Circumscribing the Right to Bear Arms: the Second Amendment, Gun Violence, and Gun Control in California and Mississippi

The United States occupies a unique position amongst countries around the world when it comes to gun rights. While the United States is one of three countries that provides its people the constitutional right to bear arms, it is the only country that has more guns per capita than residents. Further, because of the saturation of guns in the United States, the country significantly leads in the amount of gun-related homicides than any other developed nation. Nevertheless, state legislatures have circumscribed gun rights within the bounds of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution to curb gun violence. This note weighs California and Mississippi’s gun control laws against rates of gun violence in the respective states. Using critical race theory, the paper concludes that while there is a direct correlation between stricter gun control laws and lower gun violence, gun violence disproportionately affects Black Americans. These findings are grounded in social, historical, political, and constitutional analyse

Temperature based rapid SAW humidity sensor

This paper investigates the effect of temperature on the sensitivity of a thin-film Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) based SAW humidity sensor. A PVA coated 433.92 MHz SAW resonator-based humidity sensor was fabricated and tested with different levels of humidity (0.5 to 95% RH) at different operating temperatures (10°C to 70°C). The sensor response was recorded through in-house developed data acquisition software and it was observed that PVA thin film coated SAW sensor shows the maximum sensitivity for trace level moisture detection at a lower temperature (≤10 °C). The sensor sensitivity has been recorded >400Hz/% RH for trace level detection (0.5–30% RH). It has been observed that sensor sensitivity deteriorates when temperature increased to 40 °C from 10 °C. The sensor has a fast response (~1s) and recovery time (<3s) for trace level humidity detection. The proposed sensor can be used in many applications, including fabrication of electronic devices, IC fabrication, pharmaceutical, textile industries, food processing, semiconductor device fabrication, and packaging

Evolutionary study on two closed Gammarus (Crustacea, Amphipoda) species from Zagros Mountains (Iran) using molecular methods

Mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit I DNA sequences are a good discriminative marker for phylogenetic studies in crustaceans and especially in amphipoda. In the present study, molecular and morphological data were analyzed to test whether Gammarus lobifer authority and Gammarus balutchi authority which [sic] one or two geographically separated but morphologically similar species. The analyses proved that there are two species and that uplift of the Zagros Mountains was probably the most important cause of Allopatric speciation in this region during the Miocene period

Towards Extended Bit Tracking for Scalable and Robust RFID Tag Identification Systems

The surge in demand for Internet of Things (IoT) systems and applications has motivated a paradigm shift in the development of viable radio frequency identification technology (RFID)-based solutions for ubiquitous real-Time monitoring and tracking. Bit tracking-based anti-collision algorithms have attracted considerable attention, recently, due to its positive impact on decreasing the identification time. We aim to extend bit tracking to work effectively over erroneous channels and scalable multi RFID readers systems. Towards this objective, we extend the bit tracking technique along two dimensions. First, we introduce and evaluate a type of bit errors that appears only in bit tracking-based anti-collision algorithms called false collided bit error in single reader RFID systems. A false collided bit error occurs when a reader perceives a bit sent by tag as an erroneous bit due to channel imperfection and not because of a physical collision. This phenomenon results in a significant increase in the identification delay. We introduce a novel, zero overhead algorithm called false collided bit error selective recovery tackling the error. There is a repetition gain in bit tracking-based anti-collision algorithms due to their nature, which can be utilized to detect and correct false collided bit errors without adding extra coding bits. Second, we extend bit tracking to 'error-free' scalable mutli-reader systems, while leaving the study of multi-readers tag identification over imperfect channels for future work. We propose the multi-reader RFID tag identification using bit tracking (MRTI-BT) algorithm which allows concurrent tag identification, by neighboring RFID readers, as opposed to time-consuming scheduling. MRTI-BT identifies tags exclusive to different RFIDs, concurrently. The concept of bit tracking and the proposed parallel identification property are leveraged to reduce the identification time compared to the state-of-The-Art. 2013 IEEE.This work was supported by the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation) through NPRP under Grant 7-684-1-127. The work of A. Fahim and T. ElBatt was supported by the Vodafone Egypt Foundation.Scopu

