From Memphis, with Love: A Model to Protect Protesters in the Age of Surveillance

In 1978, after two years of contentious litigation, the City of Memphis entered into a unique agreement with its citizens: it signed a consent decree, stipulating that it would halt its interference with First Amendment–protected activities. More specifically, the Consent Decree barred the City from surveilling protesters—the very conduct that triggered litigation. Fast forward forty years. In 2018, narratives of police brutality dominated the nation’s headlines. Consequently, protesters demonstrated from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri to Oakland, California. And in Memphis, Tennessee, those who protested were often met with an all-too-familiar response—surveillance by the Memphis Police Department. That is until the Western District of Tennessee found that the City had violated the terms of its own agreement. The court’s message was undeniably clear—the Memphis Consent Decree is alive and well. Memphis is by no means an outlier in police–civilian relations. After all, police departments across the country surveil protesters. But Memphis is an outlier in terms of the method it has chosen to address this issue. As the surveillance of protesters and the capacity to surveil protesters grow, the Memphis Consent Decree offers a model for future legislation that better safeguards First Amendment values. This Note accordingly narrates the story of Memphis, its successes and failures, and the lessons it holds for hundreds of cities, for decades to come

Characteristics and Performances of Entrepreneurial Management in Romania

The paper presents the results of an empiric research conducted between April and June 2010 and offers a broad view of the management developed in the Romanian SME's, of their performances during the last year and of the methods used by the entrepreneurs and managers to measure the performances of their firm. Also, the paper underlines the characteristics of the management practiced in the firms with superior performances, resulting in a tight bond between the degree of professionalism of the management and the degree of profitability of the firm.entrepreneurial management, Romania.

A mentalist framework for linguistic and extralinguistic communication

We outline some components of a mentalist theory of human communicative competence. Communication in our species is an intentional and overt type of social interaction, based on each agent's capability of entertaining shared mental states and of acting so as to make certain mental states shared with the other. Communicative meaning is a matter of ascription: it is not an intrinsic property of a communicative act, but is instead created here and now as the shared construction of the interlocutors. We then discuss how communicative actions are superficially realized by our species, focusing in particular on the difference between linguistic and extralinguistic (that is, gestural) means of expression. Linguistic communication is the communicative use of a symbol system, whereas extralinguistic communication is the communicative use of a set of symbols. The difference turns out to be a matter of processing rather than of intrinsic structure

Researches regarding the toxicology of saccharin

Saccharin, first synthesized in 1879, eventually became popular as an inexpensive substitute for sugar, particularly as a non-caloric sweetener. The dispute is concerning the safety of saccharin itself. In this article, the history concerning the uses of saccahrin and the accompanying controversy is reviewed. A benefit-risk evaluation for saccharin showed few, if any documentable benefits from the use of saccharin and much genuine uncertainty concerning the potential risks for ingestion by man. This element of genuine uncertainty as to the extent

Fizički integritet i najnovije zakonodavne izmjene u Albaniji

In 2016 Albania went through a major justice reform which provided legislative changes to the already existing institutions, established new ones and sought to improve the procedural guarantees of the accused in criminal trials. While the Albanian Code of Criminal Procedure prior to the changes did not provide for biological evidence or a medical intervention in the course of a criminal investigation, the new legislative changes introduced the concepts of biological evidence and the compulsory physical examination as part of tools in search of the evidence. Even though the draft amendments to the previous Albanian Code of Criminal procedure recognized the problems encountered in practice during the collection of biological evidence vis à vis individual’s rights to personal integrity and dignity, the application of the newly introduced and enacted provisions remains still unclear and raises concerns, not only regarding the possible arbitrary use of such tools by law enforcement authorities, but also on the possible conflicts that can arise from the application of such procedures by medical examiners and physicians and the fundamental rights of the person under examination or undergoing the medical procedure/intervention.U 2016. godini Albanija je prošla kroz veliku reformu pravosuđa koja je već postojećim institucijama donijela zakonske izmjene, uspostavila nove zakone te nastojala poboljšati procesna jamstva optuženih u kaznenim postupcima. Dok albanski Zakon o kaznenom postupku prije ovih izmjena nije predviđao biološke dokaze niti medicinsku intervenciju tijekom kaznene istrage, nove zakonske izmjene predstavile su koncepte bioloških dokaza i obavezni fizički pregled kao dio alata u potrazi za dokazima. Iako su u nacrtima amandmana za prethodni Zakon o kaznenom postupku Albanije prepoznati problemi koji se susreću u praksi tijekom prikupljanja bioloških dokaza s obzirom na prava pojedinca na osobni integritet i dostojanstvo, primjena novouvedenih i donesenih odredbi i dalje ostaje nejasna i izaziva zabrinutost, ne samo u pogledu mogućeg proizvoljnog korištenja takvih alata od strane tijela za provedbu zakona, već i zbog mogućih sukoba koji mogu proizaći iz primjene takvih postupaka od strane medicinskih istražitelja i liječnika te temeljnih prava osobe koju se ispituje ili prolazi kroz medicinski postupak/intervenciju

