Special purpose computer provides programmable digital filter for sampled-data control systems

Generalized digital filter is a special purpose computer. The term digital filter is an algorithm which accepts an input sequence of numbers and transforms it into an output number sequence. The organization of the computer, the logical design and synthesis, and experimentaion with the computer in two sampled data control systems is discussed

Protecting the Watchdog: Using the Freedom of Information Act to Preference the Press

The fourth estate is undergoing dramatic changes. Many newspaper reporters, already surrounded by a growing number of empty desks, are shifting their focus away from costly investigative reporting and towards amassing Twitter followers and writing the perfect “share line.” Newspapers’ budgets can no longer robustly support accountability journalism and pitching fights against the government. And so, while this busier and noisier media environment may have a desirable democratizing effect—more of us are able to participate in analyzing, debating, and perhaps even making the news—it has not succeeded in filling a role that print journalists have traditionally played well—keeping watch on the government. In order to perpetuate its historical role as watchdog, the fourth estate needs fortification. This fortification should come in the form of legal preferences for the press. Providing such preferences is not new, but it arguably has not been done in a significant way since postal subsidies were granted to newspapers in the colonial era. Today, with few exceptions, the law generally treats journalists just like any other citizens and news organizations like any other business. This article proposes a new way to preference the press—one that would not involve direct subsidies or discriminating between old media and new. Instead, it would give journalists a commodity that is fundamental to their work: information. To preference the press, this article looks to the Freedom of Information Act, the law governing when and how the executive branch discloses information to the public. While in theory the law facilitates the press’s access to vast amounts of information in the hands of the executive branch, implementation of FOIA has, since it was passed in 1966, been fraught with problems. Agencies routinely take months and even years to respond to journalists’ requests, making the process incompatible with a news cycle that is spinning ever faster. This article proposes focusing on FOIA’s expedited processing provisions to prioritize journalists’ requests over those of other requesters, expedite agency fulfillment of them, and ease the press’s ability to challenge late, incomplete, or otherwise unsatisfactory disclosures. It argues that any journalist filing a FOIA request seeking expedited processing should presumptively go to the front of the queue. At that point, there would be firm deadlines (where none exist now) for providing the journalist with the information requested. These small but significant changes to an already established provision of FOIA could help the media better serve as a watchdog at a time when that role needs protecting

Electrical grounding bracket

Device serves as common grounding point for shielded wires of multipin electrical connector and permits addition or removal of ground leads without disturbing other grounded wires

Making News: Balancing Newsworthiness and Privacy in the Age of Algorithms

In deciding privacy lawsuits against media defendants, courts have for decades deferred to the media. They have given it wide berth to determine what is newsworthy and so, what is protected under the First Amendment. And in doing so, they have often spoken reverently of the editorial process and journalistic decision-making. Yet, in just the last several years, news production and consumption has changed dramatically. As we get more of our news from digital and social media sites, the role of information gatekeeper is shifting from journalists to computer engineers, programmers, and app designers. The algorithms that the latter write and that underlie Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms are not only influencing what we read but are prompting journalists to approach their craft differently. While the Restatement (Second) of Torts says that a glance at any morning newspaper can confirm what qualifies as newsworthy, this article argues that the modern-day corollary (which might involve a glance at a Facebook News Feed) is not true. If we want to meaningfully balance privacy and First Amendment rights, then courts should not be so quick to defer to the press in privacy tort cases, especially given that courts’ assumptions about how the press makes newsworthiness decisions may no longer be accurate. This article offers several suggestions for making better-reasoned decisions in privacy cases against the press

