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Improving Infrared Sensor Temperature Readings by Machine Analysis of Emissivity
No full textTemperature is an important and first step in determining the health of individuals. Using an infrared temperature sensor is easy to do, quick, and does not involve touching a patient. Current devices are useful but technological advances in electronics have brought new capabilities to infrared temperature readings. One advance has narrowed the field of view and thereby increased the distance range of infrared thermometers. This feature would allow health care personnel to avoid exposure to a contagious zone surrounding a patient. A second feature allows users to include the emissivity of infrared readings for humans. Neither of these advances can be exploited by current infrared thermometers leaving a void in the practical application of this new breed of infrared sensors. A 2014 report by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and in Health (CADTH) questioned the accuracy of infrared thermometers and called for more research. This dissertation explores the parameters of the basic physics underlying infrared sensors. A methodology is developed to conduct various testing regimes using C++ or Python software programming and two surveys of students were conducted using a modern sensor. The evaluation of the results determined the accuracy and range of infrared sensor temperature readings were improved with the inclusion of the emissivity parameter using machine analysis of emissivity
Fair Use and First Amendment: Without Fair Use, What Would You Freely Speak About?
Get PDFThe question this paper tries to answer is: Without fair use, what would you freely speak about? This paper will seek to demonstrate that the Copyright Clause’s Fair Use doctrine, and the First Amendment are cousins who help each other, rather than enemies sworn to destroy each other as some believe. First I will give a brief overview and history of each doctrine. Next I will speak about three areas where I believe fair use and the First Amendment cross paths extensively. These areas are: (1) school/education; (2) social media and news; and (3) sports images/broadcasting. Finally, I will demonstrate how fair use is as important if not more important than the First Amendment for these categories that I have listed
Religion Lessons from Europe: Intolerant Secularism, Pluralistic Neutrality, and the U.S. Supreme Court
Get PDFCase law from the European Court of Human Rights demonstrates to the U.S. Supreme Court how a pluralistic neutrality principle can enrich the American society and harness the value of faith in the public sphere, while at the same time retaining the vigorous protection of individual religious rights. The unfortunate alternative to a jurisprudence built around pluralistic neutrality is the inevitability of intolerant secularism—an increasingly militant separation of religious ideals from the public life, leading ultimately to a repressive society that has no room in its government for religious citizens. The results of intolerant secularism are seen in a recent series of negative cases decided by the European Court, which illustrate how highly secularized nations can trample the fundamental rights of religious citizens for the sake of secular ideals. The Supreme Court can avoid this type of intolerance in the United States by distancing itself from the principle of strict neutrality that the Court often has repeated in its Establishment Clause cases. A better path for the Supreme Court is to emulate a series of positive cases from the European Court that demonstrate pluralistic values. These cases show the value that religion can bring to public life, and the ability of progressive nations to welcome religious diversity into the public square without harming individual rights. The net result of this shift in the Supreme Court’s focus—without sacrificing the value and purpose of the Establishment Clause—would be to promote the cause of religious pluralism in the United States, and to enhance the dignity of the American people to live out their religious faith in the community insofar as they choose (or do not choose) to do
Feminist Judging Matters: How Feminist Theory and Methods Affect the Process of Judgment
Get PDFThe word “feminism” means different things to its many supporters (and undoubtedly, to its detractors). For some, it refers to the historic struggle: first to realize the right of women to vote and then to eliminate explicit discrimination against women from the nation\u27s laws. For others, it is a political movement, the purpose of which is to raise awareness about and to overcome past and present oppression faced by women. For still others, it is a philosophy--a system of thought--and a community of belief centering on attaining political, social, and economic equality for women, men, and people of any gender.
For us, the editors of Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, feminism is all of those things and more. Feminism is both a movement and a mode of inquiry. In its best and most capacious form, feminism embraces justice for all and seeks to ally itself with rights-based movements for people of color, the poor, immigrants, refugees, religious minorities, disabled individuals, LGBTQ+ people, and other historically marginalized groups.
