Babies Behind Bars: An Evaluation of Prison Nurseries in American Female Prisons and Their Potential Constitutional Challenges

This note opens the prison doors and delves into the United States female prison system, primarily focusing on the positive and negative impact of nursery programs on mothers and children, along with potential constitutional claims that can be brought against these programs. Part I provides a general background about the American prison system, and briefly touches on the constitutional standards of prisoners’ rights. It also discusses the history and development of female prisons and illustrates the rapid increase of female incarceration. Part II focuses on the prevalence of mothers within the female population in prisons. Part III introduces prison nursery programs and explains their history and how they operate. Part IV discusses the positive impact prison nurseries have had on both mothers and children. Part V touches on a few negative effects and the limitations of these programs. Finally, Part VI raises three potential constitutional challenges that can be raised against prison nurseries: two arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause and one argument based on the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. As this note will conclude, there should be an increase in the implementation of prison nursery programs in American prisons, as the value of these programs greatly outweighs their limitations. Moreover, potential constitutional attacks on these programs should not be discouraging, as they are unlikely to prevail

Tropomyosins, N-terminal acetylation and their impact on yeast cytoskeletal function: A characterisation of novel tropomyosins from N. crassa and the N-terminal acetyltransferase, Nat3p

PhDWhile the fundamental role of tropomyosins (Tms) in the maintenance of the actin cytoskeleton in yeast is established, details of their exact regulatory functions in lower eukaryotes remains to be deciphered. Here, two novel Tms have been identified from the filamentous yeast Neurospora crassa: a 161 residue protein spanning 4 actin monomers (crTm161p), and a 123 residue protein which spans 3 actin monomers (crTm123p). The latter isoform is the shortest naturally occurring Tm known. The isoforms are produced as a result of alternative splicing from a single gene- a phenomenon that has not previously been observed in yeast Tms. Both Tms were cloned, purified and crystallised. They were also characterised biochemically and biophysically, giving some insight into their role in fungal cytoskeleton regulation. The crystals produced provide the potential for future structural studies, as a high resolution structure of a complete Tm is still not available. The N-terminal acetylation of Tms is essential for their function, and is catalysed in Saccaromyces cerevisiae by the N-terminal N-acetyltransferase (NAT) Nat3p. Nat3p was expressed and purified. Its functionality was investigated via acetyl coenzyme A binding assays. The molecular structure of Nat3p was modelled using existing data from structural homologues. The closely related N-terminal NAT, Nat5p, was also expressed, purified and its structure modelled. Nat3p was largely insoluble while Nat5p was soluble and was successfully crystallised. Structural insights from molecular modelling were able to provide some justification for these differences. Finally the in vivo effects of genetic knockouts of the TPM1 and NAT3 genes in yeast were analysed quantitatively. Complementation of the defective knockout phenotypes by over-expression of various Tm and Nat3p constructs was also investigated. Quantifying the overlapping phenotypes of the NAT3Δ and TPM1Δ mutaunts has clarified their distinct impacts upon the cytoskeleton. The ability of the crTms to rescue TPM1Δ phenotypes implies they have roles similar to those of Tpm1p

Identification of Persons and Several Demographic Features based on Motion Analysis of Various Daily Activities using Wearable Sensors

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in using the capabilities of wearable sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers, to recognize individuals while undertaking a set of normal daily activities. The past few years have seen considerable research exploring person recognition using wearable sensing devices due to its significance in different applications, including security and human-computer interaction applications. This thesis explores the identification of subjects and related multiple biometric demographic attributes based on the motion data of normal daily activities gathered using wearable sensor devices. First, it studies the recognition of 18 subjects based on motion data of 20 daily living activities using six wearable sensors affixed to different body locations. Next, it investigates the task of classifying various biometric demographic features: age, gender, height, and weight based on motion data of various activities gathered using two types of accelerometers and one gyroscope wearable sensors. Initially, different significant parameters that impact the subjects' recognition success rates are investigated. These include studying the performance of the three sensor sources: accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, and the impact of their combinations. Furthermore, the impact of the number of different sensors mounted at different body positions and the best body position to mount sensors are also studied. Next, the analysis also explored which activities are more suitable for subject recognition, and lastly, the recognition success rates and mutual confusion among individuals. In addition, the impact of several fundamental factors on the classification performance of different demographic features using motion data collected from three sensors is studied. Those factors include the performance evaluation of feature-set extracted from both time and frequency domains, feature selection, individual sensor sources and multiple sources. The key findings are: (I) Features extracted from all three sensor sources provide the highest accuracy of subjects recognition. (2) The recognition accuracy is affected by the body position and the number of sensors. Ankle, chest, and thigh positions outperform other positions in terms of the recognition accuracy of subjects. There is a depreciating association between the subject classification accuracy and the number of sensors used. (3) Sedentary activities such as watching tv, texting on the phone, writing with a pen, and using pc produce higher classification results and distinguish persons efficiently due to the absence of motion noise in the signal. (4) Identifiability is not uniformly distributed across subjects. (5) According to the classification results of considered biometric features, both full and selected features-set derived from all three sources of two accelerometers and a gyroscope sensor provide the highest classification accuracy of all biometric features compared to features derived from individual sensors sources or pairs of sensors together. (6) Under all configurations and for all biometric features classified; the time-domain features examined always outperformed the frequency domain features. Combining the two sets led to no increase in classification accuracy over time-domain alone

