Is that a threat?: Elonis v. United States and the Standard of Intent for True Threat Convictions

This commentary analyzes the Supreme Court case Elonis v. United States where the Court will determine the applicable criminal-intent standard required to convict a defendant for threatening speech. After a series of violent Facebook posts against coworkers and his estranged wife, Petitioner Elonis was convicted for making so-called true threats of violence--speech not granted First-Amendment protection. Elonis argues that the prosecution should have been required to prove that he actually had the intent to threaten people when he wrote the posts, not simply that a reasonable person would find the posts threatening. The Author argues that the Court should rule in the Petitioner\u27s favor and require a finding of subjective intent because such a mens rea requirement is suggested in the plain meaning, legislative history, and by the Court\u27s true-threat jurisprudence

Is that a threat?: Elonis v. United States and the Standard of Intent for True Threat Convictions

This commentary analyzes the Supreme Court case Elonis v. United States where the Court will determine the applicable criminal-intent standard required to convict a defendant for threatening speech. After a series of violent Facebook posts against coworkers and his estranged wife, Petitioner Elonis was convicted for making so-called true threats of violence--speech not granted First-Amendment protection. Elonis argues that the prosecution should have been required to prove that he actually had the intent to threaten people when he wrote the posts, not simply that a reasonable person would find the posts threatening. The Author argues that the Court should rule in the Petitioner\u27s favor and require a finding of subjective intent because such a mens rea requirement is suggested in the plain meaning, legislative history, and by the Court\u27s true-threat jurisprudence

Cavity field ensembles from nonselective measurements

We continue our investigations of cavity QED with time dependent parameters. In this paper we discuss the situation where the state of the atoms leaving the cavity is reduced but the outcome is not recorded. In this case our knowledge is limited to an ensemble description of the results only. By applying the Demkov-Kunike level-crossing model, we show that even in this case, the filtering action of the interaction allows us to prepare a preassigned Fock state with good accuracy. The possibilities and limitations of the method are discussed and some relations to earlier work are presented.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Photon filters in a microwave cavity

In an earlier paper we have concluded that time-dependent parameters in atom-mode interaction can be utilized to modify the quantum field in a cavity. When an atom shoots through the cavity field, it is expected to experience a trigonometric time dependence of its coupling constant. We investigate the possibilities this offers to modify the field. As a point of comparison we use the solvable Rosen-Zener model, which has parameter dependencies roughly similar to the ones expected in a real cavity. We do confirm that by repeatedly sending atoms through the cavity, we can obtain filters on the photon states. Highly non-classical states can be obtained. We find that the Rosen-Zener model is more sensitive to the detuning than the case of a trigonometric coupling.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Validity of adiabaticity in Cavity QED

This paper deals with the concept of adiabaticity for fully quantum mechanically cavity QED models. The physically interesting cases of Gaussian and standing wave shapes of the cavity mode are considered. An analytical approximate measure for adiabaticity is given and compared with numerical wave packet simulations. Good agreement is obtained where the approximations are expected to be valid. Usually for cavity QED systems, the large atom-field detuning case is considered as the adiabatic limit. We, however, show that adiabaticity is also valid, for the Gaussian mode shape, in the opposite limit. Effective semiclassical time dependent models, which do not take into account the shape of the wave packet, are derived. Corrections to such an effective theory, which are purely quantum mechanical, are discussed. It is shown that many of the results presented can be applied to time dependent two-level systems.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Food products for space applications

Specially-prepared foodstuffs supply an astronaut with a diet containing his basic nutritional requirements in a form that is useful in his enironment. Several edible coatings preserve foods and give loose foods form and firmness. These coatings aid in packaging and give the food slip for easy removal from the package

A systematic program of cometary spectroscopy

Some early results of a systematic program of observing the spectroscopic behavior of comets as a function of heliocentric distance are presented. An ultraviolet sensitive microchannel plate intensifier spectrograph was used to record the 3000-5000A spectrum of comets brighter than magnitude 17 with a spectral resolution of 8 or 16A, followed by direct image for better interpretation of the spatial distribution of spectral features. Although the goals of the program require much more time and data, some interesting results from Comets Schwassmann-Wachmann, 1, Bradfield and Bowell were obtained