This essay presents feminism as the foundation for a developing form of rich, complex, and practical legal scholarship--the lens and the means through which we may approach and resolve many legal problems. First, this essay explores the intellectual foundations of feminist legal theory and situates the United States and international feminist judgments projects within that scholarly tradition. It next considers how the feminist judgments projects move beyond traditional academic scholarship to bridge the gap between the real-world practice of law and feminist theory, a move that made the publication of Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court an especially fitting topic for the 10th Annual Conference held at the University of Baltimore Center on Applied Feminism.
When they write feminist judgments (using feminist perspectives or methods to produce revised versions of actual court opinions), feminist authors translate feminist theory into the language of law practice and judging. Their translations demonstrate the potential for lawyers to incorporate feminist theory and methods into oral and written arguments, for law students to gain deeper insights from and to learn the practical utility of feminist theory, and for judges to recognize how incorporating feminist perspectives may transform the reasoning or outcome of a case without changing the law or the facts of the underlying lawsuit. Finally, this essay uses contemporary examples of feminist judging to illustrate that the gap between feminist theory and judicial decision making is narrowing, a real-world advance that suggests a widening judicial audience for Feminist Judgments
Targeted Capture
Get PDFThis Article confronts one of the most difficult and contested questions in the debate about targeted killing that has raged in academic and policy circles over the last decade. Suppose that, in wartime, the target of a military strike may readily be neutralized through nonlethal means such as capture. Do the attacking forces have an obligation to pursue that nonlethal alternative? The Article defends the duty to employ less restrictive means (“LRM”) in wartime, and it advances several novel arguments in defense of that obligation. In contrast to those who look to external restraints--such as those imposed by international human rights law, U.S. constitutional law, or, indeed, the laws of war themselves--to check the operation of military necessity, I argue that the most plausible LRM obligation exists as a limitation embedded within the necessity principle itself. Indeed, the principle of military necessity supports not one, but two, related LRM restraints. The first restraint--virtually ignored yet highly relevant to contemporary debates--is a right reason requirement: it prohibits the killing of combatants for reasons unrelated to the pursuit of military advantage. Specifically, the necessity principle does not permit a preference for lethal force over capture when that preference is driven by considerations such as retributive justice, a desire to avoid due process obligations relating to capture and trial, raising morale, and diplomatic sensitivities. The second restraint--more familiar to the debate yet still deserving of further exploration--is objective in nature. It demands that lethal force benefit from a cognizable expectation of military advantage. The Article develops and defends these claims, engages both contrary and complementary viewpoints, and anticipates objections
Safety from Plea-Bargains’ Hazards
Get PDFThere is a significant risk—in safety terms, a hazard—that the wide gap between the defendant’s anticipated punishment if convicted at trial and the relatively lighter punishment if he confesses in a plea-bargain will lead not only the guilty but also the innocent to confessing. In practice, only 3% of all federal cases go to trial, and only 6% of state cases. In the remainder, conviction is obtained through plea-bargaining. Indeed, plea-bargains are one of the central mechanisms facilitating false convictions.
In other fields, the meaning of a “safety-critical system” is well understood, and resources are, therefore, invested in modern safety methods, which reduce significantly the rate of accidents. This is the case, for example, in the aviation field, which abandoned the “Fly-Fix-Fly” approach and developed more advanced safety methods that generally follow an “Identify-Analyze-Control” model and are aimed at “First-Time-Safe.” Under this approach, there is systematic identification of future hazards, analysis of the probability of their occurrence, and a complete neutralization of the risk, or at least its reduction to an acceptable level.
A false conviction is a system error and accident just like a plane crash. But in criminal law, a Hidden Accidents Principle governs and almost all the false convictions are never detected. Therefore, not enough thought has been given to the system’s safety. Empiric studies based on the Innocence Project’s findings point to a very high false-conviction rate: at least 5% for the most serious crimes. Regarding convictions based on plea-bargains, the rate is probably significantly higher since the commission of the offense and the guilt of the accused are not proved by significant evidence.
This article proposes a theory and some initial tools for incorporating modern safety into the criminal justice system. Specifically, I demonstrate how the innovative “System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes” (STAMP) safety model can be applied in the criminal justice system, by developing constraints, controls, and barriers against the existing hazards in the context of convictions based on plea-bargains.
