Refocusing Intelligence: Keeping Intelligence Relevant Beyond the Global War on Terrorism

Historically, the intelligence community has been unprepared to meet emerging threats. This is due to intelligence focusing on current and past threats rather than being oriented towards the future. The attacks on 9/11 and subsequent war on terrorism only cemented this fact. This study looks at the history of intelligence to reveal this pattern along with relevant reforms to the intelligence community. Unfortunately, the current reforms only meet the needs of the current issues facing the intelligence community without preparing the community for the future. Looking at potential threats faced by the nation, the potential shortfalls in intelligence become known. This study proposes four reform areas that are required in the intelligence community and ways to implement the reforms. Ultimately, unless further reforms are implemented, the intelligence community may remain unprepared to meet the intelligence needs of future conflicts and operations.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Federal Power, States\u27 Rights, Individual Rights: Mentally Disabled Prisoners and the Supreme Court\u27s New Activism

This Note examines the situation of mentally disabled prisoners who seek to assert their rights in federal court. Neither laws affecting the disabled nor laws affecting prisoners receive heightened scrutiny by the judiciary, which, thus far, also refuses to recognize the unique burdens of those who fit both categories. Because mentally disabled prisoners do not qualify for heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, recent developments in the federalism doctrine lead the courts to conclude that they are without jurisdiction to hear suits brought by prisoners against state penitentiaries. This Note explores the underpinnings of federalism, separation of powers, and equal protection jurisprudence, arguing that states do not have the extensive sovereign immunity that the Supreme Court claims, that Congress should be permitted to influence the level of scrutiny afforded to claims brought by the disabled, and that the predicament of mentally disabled prisoners warrants heightened scrutiny

Cohering and decohering power of massive scalar fields under instantaneous interactions

Employing a non-perturbative approach based on an instantaneous interaction between a two-level Unruh-DeWitt detector and a massive scalar field, we investigate the ability of the field to generate or destroy coherence in the detector by deriving the cohering and decohering power of the induced quantum evolution channel. For a field in a coherent state a previously unnoticed effect is reported whereby the amount of coherence that the field generates displays a revival pattern with respect to the size of the detector. It is demonstrated that by including mass in a thermal field the set of maximally coherent states of the detector decoheres less compared to a zero mass. In both of the examples mentioned, by making a suitable choice of detector radius, field energy and coupling strength it is possible to infer the mass of the field by either measuring the coherence present in the detector in the case of an interaction with a coherent field or the corresponding decoherence of a maximally coherent state in the case of a thermal field. In view of recent advances in the study of Proca metamaterials, these results suggest the possibility of utilising the theory of massive electromagnetism for the construction of novel applications for use in quantum technologies

Elevational adaptation and plasticity in seedling phenology of temperate deciduous tree species

Phenological events, such as the initiation and the end of seasonal growth, are thought to be under strong evolutionary control because of their influence on tree fitness. Although numerous studies highlighted genetic differentiation in phenology among populations from contrasting climates, it remains unclear whether local adaptation could restrict phenological plasticity in response to current warming. Seedling populations of seven deciduous tree species from high and low elevations in the Swiss Alps were investigated in eight common gardens located along two elevational gradients from 400 to 1,700m. We addressed the following questions: are there genetic differentiations in phenology between populations from low and high elevations, and are populations from the upper elevational limit of a species' distribution able to respond to increasing temperature to the same extent as low-elevation populations? Genetic variation of leaf unfolding date between seedlings from low and high populations was detected in six out of seven tree species. Except for beech, populations from high elevations tended to flush later than populations from low elevations, emphasizing that phenology is likely to be under evolutionary pressure. Furthermore, seedlings from high elevation exhibited lower phenological plasticity to temperature than low-elevation provenances. This difference in phenological plasticity may reflect the opposing selective forces involved (i.e. a trade-off between maximizing growing season length and avoiding frost damages). Nevertheless, environmental effects were much stronger than genetic effects, suggesting a high phenological plasticity to enable tree populations to track ongoing climate change, which includes the risk of tracking unusually warm springs followed by fros