Civil Forfeiture and the Constitution: Are Individual Rights Really Less Important than the War on Drugs?

Democracy creates an often precarious balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the whole. To shelter individuals from the passions of the day, the Founding Fathers enumerated certain rights and established constitutional protections. As the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States uses these rights and protections as a tool to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the whole. In the last two decades, however, a war on drugs in the United States has been used to justify infringements upon traditional property rights and due process. The antiquated concept of forfeiture has become one of the primary weapons in this drug war and, as such, is often the device by which individual rights are sacrificed

Ninth Grade Student Reaction To Using Summarization And Annotation

This capstone uses a qualitative research approach to address how a group of ninth grade students who struggle with reading describe their reactions to two reading strategies, summarization and annotation. In order for students to meet the rigors of the Common Core Standards, students must be able to read and comprehend complex texts independently. This capstone seeks to understand how students felt about the strategies and how well they felt they used them. In the literature review the topics explored include the new reading expectations of high school graduates, students not meeting those standards, and the theory and application behind annotation and summarization. An action research plan was used to explore how eleven ninth grade students in a remedial reading class in the rural southeastern United States reacted to being taught or retaught two reading strategies. Each strategy was introduced using a familiar piece of text and demonstrated by the instructor. After the introduction, the students were guided through the strategy, and then gradually released to do the strategy on their own. The data was collected using Likert scale surveys. A pre-survey was used to measure familiarity with the strategies. Students rated their use of the strategies using post-survey administered after independent practice . Contrary to the research described in the review of the research literature many of the students rated themselves higher performance-wise than the instructor evaluation of their work. In the future, it would be interesting to pursue an investigation of these strategies across curriculum having all instructors using the same terminology and criteria evaluation. The transfer of notes into a paragraph with the information proved the most difficult for students. The discovery of the need for more scaffolding in synthesizing the information into a paragraph was one of the most profound calls for change in the method of teaching these strategies in the capstone. The limitations of the study included the small non-random study sample, the short time frame for the conducting of the research and being a beginning researcher with a full teaching class-load

Methods for Evaluating Respondent Attrition in Web-Based Surveys

Background: Electronic surveys are convenient, cost effective, and increasingly popular tools for collecting information. While the online platform allows researchers to recruit and enroll more participants, there is an increased risk of participant dropout in Web-based research. Often, these dropout trends are simply reported, adjusted for, or ignored altogether. Objective: To propose a conceptual framework that analyzes respondent attrition and demonstrates the utility of these methods with existing survey data. Methods: First, we suggest visualization of attrition trends using bar charts and survival curves. Next, we propose a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to detect or confirm significant attrition points. Finally, we suggest applications of existing statistical methods to investigate the effect of internal survey characteristics and patient characteristics on dropout. In order to apply this framework, we conducted a case study; a seventeen-item Informed Decision-Making (IDM) module addressing how and why patients make decisions about cancer screening. Results: Using the framework, we were able to find significant attrition points at Questions 4, 6, 7, and 9, and were also able to identify participant responses and characteristics associated with dropout at these points and overall. Conclusions: When these methods were applied to survey data, significant attrition trends were revealed, both visually and empirically, that can inspire researchers to investigate the factors associated with survey dropout, address whether survey completion is associated with health outcomes, and compare attrition patterns between groups. The framework can be used to extract information beyond simple responses, can be useful during survey development, and can help determine the external validity of survey results

Synthesis, Photochemical, and Redox Properties of Gold(I) and Gold(III) Pincer Complexes Incorporating a 2,2′:6′,2″-Terpyridine Ligand Framework

