Habeas Corpus Proceedings in the Supreme Court of Texas.

Writs of habeas corpus, anchored both in the common law and Constitution of Texas, are vitally important to secure the freedom of those wrongfully imprisoned. However, minimal literature on the subject exists to assist attorneys who must prepare and present an application for writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court of Texas. To address the gap in literature, this article lays out the process attorneys should follow when filing a writ of habeas corpus. The most important items which should be brought before the Court are: (1) a motion for leave to file the application; (2) the application for writ; (3) a brief in support of the alleged grounds of illegal restraint; (4) the filing fee and additional fee if motion for leave is granted; (5) proof that the party is illegally restrained; (6) a transcript of relevant orders, judgments and commitment; (7) a transcribed statement of facts in certain cases; and (8) provision for an adequate bond in the event the writ is granted. It is crucial that attorneys understand how to properly file a writ of habeas corpus in order to advance its vital function. Writs of habeas corpus provide a prompt and efficacious remedy for the party intolerably restrained. History proves that the writ of habeas corpus is inextricably intertwined with the expansion of fundamental rights of personal liberty. A discussion of the relevant statutes and case law makes abundantly clear its continuing importance in a civilized society. Writs of habeas corpus ensure that the government is held accountable for a person’s improper imprisonment and make certain that the party has been afforded due process of the law

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Oral History Interview with Joe R. Greenhill, October 11, 1984

Interview with judge Joe R. Greenhill who was active in St. David's Episcopal Church during it's early years. He speaks about his family, his involvement and activity at the church, and recounts memories of historical moments of the church

Crowdsourcing Citizen Science: Exploring the Tensions Between Paid Professionals and Users

This paper explores the relationship between paid labour and unpaid users within the Zooniverse, a crowdsourced citizen science platform. The platform brings together a crowd of users to categorise data for use in scientific projects. It was initially established by a small group of academics for a single astronomy project, but has now grown into a multi-project platform that has engaged over 1.3 million users so far. The growth has introduced different dynamics to the platform as it has incorporated a greater number of scientists, developers, links with organisations, and funding arrangements—each bringing additional pressures and complications. The relationships between paid/professional and unpaid/citizen labour have become increasingly complicated with the rapid expansion of the Zooniverse. The paper draws on empirical data from an ongoing research project that has access to both users and paid professionals on the platform. There is the potential through growing peer-to-peer capacity that the boundaries between professional and citizen scientists can become significantly blurred. The findings of the paper, therefore, address important questions about the combinations of paid and unpaid labour, the involvement of a crowd in citizen science, and the contradictions this entails for an online platform. These are considered specifically from the viewpoint of the users and, therefore, form a new contribution to the theoretical understanding of crowdsourcing in practice

Doing Good Online: The Changing Relationships Between Motivations, Activity, and Retention Among Online Volunteers

Advances in Internet technology are making it possible for individuals to volunteer online and participate in research-based activities of nonprofit organizations. Using survey data from a representative sample of such contributors, this study investigates their motivations to volunteer for five online volunteering projects using the Volunteer Functions Inventory. We explore relationships between these six categories of motivation and actual recorded measures of both volunteer activity and retention. We also use quantile regression analysis to investigate the extent to which these motivations change at different stages in the volunteer process. Our results show that volunteers’ activity and retention tend to associate significantly and positively with the motivations of understanding and values, as well as significantly and negatively with the social and career motivations. We also find the importance of motivations changes significantly across the stages of volunteer engagement. In some cases, especially the understanding motivation, the changes observed for activity and retention are markedly different