Cultural Values and Government

Mr. Dellinger Mr. Dellinger originally delivered these remarks for the panel entitled The Role of Government in Defining Our Culture, at the Federalist Society’s 2006 National Lawyers Convention, on Saturday, November 18, 2006, in Washington, D.C. commenting on the Ninth Circuit decision Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts. The case involved the constitutionality of the Helms Amendment which required that the National Endowment for the Arts take decency into account in choosing who should be awarded artistic grants

The POPOP4 library and codes for preparing secondary gamma-ray production cross sections

The POPOP4 code for converting secondary gamma ray yield data to multigroup secondary gamma ray production cross sections and the POPOP4 library of secondary gamma ray yield data are described. Recent results of the testing of uranium and iron data sets from the POPOP4 library are given. The data sets were tested by comparing calculated secondary gamma ray pulse height spectra measured at the ORNL TSR-II reactor

The “risk-adjusted” price-concentration relationship in banking

Price-concentration studies in banking typically find a significant and negative relationship between consumer deposit rates (i.e., prices) and market concentration. This relationship implies that highly concentrated banking markets are “bad” for depositors. It also provides support for the Structure-Conduct-Performance hypothesis and rejects the Efficient-Structure hypothesis. However, these studies have focused almost exclusively on supply-side control variables and have neglected demand-side variables when estimating the reduced form price-concentration relationship. For example, previous studies have not included in their analysis bank-specific risk variables as measures of cross-sectional derived deposit demand. The authors find that when bank-specific risk variables are included in the analysis the magnitude of the relationship between deposit rates and market concentration decreases by over 50 percent. They offer an explanation for these results based on the correlation between a bank’s risk profile and the structure of the market in which it operates. These results suggest that it may be necessary to reconsider the well-established assumption that higher market concentration necessarily leads to anticompetitive deposit pricing behavior by commercial banks. This finding has direct implications for the antitrust evaluations of bank merger and acquisition proposals by regulatory agencies. And, in a more general sense, these results suggest that any Structure-Conduct-Performance-based study that does not explicitly consider the possibility of very different risk profiles of the firms analyzed may indeed miss a very important set of explanatory variables. And, thus, the results from those studies may be spurious.

Optical Measurements on Solid Specimens of Solid Rocket Motor Exhaust and Solid Rocket Motor Slag

Samples of aluminum slag were investigated to aid the Earth Science and Applications Division at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Alumina from space motor propellant exhaust and space motor propellant slag was examined as a component of space refuse. Thermal emittance and solar absorptivity measurements were taken to support their comparison with reflectance measurements derived from actual debris. To determine the similarity between the samples and space motor exhaust or space motor slag, emittance and absorbance results were correlated with an examination of specimen morphology

X-ray Binaries and Globular Clusters in Elliptical Galaxies

The X-ray emission from normal elliptical galaxies has two major components: soft emission from diffuse gas and harder emission from populations of accreting (low-mass) stellar X-ray binaries (LMXB). If LMXB populations are tied to the field stellar populations in galaxies, their total X-ray luminosities should be proportional to the optical luminosities of galaxies. However, recent ASCA and Chandra X-ray observations show that the global luminosities of LMXB components in ellipticals exhibit significant scatter at a given optical luminosity. This scatter may reflect a range of evolutionary stages among LMXB populations in ellipticals of different ages. If so, the ratio of the global LMXB X-ray luminosity to the galactic optical luminosity, L_LMXB/L_opt, may be used to determine when the bulk of stars were formed in individual ellipticals. To test this, we compare variations in L_LMXB/L_opt for LMXB populations in ellipticals to optically-derived estimates of stellar ages in the same galaxies. We find no correlation, implying that L_LMXB/L_opt variations are not good age indicators for ellipticals. Alternatively, LMXBs may be formed primarily in globular clusters (through stellar tidal interactions), rather than in the stellar fields of galaxies. Since elliptical galaxies exhibit a wide range of globular cluster populations for a given galaxian luminosity, this may induce a dispersion in the LMXB populations of ellipticals with similar optical luminosities. Indeed, we find that L_LMXB/L_opt ratios for LMXB populations are strongly correlated with the specific globular cluster frequencies in elliptical galaxies. This suggests that most LMXBs were formed in globular clusters.Comment: 5 pages, emulateapj5 style, 2 embedded EPS figures, to appear in ApJ Letter

Establishing a communications-intensive network to resolve artificial intelligence issues within NASA's Space Station Freedom research centers community

MITRE Corporation's, A Review of Space Station Freedom Program Capabilities for the Development and Application of Advanced Automation, cites as a critical issue the following situation, extant at the NASA facilities visited in the course of preparing the review: The major issues noted with regard to design and research facilities deal with cooperative problem solving, technology transfer, and communication between these facilities. While the authors were visiting lab and test beds to collect information, personnel at many of these facilities were interested in any information they could collect on activities at other facilities. A formal means of gathering this information could not be identified by these personnel. While communication between some facilities was taking place or was planned, for technology transfer or coordination of schedules (e.g., for SADP demonstrations), poor communication between these facilities could lead to a lack of technical standards, duplication of effort, poorly defined interfaces, scheduling problems, and increased cost. Formal mechanisms by which effective communication and cooperative problem solving can take place, and information can be disseminated, must be defined. A solution is proposed for the communications aspects of the issues addressed above; and offered at the same time a solution which can prove effective in dealing with some of the problems being encountered with expertise being lost via retirement or defection to the private sector. The proffered recommendations are recognizably cost-effective and tap the rising sector of expert knowledge being produced by the American academic community

Sound propagation from a simple source in a wind tunnel

The nature of the acoustic field of a simple source in a wind tunnel under flow conditions was examined theoretically and experimentally. The motivation of the study was to establish aspects of the theoretical framework for interpreting acoustic data taken (in wind) tunnels using in wind microphones. Three distinct investigations were performed and are described in detail

The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax

Economic inequality threatens America’s constitutional democracy. Beyond obvious harms to our nation’s social fabric and people’s lives, soaring economic inequality translates into political inequality and corrodes democratic institutions and values. The coincident, relentless rise of money in politics exacerbates the problem. As elected officials and candidates meet skyrocketing campaign costs by devoting more and more time to political fundraising—and independent expenditures mushroom—Americans lose faith and withdraw from a system widely perceived as beholden to wealthy individuals and corporate interests. The United States needs innovative approaches to help rebuild foundational, shared understandings of American democracy, the American Dream, and opportunity and fairness. Tax policy provides one central context in which collective judgments about fundamental values help form national identity. We believe that a national wealth tax (that is, a tax on individuals’ net worth) should be among the policy options under consideration to support vital infrastructure, social service, and other governmental functions. Although not a new concept, a wealth tax may be an idea whose time has come, as inequality soars toward record highs. Our aim in this Essay is to help ensure that a wealth tax is among the policy options available to Congress by challenging a common assumption that has unduly harmed its prospects: the belief that the U.S. Constitution effectively makes a national wealth tax impossible. We believe this conventional wisdom is wrong and its casual repetition has been harmful. Devising a progressive tax system that effectively taxes the wealthy is notoriously difficult, but whether a wealth tax is part of that system should depend upon the policy choices of democratically elected representatives, not faulty constitutional understandings