Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights

The plethora of early gun laws herein described establish their prolific existence, but also validate the argument that gun rules and gun rights are by no means at odds. If the Supreme Court was indeed serious in saying that the provenance of gun regulations is relevant to the evaluation of contemporary laws, then this examination advances the Court's stated objective. The common notions that gun laws are largely a function of modern, industrial (or postindustrial) America, that gun laws are incompatible with American history and its practices or values, and that gun laws fundamentally collide with American legal traditions or individual rights, are all patently false. Following this introduction in part I, part II establishes that gun laws are as old as the nation. Part III summarizes the different categories into which early gun laws are categorized, and the frequency distributions within each category divided into time periods from 1607 to 1934. Part IV examines illustrative laws within each category and considers their nature and consequences. Part V offers a brief conclusion

Lost and Found: Researching the Second Amendment

The recent proliferation of writings on the Second Amendment makes numerous claims including: (1) there has been little or no legal scholarship on the Second Amendment until recent times; (2) the individualist view of the Second Amendment is the dominant or mainstream paradigm; (3) the courts have committed a dereliction of duty insofar as they have been silent on, or indifferent to, interpretation of the Second Amendment; and (4) since three of the four Supreme Court cases concerning the Second Amendment were decided in the nineteenth century, the court doctrine is somehow defective, irrelevant, outdated, unclear, or embarrassing. In this Article, Spitzer rebuts these claims based on his detailed study of law journal literature on the Second Amendment and suggests that law journals provide a breeding ground for occasionally wayward theories of constitutional meaning

Optimal Occulter Design for Finding Extrasolar Planets

One proposed method for finding terrestrial planets around nearby stars is to use two spacecraft--a telescope and a specially shaped occulter that is specifically designed to prevent all but a tiny fraction of the starlight from diffracting into the telescope. As the cost and observing cadence for such a mission will be driven largely by the separation between the two spacecraft, it is critically important to design an occulter that can meet the observing goals while flying as close to the telescope as possible. In this paper, we explore this tradeoff between separation and occulter diameter. More specifically, we present a method for designing the shape of the outer edge of an occulter that is as small as possible and gives a shadow that is deep enough and large enough for a 4m telescope to survey the habitable zones of many stars for Earth-like planets. In particular, we show that in order for a 4m telescope to detect in broadband visible light a planet 0.06 arcseconds from a star shining $10^{10}$ times brighter than the planet requires a specially-shaped occulter 50m in diameter positioned about $72,000$ km in front of the telescope.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 15 subfigure

Treatment of the Narcoleptiform Sleep Disorder in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia with Sodium Oxybate

This study investigates the response of the underlying sleep disorder associated with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) to treatment. We retrospectively reviewed 118 cases clinically consistent with CFS or FM, treated in a neurology practice. Abnormal findings on sleep studies and associated human leukocyte antigen markers, and a clinical pattern suggestive of narcolepsy, are present in a high proportion of patients. When considered appropriate based on the clinical picture and test results, treatment with sodium oxybate was offered to these patients. Sixty percent of patients treated with oxybate experienced significant relief of pain, while 75% experienced significant relief of fatigue. We postulate that the response to oxybate in CFS and FM suggests a disturbance of sleep similar to narcolepsy. These findings support this novel approach to intervention and further research. The inability to distinguish CFS and FM by testing and response to treatment suggests that they may represent variations of the same disorder or may be closely related disorders.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78646/1/j.1533-2500.2009.00334.x.pd

Struktur och storlek hos två björnpopulationer (Ursos arctos) från SNP-baserade släktträdsanalyser

Reliable population estimates are an important aspect of sustainable wildlife management but usually difficult to obtain for rare and elusive large carnivores. I tested a new method developed by Creel and Rosenblatt (2013) to estimate the population size of two Swedish brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations. The Creel-Rosenblatt estimator (CRE) projects beyond the count of genotypes by including individuals that were inferred from the pedigree as well as undetected individuals into the population estimates. Using a recently developed panel of 96 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), hunter-collected fecal samples were genotyped for reconstructing pedigrees. Based on 434 genotypes from Dalarna-Gävleborg and 265 from Västerbotten, the CRE population estimates