Ninth Circuit Unmasks Anonymous Internet Users and Lowers the Bar for Disclosure of Online Speakers

There is no judicial consensus about what test to apply when plaintiffs attempt to obtain the identity of an anonymous Internet user during discovery in an online defamation case. In July 2010, the Ninth Circuit became the first federal appeals court to devise an articulable test to determine when a plaintiff may compel disclosure of an online commentator. Previously, federal courts had applied inconsistent balancing tests to determine whether disclosure was appropriate. In In re Anonymous Online Speakers, the Ninth Circuit relied upon the Delaware state-court standard from Doe v. Cahill but applied this test in a way that made it easier for commercial defamation plaintiffs to obtain the identity of anonymous defendants. This Article surveys the prevalent online defamation cases, summarizing the three primary judicial tests applied by state courts and positing that other circuits likely will adopt the reasoning set forth in Anonymous Online Speakers for commercial online speech

Get Outta My Face[book]: The Discoverability of Social Networking Data and the Passwords Needed to Access Them

Under what circumstances can a social network user be compelled to turn over his or her user identification and password in civil litigation? In three recent cases, courts attempted to answer this question with varied results. The New York Supreme Court Appellate Division refused to allow discovery of private Facebook information in McCann v. Harleysville Insurance Co. because the discovery request was not sufficiently tailored to reach discoverable information. Soon thereafter, the same court allowed discovery of similar material in Romano v. Steelcase, Inc. based on the level of publicity of the social networking account. In McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway, Inc., the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas allowed discovery of private Facebook information based upon similar considerations as the Romano court. The McMillen court questioned whether the plaintiff should be allowed to block discovery by asserting an evidentiary privilege and determined that no reasonable expectation of confidentiality exists on social networking sites. The court determined that as long as a person’s social network sites contain information relevant to the lawsuit, courts should allow litigants to utilize “all rational means for ascertaining the truth.” This Article first summarizes the potential bases to prohibit discovery of social networking information and communication. It then examines the recent case law and identifies the level of protection courts are willing to afford social networking communication and the login information needed to access them in civil discovery

Family sexual communication and sexual attitudes: understanding the influence on couples sexual communication

Master of ScienceDepartment of Family Studies and Human ServicesJoyce BaptistQuality of couples sexual communication remains an understudied area, despite its link with important relational outcomes such as relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and condom use. Using a sample of 441 college students, this study examined how parent-child sexual communication (frequency, quality and permissive and restrictive messages) is related to sexual attitudes (permissive and idealistic) and couples sexual communication. Results suggests quality of couples sexual communication was positively related to frequency of parent-child sexual communication and negatively related to quality of parent-child sexual communication. There was not a significant relationship between the types of messages about sexuality from parents and quality of couples sexual communication. However, permissive parental messages were positively related to permissive sexual attitudes and restrictive parental messages was negatively related to permissive sexual attitudes. Idealistic sexual attitudes were found to be positively related to couples sexual communication. Finally, idealistic sexual attitudes marginally mediated the relationship between quality of parent-child sexual communication and quality of couples sexual communication. Clinical and research implications are discussed

Sexual Identity and Birth Cohort Differences in Social Support and Its Link with Well-Being among Sexual Minority Individuals

This study examined sexual identity and birth cohort differences in social support and its association with well-being, using a longitudinal national probability sample of 706 cisgender and non-binary sexual minority individuals from the USA. The data allowed for extensive descriptions of perceived social support and support networks across subgroups. Findings demonstrated that sexual identity and birth cohort differences in overall sizes of support networks and levels of perceived social support were small. Furthermore, fixed effects analyses indicated that changes in the size of respondents’ social support networks were not related to well-being, with a one-person change being associated with a.04 SD change in well-being or less, depending on the indicator of well-being being tested. Moreover, changes in perceived social support were only limitedly related to changes in respondents’ well-being, a 1-point change in the scale of perceived social support being associated with a.11 SD change in life-satisfaction. Associations were smaller for overall well-being or psychological distress, the other two indicators of well-being used. Together, these findings could imply that cross-sectional research has overestimated the relevance of social support for the well-being of sexual minority individuals, but also that general social support is insufficiently tailored to the support needs of the sexual minority population

