Race Decriminalization and Criminal Legal System Reform

There is emerging consensus that various components of the criminal legal system have gone too far in capturing and punishing masses of Black men, women, and children. This evolving recognition has helped propel important and pathbreaking criminal legal reforms in recent years, with significant bipartisan support. These reforms have targeted the criminal legal system itself. They strive to address the pain inflicted by the system. However, by concerning themselves solely with the criminal legal system, these reforms do not confront the reality that Black men, women, and children will continue to be devastatingly overrepresented in each stitch of the system. As a result, these reforms do not reach deeply enough. They do not address or confront the reality that simply being Black has been and will continue to be criminalized. This Article asserts that measures beyond these reforms—measures that reach the root of racial criminalization—are necessary for true criminal legal system transformation

Determinants of farmers’ compliance with coffee eco-certification standards in Mt. Kenya region

This paper sought to investigate determinants of farmers’ compliance with coffee eco-certification standards in Mt. Kenya region. Socio-economic, institutional and farm factors were analyzed and the binary logistic regression model was used to predict factors enhancing compliance. The findings show that perception of benefits, coffee as the main source of income, annual coffee production, and the number of times a farmer sprayed annually; were the main drivers of compliance. The findings point towards a growing concern that certification projects focus on ‘progressive’ farmers rather than seek to uplift and integrate ‘weak’ farmers. This calls for concerted efforts among all key stakeholders to enhance inclusivity and participation.Crop Production/Industries,

Effective mass in quantum effects of radiation pressure

We study the quantum effects of radiation pressure in a high-finesse cavity with a mirror coated on a mechanical resonator. We show that the optomechanical coupling can be described by an effective susceptibility which takes into account every acoustic modes of the resonator and their coupling to the light. At low frequency this effective response is similar to a harmonic response with an effective mass smaller than the total mass of the mirror. For a plano-convex resonator the effective mass is related to the light spot size and becomes very small for small optical waists, thus enhancing the quantum effects of optomechanical coupling.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, RevTe

Quantum limits of cold damping with optomechanical coupling

Thermal noise of a mirror can be reduced by cold damping. The displacement is measured with a high-finesse cavity and controlled with the radiation pressure of a modulated light beam. We establish the general quantum limits of noise in cold damping mechanisms and we show that the optomechanical system allows to reach these limits. Displacement noise can be arbitrarily reduced in a narrow frequency band. In a wide-band analysis we show that thermal fluctuations are reduced as with classical damping whereas quantum zero-point fluctuations are left unchanged. The only limit of cold damping is then due to zero-point energy of the mirrorComment: 10 pages, 3 figures, RevTe