Patterns of megafloral change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in the Northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

The spatial and temporal distribution of vegetation in the terminal Cretaceous of Western Interior North America was a complex mosaic resulting from the interaction of factors including a shifting coastline, tectonic activity, a mild, possibly deteriorating climate, dinosaur herbivory, local facies effects, and a hypothesized bolide impact. In order to achieve sufficient resolution to analyze this vegetational pattern, over 100 megafloral collecting sites were established, yielding approximately 15,000 specimens, in Upper Cretaceous and lower Paleocene strata in the Williston, Powder River, and Bighorn basins in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. These localities were integrated into a lithostratigraphic framework that is based on detailed local reference sections and constrained by vertebrate and palynomorph biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and sedimentary facies analysis. A regional biostratigraphy based on well located and identified plant megafossils that can be used to address patterns of floral evolution, ecology, and extinction is the goal of this research. Results of the analyses are discussed

Detection Of License Plates In Mobile Device Dashcam

Systems and methods for detection of license plates using mobile dashcams are disclosed. The system includes a mobile device installed with a dashcam app connected to a server and a law enforcement agency through a mobile network. The dashcam app maintains an on-device database of vehicle data. The vehicle data is obtained from a server after pre-computation of the detection parameters from the issued Amber Alerts on the server-side. This enables the detection task to be more computationally feasible on the mobile device. The method includes detecting a vehicle that matches the description provided in Amber Alerts. The user is alerted of a matching vehicle and prompted with options for sharing the dashcam data with a law enforcement agency. The systems and methods disclosed herein allow for detection of a matching vehicle even in the absence of a network or a poor mobile network

Street Cop is not Street-Smart

Frontline, the award-winnnng WGBH-TV series, is airing a nationally televised special on the war against street drugs. The show, called Street Cop, takes viewers to Boston\u27s inner city for fifty minutes of heart-pumping violence. We see the police take a sledgehammer to an apartment door in search of drugs as the women and children inside scream in wide-eyed terror. We watch police officers wrestle a young man to the pavement over a suspected drug deal, and we feel the tension mount during a domestic argument until in the confusion a woman is arrested for throwing what an officer thought was a stone. Later, it turns out to have been a shoe. If war is hell, Street Cop says that life in Roxbury cannot be far behind

PEER GROUP INFLUENCES UPON ADOLESCENT DRINKING PRACTICES

Utilizing longitudinal data on 345 high school students, this study investigates the impact that peer identification, sociability, activity, and perceptions of peer attitudes governing the use of alcohol have upon adolescent alcohol use, and the likelihood of experiencing personal problems as a consequence of drinking. The major findings are that adolescent orientations toward alcohol are responsive to all but peer identification, and that the predictors generally exert their strongest influences upon youthful drinking in and around the junior year. Similarly, alcohol use and personal problems associated with drinking each exert varying degrees of influence upon the predictors within and across time, though these effects generally cluster around the junior year as well

Federal Court Processing of Corporate, White Collar, and Common Crime Economic Offenders Over the Past Three Decades

The history of white-collar and corporate crime in our nation has been one of toleration. Throughout much of this century, the victims, the government, and the criminal justice system have been largely inactive in attempting to control this form of law-violating behavior. Asa result, occupational and organizational crime offenders have been treated preferentially in our courts when compared to traditional or common crime offenders. Beginning in the 1970s, however, public attitudes began to changeand the government and criminal justice system were given a mandate to pursue these offenders. This paper utilizes aggregate data on the U.S. District Courts for the fiscal years ending June 30, 1964, 1974, and 1984, and is designed to investigate whethera shift in criminal justice policy (arising from public concerns over corporate and white-collar crime) has been put into effect. That is, have equitableoperational policies for the adjudicationand sentencing of corporate, white-collar, and common crime offenders evolved over the past three decades? The conclusions drawn from the data suggest that while corporate and white-collar criminals are more frequently being brought to the attention of the courts, and have beenreceiving more and moreserious sanctions, they are still receiving more lenient penalties for their actions than are common property crime offenders

Media Images of Boston\u27s Black Community

In their efforts to report on the forces that affect Boston\u27s racial climate, the local media have typically focused on the more obvious institutional actors: businesses, city hall, school boards, churches, the courts, neighborhood groups. Rarely have the media themselves been subjected to the same scrutiny. This study represents one such effort It is an analysis of the images of Boston\u27s black community that are conveyed through the local news media. It asks the question: If a Bostonian relied solely on the local news for information about local blacks, 1) what impressions would he or she be left with, and 2) how representative of reality might those impressions be? Given Boston\u27s housing patterns, the question is far from academic. Much of the city is made up of tightiy segregated neighborhoods, places where white residents might have little or no meaningful contact with blacks. Similarly, Boston\u27s suburbs have failed to follow a national pattern of modest gains in black residents. People who do not interact with blacks would seem particularly vulnerable to media images whose accuracy they can neither verify nor reject on the basis of their personal experience. And yet all of us, no matter where we live, tend to internalize the messages we receive through the media. To the extent that those messages contradict racist attitudes about blacks or reinforce them, the local media stand as agents for positive social change or unwitting perpetuators of racism. To better understand how the local media portray Boston\u27s black community, I monitored news reports from a sample of newspapers and radio and television stations for one month during the summer of 1986. I noted the roles blacks played, the activities blacks were shown to be engaged in, and the events that brought blacks into the news. By comparing the portrayal of blacks in Boston\u27s major media with portrayals in the black media, I sought to understand the criteria that reporters and editors use to judge the newsworthiness of items relating to the black community, and to understand whether (and if so, why) the images broadcast about blacks may be unrepresentative

PERCEPTUAL RESPONSESOF VICTIMIZATION IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Relationships between frequency and severity of household victimization and fears, concerns and behavioral responses to crime are investigated utilizing a mailed victimization questionnaire among a predominantly rural/farm market population. Frequency of victimization is defined as the number of personal and property offenses experienced by household members. Severity is defined as the proximity of the victim to the offense. Fear is measured by three items relating to percep tions of the relative safety of one's residential area. Concern is measured by three items relating to attitudes or percep tions about crime in general. Behavioral measures include minor avoidance reactions, such as altering entertainment practices partially in response to crime, and major avoidance or retreatist actions, such as moving in response to crime. Major findings and conclusions are as follows: (1) as the frequency and severity of victimization increases, fear of, but not concern about, crime increases; (2) though victimization appears to be an important factor in minor behavioral adaptations, this relationship is not as conclusive for major avoidance reactions; (3) fear is considered to be a rational response to people's experiential worlds; and (4) fear may be viewed as an independent consequence of both concern and victimization among the rural population sampled

Media Images and Racial Stereotyping

To better understand how the local media portray Boston\u27s black community, I monitored news reports from a sample of newspapers and radio and television stations for one month during the summer of 1986. I noted the roles blacks played, the activities blacks were shown to be engaged in, and the events that brought blacks into the news. By comparing the portrayal of blacks in Boston\u27s major media with portrayals in the black media, I sought to understand the criteria that reporters and editors use to judge the newsworthiness of items relating to the black community, and to determine whether (and why) the images broadcast about blacks were or were not representative