Graham v. Florida: How the Supreme Court\u27s Rationale Encourages Reform of the Juvenile Justice System Through Alternative Dispute Resolution Strategies

The article presents information on the reforms in the juvenile justice system of the U.S. through alternative dispute resolution-based strategies which has been illustrated with the U.S. Supreme Court cases Roper v. Simmons, and Graham v. Florida. It discusses rationale of the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham case and analyzes Graham\u27s current and future impact. A proportionality standard expressed in legislative enactments and state practice was applied by the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham case

Multi-proxy characterization of ACEX subunit 1/5 (the “zebra” interval) to better understand sediment deposition at this critical age boundary and paleoceanographic transition

Sediment cores recovered from the Lomonosov Ridge on IODP Expedition 302, the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), provided the first major insights into long-term Cenozoic history of climate and ocean conditions in the central Arctic. However, the ACEX record is hampered by a major hiatus or severely condensed interval (depending on age-model interpretations) at 198.7 mcd separating the middle Eocene and Miocene records. Lithologic subunit 1/5 lies above this depth horizon, and is informally called the “zebra interval” because of distinctive stripes - black and gray tilted and cross-banded silty-clay layers, up to 3 cm thick that characterize the lower ~2.5 m of the subunit. Prior studies provide micropaleontological evidence for a brackish, shallow water depositional environment below and across the hiatus, continuing into subunit 1/5; and the cross-banding suggests a high-energy shallow water setting conducive to reworking and erosion. In addition, prior studies place the hiatus and subunit 1/5 within an overall up-section transition from warmer to cooler temperatures with more persistent ice-rafting, and from restricted to more open water circulation. Given the paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic differences above and below this interval and its unique lithologic pattern, this study aimed to better characterize the sedimentology of the black and gray couplets. Twenty-four samples from the black and gray layers and eleven samples from above and below the “zebra interval” were analyzed to characterize the XRF elemental composition, XRD bulk and clay mineral composition, grain size, and coarse sand composition and abundance. Overall, the zebra interval had less Fe and more variability in grain size than the stratigraphic intervals above and below it. In addition, the zebra interval showed upcore shifts from smectite to illite-dominated clays and greater abundance of terrigenous coarse sand. The sand-sized grains are quartz-dominated, showing very little change in composition throughout all three of the lithologic sub-units. Quartz-grains are also generally well-rounded. Differences between the gray and black layers within the zebra interval were limited; gray bands tended to have greater abundances of quartz and muscovite, slightly higher Ti abundances, and lower abundances of Fe, Co, Ni, K, P, As, Sr, and Mn than the black layers. The sedimentological observations are perplexing. Rounded quartz suggests reworking in a shallow water setting that has wave or tide action, so this, along with the tilted and cross-banding support the micropaleontological interpretation of an estuarine depositional setting for the zebra interval. The compositional differences (abundance of quartz and muscovite) may indicate semi-regular differences in transport energy or provenance that could relate to variations in input due to seasonal changes, storms or tides. However, the duration of a black-gray couplet is unknown, making it difficult to infer a specific depositional control. Complicating this further is the lack of graded bedding or other distinct changes in grain size between the gray and black layers, which would be expected if shallow water currents produced the tilted and cross-bedded layers. However, these inconsistencies may be artifacts of the sample processing – the samples were semi-lithified and therefore difficult to disaggregate. Additional grain size work that does not require disaggregation should be conducted. The dominance of the clay mineral smectite in subunit 1/5 suggests transport from the Kara and/or Laptev Sea regions. An alternative interpretation for the origin of the black and gray layers is that the color changes could be the result of post-depositional semi-regular changes in oxidation of the bottom waters. In an estuary this might occur due to seasonal overturn, and could be sea-ice influenced However, this is difficult to reconcile with the tilted and cross-bedded nature of the black and gray layers. At a broader scale, the distinct shift in clay mineralogy and drop in sand abundance from subunit 1/5 (“zebra interval”) to overlying subunit 1/4 may indicate a change in circulation from a strong transpolar drift current to an increase in terrigenous transport to the central Arctic by the Beaufort Gyre. This puzzling time of paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic transition will be investigated further in upcoming IODP Expedition 377

