A Comprehensive Administrative Solution to the Armed Career Criminal Act Debacle

For thirty years, the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) has imposed a fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence on those people convicted as felons in possession of a firearm or ammunition who have three prior convictions for a violent felony or serious drug offense. Debate about the law has existed mainly within a larger discussion on the normative value of mandatory minimums. Assuming that the ACCA endures, however, administering it will continue to be a challenge. The approach that courts use to determine whether past convictions qualify as ACCA predicate offenses creates ex ante uncertainty and the potential for intercourt disparities. Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s guidance on sentencing ACCA defendants has been unclear. The resulting ambiguity creates inequity between defendants and fails to give them fair warning of the statute’s scope. This ambiguity also depletes the resources of courts, defendants, and prosecutors and prevents the statute from realizing its full potential of deterring violent crime. This Note argues that rather than allowing this debacle to continue, Congress should delegate to a federal agency the task of compiling a binding list of state statutes that qualify as predicate offenses. Under this approach, the states would assist the federal agency by providing initial guidance on their ambiguous statutes. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has the manpower, subject familiarity, and institutional incentives to build and maintain the appendix, and state sentencing commissions would make ideal partners. In states that do not have sentencing commissions, comparable agencies and even properly incentivized attorneys general may be able to aid the federal Sentencing Commission. Congress should leverage this undertaking to resolve related definitional questions about the meaning of a violent crime in other areas of federal law

Massive stars in the hinterland of the young cluster, Westerlund 2

Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 13 July 2018. 16 pages, plus one-page table in an appendix.An unsettled question concerning the formation and distribution of massive stars is whether they must be born in massive clusters and, if found in less dense environments, whether they must have migrated there. With the advent of wide-area digital photometric surveys, it is now possible to identify massive stars away from prominent Galactic clusters without bias. In this study we consider 40 candidate OB stars found in the field around the young massive cluster, Westerlund 2, by Mohr-Smith et al.: these are located inside a box of 1.5 × 1.5 deg 2 and are selected on the basis of their extinctions and K magnitudes.We present VLT/X-shooter spectra of two of the hottest O stars, respectively 11 and 22 arcmin from the centre of Westerlund 2. They are confirmed as O4V stars, with stellar masses likely to be in excess of 40 M ·. Their radial velocities relative to the non-binary reference object, MSP 182, in Westerlund 2 are -29.4 ± 1.7 and -14.4 ± 2.2 km s -1, respectively. Using Gaia DR2 proper motions we find that between 8 and 11 early O/WR stars in the studied region (including the two VLT targets, plus WR 20c and WR 20aa) could have been ejected fromWesterlund 2 in the last one million years. This represents an efficiency of massive-star ejection of up to ~ 25 per cent. On sky, the positions of these stars and their proper motions show a near N-S alignment. We discuss the possibility that these results are a consequence of prior sub-cluster merging combining with dynamical ejection.Peer reviewe

Modeling Flood Inundation & Hydrological Connectivity Across the Congaree River Floodplain, Congaree National Park

2012 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Exploring Opportunities for Collaborative Water Research, Policy and Managemen

The Processing Pathway of Prelamin A

The conversion of mammalian prelamin A to mature lamin A proceeds through the removal of 18 amino acids from the carboxyl terminus. The initial step in this processing is the isoprenylation of a CAAX box cysteine. This proteolytic event is distinctive for prelamin A among the known prenylated mammalian proteins. Since the carboxyl terminus of prelamin A is removed during maturation, it is not obvious that this protein would undergo the two reactions subsequent to prenylation observed in other CAAX box proteins-the endoproteolytic removal of the carboxyl-terminal 3 amino acids and the subsequent methylation of the now carboxyl-terminal cysteine. To characterize the maturation of prelamin A further, we have developed a CHO-K1 cell line that possesses a dexamethasone-inducible human prelamin A against a genetic background of high mevalonate uptake. Utilizing this cell line in association with antibodies specific to the transgenic prelamin A, we have been able to demonstrate directly in vivo that prelamin A undergoes farnesylation and carboxymethylation prior to conversion to lamin A, as is the case for other prenylated proteins. We have demonstrated previously that in the absence of isoprenylation, conversion of prelamin A to lamin A is blocked, but that unprocessed prelamin A is transported to the nucleus where it can still undergo maturation. Consistent with the implications of these prior studies, we now demonstrate the presence of both subunits of farnesyl-protein transferase in the nucleus

Preliminary tank characterization report for single-shell tank 241-BX-111: best-basis inventory

An effort is underway to provide waste inventory estimates that will serve as standard characterization source terms for the various waste management activities. As part of this effort, an evaluation of available information for single-shell tank 241-BX-111 was performed, and a best-basis inventory was established. This work follows the methodology that was established by the standard inventory task

Notes on the Diagnostic Differences Between Psychosis and Autism in Childhood.

O artigo aborda a discussão em torno do diagnóstico diferencial da psicose e do autismo infantis, mostrando a falta de concordância entre os autores psicanalistas. Busca, em seguida, delinear um diagnóstico diferencial a partir da proposição de que no autismo falha a função materna e na psicose infantil falha a função paterna.This paper discusses the differences between the diagnosis of the infantile autism and the one of psychosis in infancy. It shows the lack of agreement among psychoanalysts who have written about this theme and proposes a way of establishing the diagnostic difference: autism can be stated as a fail in maternal function, and psychosis as a fail in paternal function