The Freedom of Information Act Reimagined: Lawmaking, Transparency, and National Security In Twenty-First-Century America

When it was originally passed in the United States in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was the broadest and most comprehensive freedom of information law in the world. Based on the idea that the American people have a right to know about the inner workings of their government, FOIA allowed anyone in the country to request and obtain access to a wide variety of records held by federal agencies. Over the past half century, the law has been used by journalists and other concerned citizens to expose countless instances of waste, fraud, and mismanagement in government. However, half a century after it was originally created, FOIA no longer seems to be working as intended, as evidence suggests that the government is releasing less information to the public than ever before. This project examines FOIA’s development over the past 50 years, with a particular focus on three recent updates to the law that initially seemed to fix its problems but ultimately appear to have been ineffective. Why is a law that once worked so well to increase transparency no longer doing so? And what are the consequences of a more secretive government? Three explanations for the law’s recent shortcomings are discussed and analyzed

Biophysical Measurements of Cells, Microtubules, and DNA with an Atomic Force Microscope

Atomic force microscopes (AFMs) are ubiquitous in research laboratories and have recently been priced for use in teaching laboratories. Here we review several AFM platforms (Dimension 3000 by Digital Instruments, EasyScan2 by Nanosurf, ezAFM by Nanomagnetics, and TKAFM by Thorlabs) and describe various biophysical experiments that could be done in the teaching laboratory using these instruments. In particular, we focus on experiments that image biological materials and quantify biophysical parameters: 1) imaging cells to determine membrane tension, 2) imaging microtubules to determine their persistence length, 3) imaging the random walk of DNA molecules to determine their contour length, and 4) imaging stretched DNA molecules to measure the tensional force.Comment: 29 page preprint, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Bounds on Lorentz and CPT Violation from the Earth-Ionosphere Cavity

Electromagnetic resonant cavities form the basis of many tests of Lorentz invariance involving photons. The effects of some forms of Lorentz violation scale with cavity size. We investigate possible signals of violations in the naturally occurring resonances formed in the Earth-ionosphere cavity. Comparison with observed resonances places the first terrestrial constraints on coefficients associated with dimension-three Lorentz-violating operators at the level of 10^{-20} GeV.Comment: 8 pages REVTe

Scanning X-ray Diffraction Microscopy for Diamond Quantum Sensing

Understanding nano- and micro-scale crystal strain in CVD diamond is crucial to the advancement of diamond quantum technologies. In particular, the presence of such strain and its characterization present a challenge to diamond-based quantum sensing and information applications -- as well as for future dark matter detectors where directional information of incoming particles is encoded in crystal strain. Here, we exploit nanofocused scanning X-ray diffraction microscopy to quantitatively measure crystal deformation from growth defects in CVD diamond with high spatial and strain resolution. Combining information from multiple Bragg angles allows stereoscopic three-dimensional reconstruction of strained volumes; the diffraction results are validated via comparison to optical measurements of the strain tensor based on spin-state-dependent spectroscopy of ensembles of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in the diamond. Our results open a path towards directional detection of dark matter via X-ray measurement of crystal strain, and provide a new tool for diamond growth analysis and improvement of defect-based sensing.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures (incl. Supplemental Material

Prospectus, November 18, 1991

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1991/1017/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, September 9, 1991

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1991/1012/thumbnail.jp