Small Cells, Big Problems: The Increasing Precision of Cell Site Location Information and the Need for Fourth Amendment Protections

The past fifty years has witnessed an evolution in technology advancement in police surveillance. Today, one of the essential tools of police surveillance is something most Americans carry with them in their pockets every day, the cell phone. Cell phones not only contain a huge repository of personal data, they also provide continuous surveillance of a person’s movement known as cell site location information (CSLI). In 1986, Congress sought to provide some privacy protections to CSLI in the Stored Communication Act. Although this solution may have struck the proper balance in an age when cell phones were a mere novelty in the hands of a comparative few, we now live in an age where, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized, cell phones could be seen “an important feature of human anatomy.” In 1986, there were only an estimated 681,825 subscribers serviced by 1531, cell sites. By 2013, there were 335 million subscribers and over 340,000 cell sites. Recently, cell phone service providers have begun to use small cell technologies, miniature cell phone towers that can provide additional coverage and bandwidth support to overburdened cellular networks. Small cells, known variously as femtocells, picocells, and microcells, are already installed throughout the United States, in particular in urban areas. As small cells overtake traditional cell phone towers as the most common means of transmitting cellular signals, CSLI will transform from a means of placing a person’s phone in a general area within a matter of miles to a precise location tracking tool charting a person’s movements down to a matter of feet. The late Justice Scalia in his 2001 majority opinion in Kyllo v. U.S., a case involving thermal imaging, opined that “while the technology used in the present case was relatively crude, the rule we adopt must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in development.” This Article explores the evolution of CSLI by focusing on the rise of small cell technologies. It also canvasses decisions in the circuits involving CSLI. It points out that the third-party exception to the Fourth Amendment is inapplicable to CSLI. Following Justice Scalia’s admonition, we believe that CSLI will only grow more precise as small cells infiltrate cellular networks and we therefore adopt an approach that incorporates the Fourth Amendment requirements for a search warrant particularly describing the place to be searched and items to be seized as well as the requirement for probable cause. Placing CSLI under the Fourth Amendment would make a major section of the Stored Communication Act unconstitutional

Real-world word learning: exploring children's developing semantic representations of a science term

Assessments of lexical acquisition are often limited to pre-school children on forced choice comprehension measures. This study assessed the understandings 30 school-age children (mean age = 6;7) acquired about the science term, eclipse following a naturalistic exposure to a solar eclipse. The knowledge children acquired about eclipses and a control term, comet was assessed at three points in time (baseline-test, two-week post-test and five-month post-test) using a range of assessment tasks (multiple-choice comprehension, picture-naming, drawing and a model of a solar system task). Children's knowledge was compared to 15 adult controls during the baseline-test and two-week post-test. Children acquired extensive knowledge about eclipses, but not comets; at the two-week post-test and five-month post-test, the majority of children named and drew eclipses and „made? an eclipse using models of the sun, moon and earth. Also, children's eclipse knowledge more closely approximated adult-level understandings at the two-week post-test than at the baseline-test. Implications for the study of lexical acquisition in later development are discussed

SubmilliJansky Transients in Archival Radio Observations

[ABRIDGED] We report the results of a 944-epoch survey for transient sources with archival data from the Very Large Array spanning 22 years with a typical epoch separation of 7 days. Observations were obtained at 5 or 8.4 GHz for a single field of view with a full-width at half-maximum of 8.6' and 5.1', respectively, and achieved a typical point-source detection threshold at the beam center of ~300 microJy per epoch. Ten transient sources were detected with a significance threshold such that only one false positive would be expected. Of these transients, eight were detected in only a single epoch. Two transients were too faint to be detected in individual epochs but were detected in two-month averages. None of the ten transients was detected in longer-term averages or associated with persistent emission in the deep image produced from the combination of all epochs. The cumulative rate for the short timescale radio transients above 370 microJy at 5 and 8.4 GHz is 0.07 < R < 40 deg^-2 yr^-1, where the uncertainty is due to the unknown duration of the transients, 20 min < t_char < 7 days. A two-epoch survey for transients will detect 1.5 +/- 0.4 transient per square degrees above a flux density of 370 microJy. Two transients are associated with galaxies at z=0.040 and z=0.249. These may be similar to the peculiar Type Ib/c radio supernova SN 1998bw associated with GRB 980428. Six transients have no counterparts in the optical or infrared (R=27, Ks=18). The hosts and progenitors of these transients are unknown.Comment: Accepted for ApJ; full quality figures available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~gbower/ps/rt.pd

The Global Health System: Lessons for a Stronger Institutional Framework

Governmen

Using assignment data to analyse a blended information literacy intervention: a quantitative approach

This research sought to determine whether a blended information literacy learning and teaching intervention could statistically significantly enhance undergraduates’ information discernment compared to standard face-to-face delivery. A mixture of face-to-face and online activities, including online social media learning, was used. Three interventions were designed to develop the information literacies of first-year undergraduates studying Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University and focused on one aspect of information literacy: the ability to evaluate source material effectively. An analysis was devised where written evaluations of found information for an assessment were converted into numerical scores and then measured statistically. This helped to evaluate the efficacy of the interventions and provided data for further analysis. An insight into how the information literacy pedagogical intervention and the cognitive processes involved in enabling participants to interact critically with information is provided. The intervention which incorporated social media learning proved to be the most successful learning and teaching approach. The data indicated that undergraduate students’ information literacy can be developed. However, additional long-term data is required to establish whether this intervention would have a lasting impact