Job accessibility and employment probability

The objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of residential job accessibility on female employment probability in the metropolitan areas of Barcelona and Madrid. Following a “spatial mismatch” framework, we estimate a female employment probability equation where variables controlling for personal characteristics, residential segregation and employment potential on public transport network are included. Data used come from Microcensus 2001 of INE (National Institute of Statistics). The research focuses on the treatment of endogeneity problems and the measurement of accessibility variables. Our results show that low job accessibility in public transport negatively affects employment probability. The intensity of this effect tends to decrease with individual’s educational attainment. A higher degree of residential segregation also reduces job probability in a significant way..

Executive Information Systems' Multidimensional Models

Executive Information Systems are design to improve the quality of strategic level of management in organization through a new type of technology and several techniques for extracting, transforming, processing, integrating and presenting data in such a way that the organizational knowledge filters can easily associate with this data and turn it into information for the organization. These technologies are known as Business Intelligence Tools. But in order to build analytic reports for Executive Information Systems (EIS) in an organization we need to design a multidimensional model based on the business model from the organization. This paper presents some multidimensional models that can be used in EIS development and propose a new model that is suitable for strategic business requests.Executive Information Systems (EIS), Decision Support Systems (DSS), multidimensional models, Business Intelligence tools, On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)

On the Stability of a Polling System with an Adaptive Service Mechanism

We consider a single-server cyclic polling system with three queues where the server follows an adaptive rule: if it finds one of queues empty in a given cycle, it decides not to visit that queue in the next cycle. In the case of limited service policies, we prove stability and instability results under some conditions which are sufficient but not necessary, in general. Then we discuss open problems with identifying the exact stability region for models with limited service disciplines: we conjecture that a necessary and sufficient condition for the stability may depend on the whole distributions of the primitive sequences, and illustrate that by examples. We conclude the paper with a section on the stability analysis of a polling system with either gated or exhaustive service disciplines.Comment: 16 page

A polling system whose stability region depends on a whole distribution of service times

We present an example of a single-server polling system with two queues and an adaptive service policy where the stability region depends on the expected values of all the primitives and also on a certain exponential moment of the service-time distribution in one of the queues. The latter parameter can not be determined, in general, in terms of any finite number of power moments. It follows that the fluid approximation approach may not be an appropriate tool for the stability study of this model.Comment: 6 page

Sensitivity equations and calibration requirements on airborne interferometry

The usage of an airborne interferometric SAR to mass map production is strongly dependent on the capability of performing the data processing in a near automatic mode. One of the main limitations is related to both the accurate calibration of the system parameters, its stability from flight to flight and the correct in-flight recording of aircraft position and attitude. The unstable movements of an airborne SAR platform, if recorded in an accurate manner, can be corrected during the processing step. Measurement errors and time drifts lead to location errors in the final DEM. The system requirements in both accuracy and stability to fulfil a quality-mapping requirement can be resolved from the sensitivity equations. The same equations can be also used to calibrate the system parameters from the location errors on the imaging of well-known targets, usually corner reflectors.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version