614 research outputs found

    Expansion of the Automobile Exception to the Warrant Requirement: Police Discretion Replaces the Neutral and Detached Magistrate

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    As illegal drug usage continues to be an increasing concern of this country, the United States Supreme Court has lessened Fourth Amendment constraints on law enforcement officials. Because of the nature of drugs (minute amounts are illegal and thus they are easily transported and hidden), the allowable scope of searches is a critical issue in the war on drugs. Regardless of whether the Court had drugs in mind when it set forth this new rule, it is drug related offenses where this decision will have the visible impact

    Experienced tutors' deployment of thinking skills and what might be entailed in enhancing such skills

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    In the context of research that reports weaknesses in adults' critical thinking skills, the primary aim was to examine adults' use of critical thinking skills that are described in taxonomies and to identify areas for development. Position papers written by an opportunity sample of 32 experienced adult educators formed the data for a descriptive sample survey design intended to reveal participants' use of critical thinking skills. Each 6000-word paper was written during a development programme that supported such skills. A content analysis of the papers revealed that when participants drew on personal and published ideas about learning to derive their proposals for change, they accepted the ideas uncritically, thereby implying that they might find it difficult to help learners to examine ideas critically. The evidence supports research that implies that critical thinking skills are unlikely to develop unless overall course design privileges the development of epistemological understanding (King and Kitchener 1994, Kuhn 1999). A fundamental assumption underlying the study is that this understanding influences effective citizenship and personal development, as well as employability. A proposition that merits attention in future research is that the development of epistemological understanding is largely neglected in current curricula in formal post-16 education

    Generative technologies for model animation in the TopCased platform

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    International audienceDomain Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) are more and more used to handle high level concepts, and thus bring complex software development under control. The increasingly recurring definition of new languages raises the problem of the definition of support tools such as editor, simulator, compiler, etc. In this paper we propose generative technologies that have been designed to ease the development of model animation tools inside the TopCased platform. These tools rely on the automatically generated graphical editors of TopCased and provide additional generators for building model animator graphical interface. We also rely on an architecture for executable metamodel (i.e., the TopCased model execution metamodeling pattern) to bind the behavioral semantics of the modeling language. These tools were designed in a pragmatic manner by abstracting the various model animators that had been hand-coded in the TopCased project, and then validated by refactoring these animators

    Helping education undergraduates to use appropriate criteria for evaluating accounts of motivation

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    The aim of the study was to compare students in a control group with those in a treatment group with respect to evaluative comments on psychological accounts of motivation. The treatment group systematically scrutinized the nature and interpretation of evidence that supported different accounts, and the assumptions, logic, coherence and clarity of accounts. Content analysis of 74 scripts (using three categories) showed that the control group students made more assertions than either evidential or evaluative points, whereas the treatment group used evaluative statements as often as they used assertion. The findings provide support for privileging activities that develop understanding of how knowledge might be contested, and suggest a need for further research on pedagogies to serve this end. The idea is considered that such understanding has a pivotal role in the development of critical thinking

    Clear sky fraction above Indonesia: an analysis for astronomical site selection

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    We report a study of cloud cover over Indonesia based on meteorological satellite data, spanning over the past 15 years (from 1996 to 2010) in order to be able to select a new astronomical site capable to host a multi-wavelength astronomical observatory. High spatial resolution of meteorological satellite data acquired from {\it Geostationary Meteorological Satellite 5} ({\it GMS 5}), {\it Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 9} ({\it GOES 9}), and {\it Multi-functional Transport Satellite-1R} ({\it MTSAT-1R}) are used to derive yearly average clear fractions over the regions of Indonesia. This parameter is determined from temperature measurement of the IR3 channel (water vapor, 6.7 μ\mum) for high altitude clouds (cirrus) and from the IR1 channel (10.7 μ\mum) for lower altitude clouds. Accordingly, an algorithm is developed to detect the corresponding clouds. The results of this study are then adopted to select the best possible sites in Indonesia to be analysed further by performing in situ measurements planned for the coming years. The results suggest that regions of East Nusa Tenggara, located in south-eastern part of Indonesia, are the most promising candidates for such an astronomical site. Yearly clear sky fraction of this regions may reach better than 70 per cent with an uncertainty of 10 per cent.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, and 4 table

    De novoframeshift mutation in ASXL3 in a patient with global developmental delay, microcephaly, and craniofacial anomalies

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    BACKGROUND: Currently, diagnosis of affected individuals with rare genetic disorders can be lengthy and costly, resulting in a diagnostic odyssey and in many patients a definitive molecular diagnosis is never achieved despite extensive clinical investigation. The recent advent and use of genomic medicine has resulted in a paradigm shift in the clinical molecular genetics of rare diseases and has provided insight into the causes of numerous rare genetic conditions. In particular, whole exome and genome sequencing of families has been particularly useful in discovering de novo germline mutations as the cause of both rare diseases and complex disorders. CASE PRESENTATION: We present a six year old, nonverbal African American female with microcephaly, autism, global developmental delay, and metopic craniosynostosis. Exome sequencing of the patient and her two parents revealed a heterozygous two base pair de novo deletion, c.1897_1898delCA, p.Gln633ValfsX13 in ASXL3, predicted to result in a frameshift at codon 633 with substitution of a valine for a glutamine and introduction of a premature stop codon. CONCLUSIONS: We provide additional evidence that, truncating and frameshifting mutations in the ASXL3 gene are the cause of a newly recognized disorder characterized by severe global developmental delay, short stature, microcephaly, and craniofacial anomalies. Furthermore, we expand the knowledge about disease causing mutations and the genotype-phenotype relationships in ASXL3 and provide evidence that rare, nonsynonymous, damaging mutations are not associated with developmental delay or microcephaly

    Enhancement of electroporation facilitated immunogene therapy via T-reg depletion

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    Regulatory T cells (T-regs) can negatively impact tumor antigen-specific immune responses after infiltration into tumor tissue. However, depletion of T-regs can facilitate enhanced anti-tumor responses, thus augmenting the potential for immunotherapies. Here we focus on treating a highly aggressive form of cancer using a murine melanoma model with a poor prognosis. We utilize a combination of T-reg depletion and immunotherapy plasmid DNA delivered into the B16F10 melanoma tumor model via electroporation. Plasmids encoding murine granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor and human B71 were transfected with electroporation into the tumor and transient elimination of T-regs was achieved with CD25-depleting antibodies (PC61). The combinational treatment effectively depleted T-regs compared to the untreated tumor and significantly reduced lung metastases. The combination treatment was not effective in increasing the survival, but only effective in suppression of metastases. These results indicate the potential for combining T-reg depletion with immunotherapy-based gene electrotransfer to decrease systemic metastasis and potentially enhance survival
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