Safe from Sex Offenders? Legislating Internet Publication of Sex Offender Registries

In July 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice implemented the National Sex Offender Public Registry, which links the registries of individual states. A year later, the Adam Walsh Bill created the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, which required the Department of Justice to maintain a comprehensive national sex offender registry. The purpose of this article is to examine the statutory provisions of every state and the District of Columbia regarding the use of the Internet as a tool in administering Megan\u27s Law. The analysis begins by examining sex offender registration and notification laws at the federal level and discussing major federal legislation and United States Supreme Court cases that impact how states draft their Megan\u27s Laws. Next, the portions of each state\u27s Megan\u27s Law that mentions the Internet as a notification tool, if any, are categorized. This article concludes that though state legislatures have embraced the Internet as a notification model, the model itself will not be effective unless the registry information disseminated is accurate and up-to-date. States can help ensure the effectiveness of online registries by including provisions in their statutes for the accuracy, timeliness, and publicity of the sites

Is Driving with the Intent to Gather News a Crime? The Chilling Effects of California’s Anti-Paparazzi Legislation

While celebrities may have a love-hate relationship with the photographers who give them red carpet publicity but also pursue shots of their most intimate moments, the California Legislature has little use for the paparazzi. The 2010 anti-paparazzi bill is the most recent in a string of legislative attempts to curb aggressive paparazzi. Assembly Bill 2479 makes two major changes. The first change penalizes those who capture images or audio recordings by false imprisonment, targeting paparazzi who swarm celebrities and prevent them from moving or driving freely. The second change enhances penalties for reckless driving if one has an intent to photograph or record. This Article examines the constitutionality of California’s most recent anti-paparazzi law, concluding that Assembly Bill 2479, like California’s prior anti-paparazzi laws, needlessly modifies existing law at the expense of the First Amend-ment guarantee of a free press

Parental and staff perspectives of NICU research procedures.

BACKGROUND: There are limited data on parental perception of infant participation in minimal risk and minor increase above minimal risk research focusing on the NICU population. The study objective was to assess parental and NICU staff perceptions concerning minimal risk and minor increase above minimal risk in the NICU setting. METHODS: Parents of infants and NICU staff were presented with a combination of 4 infant scenarios and 5 hypothetical research procedures. These assessed participants\u27 willingness to allow their infant to participate in research and their attitude towards obligation to assist future children. Linear and hierarchal linear models analyzed the association and interaction effects on the likelihood to consent to research procedures. RESULTS: Sixty parents and 30 NICU staff members were surveyed. Parents\u27 acceptability for each of the five research procedures ranged from 31 % to 83 %. Parent gender, age, race/ethnicity, insurance, education and history of previous child in the NICU were not associated with the likelihood to consent to the research procedures. Acceptability for each of the five research procedures among NICU staff ranged from 19 % to 98 %. There were no significant differences between NICU staff\u27s and parents\u27 responses for 4 of 5 research procedures. A minority of parents and nurses (38.3 % and 40 % respectively), compared to a majority of physicians (66.7 %), agreed or strongly agreed that parents have a responsibility to involve their children in low risk medical research in order to help future children, even if this would not help their own child. Lower agreement with obligation to help future children (p \u3c 0.01) and higher education (p = 0.01) were associated with a decreased likelihood to consent to research procedures. CONCLUSION: In our study population, common NICU-related research procedures were considered appropriate and acceptable to a diverse group of NICU parents representing a wide range of race/ethnic and socioeconomic strata. Current regulations guiding informed consent for minimal and minor increase over minimal risk research in the NICU environment appear ethically consistent with a diverse group of parents and providers

Biological relevance of CNV calling methods using familial relatedness including monozygotic twins

Studies involving the analysis of structural variation including Copy Number Variation (CNV) have recently exploded in the literature. Furthermore, CNVs have been associated with a number of complex diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders. Common methods for CNV detection use SNP, CNV, or CGH arrays, where the signal intensities of consecutive probes are used to define the number of copies associated with a given genomic region. These practices pose a number of challenges that interfere with the ability of available methods to accurately call CNVs. It has, therefore, become necessary to develop experimental protocols to test the reliability of CNV calling methods from microarray data so that researchers can properly discriminate biologically relevant data from noise

Camera Trap Images used in "Identifying Animal Species in Camera Trap Images using Deep Learning and Citizen Science"

All images were downloaded from Zooniverse and have been resized to 330x330 pixels.This dataset provides the camera trap images used in "Identifying Animal Species in Camera Trap Images using Deep Learning and Citizen Science" as well as meta-data about the images. The Snapshop Serengeti collection includes 6,163,870 images in JPG format. The Snapshot Wisconsin collection includes 497,204 images in JPG format. The Camera CATalogue collection include 506,241 images in JPG format. Excluded are the images for the dataset "Elephant Expedition" which will be published separately outside DRUM. Also excluded are images of humans due to privacy reasons.This study was partially supported by the NSF under award IIS 1619177The development of the Zooniverse platform was partially supported by a Global Impact Award from Google.We also acknowledge support from STFC under grant ST/N003179/1.EE was funded by the University of Oxford’s Hertford College Mortimer May fund

Measuring what matters: Assessing the full suite of benefits of OHF investments

Funding provided from the Outdoor Heritage fund as part of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendmen