Right to Remain Silent: A First Amendment Analysis of Abortion Informed Consent Laws, The

Since the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion in the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, the law governing the regulation of abortions has been in a constant state of flux. After the legalization of abortion, states began enacting informed consent laws in order to regulate what information a woman must be given before terminating her pregnancy; today, a total of 32 states have an informed consent law of some kind. Many informed consent laws, such as that of Missouri, require that a woman receive information at least 24 hours before undergoing an abortion and that the abortion providers disclose the physical and mental risks involved with the termination of pregnancy. However, states are increasingly considering informed consent laws that go well beyond merely informing women of health risks associated with abortion. Fueled by pressure from anti-choice groups and bolstered by a predominantly conservative Supreme Court, state legislatures introduced 92 bills regarding the expansion of informed consent requirements in 2006 alone. Proponents of expanded informed consent laws argue that such measures are necessary not only to protect the potential lives of fetuses, but alsobecause some women are ignorant to what it means to be pregnant and may falsely believe that an abortion is merely a surgical operation that involves removing tissue. In response, pro-choice groups argue that such informed consent laws are meant only to scare and mislead women who have otherwise made an informed choice to terminate their pregnancies. In the past, courts have focused mostly on the rights of women and their unborn fetuses, but informed consent laws also directly implicate the rights of another group - abortion providers. While states are undoubtedly free to regulate abortions and to promote childbirth, problems arise when states compel physicians to deliver to their patients information with which the physicians themselves do not agree. In Planned Parenthood Minnesota v. Rounds, a 3-judge panel for the Eighth Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction against a South Dakota law compelling physicians to inform patients that an abortion terminates the life of a whole separate, unique, living human being, stating that the challenged disclosures could be found to violate the First Amendment rights of physicians. This Note argues that Planned Parenthood Minnesota v. Rounds was correctly decided; it further argues that informed consent laws which force physicians to disseminate the State\u27s moral ideology fall outside the purview of protections given to informed consent laws that involve the disclosure of scientific facts

Automatic photointerpretation for land use management in Minnesota

The author has identified the following significant results. Automatic photointerpretation techniques were utilized to evaluate the feasibility of data for land use management. It was shown that ERTS-1 MSS data can produce thematic maps of adequate resolution and accuracy to update land use maps. In particular, five typical land use areas were mapped with classification accuracies ranging from 77% to over 90%

Electrochemically Modulated Permeability of Poly(aniline) and Composite Poly(aniline)−Poly(styrenesulfonate) Membranes

The influence of oxidation state on the permeability of several probe molecules through conducting polymer membranes comprising composites of poly(aniline) and poly(styrenesulfonate) was examined in aqueous solution. Pure poly(aniline) membranes displayed a characteristic increase in permeability between reduced and half-oxidized states for neutrally charged phenol and negatively charged 4-hydroxybenzenesulfonate. In contrast, positively charged pyridine experienced decreased permeability through the membrane when poly(aniline) was switched from the reduced to the half-oxidized state. This behavior can be explained by a combination of oxidation-induced film swelling and the anion-exchange character of the positively charged membrane. The membrane composition was modified to include a fixed negative charge by the addition of poly(styrenesulfonate) during synthesis. The incorporation of this negatively charged component introduced cation-exchange character to the film and substantially reduced membrane permeability to 4-hydroxybenzenesulfonate in both oxidation states. In addition, increasing the fraction of poly(styrenesulfonate) in the membrane served to decrease film permeability for all species because of a densification of the membrane. This work demonstrates how both film composition and oxidation state can be used to tune the permeability of conducting polymer membranes

Application of ERTS-1 imagery to state wide land information system in Minnesota

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Testing and Implementation Progress on the Advanced Photon Source (APS) Linear Accelerator (Linac) High-Power S-band Switching System

An S-band linear accelerator is the source of particles and the front end of the Advanced Photon Source injector. In addition, it supports a low-energy undulator test line (LEUTL) and drives a free-electron laser (FEL). A waveguide-switching and distribution system is now under construction. The system configuration was revised to be consistent with the recent change to electron-only operation. There are now six modulator-klystron subsystems, two of which are being configured to act as hot spares for two S-band transmitters each, so that no single failure will prevent injector operation. The two subsystems are also used to support additional LEUTL capabilities and off-line testing. Design considerations for the waveguide-switching subsystem, topology selection, control and protection provisions, high-power test results, and current status are describedComment: Linac 2000 paper No. THE07 3 pages with 3 figure

Multiple-scattering Modelling of Scattering by Biological Cells

Past work on scattering by biological cells has been restricted to unrealistic oversimplified models of cells, or uses slow methods unsuited for calculations involving large numbers of cells or varying illumination. We consider the systematic use of fast, accurate methods for modelling light scattering in realistic complex biological cells. This will allow, for example, the study of light scattering by realistic ensembles of cells, which is immediately applicable to optical cancer detection, and remote sensing of microorganisms. It will also be possible to study light scattering by cells under constantly varying illumination, such as encountered in applications like flow cytometry

Weak decays of 4He-Lambda

We measured the lifetime and the mesonic and non-mesonic decay rates of the 4He-Lambda hypernucleus. The hypernuclei were created using a 750 MeV/c momentum K- beam on a liquid 4He target by the reaction 4He(K-,pi-)4He-Lambda. The 4He-Lambda lifetime was directly measured using protons from Lambda p -> n p non-mesonic decay (also referred to as proton-stimulated decay) and was found to have a value of tau = 245 +/- 24 ps. The mesonic decay rates were determined from the observed numbers of pi-'s and pi0's as Gamma_pi-/Gamma_tot = 0.270 +/- 0.024 and Gamma_pi0/Gamma_tot = 0.564 +/- 0.036, respectively, and the values of the proton- and neutron-stimulated decay rates were extracted as Gamma_p/Gamma_tot = 0.169 +/- 0.019 and Gamma_n/Gamma_tot <= 0.032 (95% CL), respectively. The effects of final-state interactions and possible 3-body Lambda N N decay contributions were studied in the context of a simple model of nucleon-stimulated decay. Nucleon-nucleon coincidence events were observed and were used in the determination of the non-mesonic branching fractions. The implications of the results of this analysis were considered for the empirical Delta I = 1/2 rule and the decay rates of the 4H-Lambda hypernucleus.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, published in PRC, revised content to match published versio

Geometrically induced modification of surface plasmons in the optical and telecom regimes

We demonstrate that the introduction of a subwavelength periodic modulation into a metallic structure strongly modifies the guiding characteristics of the surface plasmon modes supported by the system. Moreover, it is also shown how a new type of a tightly confined surface plasmon polariton mode can be created by just milling a periodic corrugation into a metallic ridge placed on top of a metal surface