Familiarity breeds respect: Organizing and studying a courtwatch

Like hospitals, courts are usually places you do not want to see. Litigants are there under unpleasant circumstances, such as being involved in crime or seeking redress for private wrongs, and witnesses and jurors are often there reluctantly. Nevertheless, compared with other branches of government; the judiciary has enjoyed continuous high public support, probably because this is the only opportunity individual people get to affect the operation of a governmental function personally. In court, a single person's complaint is sufficient to evoke a full hearing, which is not the case in legislative or executive realms (Zemans, 1991). In court, the citizen and the government are at their closest, directly interacting, with judges making decisions of direct personal significance to the citizen

Raising the Standard of Evidence for Initiating an Identification Procedure

How do police select suspects for witnesses to identify? There is currently no standard for the quantity of evidence required before investigators can order an identification procedure. Because eyewitness misidentification continues to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions, law and policy should guide police discretion at this investigatory stage by requiring detectives to show an evidentiary basis for placing suspects in lineups, showups, or photo arrays. The American Law Institute has proposed an addition to the Model Penal Code requiring police to have a strong basis in factual evidence before conducting identification procedures. The American Psychology-Law Society called for an evidence-based suspicion standard. Current law provides Fifth Amendment due process challenges to the suggestiveness of such procedures post hoc but does not address the reasons police may apply them to subjects ab initio, which is a Fourth Amendment concern. Reviewing Terry v. Ohio (1968), Justice Brennan’s dicta in Davis v. Mississippi (1969), and Maryland v. Buie (1990), this Article outlines Fourth Amendment-based arguments for developing a standard of evidence for initiating identification procedures, concluding that the reasonable suspicion standard of Terry is insufficient, and an articulable facts standard should be implemented

Development and utilization of camelid VHH antibodies from alpaca for 2,2',4,4'-tetrabrominated diphenyl ether detection.

An antibody-based analytical method for the detection of a chemical flame retardant using antibody fragments isolated from an alpaca has been developed. One specific chemical flame retardant congener, 2,2',4,4'-tetrabrominated diphenyl ether (BDE-47), is often the major poly-BDE (PBDE) congener present in human and environmental samples and that which is the most frequently detected. An alpaca was immunized with a surrogate of BDE-47 covalently attached to a carrier protein. The resulting mRNA coding for the variable domain of heavy-chain antibodies (VHH) were isolated, transcribed to cDNA, and cloned into a phagemid vector for phage display library construction. Selection of VHHs recognizing BDE-47 was achieved by panning under carefully modified conditions. The assay sensitivity for detecting BDE-47 was down to the part-per-billion (microgram per liter) level. Cross-reactivity analyses confirmed that this method was highly selective for BDE-47 and selected hydroxylated metabolites. When exposed to elevated temperatures, the camelid VHH antibodies retained more reactivity than a polyclonal antibody developed to the same target analyte. The use of this VHH antibody reagent immobilized onto a Au electrode for impedance biosensing demonstrates the increased versatility of VHH antibodies

Development and utilization of camelid VHH antibodies from alpaca for 2,2',4,4'-tetrabrominated diphenyl ether detection.

An antibody-based analytical method for the detection of a chemical flame retardant using antibody fragments isolated from an alpaca has been developed. One specific chemical flame retardant congener, 2,2',4,4'-tetrabrominated diphenyl ether (BDE-47), is often the major poly-BDE (PBDE) congener present in human and environmental samples and that which is the most frequently detected. An alpaca was immunized with a surrogate of BDE-47 covalently attached to a carrier protein. The resulting mRNA coding for the variable domain of heavy-chain antibodies (VHH) were isolated, transcribed to cDNA, and cloned into a phagemid vector for phage display library construction. Selection of VHHs recognizing BDE-47 was achieved by panning under carefully modified conditions. The assay sensitivity for detecting BDE-47 was down to the part-per-billion (microgram per liter) level. Cross-reactivity analyses confirmed that this method was highly selective for BDE-47 and selected hydroxylated metabolites. When exposed to elevated temperatures, the camelid VHH antibodies retained more reactivity than a polyclonal antibody developed to the same target analyte. The use of this VHH antibody reagent immobilized onto a Au electrode for impedance biosensing demonstrates the increased versatility of VHH antibodies