Spectral energy distribution of the gamma-ray microquasar LS 5039

The microquasar LS 5039 has recently been detected as a source of very high energy (VHE) $\gamma$-rays. This detection, that confirms the previously proposed association of LS 5039 with the EGRET source 3EG~J1824$-$1514, makes of LS 5039 a special system with observational data covering nearly all the electromagnetic spectrum. In order to reproduce the observed spectrum of LS 5039, from radio to VHE $\gamma$-rays, we have applied a cold matter dominated jet model that takes into account accretion variability, the jet magnetic field, particle acceleration, adiabatic and radiative losses, microscopic energy conservation in the jet, and pair creation and absorption due to the external photon fields, as well as the emission from the first generation of secondaries. The radiative processes taken into account are synchrotron, relativistic Bremsstrahlung and inverse Compton (IC). The model is based on a scenario that has been characterized with recent observational results, concerning the orbital parameters, the orbital variability at X-rays and the nature of the compact object. The computed spectral energy distribution (SED) shows a good agreement with the available observational data.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, submitted to A&A, revised vesion accounting for referee comments, small improvements of the results due to better calculation

Metacognitive developments in word learning:mutual exclusivity and theory of mind

This study examines the flexibility with which children can use pragmatic information to determine word reference. Extensive previous research shows that children choose an unfamiliar object as referent of a novel name: the disambiguation effect. We added a pragmatic cue indirectly indicating a familiar object as intended referent. In three experiments, preschool children’s ability to take this cue into account was specifically associated with false belief understanding and the ability to produce familiar alternative names (e.g., rabbit, animal) for a given referent. The association was predicted by the hypothesis that all three tasks require an understanding of perspective (linguistic or mental). The findings indicate that perspectival understanding is required to take into account indirect pragmatic information to suspend the disambiguation effect. Implications for lexical principles and socio-pragmatic theories of word learning are discussed

Results of ASERTAA, a randomized prospective crossover pharmacogenetic study of immediate-release versus extended-release tacrolimus in African American kidney transplant recipients

BACKGROUND: Differences in tacrolimus dosing across ancestries is partly attributable to polymorphisms in CYP3A5 genes that encode tacrolimus-metabolizing cytochrome P450 3A5 enzymes. The CYP3A5*1 allele, preponderant in African Americans, is associated with rapid metabolism, subtherapeutic concentrations, and higher dose requirements for tacrolimus, all contributing to worse outcomes. Little is known about the relationship between CYP3A5 genotype and the tacrolimus pharmacokinetic area under the curve (AUC) profile in African Americans or whether pharmacogenetic differences exist between conventional twice-daily, rapidly absorbed, immediate-release tacrolimus (IR-Tac) and once-daily extended-release tacrolimus (LifeCycle Pharma Tac [LCPT]) with a delayed absorption profile. STUDY DESIGN: Randomized prospective crossover study. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS: 50 African American maintenance kidney recipients on stable IR-Tac dosing. INTERVENTION: Recipients were randomly assigned to continue IR-Tac on days 1 to 7 and then switch to LCPT on day 8 or receive LCPT on days 1 to 7 and then switch to IR-Tac on day 8. The LCPT dose was 85% of the IR-Tac total daily dose. OUTCOMES: Tacrolimus 24-hour AUC (AUC MEASUREMENTS: CYP3A5 genotype, 24-hour tacrolimus pharmacokinetic profiles. RESULTS: ∼80% of participants carried the CYP3A5*1 allele (CYP3A5 expressers). There were no significant differences in AUC LIMITATIONS: This was primarily a pharmacogenetic study rather than an efficacy study; the follow-up period was too short to capture clinical outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Achieving therapeutic tacrolimus trough concentrations with IR-Tac in most African Americans results in significantly higher peak concentrations, potentially magnifying the risk for toxicity and adverse outcomes. This pharmacogenetic effect is attenuated by delayed tacrolimus absorption with LCPT. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, with study number NCT01962922

Leptin fails to blunt the lipopolysaccharide-induced activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in rats

Copyright @ 2013 The authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.Obesity is a risk factor for sepsis morbidity and mortality, whereas the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a protective role in the body's defence against sepsis. Sepsis induces a profound systemic immune response and cytokines serve as excellent markers for sepsis as they act as mediators of the immune response. Evidence suggests that the adipokine leptin may play a pathogenic role in sepsis. Mouse endotoxaemic models present with elevated leptin levels and exogenously added leptin increased mortality whereas human septic patients have elevated circulating levels of the soluble leptin receptor (Ob-Re). Evidence suggests that leptin can inhibit the regulation of the HPA axis. Thus, leptin may suppress the HPA axis, impairing its protective role in sepsis.We hypothesised that leptin would attenuate the HPA axis response to sepsis.We investigated the direct effects of an i.p. injection of 2 mg/kg leptin on the HPA axis response to intraperitoneally injected 25 μg/kg lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the male Wistar rat. We found that LPS potently activated the HPA axis, as shown by significantly increased plasma stress hormones, ACTH and corticosterone, and increased plasma interleukin 1β (IL1β) levels, 2 h after administration. Pre-treatment with leptin, 2 h before LPS administration, did not influence the HPA axis response to LPS. In turn, LPS did not affect plasma leptin levels. Our findings suggest that leptin does not influence HPA function or IL1b secretion in a rat model of LPS-induced sepsis, and thus that leptin is unlikely to be involved in the acute-phase endocrine response to bacterial infection in rats.The section is funded by grants from the MRC, BBSRC, NIHR and an Integrative Mammalian Biology (IMB) Capacity Building Award, and by a FP7-HEALTH-2009-241592 EuroCHIP grant and is supported by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre Funding Scheme. This work is supported by a BBSRC Doctoral Training-Strategic Skills Award grant (BB/F017340/1)