High resolution images at 11 and 20 microns of the Active Galactic Nucleus in NGC 1068

We present diffraction-limited IR images at 11.2 and 20.5 microns of the central 6''x6'' region in NGC 1068, collected with the CAMIRAS instrument mounted at the f/36 IR focus of the CFHT/Hawaii 3.6m telescope and at the f/35 IR focus of the ESO/La Silla 3.6m telescope, respectively. After deconvolution, the achieved resolution (0.6'') reveals a prominent central core emitting about 95 % of the total flux at these wavelengths, as well as extended emission, to the South-West and to the North-East, broken into patchy components which are particularly conspicuous at 20.5 microns and can be isolated as individual clouds. The central core shows an East-West FWHM of 0.6'' (hence unresolved) and a North-South FWHM of 0.9'' corresponding to a resolved full size extension of abound 100 pc. Such an elongated shape is in agreement with model predictions of a dusty/molecular torus surrounding the central engine in NGC 1068, observed under an inclination angle around 65 degrees.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysic

The Legacy of Civil Rights and the Opportunity for Transactional Law Clinics

At the end of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously paraphrased abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker stating, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The implication of the phrase is that the social justice goals of the Civil Rights Movement would eventually be achieved. His prayer was that servants of justice would be rewarded in due time. In other words, that the goals of the Civil Rights Movement would be achievable at some point in the future. President Obama resurrected the phrase throughout his presidential campaign and throughout his presidency. The President was so taken with the phrase that he even had the quote woven into the presidential rug in the Oval Office during his tenure in the White House

Financial Inclusion, Cryptocurrency, and Afrofuturism

As a community, Black people consistently face barriers to full participation in traditional financial markets. The decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency market is attractive to a community that has been historically and systematically excluded from the traditional financial markets by both private and public actors. As new entrants to any type of financial market, Black people have increasingly embraced blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as a path towards the wealth-building opportunities and financial freedom they have been denied in traditional markets. This Article analyzes whether the technology’s decentralized system will lead to financial inclusion or increased financial exclusion. Without reconciling the racially discriminatory history or effects of the current central financial system, the innovative decentralized appeal to Black people will do little to overcome economic inequity. It may be possible that some cryptocurrencies can be tools for financial inclusion by improving economic outcomes and building wealth outside of traditional financial institutions, but without an intervention, a decentralized system will not necessarily lead to decentralized wealth. The rise of cryptocurrency presents an opportunity to think about how to create a fairer, more inclusive financial system. Taken together with the financial exclusions of the past, cryptocurrency can be a vehicle through which we think about true financial inclusion. However, asking traditionally marginalized groups to participate in an extremely risky cryptocurrency market in pursuit of racial equity is an unrealistic solution given the legacy and reality of financial exclusion. A decentralized system cannot fix the systemic racial inequality that has been embedded in our financial systems. This Article proposes using an Afrofuturist framework in the shaping of policy toward cryptocurrency. An Afrofuturist paradigm pushes for systemic problems to be solved through wholesale systems change rather than tinkering at the margins. Moving forward using an Afrofuturist lens would facilitate a rethinking of our financial systems and the role of cryptocurrency as a portal for racial equity

What\u27s Wrong with Jumpstart(ing) Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act?

Lack of access to financial capital is a barrier for many entrepreneurs who seek to grow their business venture. In an effort to democratize the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Congress and the Obama Administration enacted the JOBS Act, which implements and regulates crowdfunding. The democratic nature of the online crowdfunding platforms is a seemingly attractive solution to structural and institutionalized barriers to fundraising within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Although the JOBS Act is a laudable step, the legislation does not in practice help entrepreneurs and herein lies one of its greatest shortcomings. The JOBS Act is unduly burdensome and is yet another barrier for entrepreneurs. Merely permitting underrepresented entrepreneurs and unsophisticated investors to engage in an alternative investment scheme of crowdfunding to raise capital does not solve the problems of access to traditional sources of capital. This article makes concrete proposals for addressing these shortcomings

Deals or No Deals: Integrating Transactional Skills in the First Year Curriculum

In the wake of criticism of legal education from both outside the academy and within, the mandate for developing and graduating practice-ready attorneys has never been clearer. There is a strong desire for law schools to begin graduating students who are practice-ready, meaning that these new attorneys would be prepared for the real practice of law upon graduation. The question of what type of practice remains. At least half, if not more, of all attorneys engage in some form of transactional practice, rather than litigation, or other form of dispute resolution. Transactional practice refers to the art of “planning, negotiating, documenting, and closing the deal.” The fact that so many practicing attorneys engage in transactional work indicates that, in order for law schools to produce truly practice-ready attorneys, law schools must train students for practice in both transactional and litigation fields. If law schools are not teaching transactional skills, then law schools are failing to teach over half of all lawyers the skills necessary to practice law. By changing the status quo, students may leave law school with both a more productive set of lawyering skills and a broader view of how they can contribute to the profession and the communities lawyers serve. If not changed, law schools will have failed in any effort to graduate practice-ready students.This article joins a growing body of scholarship on the pedagogy of transactional law and skills. This article challenges the traditional pedagogy of teaching law students to think like a lawyer and argues that law schools should shift the analytical framework of a litigation-dominated model, which is typically taught in the first year, to a model that incorporates transactional skills teaching into the first year law school curriculum

The Economic Justice Imperative for Transactional Law Clinics

The economic, political, and social volatility of the sixties and seventies, out of which clinical legal education was born, has certain mythical qualities for most law students, and perhaps some law professors. America still bears the scars of the economic policies of those previous eras, such as redlining, blockbusting, poverty and urban decay. While the realities of the era may seem out of reach for many of our students, those policies arising out of that era have contributed to the wealth gap in this country, which has worsened over the last twenty years. Now more than ever, society needs social justice lawyers, not just practice-ready lawyers, and, in particular, not just litigators. Despite this need, transactional clinical pedagogy prioritizes the practice-readiness of students. While an important concern, prioritizing student practice-readiness seems misguided at best and fails our students at worst.This Article challenges the dichotomy between practice-readiness and client service in a business law clinic and expands transactional clinical pedagogy by reinforcing the public interest and social justice functions served by such clinics. Further, this Article highlights the socio-historic contexts of transactional lawyering and argues that transactional lawyering and, specifically, the uniqueness of a transactional clinic, can offer a public service model to students. The primary contribution of this Article is a perspective on transactional clinical pedagogy that is inclusive of the civil rights movement and the fight for economic rights

The Wealth Gap and the Racial Disparities in the Startup Ecosystem

Although much attention has been given to structural inequality as it manifests in the criminal justice context, little has been said about economic inequality as it relates to the startup ecosystem. This Article details how the historic creation of the wealth gap affects entrepreneurship, highlighting how the wealth gap adversely impacts entrepreneurs of color. Entrepreneurship is a compelling solution to wealth inequality, but wealth inequality can be an impediment to success in entrepreneurship. This Article explains how the United States’ history of bolstering wealth creation for some, while inhibiting wealth creation for people of color, matters for understanding the startup ecosystem today. This Article describes how access to traditional and innovative sources of capital raising perpetuates the racial wealth gap, and this Article makes concrete proposals for addressing these shortcomings

Nowhere to Run to, Nowhere to Hide

As the COVID-19 global pandemic ravaged the United States, exacerbating the country’s existing racial disparities, Black and brown small business owners navigated unprecedented obstacles to stay afloat. Adding even more hardship and challenges, the United States also engaged in a nationwide racial reckoning in the wake of the murder of George Floyd resulting in wide-scale protests in the same neighborhoods that initially saw a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 and harming many of the same Black and brown business owners. These business owners had to operate in an environment in which they experienced recurring trauma, mental anguish and uncertainty, along with physical destruction of many of their businesses and communities. This essay looks at how the generation-defining events of 2020 and the first half of 2021 affected the landscape of operating a small business, particularly for Black small business owners in Philadelphia and New York, where the authors run transactional law clinics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Columbia Law School. It goes on to describe how the pandemic and George Floyd protests affected their clinic students, clients, and themselves. The essay analyzes the events of the last year and a half in the historical context of past events of economic disruption and racial unrest. It concludes that a lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be the recognition of systemic racism and inequity that has persisted in American society for over 150 years and how it stunts Black and brown entrepreneurship

Molecular hydrogen in the disk of the Herbig Ae star HD97048

We present high-resolution spectroscopic mid-infrared observations of the circumstellar disk around the Herbig Ae star HD97048 obtained with the VLT Imager and Spectrometer for the mid-InfraRed (VISIR). We conducted observations of mid-infrared pure rotational lines of molecular hydrogen (H2) as a tracer of warm gas in the disk surface layers. In a previous paper, we reported the detection of the S(1) pure rotational line of H2 at 17.035 microns and argued it is arising from the inner regions of the disk around the star. We used VISIR on the VLT for a more comprehensive study based on complementary observations of the other mid-infrared molecular transitions, namely S(2) and S(4) at 12.278 microns and 8.025 microns respectively, to investigate the physical properties of the molecular gas in the circumstellar disk around HD97048. We do not detect neither the S(2) line nor the S(4) H2 line from the disk of HD97048, but we derive upper limits on the integrated line fluxes which allows us to estimate an upper limit on the gas excitation temperature, T_ex < 570 K. This limit on the temperature is consistent with the assumptions previously used in the analysis of the S(1) line, and allows us to set stronger contraints on the mass of warm gas in the inner regions of the disk. Indeed, we estimate the mass of warm gas to be lower than 0.1 M_Jup. We also discuss the probable physical mechanisms which could be responsible of the excitation of H2 in the disk of HD97048.Comment: accepted for publication in Ap