Managing the Misinformation Marketplace: The First Amendment and the Fight Against Fake News

In recent years, fake news has overtaken the internet. Fake news publishers are able to disseminate false stories widely and cheaply on social media websites, amassing millions of likes, comments, and shares, with some fake news even “trending” on certain platforms. The ease with which a publisher can create and spread falsehoods has led to a marketplace of misinformation unprecedented in size and power. People’s vulnerability to fake news means that they are far less likely to receive accurate political information and are therefore unable to make informed decisions when voting. Because a democratic system relies on an informed populace to determine how it should act, fake news presents a unique threat to U.S. democracy. Although fake news threatens democratic institutions, First Amendment protections for false speech present a significant obstacle for regulatory remedies. This Note explores the ways these speech protections interfere with the government’s ability to protect political discourse—the process that enables it to function effectively—and proposes that the government regulate journalists to ensure that people can rely on legitimate news media to receive accurate information

Managing the Misinformation Marketplace: The First Amendment and the Fight Against Fake News

In recent years, fake news has overtaken the internet. Fake news publishers are able to disseminate false stories widely and cheaply on social media websites, amassing millions of likes, comments, and shares, with some fake news even “trending” on certain platforms. The ease with which a publisher can create and spread falsehoods has led to a marketplace of misinformation unprecedented in size and power. People’s vulnerability to fake news means that they are far less likely to receive accurate political information and are therefore unable to make informed decisions when voting. Because a democratic system relies on an informed populace to determine how it should act, fake news presents a unique threat to U.S. democracy. Although fake news threatens democratic institutions, First Amendment protections for false speech present a significant obstacle for regulatory remedies. This Note explores the ways these speech protections interfere with the government’s ability to protect political discourse—the process that enables it to function effectively—and proposes that the government regulate journalists to ensure that people can rely on legitimate news media to receive accurate information

Vertical propagation of submeso and coherent structure in a tall and dense amazon forest in different stability conditions. PART II: Coherent structures analysis

Observations of the vertical structure of the turbulent flow in different stability regimes above and within the Amazon Forest at the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) site have been presented in Part I. Here, the influence of stability on the inception and development of coherent structures is investigated. According to the mixing-layer analogy the coherent vortices that dominate the turbulent flows at the canopy-atmosphere interface are generated by hydrodynamical instabilities triggered by an inflection in the vertical profile of the mean wind speed at or near the canopy top. The coherent motions time, and separation length scale, , depend on the shear length scale, , close to the canopy top. The present analysis studies the characteristics of , and in the five stability regimes defined in Part I. The behaviour of with stability is evaluated and parameterized. increases with decreasing stability, presenting two asymptotes for large unstable and stable stratification and a linear behaviour close to neutral stratification. Coherent structures and their timescale are detected with an original method based on the autocorrelation functions of 5-min subsets of turbulent quantities. The vertical time scale is larger in neutral conditions and decreases for both increasing and decreasing stability. At the canopy top the separation length scale presents a linear dependence on , whose slope is maximum in neutral conditions and decreases departing from neutrality. An original parameterization of the dependence of this slope on , where is the canopy height and is the Obukhov length, is shown. Combining the parameterizations, the dependence of the separation length scale is finally presented. has a maximum for slightly unstable conditions, linearly decreases towards neutral and weakly stable stratifications and then it tends to zero for very intense unstable and stable stratifications

Prosafe: a european endeavor to improve quality of critical care medicine in seven countries

BACKGROUND: long-lasting shared research databases are an important source of epidemiological information and can promote comparison between different healthcare services. Here we present ProsaFe, an advanced international research network in intensive care medicine, with the focus on assessing and improving the quality of care. the project involved 343 icUs in seven countries. all patients admitted to the icU were eligible for data collection. MetHoDs: the ProsaFe network collected data using the same electronic case report form translated into the corresponding languages. a complex, multidimensional validation system was implemented to ensure maximum data quality. individual and aggregate reports by country, region, and icU type were prepared annually. a web-based data-sharing system allowed participants to autonomously perform different analyses on both own data and the entire database. RESULTS: The final analysis was restricted to 262 general ICUs and 432,223 adult patients, mostly admitted to Italian units, where a research network had been active since 1991. organization of critical care medicine in the seven countries was relatively similar, in terms of staffing, case mix and procedures, suggesting a common understanding of the role of critical care medicine. conversely, icU equipment differed, and patient outcomes showed wide variations among countries. coNclUsioNs: ProsaFe is a permanent, stable, open access, multilingual database for clinical benchmarking, icU self-evaluation and research within and across countries, which offers a unique opportunity to improve the quality of critical care. its entry into routine clinical practice on a voluntary basis is testimony to the success and viability of the endeavor