Optimization algorithms for shortest path analysis

Discrete optimization algorithms exist for analysis of network optimization of flow problems. Computer programs written from these algorithms can be used for local area network analysis of point-to-point computer networks, transportation networks, resource allocation, distribution, and production scheduling. One aspect of a network that can be optimized using discrete optimization algorithms is the length of the path that data will take when traveling through the network. One node in the network signifies the source node and a second node is the sink or destination. The object is to find the shortest path between the two nodes. The definition of shortest path depends on the quantity analyzed in the network. Shortest path can represent the fastest path, most cost-efficient path, most fuel-efficient path, etc. Also, different levels of computation may be required. It may be necessary to find the shortest path between two nodes in a network, the shortest path between a source node and all other nodes in a network, or the shortest path between all pairs of nodes in a network. The complexity, performance, and results of different optimization methods can be compared using a series of network models. A comparison of the algorithms researched and results of the computer analysis will be shown

Junior Recital:Heather Hojnacki, Saxophone

Kemp Recital Hall Thursday Evening April 10, 2008 7:00p.m

Senior Recital: Heather Hojnacki, Saxophone; October 18, 2009

Kemp Recital HallOctober 18th, 2009Sunday Evening6:00 p.m

The Subprime Mortgage Lending Collapse: Should We Have Seen It Coming?

The subprime mortgage lending crisis and the decline in housing values has profoundly affected the worlds’ financial markets.  Financial institutions have ceased to exist, others have come under the U.S. government’s control, the future survival of others has been threatened and the U.S. government is proposing the greatest financial rescue operation since the Great Depression.  Profound changes in the financial markets have occurred and the markets will never be quite the same again.  This paper presents the argument that this collapse should have been foreseen by tracing and comparing the development and decline in the subprime auto lending market in the 1990’s to the development and decline of the subprime mortgage lending market.   While the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis are greater and farther reaching than those of the subprime auto lending market, there is no question that the similarities are plain to be seen and that the current crisis should come as no surprise

Jak technologie informacyjne i komunikacyjne mogą wspomagać rozwijanie uzdolnień uczniów

Artykuł z numeru 1/2011 internetowego czasopisma edukacyjnego ORE "Trendy

An Assessment of Tire-Buying Among Millennial Consumers

This study first examines general purchasing trends among millennial consumers before digging into the perceptions that millennial consumers have of the tire-purchasing experience. Our initial hypothesis was that the negative view of tire-purchasing held by many millennial age consumers was driven by the difficulty of the process itself. Through our own research, we discovered that it is the perceptions held by those who have not yet purchased tires rather than the reality of the purchasing experience that is the issue

An X-Ray Spectral Classification Algorithm with Application to Young Stellar Clusters

A large volume of low signal-to-noise, multidimensional data is available from the CCD imaging spectrometers aboard the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the X-Ray Multimirror Mission (XMM-Newton). To make progress analyzing this data,itisessentialtodevelopmethods tosort,classify,and characterize thevastlibrary of X-rayspectrain a nonparametric fashion (complementary to current parametric model fits). We have developed a spectral classification algorithm that handles large volumes of data and operates independently of the requirement of spectral model fits.Weuseprovenmultivariatestatisticaltechniquesincludingprincipalcomponentanalysisandanensembleclassifier consistingofagglomerativehierarchicalclusteringandK-meansclusteringappliedforthefirsttimeforspectralclassification.Thealgorithmpositionsthesourcesinamultidimensionalspectralsequenceandthengroupstheorderedsources into clusters based on their spectra. These clusters appear more distinct for sources with harder observed spectra. The apparent diversity ofsource spectra isreduced toa three-dimensional locus inprincipal component space,withspectral outliers falling outside this locus. The algorithm was applied to a sample of 444 strong sources selected from the 1616 X-ray emitting sources detected in deep Chandra imaging spectroscopy of the Orion Nebula Cluster. Classes form sequencesinNH,AV,andaccretionactivityindicators,demonstratingthatthealgorithmefficientlysortstheX-raysources into a physically meaningful sequence. The algorithm also isolates important classes of very deeply embedded, active young stellar objects, and yields trends between X-ray spectral parameters and stellar parameters for the lowest mass, pre‐main-sequence stars