389 research outputs found
All In, But Left Out: How the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act Seeks to Eradicate Online Gambling in the United States
In recent years, gambling on the Internet has evolved into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The industry has been particularly entrenched in the United States, whose citizens at one time accounted for up to one-half of all Internet gambling revenues. However, the landscape of Internet gambling in the United States changed drastically in 2006, when President George W Bush signed into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The crucial provision of the UIGEA is its prohibition of the acceptance of payments, made by United States banks and creditors, to purveyors of unlawful Internet gambling enterprises. By targeting United States financial institutions instead of individual gamblers, the UIGEA attempts to indirectly prohibit Internet gambling within U.S. borders.
The UIGEA, however, is not without both legal and pragmatic problems. This Note seeks to illustrate those problems and to predict how the UIGEA will continue to affect the Internet gambling industry. First, the Note provides a background of prior attempts at regulation of Internet gambling, both at the state and federal level. Second, it engages in a textual analysis of the UIGEA, recognizing potential legal arguments both for and against the law. Third, the Note touches on how the UIGEA has affected an ongoing trade dispute between the United States and Antigua and Barbuda. Finally, the Note recognizes potential enforcement problems raised by the UIGEA, even if all of its provisions are legally sound
Entanglement properties of optical coherent states under amplitude damping
Through concurrence, we characterize the entanglement properties of optical
coherent-state qubits subject to an amplitude damping channel. We investigate
the distillation capabilities of known error correcting codes and obtain upper
bounds on the entanglement depending on the non-orthogonality of the coherent
states and the channel damping parameter. This work provides a first, full
quantitative analysis of these photon-loss codes which are naturally
reminiscent of the standard qubit codes against Pauli errors.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Revised version with small corrections; main
results remain unaltere
GPS radio occultation with CHAMP: monitoring of climate change parameters
International audienceThe Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) technique offers a valuable new data source for global and continuous monitoring of the Earth's atmosphere. Refractivity, temperature and water vapor profiles with high accuracy and vertical resolution can be derived from this method. The GPS RO technique requires no calibration, is not affected by clouds, aerosols or precipitation, and the occultations are almost uniformly distributed over the globe. In this paper the potential of GPS RO for monitoring of the temperature is demonstrated exemplarily for the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) region using GPS RO data from the German CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload) satellite mission. In addition, results of a 1DVAR retrieval scheme to derive tropospheric water vapor profiles using ECMWF data as background will be discussed. CHAMP RO data are available since 2001 with up to 200 high resolution temperature profiles per day. The temperature bias between CHAMP temperature profiles and radiosonde data as well as ECMWF analyses is less than 0.5 K between 300?30 hPa. The CHAMP RO experiment generates the first long-term RO data set. Other satellite missions will follow (GRACE, TerraSAR-X, COSMIC, METOP) generating some thousand profiles of atmospheric parameters daily
GPS radio occultation with CHAMP and SAC-C: global monitoring of thermal tropopause parameters
In this study the global lapse-rate tropopause (LRT) pressure, temperature, potential temperature, and sharpness are discussed based on Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultations (RO) from the German CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload) and the U.S.-Argentinian SAC-C (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-C) satellite missions. Results with respect to seasonal variations are compared with operational radiosonde data and ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast) operational analyses. Results on the tropical quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) are updated from an earlier study. CHAMP RO data are available continuously since May 2001 with on average 150 high resolution temperature profiles per day. SAC-C data are available for several periods in 2001 and 2002. In this study temperature data from CHAMP for the period May 2001-December 2004 and SAC-C data from August 2001-October 2001 and March 2002-November 2002 were used, respectively. The bias between GPS RO temperature profiles and radiosonde data was found to be less than 1.5K between 300 and 10hPa with a standard deviation of 2-3K. Between 200-20hPa the bias is even less than 0.5K (2K standard deviation). The mean deviations based on 167699 comparisons between CHAMP/SAC-C and ECMWF LRT parameters are (-2.1±37.1)hPa for pressure and (0.1±4.2)K for temperature. Comparisons of LRT pressure and temperature between CHAMP and nearby radiosondes (13230) resulted in (5.8±19.8)hPa and (-0.1±3.3)K, respectively. The comparisons between CHAMP/SAC-C and ECMWF show on average the largest differences in the vicinity of the jet streams with up to 700m in LRT altitude and 3K in LRT temperature, respectively. The CHAMP mission generates the first long-term RO data set. Other satellite missions will follow (GRACE, COSMIC, MetOp, TerraSAR-X, EQUARS) generating together some thousand temperature profiles daily
Efficient Heralding of Photonic Qubits with Apllications to Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution
We present an efficient way of heralding photonic qubit signals using linear
optics devices. First we show that one can obtain asymptotically perfect
heralding and unit success probability with growing resources. Second, we show
that even using finite resources, we can improve qualitatively and
quantitatively over earlier heralding results. In the latte r scenario, we can
obtain perfect heralded photonic qubits while maintaining a finite success
probability. We demonstrate the advantage of our heralding scheme by predicting
key rates for device independent quantum key distribution, taking imperfections
of sources and detectors into account
Open-source Arduino-compatible data loggers designed for field research
Automated electronic data loggers revolutionized environmental monitoring by
enabling reliable high-frequency measurements. However, the potential to
monitor the complex environmental interactions involved in global change has
not been fully realized due to the high cost and lack of modularity of
commercially available data loggers. Responding to this need, we developed
the ALog (Arduino logger) series of three open-source data loggers, based on the popular and
easy-to-program Arduino microcontroller platform. ALog data loggers are low
cost, lightweight, and low power; they function between −30 and
+60 ∘C, can be powered by readily available alkaline batteries, and
can store up to 32 GB of data locally. They are compatible with standard
environmental sensors, and the ALog firmware library may be expanded to add
additional sensor support. The ALog has measured parameters linked to
weather, streamflow, and glacier melt during deployments of days to years at
field sites in the USA, Canada, Argentina, and Ecuador. The result of this
work is a robust and field-tested open-source data logger that is the direct
descendant of dozens of individuals' contributions to the growing open-source
electronics movement.</p
Rapid and accurate simultaneous determination of abamectin and ivermectin in bovine milk by high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection
An analytical method using high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection for the simultaneous determination of abamectin and ivermectin in bovine milk was developed and validated. The best recovery results were achieved by using acetonitrile for extraction of the compounds followed by solid phase extraction in cartridges containing C18 for the purification of the extract. Pre-column derivatization was accomplished with N-methylimidazole and trifluoroacetic anhydride. The method limit of detection (LOD) values for abamectin and ivermectin were 0.10 and 0.14 µg L-1 and the limit of quantification (LOQ) values were 0.18 and 0.36 µg L-1, respectively. The recoveries were from 75 to 101%, with RSD values lower than 10%. The LOD and LOQ values are lower than the maximum residue limits (MRLs) in milk established by Codex Alimentarius, European Union and the Brazilian legislation
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