Reaction of [Au(C6F5)(tht)] (tht = tetrahydrothiophene) with 2,2′:6′,2″-terpyridine (terpy) leads to complex [Au(C6F5)(η1-terpy)] (1). The chemical oxidation of complex (1) with 2 equiv of [N(C6H4Br-4)3](PF6) or using electrosynthetic techniques affords the Au(III) complex [Au(C6F5)(η3-terpy)](PF6)2 (2). The X-ray diffraction study of complex 2 reveals that the terpyridine acts as tridentate chelate ligand, which leads to a slightly distorted square-planar geometry. Complex 1 displays fluorescence in the solid state at 77 K due to a metal (gold) to ligand (terpy) charge transfer transition, whereas complex 2 displays fluorescence in acetonitrile due to excimer or exciplex formation. Time-dependent density functional theory calculations match the experimental absorption spectra of the synthesized complexes. In order to further probe the frontier orbitals of both complexes and study their redox behavior, each compound was separately characterized using cyclic voltammetry. The bulk electrolysis of a solution of complex 1 was analyzed by spectroscopic methods confirming the electrochemical synthesis of complex 2

A novel supramolecular assembly in an iron(III) compound exhibiting magnetic ordering at 70 K

Ethyl-substituted ammonium cation allows the preparation of an unprecedented oxo- and oxalato-bridged supramolecular three-dimensional network. The compound exhibits magnetic ordering with Tc = 70 K due to a weak spin canting.Julve Olcina, Miguel, [email protected] ; Lloret Pastor, Francisco, [email protected]

Developing pedagogies that work for Pre-Service and Early Career Teachers to reduce the Attainment Gap in Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing. Research Question 3: What other practice or research might assist us in our purpose?

This report contributes to the Scottish Council of Deans of Education project related to the Scottish Attainment Challenge. It presents a literature review that responds to the third research question of the SCDE collaborative project: What other practice or research might assist us in our purpose? The purpose of this phase was to resource professional conversations and thinking in the teacher education sector, and to inform the final trial phase of the project. A literature search was undertaken using a range of strategies, to identify published accounts of innovative work from beyond Scotland in the following fields: initial teacher education for high poverty settings; pedagogies in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing; mentoring and induction. Each group of studies is summarised under themes with their potential for the SAC, ITE programmes and professional learning noted

Measuring ultracool properties from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedWe discuss the properties and of ultracool and brown dwarfs that can be measured from current large area surveys and how fundamental parameters, such as the mass function and formation history can be measured, describing our own first measurement of the formation history in the sub-stellar regime using data from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

The Calan-Hertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search

The detailed study of the exoplanetary systems HD189733 and HD209458 has given rise to a wealth of exciting information on the physics of exoplanetary atmospheres. To further our understanding of the make-up and processes within these atmospheres we require a larger sample of bright transiting planets. We have began a project to detect more bright transiting planets in the southern hemisphere by utilising precision radial-velocity measurements. We have observed a constrained sample of bright, inactive and metal-rich stars using the HARPS instrument and here we present the current status of this project, along with our first discoveries which include a brown dwarf/extreme-Jovian exoplanet found in the brown dwarf desert region around the star HD191760 and improved orbits for three other exoplanetary systems HD48265, HD143361 and HD154672. Finally, we briefly discuss the future of this project and the current prospects we have for discovering more bright transiting planets.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the conference proceedings "New Technologies for Probing the Diversity of Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets" Shanghai 200

Temperature-Induced Phase Shift of Daily Rhythm of Serum Prolactin in Gulf Killifish

Daily variations in circulating levels of the pituitary hormone prolactin have been reported in several vertebrates, including fishes. In some animals, the 24-h rhythm changes seasonally with respect to the time of day that maximum and minimum prolactin levels occur. It has been hypothesised that this seasonal change in phase of prolactin rhythm is an important component of the mechanism controlling seasonality in vertebrates. Because water temperature is generally considered the principal environmental regulator of seasonal changes in reproduction and metabolism in many fishes, including the gulf killifish Fundulus grandis, we determined the daily rhythm of serum prolactin concentrations in fish held at temperatures that are stimulatory (20 °C) or inhibitory (28 °C) for reproductive development. We found that an increase in water temperature from 20° to 28 °C phase shifts the daily variation of serum prolactin with respect to the daily photoperiod in F. grandis