The Wine Is in the Mail: The Twenty-first Amendment and State Laws Against the Direct Shipment of Alcoholic Beverages

The Internet has revolutionized commerce by providing an easy way for businesses to reach vast numbers of customers, and by allowing consumers to attain products of all sorts with the mere click of a mouse. Some wine consumers, however, feel left behind by the Internet revolution. State laws against the direct shipment of alcohol leave them frustrated because they cannot purchase wine online and have it shipped to their homes. These laws against direct shipment have attracted a significant amount of attention in the news media, and they have recently been challenged in a number of federal courts. To understand the direct shipment issue fully, it is necessary to understand the purpose of direct shipment laws and the role they play in states\u27 alcohol regulation schemes. All fifty states regulate the importation and distribution of alcohol in some way. Some states, like Pennsylvania, have state run monopolies whereby all alcohol is sold and distributed through state owned stores. Most states, however, allow private wholesalers and retailers to sell and distribute alcohol pursuant to state-issued licenses. States that allow private, licensed sales and distribution have a three-tier system of distribution. Under these three-tier systems, alcohol suppliers (tier one) are permitted to sell their products only to licensed wholesalers (tier two). The wholesalers collect excise taxes from the suppliers and provide the state with information about the suppliers -and the alcohol that they import. The wholesalers then sell the alcohol to licensed retail outlets within the state (tier three), and make a profit by charging a higher price than they paid to the sup- pliers. The retailers then sell the alcohol to consumers. State laws prohibiting the direct shipment of alcohol protect the integrity of these state distribution systems by prohibiting alcohol suppliers from shipping alcohol directly to in-state consumers without going through the three-tier system. Consequently, under most state alcohol regulation schemes, there are only two ways in which in-state or out-of-state sellers of alcoholic beverages may sell alcohol to in-state consumers: (1) by obtaining a license from the state to do so, or (2) by shipping the beverages through the three- tier system. Many states restrict licenses to in-state residents, leaving out-of-state suppliers with the only option of sending their products through the three-tier system. There are three basic types of direct shipment laws. Twenty-nine states have express prohibition statutes that entirely prohibit direct shipment to consumers by any supplier without a permit. Nine states and the District of Columbia allow limited direct shipment, which generally permits direct shipment to consumers in small quantities. Twelve states have reciprocals with other states, which authorize direct shipment from suppliers in states that reciprocate the direct shipment privilege to its state suppliers

Chemical Facility Information System for Hawaii (CFISH) Final Report

The computer program, the Computer-Aided Management of Emergency Operations (known as CAMEO), contains detailed information about more than 3,000 chemicals, allows air plume modeling, and contains databases with much related information. While CAMEO provides a ready base of information on hazardous materials, it is not designed for use by the general public. In the interest of making the chemical information contained in CAMEO available to the private citizen and thereby meeting the public's right-to-know objectives as expressed under SARA TItle lIl, the Department of Health with funds provided by the Environmental Protection Agency has contracted with the University of Hawaii, Environmental Center, to develop a user-friendly computer program based on the chemical and facility data contained in CAMEO. The new program, CFISH, for Chemical Facility Information System for Hawaii, is designed to facilitate public awareness of the storage, location, use, or accidental spillage of hazardous chemicals in the community. The CFISH program permits the public to examine some 590 chemical facilities within the State with regard to what chemicals are used in their operations, the amounts released to the environment as a routine component of that use, and records of any spills or other accidental releases. The following report reviews our efforts to develop the Chemical Facility Information System for Hawaii (CFISH) and the means taken to educate the public on its content and availability .Hawaii State Department of Health/Office of Hazard Evaluation & Emergency Response U.S. Environmental Protection Agenc

EXAMINING THE VALIDITY OF A COMPUTERIZED CHAKRA MEASURING INSTRUMENT: A Pilot Study

Context: The chakra system, a complex network of energy vortexes that receive and process energy within the body, has been espoused for centuries in Asian and other cultures to playa fundamental role in the health of individuals. Many illnesses are thought to originate as blocked energy within the chakra system, and are often thought to be caused by unresolved psychological trauma. Recently, instruments have been created to measure chakra functioning, but no studies to date have attempted to determine their validity in accordance with chakra theory. Objective: To determine the validity of the Inneracrive Aura Video System 5.1 (lAV system) by examining the relationship between self reported psychological symptoms and chakra levels. Method: Sixty-four university students, 42 Americans and 22 Jamaicans, volunteered to complete the Symptom Checklist 90-R (SCL-90-R) and the IAV system measuring chakra level functioning. Results: The expected overall negative relationship between chakra levels and psychological symptoms was confirmed. Pearson product moment correlation analysis revealed significant negative correlations between chakra levels and psychological symptoms. Implications for future chakra research are discussed

EXAMINING THE VALIDITY OF A COMPUTERIZED CHAKRA MEASURING INSTRUMENT: A Pilot Study

Context: The chakra system, a complex network of energy vortexes that receive and process energy within the body, has been espoused for centuries in Asian and other cultures to playa fundamental role in the health of individuals. Many illnesses are thought to originate as blocked energy within the chakra system, and are often thought to be caused by unresolved psychological trauma. Recently, instruments have been created to measure chakra functioning, but no studies to date have attempted to determine their validity in accordance with chakra theory. Objective: To determine the validity of the Inneracrive Aura Video System 5.1 (lAV system) by examining the relationship between self reported psychological symptoms and chakra levels. Method: Sixty-four university students, 42 Americans and 22 Jamaicans, volunteered to complete the Symptom Checklist 90-R (SCL-90-R) and the IAV system measuring chakra level functioning. Results: The expected overall negative relationship between chakra levels and psychological symptoms was confirmed. Pearson product moment correlation analysis revealed significant negative correlations between chakra levels and psychological symptoms. Implications for future chakra research are discussed

The SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Quasar Target Selection

As part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) IV the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) will improve measurements of the cosmological distance scale by applying the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) method to quasar samples. eBOSS will adopt two approaches to target quasars over 7500 deg^2. First, a "CORE" quasar sample will combine the optical selection in ugriz using a likelihood-based routine called XDQSOz, with a mid-IR-optical color cut. eBOSS CORE selection (to g 2.1 quasars. Second, a selection based on variability in multi-epoch imaging from the Palomar Transient Factory should recover an additional ~3–4 deg^(−2)z > 2.1 quasars to g 2.1 will be used to improve BAO measurements in the Lyα Forest. Beyond its key cosmological goals, eBOSS should be the next-generation quasar survey, comprising >500,000 new quasars and >500,000 uniformly selected spectroscopically confirmed 0.9 < z < 2.2 quasars. At the conclusion of eBOSS, the SDSS will have provided unique spectra for more than 800,000 quasars

The IPAC Image Subtraction and Discovery Pipeline for the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory

We describe the near real-time transient-source discovery engine for the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), currently in operations at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Caltech. We coin this system the IPAC/iPTF Discovery Engine (or IDE). We review the algorithms used for PSF-matching, image subtraction, detection, photometry, and machine-learned (ML) vetting of extracted transient candidates. We also review the performance of our ML classifier. For a limiting signal-to-noise ratio of 4 in relatively unconfused regions, "bogus" candidates from processing artifacts and imperfect image subtractions outnumber real transients by ~ 10:1. This can be considerably higher for image data with inaccurate astrometric and/or PSF-matching solutions. Despite this occasionally high contamination rate, the ML classifier is able to identify real transients with an efficiency (or completeness) of ~ 97% for a maximum tolerable false-positive rate of 1% when classifying raw candidates. All subtraction-image metrics, source features, ML probability-based real-bogus scores, contextual metadata from other surveys, and possible associations with known Solar System objects are stored in a relational database for retrieval by the various science working groups. We review our efforts in mitigating false-positives and our experience in optimizing the overall system in response to the multitude of science projects underway with iPTF.Comment: 66 pages, 21 figures, 7 tables, accepted by PAS

The Palomar Transient Factory and RR Lyrae: The Metallicity–Light Curve Relation Based on ab-type RR Lyrae in the Kepler Field

The wide-field synoptic sky surveys, known as the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), will accumulate a large number of known and new RR Lyrae. These RR Lyrae are good tracers to study the substructure of the Galactic halo if their distance, metallicity, and galactocentric velocity can be measured. Candidates of halo RR Lyrae can be identified from their distance and metallicity before requesting spectroscopic observations for confirmation. This is because both quantities can be obtained via their photometric light curves, because the absolute V-band magnitude for RR Lyrae is correlated with metallicity, and the metallicity can be estimated using a metallicity–light curve relation. To fully utilize the PTF and iPTF light-curve data in related future work, it is necessary to derive the metallicity–light curve relation in the native PTF/iPTF R-band photometric system. In this work, we derived such a relation using the known ab-type RR Lyrae located in the Kepler field, and it is found to be [Fe/H]_(PTF) = -4.089-7.346P + 1.280φ_(31) (where P is pulsational period and φ_(31) is one of the Fourier parameters describing the shape of the light curve), with a dispersion of 0.118 dex. We tested our metallicity–light curve relation with new spectroscopic observations of a few RR Lyrae in the Kepler field, as well as several data sets available in the literature. Our tests demonstrated that the derived metallicity–light curve relation could be used to estimate metallicities for the majority of the RR Lyrae, which are in agreement with the published values

The Palomar Transient Factory and RR Lyrae: The Metallicity–Light Curve Relation Based on ab-type RR Lyrae in the Kepler Field

The wide-field synoptic sky surveys, known as the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), will accumulate a large number of known and new RR Lyrae. These RR Lyrae are good tracers to study the substructure of the Galactic halo if their distance, metallicity, and galactocentric velocity can be measured. Candidates of halo RR Lyrae can be identified from their distance and metallicity before requesting spectroscopic observations for confirmation. This is because both quantities can be obtained via their photometric light curves, because the absolute V-band magnitude for RR Lyrae is correlated with metallicity, and the metallicity can be estimated using a metallicity–light curve relation. To fully utilize the PTF and iPTF light-curve data in related future work, it is necessary to derive the metallicity–light curve relation in the native PTF/iPTF R-band photometric system. In this work, we derived such a relation using the known ab-type RR Lyrae located in the Kepler field, and it is found to be [Fe/H]_(PTF) = -4.089-7.346P + 1.280φ_(31) (where P is pulsational period and φ_(31) is one of the Fourier parameters describing the shape of the light curve), with a dispersion of 0.118 dex. We tested our metallicity–light curve relation with new spectroscopic observations of a few RR Lyrae in the Kepler field, as well as several data sets available in the literature. Our tests demonstrated that the derived metallicity–light curve relation could be used to estimate metallicities for the majority of the RR Lyrae, which are in agreement with the published values