The Impact of Ethnic Groups on National Security

Ethnic diversity in and of itself does not negatively affect national security. The threat it imposes to national security is a result of many factors combined with political opportunity that fundamental changes occurring in the political system exploited by ethnic and sectarian groups trying to change the political system to their advantage. Many factors such as political, historical, economic, social, cultural, environmental, and psychological factors may lead ethnic groups to rebel and impose threats to the national states of any country especially developing countries

WHY STAY? SAUDI WOMEN’S ADAPTIONS TO VIOLENCE

The study investigates the reasons why women continue to live with an abusive husband and examines the relationship between their reasons and a number of variables that support one’s ability to cope with spousal violence. These variables include employment status, educational level, number of children, marriage duration, the social status of the wife's family and the number of violent incidents. A demographic survey and a spousal violence adaption scale were administered to a sample of 114 abused wives. The results revealed that all of the variables and several of the dimensions represented by the violence adaption scale affected the women’s decisions. The impact of these variables was more obvious among nonworking wives and the lesser educated, women with a greater number of children, those who had been married longer, those who senatal families had a low social status, and those who were subjected to violence more frequently. Keywords: adaptation to violence, marital violence, Saudi Arabia, spousal violence, violence against women in Saudi Arabia, why women stay in violent relationships

Mrs. Martin Seham to James Meredith (1 October 1962)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/1845/thumbnail.jp

The Relationship between Moral Values and Social Acts from Max Weber's Perspective: An Empirical Study Based a Sample of Students from King Abdulaziz University

The present study aims to identify the relationship between moral values ??and social acts in light of Max Weber's theory of action in terms of some demographic variables (i.e., gender, place of residency, academic level, and academic specialization) of some college students. The study, however, subjected a sample consisting of 360 students at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The study tools included demographic data form and two criteria of measurements: moral values ??and social act. The statistical calculations were implemented using Arithmetic Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test and Pearson correlation. The results revealed that the correlation and congruence between moral values ??and social acts are much clearer in the female sample than the male sample, and in rural inhabitants than the urban ones, and in the students of the college level (1-4) than the college level (5-8). Keywords : Moral Values, Social Action, Gender,  Residency, Grade, and Academic Specialization

A Comparison of Eating Problems among Children with Autism, Mental Retardation and Children with Normal Development

The study investigates the scope of prevalence of problems with eating habits among children plagued with autism and mental retardation compared to children with normal development. The sample of the study consists of 156 male and female children whose ages range between (3-12) years. The results of the study show that autistic children have experienced eating problems more than children with mental retardation and children with normal development. All the subjects in the study face problems with eating sugar and sweets. Furthermore, children with autism have a problem related to the period of eating, whereas children with mental retardation have faced problems with eating uncooked vegetables.Key words: Autism; Mental Retardation; Normal development; Problem of eatin

Preparation, Characterization and Catalytic Activity Study of Transition Metal Doped Porous γ-Alumina

Transition-metal ions -doped γ-alumina composites with various dopant concentrations (Cr3+, Fe3+, Ce3+, Zn2+, Mn2+, V2+ and Cu2+) were prepared by straightforward tempIate-free sol-gel method. They were characterized by XRD, FTIR, SEM, NMR and N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm technique. The presence of dopant metal ions, generally, enhanced the gel formation and their behavior was dependent on the nature of the metal ion and its concentration. Certain ions, especially Fe3+, resulted in rapid formation of a transparent gel upon hydro lysis. The presence of the acetylacetonate ions (acac) enhanced the condensation reactions in the sol-gel process and resulted in eventually unique textural properties of the calcined products including high surface areas, small particle size, homogeneous mesopores, and enhanced resistance to sintering especially at high dopant concentrations and elevated calcination temperatures. The prepared doped γ-alumina powders were weakly crystalline at low dopant ion concentrations, 3%, and became completely amorphous at a concentration of 10%. The morphology of the particles was also dependent on the dopant concentration. While dopant concentration of 2% resulted in nano-particles with significant amount of inter-particle mesopores, 10% concentration led to significant aggregation into larger particles. The prepared doped γ-alumina as well as the undoped γ-alumina showed high surface areas (377 m2/g) and pore volumes (1.65 cc/g) which were largely dependent on the nature of the dopant metal ions and on their concentrations. While composites with low dopant concentration, 2 and 3%, exhibited surface areas and pore volumes comparable to those of undoped γ-alumina, a considerable decrease was associated with higher concentrations. The changes in textural properties were referred to the evident enhanced sintering associated with high dopant concentrations. Composites with low Cr3+ ion concentration, 0.75 and 2%, showed reversible thermochromism where their greenish yellow color changed to red upon calcinations at temperatures between 500 and 700 °C. Based on NMR results, occupation of tetrahedral sites by Cr3+ ions was preferred over octahedral sites at low Cr3+ concentrations. The composites showed unique textural properties comparable with those of high-surf ace-area porous γ-alumina, especially at low concentrations of Cr3+. The catalytic activity of the doped catalysts as well as that of undoped γ-alumina was studied over 1,2-dichloroethan (DCE) at 300°C using FTIR spectroscopy to monitor the reaction products. γ-alumina catalyst doped with CU(Il) and Cr(Ill) ions showed higher conversion than undoped γ-alumina. The nature of the products was strongly dependent on the presence of dopant ions and on the type of dopant. While pure γ-alumina resulted, mainly, in the formation of C2H3CI, Cu- and Cr-doped catalysts showed significantly stronger capability for deep oxidation of DCE to CO2 on the account of C2H3Cl