The Classified Information Procedures Act in the Age of Terrorism: Remodeling CIPA in an Offense-Specific Manner

The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) sets the balancing point between the government’s interest in preventing disclosure of classified information with a criminal defendant’s right to exculpatory material. Although CIPA was originally drafted with espionage cases in mind, the statute has become more commonly associated with terrorism prosecutions. This contextual shift has disrupted CIPA’s interest-balancing formulation by altering the governmental interests at stake. CIPA’s discovery burdens on the defendant are ordinarily constitutionally justified by the strong countervailing state interest in preserving vital national-security information. This concern is less salient with terrorism defendants, who are unlikely to possess state secrets. Accordingly, those defendants may require further reciprocity in discovery procedures to keep the statute within constitutional parameters. This Note examines the ill effects of CIPA’s contextual shift and proposes a set of amendments to alleviate those concerns. Chiefly, this Note suggests an offense-specific CIPA, whereby the procedural mechanisms of the statute are tailored to the offense charged. The three core recommendations of this Note are (1) inclusion of defense counsel in the discovery process and clearer standards to govern discoverability; (2) a limited and qualified declassification requirement in select Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases; and (3) bifurcation of admissibility hearings

Extended Scaling Laws in Numerical Simulations of MHD Turbulence

Magnetised turbulence is ubiquitous in astrophysical systems, where it notoriously spans a broad range of spatial scales. Phenomenological theories of MHD turbulence describe the self-similar dynamics of turbulent fluctuations in the inertial range of scales. Numerical simulations serve to guide and test these theories. However, the computational power that is currently available restricts the simulations to Reynolds numbers that are significantly smaller than those in astrophysical settings. In order to increase computational efficiency and, therefore, probe a larger range of scales, one often takes into account the fundamental anisotropy of field-guided MHD turbulence, with gradients being much slower in the field-parallel direction. The simulations are then optimised by employing the reduced MHD equations and relaxing the field-parallel numerical resolution. In this work we explore a different possibility. We propose that there exist certain quantities that are remarkably stable with respect to the Reynolds number. As an illustration, we study the alignment angle between the magnetic and velocity fluctuations in MHD turbulence, measured as the ratio of two specially constructed structure functions. We find that the scaling of this ratio can be extended surprisingly well into the regime of relatively low Reynolds number. However, the extended scaling becomes easily spoiled when the dissipation range in the simulations is under-resolved. Thus, taking the numerical optimisation methods too far can lead to spurious numerical effects and erroneous representation of the physics of MHD turbulence, which in turn can affect our ability to correctly identify the physical mechanisms that are operating astrophysical systems

Implications of India-Asean Fta on India’s fisheries sector

India and ASEAN signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in trade in goods which came to effect from 1st January 2010. There were apprehensions on the likely impact of this RTA on some sensitive sectors of India such as agriculture, fisheries and plantation crop as large number of people depend on these sectors for their livelihood. India is a large consumer of marine products and export also export part of the catch to international markets (1.7 percent in total world export in 2007). Some of the ASEAN partners of India namely Thailand (5.82%), Vietnam (3.86) and Indonesia (2.14%) have larger presence in international fisheries trade and there is a possibility that they can export these products in to India in the post FTA period. In this context the paper looked in to the various provisions of India ASEAN FTA on fisheries sector and calculated trade complementarity and similarity using different trade indices. The paper found that India has taken adequate precaution to protect its marine sector from large scale dumping. The apprehension that India-ASEAN FTA will lead to substantial import of marine products in to India is unfounded

On Rainbow Connection Number and Connectivity

Rainbow connection number, $rc(G)$, of a connected graph $G$ is the minimum number of colours needed to colour its edges, so that every pair of vertices is connected by at least one path in which no two edges are coloured the same. In this paper we investigate the relationship of rainbow connection number with vertex and edge connectivity. It is already known that for a connected graph with minimum degree $\delta$, the rainbow connection number is upper bounded by $3n/(\delta + 1) + 3$ [Chandran et al., 2010]. This directly gives an upper bound of $3n/(\lambda + 1) + 3$ and $3n/(\kappa + 1) + 3$ for rainbow connection number where $\lambda$ and $\kappa$, respectively, denote the edge and vertex connectivity of the graph. We show that the above bound in terms of edge connectivity is tight up-to additive constants and show that the bound in terms of vertex connectivity can be improved to $(2 + \epsilon)n/\kappa + 23/ \epsilon^2$, for any $\epsilon > 0$. We conjecture that rainbow connection number is upper bounded by $n/\kappa + O(1)$ and show that it is true for $\kappa = 2$. We also show that the conjecture is true for chordal graphs and graphs of girth at least 7.Comment: 10 page

Effects of WIC Program Participation on Food Consumption and Diet Quality

This paper examines the effect of WIC program Participation on food consumption and diet quality of U.S. children between 2 and 4 years of age. Diet quality is assessed using the Healthy Eating Index, U.S. Department of Agriculture's instrument for measuring overall diet quality incorporating ten recommended components of dietary guidelines. The study has found that WIC program participation has significant positive influence in improving diet quality as measured by HEI and several of its components. The analysis has also indicated that the WIC program has significant positive influence in reducing sugar consumption by children. This research and the results presented have potential significance for researchers, economists and policy makers focusing on the determinants of children's diets and the role of Federal food assistance and nutrition education programs.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

A Tobit Analysis of WIC Children's Consumption of Pyramid Group Foods

This paper develops and estimates an econometric model for children's consumption of the Pyramid Group foods using the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII) for the years 1994-96, 1998. This analysis is accomplished using a Tobit model (censored dependent variable) and by appropriately incorporating the survey design characteristics. Results of the regression analysis indicate that participation in the WIC program significantly affects the consumption patterns of children, for certain types of Pyramid Group foods. After controlling for other factors, WIC children consumed more milk, fruit and whole grain and less of added sugar than the group of eligible nonparticipating children.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,