Stress Hormone Cortisol relates to Emotion Expression for Young Children facing Economic Hardship

Background: Around 40% of children in the US face economic hardship. Related stressors influence physiological functioning and brain development, with implications for cognitive and social-emotional functioning. The hormone cortisol indicates stress levels, yet because cortisol responses to current stressors are imposed on baseline levels, the meaning of cortisol as measured on a particular occasion often is unclear: both elevated and depressed cortisol levels can indicate problematic dysregulation. The present study aims to elucidate how cortisol levels relate to expressed emotion for children attending Head Start preschool. Participants: Participants included 70 children attending a Head Start preschool in Philadelphia, PA. Mean age was 4 years, 1 month, and 52.3% were female, 54.5% Black/African American, 15.2% Latino/Hispanic American, 10.3% Asian American, and 20.0% Caucasian/European American. Procedure: Ethical standards were followed, and all procedures were approved by the WCU IRB. The study included: (1) parent demographic interviews at the start of the school year; (2) measurement of child cortisol levels via salivary assay at four times of day on six different days across the school year; (3) coding of children’s emotion expression in their preschool classes directly prior to the measurement of cortisol, using a well validated observational system called AFFEX (Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1989). Results and implications: Preliminary zero-order correlational analyses indicated that children’s expression of sadness was uniquely correlated with elevations in cortisol. No significant relations were indicated for other types of emotion expression. Implications concern understanding how child cortisol levels relate to observed emotions in preschool context

Comprehensive prediction of novel microRNA targets in Arabidopsis thaliana

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are 20–24 nt long endogenous non-coding RNAs that act as post-transcriptional regulators in metazoa and plants. Plant miRNA targets typically contain a single sequence motif with near-perfect complementarity to the miRNA. Here, we extended and applied the program RNAhybrid to identify novel miRNA targets in the complete annotated Arabidopsis thaliana transcriptome. RNAhybrid predicts the energetically most favorable miRNA:mRNA hybrids that are consistent with user-defined structural constraints. These were: (i) perfect base pairing of the duplex from nucleotide 8 to 12 counting from the 5′-end of the miRNA; (ii) loops with a maximum length of one nucleotide in either strand; (iii) bulges with no more than one nucleotide in size; and (iv) unpaired end overhangs not longer than two nucleotides. G:U base pairs are not treated as mismatches, but contribute less favorable to the overall free energy. The resulting hybrids were filtered according to their minimum free energy, resulting in an overall prediction of more than 600 novel miRNA targets. The specificity and signal-to-noise ratio of the prediction was assessed with either randomized miRNAs or randomized target sequences as negative controls. Our results are in line with recent observations that the majority of miRNA targets are not transcription factors

New Young Star Candidates in CG4 and Sa101

The CG4 and Sa101 regions together cover a region of ~0.5 square degree in the vicinity of a "cometary globule" that is part of the Gum Nebula. There are seven previously identified young stars in this region; we have searched for new young stars using mid- and far-infrared data (3.6 to 70 microns) from the Spitzer Space Telescope, combined with ground-based optical data and near-infrared data from the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). We find infrared excesses in all 6 of the previously identified young stars in our maps, and we identify 16 more candidate young stars based on apparent infrared excesses. Most (73%) of the new young stars are Class II objects. There is a tighter grouping of young stars and young star candidates in the Sa101 region, in contrast to the CG4 region, where there are fewer young stars and young star candidates, and they are more dispersed. Few likely young objects are found in the "fingers" of the dust being disturbed by the ionization front from the heart of the Gum Nebula.Comment: Accepted for publication in A

Small RNA Profile in Moso Bamboo Root and Leaf Obtained by High Definition Adapters

Moso bamboo (Phyllostachy heterocycla cv. pubescens L.) is an economically important fast-growing tree. In order to gain better understanding of gene expression regulation in this important species we used next generation sequencing to profile small RNAs in leaf and roots of young seedlings. Since standard kits to produce cDNA of small RNAs are biased for certain small RNAs, we used High Definition adapters that reduce ligation bias. We identified and experimentally validated five new microRNAs and a few other small non-coding RNAs that were not microRNAs. The biological implication of microRNA expression levels and targets of microRNAs are discussed