Effect of strong electrolytes on edible oils part III: viscosity of canola oil in 1,4-dioxane in the presence of HCl, NaOH and NaCl at different temperatures

Effect of strong electrolytes on the viscosity of canola oil in 1,4 dioxane was undertaken. The viscosity of oil in 1,4 dioxane was found to increase with the concentration of oil and decrease with rise in temperature. Strong electrolytes reduce the rate of flow of oil in 1,4 dioxane. It was noted that amongst these electrolytes, NaOH is more efficient reducing electrolyte than HCl and NaCl. The study was also extended in terms of ion-ion and ion-solvent interactions. The values of Jones-Dole coefficients (A and B) were evaluated graphically. The increase in negative values of A-cefficient with temperature is due to agitation of the molecules at higher temperature, dissociation and partial association of electrolytes in 1,4 dioxane. The positive values of B-cefficient show that these electrolytes behave as structure breaker in 1,4 dioxane. Distortion of the solvent structure is not appreciable (small), which resulted in the positive values of B-coefficient. Fluidity parameters were also evaluated and the change in these values with temperature and concentration of oil shows that the electrolytes behave as structure breaker. The energy of activation, latent heat of vaporization and molar volume of oil were also evaluated and discussed. Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management Vol. 10(1) 2006: 47-5

Effect of strong electrolytes on edible oils part II: vViscosity of maize oil in 1,4-dioxane in the presence of HCl, NaOH and NaCl at different temperatures

The effects of strong electrolytes like HCl, NaOH and NaCl on the viscosity of maize oil at various temperatures (298 – 323 K) with the difference of 5 K using 1,4 dioxane as solvent were determined. The viscosity of oil was found to be increased with the increasing concentration of oil and decreases with the rise of temperature. The addition of electrolytes decreases the viscosity of oil although very little which shows that the electrolytes increase the distance between oil molecules and cause the enhancement of rate of flow and the increment of temperature drops the rate of flow of the solutions. Furthermore the concentration of electrolytes increases the viscosity of oil solutions. It is due to the presence of unsaturated ingredients present in the oil and thermal effect. The electrolytes behave as structure breaker. The effect of temperature was also determined in terms of fluidity parameters, energy of activation, latent heat of vaporization, molar volume of oil and free energy change of activation for viscous flow. Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management Vol. 10 (3) 2006: 67-7

Bullous X linked retinoschisis: clinical features and prognosis

BACKGROUND/AIMS: A subset of patients with X linked retinoschisis (XLRS) have bullous schisis cavities in the peripheral retina. This study describes the characteristics and prognosis of the bullous form of XLRS. METHODS: A retrospective case series was performed of nine patients with molecularly proven bullous XLRS seen at a single tertiary centre. RESULTS: All cases of bullous peripheral schisis were bilateral, with one unilateral case at presentation which developed into bilateral bullous schisis over time. The mean age of onset was 1.9 years (range: 1 month-7 years, SD: 2.1 years) and at clinical diagnosis was 5.9 years (range: 1 month-27 years, SD: 9.0 years). Mean follow-up was 11 years (range: 6 months-36 years, SD: 10.8 years). Strabismus was the most common presentation (n=7). Other presenting complaints included decreased vision, floaters and an irregularly shaped pupil. The most frequently associated ocular features were strabismus (100%), vitreous haemorrhage (4/18 eyes, 22%), nystagmus (2/9, 22%) and persistent fetal vasculature (1/18, 6%). Localised tractional detachment was seen in 2/18 (11%) eyes, total detachment that underwent surgical repair in 1/18 (6%) and pigmented demarcation lines in a further 22% of the eyes. There was one eye with exudative retinal detachment. CONCLUSION: In XLRS, bullous schisis may be congenital or develop soon after birth and most commonly presents with strabismus. Cases may be complicated by some form of retinal detachment, which may be tractional or a Coats-like exudative detachment

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the development, integration and application of cognitive ontologies

We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge 3 is to test the utility of these resources for large-scale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their community-wide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data