News as Surveillance

As inhabitants of the Information Age, we are increasingly aware of the amount and kind of data that technology platforms collect on us. Far less publicized, however, is how much data news organizations collect on us as we read the news online and how they allow third parties to collect that personal data as well. A handful of studies by computer scientists reveal that, as a group, news websites are among the Internet’s worst offenders when it comes to tracking their visitors. On the one hand, this surveillance is unsurprising. It is capitalism at work. The press’s business model has long been advertising-based. Yet, today this business model raises particular First Amendment concerns. The press, a named beneficiary of the First Amendment and a First Amendment institution, is gathering user reading history. This is a violation of what legal scholars call “intellectual privacy”—a right foundational to our First Amendment free speech rights. And because of the perpetrator, this surveillance has the potential to cause far-reaching harms. Not only does it injure the individual reader or citizen, it injures society. News consumption helps each of us engage in the democratic process. It is, in fact, practically a prerequisite to our participation. Moreover, for an institution whose success is dependent on its readers’ trust, one that checks abuses of power, this surveillance seems like a special brand of betrayal. Rather than an attack on journalists or journalism, this Essay is an attack on a particular press business model. It is also a call to grapple with it before the press faces greater public backlash. Originally given as the keynote for the Washburn Law Journal’s symposium, The Future of Cyber Speech, Media, and Privacy, this Essay argues for transforming and diversifying press business models and offers up other suggestions for minimizing the use of news as surveillance

Promoting Journalism as Method

The marketplace of ideas has been a centerpiece of free speech jurisprudence for a century. According to the marketplace theory, the vigorous competition of ideas, free from government interference, is the surest path to truth. As our metaphorical marketplace has moved online, the competition has never been so heated. We should be drowning in truth. Yet, in reality, truth has perhaps never been more elusive. As we struggle to promote democratic debate and surface truth in our chaotic networked public sphere, we are understandably drawn to familiar frames and tools. These include the source of the marketplace of ideas theory—the First Amendment—as well the institutional press, once a key gatekeeper of that marketplace. Yet, both the institutional press and the First Amendment have limitations that hamper their ability to spark transformative change. Instead, this Article proposes that we look to journalism. Journalism is not the press or a journalist. Rather, it is a method and a practice—an evolving system for gathering, curating, and conveying information. Among its aims are accuracy and truth, the checking of power, and the creation of spaces for criticism and compromise. Seeding and propagating journalism could have numerous benefits. It could help to provide some of the norms desperately needed for our new information environment. It might inject democratic values into an information ecology that is driven by profit-seeking. It could create friction where speed and scale now reign. Finally, it could help reinvigorate and even repopulate an institutional press in desperate need of reinforcement

Platforms and the Fall of the Fourth Estate: Looking Beyond the First Amendment to Protect Watchdog Journalism

Journalists see the First Amendment as an amulet, and with good reason. It has long protected the Fourth Estate—an independent institutional press—in its exercise of editorial discretion to check government power. This protection helped the Fourth Estate flourish in the second half of the twentieth century and ably perform its constitutional watchdog role. But in the last two decades, the media ecology has changed. The Fourth Estate has been subsumed by a Networked Press in which journalists are joined by engineers, algorithms, audience, and other human and non-human actors in creating and distributing news. The Networked Press’s most powerful members are platforms. These platforms—companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter—shun the media label even as they function as information gatekeepers and news editors. Their norms and values, including personalization and speed, stymie watchdog reporting. The Networked Press regime significantly threatens watchdog journalism, speech that is at the core of the press’s constitutional role. Yet, limited by the state action doctrine, the First Amendment cannot shield this speech from a threat by private actors like platforms. Today, the First Amendment is insufficient to protect a free press that can serve as a check on government tyranny. This article argues that we must look beyond the First Amendment to protect watchdog journalism from the corrosive power of platforms. It describes the limits of the First Amendment and precisely how platforms threaten watchdog journalism. It also proposes a menu of extra-constitutional options for bolstering this essential brand of speech

What\u27s in a Name? New Bacterial Species and Changes to Taxonomic Status from 2012 through 2015

Technological advancements in fields such as molecular genetics and the human microbiome have resulted in an unprecedented recognition of new bacterial genus/species designations by the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. Knowledge of designations involving clinically significant bacterial species would benefit clinical microbiologists in the context of emerging pathogens, performance of accurate organism identification, and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. In anticipation of subsequent taxonomic changes being compiled by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology on a biannual basis, this compendium summarizes novel species and taxonomic revisions specific to bacteria derived from human clinical specimens from the calendar years 2012 through 2015

A nonlinear encoder Technical report no. 1, 9 May - 9 Sep. 1964

Nonlinear encoder - sinusoidal reference voltage, comparator, nonlinear counter, and clock inhibit circui

A study of high-speed AD and DA converters using redundancy techniques Interim report, May 10, 1963 - May 9, 1964

High speed analog-to-digital converters compared using redundancy encoding technique