Balancing Sexual Autonomy, Responsibility, and the Right to Privacy: Principles for Criminalizing Sex by Deception

Due to the reconceptualization of rape and other sexual offenses as violations of one's sexual autonomy, consent has replaced the element of force as the focal point of rape law. This shift to a “consent model” of rape has prompted much discussion about the scope of sexual autonomy and the problem of “rape by deception” in legal scholarship. Most theorists of consent argue that certain forms of deception invalidate any token of consent in the same way as forcible sexual contact. However, there is also a widely shared concern that criminalizing sex-by-deception poses serious problems in terms of drawing the line between deceptions that violate sexual autonomy and deceptions that do not. This Article offers an account of principles that should be considered when examining legal cases related to sex-by-deception. These principles are examined and articulated in a way that strikes a balance between responsibility, autonomy, and rights such as the right to privacy

Early development of Hypogymnia physodes (L.) Nyl. in response to emissions from a copper smelter

The early development of Hypogymnia physodes from soredia to the formation of stratified lobes has been studied experimentally in the vicinity of a copper-smelting plant in theMiddle Urals. SEM investigations combined with life table analyses of early developmental stages revealed decreases in soredial survival and developmental rate in polluted localities. Non-stricatified pre-thallus stages without an epicortex were tolerant to toxic impact and were able to survive even in the zone with the highest pollution (lichen desert zone). The sensitivity of developmental stagesancreased after stratified lobes had develope

Convergent Chaos

Chaos is widely understood as being a consequence of sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. This is the result of an instability in phase space, which separates trajectories exponentially. Here, we demonstrate that this criterion should be refined. Despite their overall intrinsic instability, trajectories may be very strongly convergent in phase space over extremely long periods, as revealed by our investigation of a simple chaotic system (a realistic model for small bodies in a turbulent flow). We establish that this strong convergence is a multi-facetted phenomenon, in which the clustering is intense, widespread and balanced by lacunarity of other regions. Power laws, indicative of scale-free features, characterize the distribution of particles in the system. We use large-deviation and extreme-value statistics to explain the effect. Our results show that the interpretation of the 'butterfly effect' needs to be carefully qualified. We argue that the combination of mixing and clustering processes makes our specific model relevant to understanding the evolution of simple organisms. Lastly, this notion of convergent chaos, which implies the existence of conditions for which uncertainties are unexpectedly small, may also be relevant to the valuation of insurance and futures contracts

A transition from river networks to scale-free networks

A spatial network is constructed on a two dimensional space where the nodes are geometrical points located at randomly distributed positions which are labeled sequentially in increasing order of one of their co-ordinates. Starting with $N$ such points the network is grown by including them one by one according to the serial number into the growing network. The $t$-th point is attached to the $i$-th node of the network using the probability: $\pi_i(t) \sim k_i(t)\ell_{ti}^{\alpha}$ where $k_i(t)$ is the degree of the $i$-th node and $\ell_{ti}$ is the Euclidean distance between the points $t$ and $i$. Here $\alpha$ is a continuously tunable parameter and while for $\alpha=0$ one gets the simple Barab\'asi-Albert network, the case for $\alpha \to -\infty$ corresponds to the spatially continuous version of the well known Scheidegger's river network problem. The modulating parameter $\alpha$ is tuned to study the transition between the two different critical behaviors at a specific value $\alpha_c$ which we numerically estimate to be -2.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figur

Energy and momentum of cylindrical gravitational waves. II

Recently Nathan Rosen and the present author obtained the energy and momentum densities of cylindrical gravitational waves in Einstein's prescription and found them to be finite and reasonable. In the present paper we calculate the same in prescriptions of Tolman as well as Landau and Lifshitz and discuss the results.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, To appear in Pramana- J. Physic

Statistical Mechanics of the Chinese Restaurant Process: lack of self-averaging, anomalous finite-size effects and condensation

The Pitman-Yor, or Chinese Restaurant Process, is a stochastic process that generates distributions following a power-law with exponents lower than two, as found in a numerous physical, biological, technological and social systems. We discuss its rich behavior with the tools and viewpoint of statistical mechanics. We show that this process invariably gives rise to a condensation, i.e. a distribution dominated by a finite number of classes. We also evaluate thoroughly the finite-size effects, finding that the lack of stationary state and self-averaging of the process creates realization-dependent cutoffs and behavior of the distributions with no equivalent in other statistical mechanical models.Comment: (5pages, 1 figure

