantial from the first period, is remarkably stable at that level, and is not significantly affected by learning.Coordination, communication, forward induction, experiment, stag hunt

AEDPA: The Hype and the Bite

On April 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Thus, the AEDPA era began. While Clinton\u27s presidential signing statement paid lip service to meaningful federal court review of state court convictions, AEDPA\u27s supporters knew better. The fix was in, and happy habeas days were here again. But, as the old saying goes, What if you gave a revolution and nobody came? As I will argue, that is in many (but not all) respects what happened. In this Article, I have argued that AEDPA was, in many respects, more hype than bite. For the most part this is true because by the time AEDPA\u27s habeas reform measures were enacted, there was very little habeas left. Beginning in the 1970s, a conservative Supreme Court systematically limited the scope of the writ by erecting procedural barriers that made it difficult for state court inmates to thread the habeas needle. Thus, AEDPA may not have been too little, but it was too late