Additionally, the article suggests an innovative idea, of recognizing defendants’ right to a fair plea-bargain offer. Plea-bargains need not be dependent on the goodwill of a particular prosecutor toward a particular defendant or her defense counsel
New York Breaks Gideon’s Promise
Get PDFIn 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States held that criminal defendants have the constitutional right to counsel, regardless of whether they can afford one, in the famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright. However, statistics, as well as public defense attorneys, reveal that the Supreme Court’s decision has yet to be fulfilled. Part of the problem is due to the system of mass incarceration in the United States. In 2013, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that the prison population reached 2.3 million individuals, compared to the 217,000 inmates imprisoned when Gideon was decided. The American Bar Association estimates that between 60 to 90 percent of criminal defendants cannot afford a lawyer, and must rely on public criminal defense services.
Even though there has been an exceptional rate of criminalization and growth in the prison system population, funding for public defenders remains inadequate and meager compared to prosecution offices. In 2007, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), determined that state and local public defender offices’ budgets were merely 5.8 billion. BJS further concluded that only 27 percent of county-based public defender offices have an adequate number of attorneys to effectively manage their caseloads.
This has real consequences for defendants. “Numerous studies that stretch from the 1980s to recent years show that public defenders meet with clients less quickly, file fewer motions, plea-bargain more often, and get charges dismissed less often than private attorneys.” However, since politicians receive little incentive from voters to reform the public defense system and increase public defender offices’ funding, these deficits continue to persist in jurisdictions. The absence of a political upside for lawmakers to increase funding may be the reason why Governor Cuomo of New York vetoed Bill S.8114/A.10706, a criminal justice reform bill that would have required New York State, rather than the individual counties, to provide funding for public defender office
If War Is Everywhere, Then Must the Law Be Nowhere?
Get PDFThis response focuses on one of the most difficult questions posed by Rosa Brooks\u27s How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: How should the erosion of the war / peace dichotomy impact the justifications for the use of lethal force by the United States government and what, if any, role is there for law in this context? While Brooks is unambiguously critical of Bush administration legal policies that asserted expansive executive war powers, she is less certain about the Obama administration\u27s own reliance on the war paradigm to justify its targeted killing policies. While describing these policies as “undermining the international rule of law,” Brooks declines to take a firm stance on whether they are lawful or unlawful, and she rejects the views of critics who would “jam war back into its old box.” It is a credit to Brooks that she is willing to acknowledge such ambivalence, but her approach comes at a cost. It is difficult to maintain a critical stance on governmental policy while simultaneously undermining the very legal foundations that most plausibly support that stance. In this way, critique quickly turns into apology
Dadless: Dead Dads in Hamlet and the Effects on their Children
Get PDFThis research is a close look at the methods of grief as depicted by the children who lose their fathers in William Shakespeare\u27s classic Hamlet.. The goal is to track each child\u27s reaction to the sudden bereavement in a variety of physical and emotional manifestations. This has been done by first examining current literature on the text, followed by a review of historical context of the period in which the play was written, and finally analyzing each character\u27s behavior. In doing so, this research seeks to highlight the importance of the presence of fathers within Hamlet and provide insight as to how bereavement shapes the narrative of not only a series of characters, but also of hundreds of years\u27 worth of audiences
21st Century Propaganda: The Age of Twitter
Get PDFTwitter is a new platform in which politics and social engagement has found a home. Due to this a new medium to propagate a message has emerged that is unlike traditional platforms of propaganda. I hypothesize that traditional tactics of analyzing propaganda are no longer sufficient. I conducted an 8 week study cataloguing tweets that contained either the hashtag #falseflag or #hoax that were based on current topics in the United States. In total I retrieved 128 tweets. I first analyzed these tweets through the seven traditional tactics of propaganda and found that they were only present in 51% of tweets, and therefore no longer a sufficient classifier of propaganda. I propose six new characteristics of Twitter propaganda that create a model to determining if a message includes propagandist material. These characteristics include: (1) a call to action, (2) questioning a proposed or accepted argument, (3) questioning a person’s authority or an authoritative power, (4) evidence given or a proposed argument, (5) a call to a person, and (6) placement of blame