Eradication of an epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from a geriatric university hospital: evidence from a 10-year follow-up

We report on a successful eradication of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) after an epidemic in 1992 in the geriatric ward of a tertiary-care hospital. After identification of MRSA in seven patients, all patients and staff members in the geriatric ward underwent screening. A multifaceted intervention plan was implemented: contact isolation, optimization of infection control and decolonization of all MRSA carriers. Thirty-two patients and five staff members were found to be MRSA carriers. Twenty one of 32 (66%) patients and all five staff members were successfully decolonized. Seven of 32 (22%) patients died during the epidemic before decolonization. A couple was discharged with persisting MRSA colonization and two individuals were lost to follow-up. The eradication of the epidemic clone was proven by systematic screenings in 1995 and 1997. Since then, the strain has no longer been identified in our institution, based on epidemiological surveillance and molecular typing of all MRSA strains obtained from any specimen. This study provides strong evidence that long-term eradication of an MRSA epidemic in a hospital is feasible, and endemicity of MRSA after an outbreak can be avoided. The successful bundle approach for eradication of MRSA during an epidemic is expensive, but the long-term benefits likely outweigh the initial heavy use of resource

Stalagmite water content as a proxy for drip water supply in tropical and subtropical areas

In this pilot study water was extracted from samples of two Holocene stalagmites from Socotra Island, Yemen, and one Eemian stalagmite from southern continental Yemen. The amount of water extracted per unit mass of stalagmite rock, termed "water yield" hereafter, serves as a measure of its total water content. Based on direct correlation plots of water yields and δ18Ocalcite and on regime shift analyses, we demonstrate that for the studied stalagmites the water yield records vary systematically with the corresponding oxygen isotopic compositions of the calcite (δ18Ocalcite). Within each stalagmite lower δ18Ocalcite values are accompanied by lower water yields and vice versa. The δ18Ocalcite records of the studied stalagmites have previously been interpreted to predominantly reflect the amount of rainfall in the area; thus, water yields can be linked to drip water supply. Higher, and therefore more continuous drip water supply caused by higher rainfall rates, supports homogeneous deposition of calcite with low porosity and therefore a small fraction of water-filled inclusions, resulting in low water yields of the respective samples. A reduction of drip water supply fosters irregular growth of calcite with higher porosity, leading to an increase of the fraction of water-filled inclusions and thus higher water yields. The results are consistent with the literature on stalagmite growth and supported by optical inspection of thin sections of our samples. We propose that for a stalagmite from a dry tropical or subtropical area, its water yield record represents a novel paleo-climate proxy recording changes in drip water supply, which can in turn be interpreted in terms of associated rainfall rates

Exact Calculation of the Spatio-temporal Correlations in the Takayasu model and in the q-model of Force Fluctuations in Bead Packs

We calculate exactly the two point mass-mass correlations in arbitrary spatial dimensions in the aggregation model of Takayasu. In this model, masses diffuse on a lattice, coalesce upon contact and adsorb unit mass from outside at a constant rate. Our exact calculation of the variance of mass at a given site proves explicitly, without making any assumption of scaling, that the upper critical dimension of the model is 2. We also extend our method to calculate the spatio-temporal correlations in a generalized class of models with aggregation, fragmentation and injection which include, in particular, the $q$-model of force fluctuations in bead packs. We present explicit expressions for the spatio-temporal force-force correlation function in the $q$-model. These can be used to test the applicability of the $q$-model in experiments.Comment: 15 pages, RevTex, 2 figure

Searching for the MSW Enhancement

We point out that the length scale associated with the MSW effect is the radius of the Earth. Therefore to verify matter enhancement of neutrino oscillations, it will be necessary to study neutrinos passing through the Earth. For the parameters of MSW solutions to the solar neutrino problem, the only detectable effects occur in a narrow band of energies from 5 to 10 MeV. We propose that serious consideration be given to mounting an experiment at a location within 9.5 degrees of the equator.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe