The State of Asylum Representation: Ideas for Change

The plight of refugees-those who flee persecution-touches a chord with Americans, who have supported both a substantial overseas resettlement program and a fair system for asylum seekers. U.S. laws provide a seemingly full opportunity for asylum applicants to explain their fear or actual experience of persecution. In fact, the U.S. offers an extensive process of interviews, hearings, and appeals to ensure that bona fide refugees are not sent back to their persecutors. The substantive law, too, has been developed considerably through administrative and judicial precedents. But how meaningful is a process that, no matter how extensive and developed, leaves asylum seekers on their own to present their claims when only experts understand how the process works and what the case law means? Asylum applicants often have escaped life threatening situations in their home countries and have overcome financial and physical obstacles to reach the United States, only to be faced with a daunting and confusing asylum application process. Legal assistance is permitted, but it must be at no expense to the government. While some asylum seekers find competent representation, many do not. Most of the key players in the U.S. asylum process-the representatives, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ( INS ) trial attorneys, the Asylum Officers and the Immigration Judges– believe that representation makes a difference for those seeking relief and for the effectiveness of the system. Immigration Court data indicates that represented asylum cases are four to six times more likely to succeed than pro se ones. The time has come to develop ways for all asylum seekers to have the type of legal assistance needed to more fully ensure that bona fide refugees receive the protection that the U.S. public wants to give them and that our laws require. Despite the importance of legal representation, there has yet to be a systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of the current delivery mechanisms in place to aid those in need of legal services and the effect of representation on the asylum system in general. This paper examines the state of affairs with regard to asylum representation and attempts to understand better the barriers to representation. It also begins to assess the effects of representation on asylum seekers and the asylum system itself, and to analyze the various ways in which the representation system can be improved

Solar-Terrestrial Simulations of CMEs with a Realistic Initiation Mechanism: Case Study for Active Region 10069

Most simulations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to date either focus on the interplanetary propagation of a giant plasma "blob" without paying too much attention to its origin and to the formation process or they focus on the complex evolution of the coronal magnetic field due to (sub-)photospheric motions which result in an eruption. Here, we present global simulations of CMEs where coronal motions are used to produce a realistic evolution of the coronal magnetic field and cause an eruption. We focus on active region 10069, which produced a number of eruptions in late August 2002, including the August 24, 2002 CME - a fast (~2000 km/s) eruption originating from W81-, as well as a slower eruption on August 22, 2002 (originating from W62). Using a three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of these ejections with the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF), we show how a realistic initiation mechanism enables us to study the deflection of the CME in the corona and in the heliosphere. Reconnection of the erupting magnetic field with that of neighboring streamers and active regions modify the solar connectivity of the field lines connecting to Earth and change the expected solar energetic particle fluxes. Comparing the results at 1 AU of our simulations with in situ observations by the ACE spacecraft, we propose an alternate solar origin for the shock wave observed at L1 on August 26.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, refereed proceedings for Solar Wind 1

Effective one-dimensional description of confined diffusion biased by a transverse gravitational force

Diffusion of point-like non interacting particles in a two-dimensional (2D) channel of varying cross section is considered. The particles are biased by a constant force in the transverse direction. We apply our recurrence mapping procedure, which enables us to derive an effective one-dimensional (1D) evolution equation, governing the 1D density of the particles in the channel. In the limit of stationary flow, we arrive at an extended Fick-Jacobs equation, corrected by an effective diffusion coefficient D(x), depending on the longitudinal coordinate x. Our result is an approximate formula for D(x), involving also influence of the transverse force. Our calculations are verified on the stationary diffusion in a linear cone, which is exactly solvable.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted in Phys. Rev.

Comparing resolved-sideband cooling and measurement-based feedback cooling on an equal footing: analytical results in the regime of ground-state cooling

We show that in the regime of ground-state cooling, simple expressions can be derived for the performance of resolved-sideband cooling --- an example of coherent feedback control --- and optimal linear measurement-based feedback cooling for a harmonic oscillator. These results are valid to leading order in the small parameters that define this regime. They provide insight into the origins of the limitations of coherent and measurement-based feedback for linear systems, and the relationship between them. These limitations are not fundamental bounds imposed by quantum mechanics, but are due to the fact that both cooling methods are restricted to use only a linear interaction with the resonator. We compare the performance of the two methods on an equal footing --- that is, for the same interaction strength --- and confirm that coherent feedback is able to make much better use of the linear interaction than measurement-based feedback. We find that this performance gap is caused not by the back-action noise of the measurement but by the projection noise. We also obtain simple expressions for the maximal cooling that can be obtained by both methods in this regime, optimized over the interaction strength.Comment: 14 pages, 2 png figures; v2: revised for publicatio

Healthiness from Duality

Healthiness is a good old question in program logics that dates back to Dijkstra. It asks for an intrinsic characterization of those predicate transformers which arise as the (backward) interpretation of a certain class of programs. There are several results known for healthiness conditions: for deterministic programs, nondeterministic ones, probabilistic ones, etc. Building upon our previous works on so-called state-and-effect triangles, we contribute a unified categorical framework for investigating healthiness conditions. We find the framework to be centered around a dual adjunction induced by a dualizing object, together with our notion of relative Eilenberg-Moore algebra playing fundamental roles too. The latter notion seems interesting in its own right in the context of monads, Lawvere theories and enriched categories.Comment: 13 pages, Extended version with appendices of a paper accepted to LICS 201

The Book of Job in rabbinic thought.

In the opening chapter of this dissertation, some solutions are offered for the problems arising from the confused and contradictory traditions relating to Job in talmudic-midrashic literature. In successive chapters, the aggadic exegesis of the Book of Job is analysed and evaluated in detail, in order to demonstrate that it was profoundly influenced by traditional views relating to the book's authorship and historical setting. The early tradition that Moses himself was the author of the Book of Job suggested that it shared a special relationship with the Pentateuch, which is presupposed by the Rabbis' consistent use of material from well-defined sections of the book in their expositions and homilies on many aspects of the creation of the world, the corruption of the Generation of the Flood and their ultimate annihilation, and the mythical monsters, to which only a passing allusion is made in the Genesis account of the creation, The aggadic interpretation of the book was influenced further by a tradition of high antiquity, that Job was actually a contemporary of the bondage and the exodus. Consequently, numerous utterances by Job and his companions were treated as allusions to events and personalities involved in Israel's early history as a nation. In the final chapter, the aggadic content of the Targum to Job is re-examined in order to show its conformity with the rabbinic interpretation of the book, and the antiquity of certain traditions preserved in the extant text of the Targum, which may shed some light on the question of the relationship between the existing Targum and the ancient text current in the First Century CE