Vicious Dog Laws Unconstitutional in Ohio

On March 3, 2006, an Ohio appeals court issued a landmark decision in City of Toledo v. Tellings, 2006 WL 513946 (Ohio App. 6 Dist), which may affect pit bulls and pit bull look-a-likes and their owners nationwide. Tellings was the owner of three pit bulls. The warden killed one of his pit bulls and criminally charged Tellings with two violations of the local Toledo ordinance limiting ownership to one vicious dog per household and two violations of the state statute requiring liability insurance with ownership of a vicious dog. The vicious dog laws on Ohio include pit bulls in the definition of vicious dogs per se. Tellings challenged these vicious dog laws as unconstitutional on several grounds. In a groundbreaking decision, the Ohio court found the statutes unconstitutionally vague and unreasonable. This short article analyzes the court\u27s findings. The decision is currently under review by the Ohio Supreme Court as of summer 2007

Vicious Dog Laws Unconstitutional in Ohio

On March 3, 2006, an Ohio appeals court issued a landmark decision in City of Toledo v. Tellings, 2006 WL 513946 (Ohio App. 6 Dist), which may affect pit bulls and pit bull look-a-likes and their owners nationwide. Tellings was the owner of three pit bulls. The warden killed one of his pit bulls and criminally charged Tellings with two violations of the local Toledo ordinance limiting ownership to one vicious dog per household and two violations of the state statute requiring liability insurance with ownership of a vicious dog. The vicious dog laws on Ohio include pit bulls in the definition of vicious dogs per se. Tellings challenged these vicious dog laws as unconstitutional on several grounds. In a groundbreaking decision, the Ohio court found the statutes unconstitutionally vague and unreasonable. This short article analyzes the court\u27s findings. The decision is currently under review by the Ohio Supreme Court as of summer 2007

Lipid content in overwintering Calanus finmarchicus across the Subpolar Eastern North Atlantic Ocean

The boreal copepod Calanus finmarchicus accumulates lipid reserves during summer feeding in surface ocean waters, which enable it to stay at depth and survive famine during overwintering. Respiration of lipids during prolonged overwintering at ocean depths (> 1000 m in some areas) has been shown to result in a net sequestration of carbon into the deep ocean: the so-called “lipid pump.” Here, we provide a comprehensive synthesis of the geographic and vertical variations in lipid content of overwintering animals across the Subpolar Eastern North Atlantic and, on the basis of this, we revise the estimates of carbon sequestration. Wax ester content ranged from 40 to 190 μg individual −1 at > 250 m depths, with highest concentrations in the coldest ( 4°C) Irminger Sea and Rockall Basin. Our new analysis results in about 44% higher estimates of carbon sequestration at up to 11.5 g C m −2

Aging is associated with an earlier arrival of reflected waves without a distal shift in reflection sites

Background-Despite pronounced increases in central pulse wave velocity (PWV) with aging, reflected wave transit time (RWTT), traditionally defined as the timing of the inflection point (T-INF) in the central pressure waveform, does not appreciably decrease, leading to the controversial proposition of a "distal-shift" of reflection sites. T-INF, however, is exceptionally prone to measurement error and is also affected by ejection pattern and not only by wave reflection. We assessed whether RWTT, assessed by advanced pressure-flow analysis, demonstrates the expected decline with aging. Methods and Results-We studied a sample of unselected adults without cardiovascular disease (n=48; median age 48 years) and a clinical population of older adults with suspected/established cardiovascular disease (n=164; 61 years). We measured central pressure and flow with carotid tonometry and phase-contrast MRI, respectively. We assessed RWTT using wave-separation analysis (RWTTWSA) and partially distributed tube-load (TL) modeling (RWTTTL). Consistent with previous reports, T-INF did not appreciably decrease with age despite pronounced increases in PWV in both populations. However, aging was associated with pronounced decreases in RWTTWSA (general population -15.0 ms/decade, P<0.001; clinical population -9.07 ms/decade, P=0.003) and RWTTTL (general -15.8 ms/decade, P<0.001; clinical -11.8 ms/decade, P<0.001). There was no evidence of an increased effective reflecting distance by either method. TINF was shown to reliably represent RWTT only under highly unrealistic assumptions about input impedance. Conclusions-RWTT declines with age in parallel with increased PWV, with earlier effects of wave reflections and without a distal shift in reflecting sites. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of wave reflections with aging

An experimental study of ZigBee for body sensor networks

We present an experimental performance evaluation of ZigBee networks in the context of data-intensive body sensor networks (BSNs). IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee devices were mainly developed for use in wireless sensors network (WSN) applications; however, due to characteristics such as low power and small form factor, they are also being widely used in BSN applications, making it necessary to evaluate their suitability in this context. The delivery ratio and end-to-end delay were evaluated, under contention, for both star and tree topologies. The reliability of the ZigBee network in a star topology without hidden nodes was very good (delivery ratio close to 100%), provided the acknowledgement mechanism was enabled. On the other hand, the performance in a tree topology was degraded due to router overload and the activation of the route maintenance protocol triggered by periods of high traffic load. The effect of the devices’ clock drift and hidden nodes on the reliability of the star network was modeled and validated through experimental tests. In these tests, the worst-case delivery ratio when the acknowledgment is used decreased to 90% with two sensor nodes, while for the non-acknowledged mode the result was of 13%. These results show that a mechanism for distributing the nodes’ traffic over the time is required to avoid BSN performance degradation caused by router overload, clock drift and hidden node issues.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologi