Commentary: Justice Who Follows Scalia\u27s Path Would Hurt the Working Class

During the campaign, Donald Trump released a list of 21 conservatives from which he promised to pick Supreme Court justices, should he win the election. With President-elect Trump apparently nearing a decision on a nominee to replace the late Justice Scalia, Senate Republicans are no doubt eagerly awaiting the chance to confirm Trump\u27s pick and restore a conservative majority on the court. [excerpt

Cavity state preparation using adiabatic transfer

We show how to prepare a variety of cavity field states for multiple cavities. The state preparation technique used is related to the method of stimulated adiabatic Raman passage or STIRAP. The cavity modes are coupled by atoms, making it possible to transfer an arbitrary cavity field state from one cavity to another, and also to prepare non-trivial cavity field states. In particular, we show how to prepare entangled states of two or more cavities, such as an EPR state and a W state, as well as various entangled superpositions of coherent states in different cavities, including Schrodinger cat states. The theoretical considerations are supported by numerical simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Eco-Labels for Credence Attributes: The Case of Shade-Grown Coffee

Using the case of shade-grown coffee, this paper examines the market impacts of eco-labels for credence attributes. First, the Mattoo and Singh (1994) test is conducted for the case of shade-grown coffee to investigate the market impacts of a shade label. This analysis in Section II shows that a shade label could pass the test, but the market impacts are likely to be minor. Section II also shows how to use estimates of supply, potential demand, and price elasticities of demand and supply to predict eco-label premiums in the post-label equilibrium. And second, given the importance of consumer demands for eco-label impacts, and since the theoretical foundations of demand for eco-labeled items are not well developed in the literature, Section III takes a closer look at the microeconomics of labels and consumer demand. A nested constant-elasticity-of-substitution preference structure is used to derive theoretically consistent Marshallian demands for shade and non-shade coffee. A numerical simulation shows how relative prices and consumer preferences for the credence attribute and variety are both important factors in demand creation of labeled items.Environmental Economics and Policy, Marketing,

EUROPEAN UNION ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES AND IMPORTS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS FROM THE UNITED STATES

The EU is the third largest regional export market for US agricultural products, with over $6 billion in annual sales. In principle, EU environmental policies designed to control domestic externalities could alter US agricultural exports to the EU. This paper develops a range of theoretically consistent and empirically relevant sectoral models that can be used to estimate the impact of environmental regulations on EU imports of US agricultural products. Section 2 reviews EU environmental policies to discuss how they may directly and indirectly affect EU demand for US agricultural imports. Section 3 develops models for size cases. Cases 1-3 are developed for homogeneous products. Case 1 assumes prices are fixed and the EU policy is a process regulation imposed on domestic producers. Case 2 extends Case 1 to include equilibrium price adjustments. Case 3 extends Case 2 to the situation where the EU policy is a product standard that affects both EU and US producers, although not necessarily in the same way. Cases 4-6 are developed for differentiated products. Case 4 focuses on EU process regulations with equilibrium price adjustments, and Case 5 extends the model to allow for eco-label policies that might shift EU consumer demands for both domestic and imported items. Case 6 extends Case 5 to allow for product standard policies in markets for differentiated products with eco-labels. Section 4 concludes.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Fearless: Bruce Larson and Alice Carter

This Monday, Professor of political science and public policy, Bruce Larson, Assistant Director of Development, Alumni, and Parent Relations, and Technology, Alice Carter, and daughter Lily Larson will be leaving for a semester in Beijing, China. Professor Larson will be joining the ranks of Gettysburg College’s Fulbright recipients, teaching two courses at the China Foreign Affairs University while conducting his research

Validity of adiabaticity in Cavity QED

This paper deals with the concept of adiabaticity for fully quantum mechanically cavity QED models. The physically interesting cases of Gaussian and standing wave shapes of the cavity mode are considered. An analytical approximate measure for adiabaticity is given and compared with numerical wave packet simulations. Good agreement is obtained where the approximations are expected to be valid. Usually for cavity QED systems, the large atom-field detuning case is considered as the adiabatic limit. We, however, show that adiabaticity is also valid, for the Gaussian mode shape, in the opposite limit. Effective semiclassical time dependent models, which do not take into account the shape of the wave packet, are derived. Corrections to such an effective theory, which are purely quantum mechanical, are discussed. It is shown that many of the results presented can be applied to time dependent two-level systems.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

The Indo-Australian weevil genus Platytenes Pascoe, 1870 (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Cryptorhynchinae)

The formerly monotypic weevil genus Platytenes Pascoe (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Cryptorhynchinae: Cryptorhynchini: Cryptorhynchina) as treated here, includes two commonly encountered and broadly distributed species in the eastern Indo-Australian region. Label data indicate that both species are associated with semicultivated betel palm (Areca catechu L., Arecaceae) and human mediated dispersal is suggested to have influenced their present-day distribution. Herein, we provide a diagnosis for Platytenes and redescribe its type species, P. varius Pascoe. We also describe P. occultus Setliff and Larson, a new species from the Solomon Islands. New host and locality records are provided, including the first records of the genus occurring on Ambon Island, the Bismarck Archipelago, D’Entrecasteaux Islands, and many previously unreported localities on New Guinea. A full bibliography, key to species, and distribution map for the genus are also provided