Recently, a 29-year-old man from Iron Mountain, Michigan, was sentenced to nearly 20 years in a federal prison for possession of child pornography. Erik Michael Smith pled guilty to receipt of child pornography last June. He told federal prosecutors that he had downloaded pornographic images from the Internet and then shared them with others he met in chat rooms through a peer-to-peer file sharing program. Senior District Judge R. Allan Edgar sentenced Smith to 235 months in prison, a $100 special assessment and, upon completion of his prison term, lifetime supervised ...

The contentious dispute over the reliability of the Intoxilyzer 8000 may decided soon. In the DUI trial of Felicia Birdwell, testimony will center around whether prosecutors may introduce breath test results into evidence without calling an expert to testify as to machine's reliability to accurately measure a driver's BAC level. If the court rules in favor of prosecutors, they could ask juries to presume a driver was legally drunk based on breath test results alone. This would be a powerful weapon in DUI cases. Without this authority, prosecutors would have a difficult ...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: For the first time researchers have been able to watch what happens to the brain as it loses consciousness. Using sophisticated imaging equipment they have constructed a 3-D movie of the brain as it changes while an anaesthetic drug takes effect. Brian Pollard, Professor of Anaesthesia at The University of Manchester (UK), will tell the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam that the real-time 3-D images seemed to show that losing consciousness involves a change in electrical activity deep within the brain, changing the activity of ...

Noninvasive ventilation (NIV) used as a weaning technique for mechanically ventilated patients can shorten intubation time and may reduce the risk of post-extubation acute respiratory failure (ARF), according to French researchers. They also found that NIV used as a post-intubation rescue therapy could significantly reduce the risk of reintubation and death. "While NIV used as a weaning technique did not reduce the risk of reintubation as compared with conventional weaning and standard oxygen therapy, we do think the reduced risk of reintubation or death with NIV used ...

Proactive telephone counseling helps smokers quit regardless of how they are recruited to a telephone quitline, according to a study published online June 10th in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Smokers who use telephone counseling quitlines may do so in response to active recruitment methods, such as physician referral or direct mail or phone calls, or passive methods, such as posters or television ads. Whether quitlines are equally effective for actively recruited smokers and passively recruited smokers has been a key question. In this study, Flora ...

Venice – the City of Dreams – may have one less nightmare to deal with following a finding that the frequency of extreme storm surge events generated by Adriatic Sea tempests could fall by about 30 per cent by 2100. A team of international scientists led by CSIRO's Dr Alberto Troccoli studied atmospheric circulation in the Mediterranean region to assess climate impacts through changes in storm surge frequency in Venice – a World Heritage-listed city built on 117 small islands and considered vulnerable to high sea levels (locally known as Acqua Alta). Dr Troccoli said ...

Clinically ascertained reports suggest that boys and girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may differ from each other in their vulnerability to substance use problems, say the researchers of the University of Helsinki and University of Jyväskylä, Finland. A total of 1545 Finnish adolescents were assessed for DSM-IV-based ADHD symptoms by their parents and classroom teachers using standardized rating scales at age 11-12 years. At age 14, substance use disorders and psychiatric co-morbidity were assessed with the Semi-Structured Assessment for the ...

A report issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) examines the use of detention centers for immigration cases. The report criticized the operation of system that is overly penal in nature, resorting to prison-like conditions for administrative detentions. The IACHR was prompted to investigate the detention systems by complaints human rights advocates, according to a New York Times story. Findings of the Report The Inter-American Commission found that: - In many if not the majority of cases, detention is a disproportionate measure and the ...

This image shows the huge plume of sulphur dioxide that spewed from Chile's Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex, which lies in the Andes about 600 km south of Santiago. After lying dormant for more than 50 years, a series of rumbling earthquakes signalled the beginnings of this major volcanic eruption. On 4 June, a fissure opened, sending a towering plume of volcanic ash and gas over 10 km high. Several thousand people were evacuated as a thick layer of ash and pumice fell and blanketed a wide area. Airports in Chile and Argentina were closed as a result. The ...

Side-impact crashes account for 13 percent of all car accidents and 18 percent of all fatal car accidents, according to a 2009 study conducted by the University of Michigan. These types of crashes, also known as T-bone accidents, can result in serious injuries to drivers and passengers, who may be able to file personal-injury lawsuits following side-impact car accidents in California. Automotive Experts Test Side-Impact Safety While front-impact collisions have been the focus of automotive safety improvements for decades, researchers and auto engineers are turning ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Voters in states with early primary races such as Iowa and New Hampshire have up to five times the influence of voters in later states in selecting presidential candidates, according to research by Brown University economist Brian Knight. The paper, the first to quantify the effects of early victories in the race for the presidential nomination, is co-authored by Nathan Schiff and published in The Journal of Political Economy. Knight and Schiff developed a statistical model that examines how daily polling data responds to returns ...

People lose 30% of their muscle strength between the ages of 50 and 70 years. However, maintaining muscle strength in old age is enormously important in order to maintain mobility and to be able to lead an independent life and manage everyday tasks independently. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Frank Mayer and colleagues from the University of Potsdam conclude that progressive strength (resistance) training counteracts muscular atrophy in old age (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108(21): 359-64). The authors investigated the extent of the effects that ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard several cases regarding acceptable behavior by law enforcement, and this term is no exception. One of the cases involves Albert Florence, a New Jersey resident who alleged that his civil rights were violated after being subject to strip searches when being booked into two local jails. Florence was stopped in 2005 while riding in his vehicle with his wife and daughter. The police ran a search for the vehicle's registration, and discovered that it belonged to Florence, who had an outstanding warrant for an unpaid fine from a 2003 non-indictable ...

Just a few genes make enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) extremely dangerous to humans. If it were not for these genes, EHEC would hardly differ from harmless enteric bacteria. Bioinformatics scientists from the Saarbrücken Cluster of Excellence want to exploit this similarity to find starting points for effective drugs against the EHEC pathogen. In a very short time, the scientists have constructed EhecRegNet, a database and analysis platform that incorporates all known interactions between enteric E. coli genes. Using integrated simulations, genetic switches for the dangerous ...

Patti Flynn is a disabled mother locked in a legal battle with her ex-boyfriend for custody of their five-year-old son. The parties currently share custody, but Flynn's ex-boyfriend is seeking full custody of the child. While this is an intense emotional fight, she has been through such struggles before. A week before she was to be married, Flynn suffered a stroke and fell in the shower, leaving her unable to speak or move her right side. Unfortunately, that relationship deteriorated, but she endured a long road of rehabilitation and learned how to care for her toddler. ...

UPTON, NY - Magnetic studies of ultrathin slabs of copper-oxide materials reveal that at very low temperatures, the thinnest, isolated layers lose their long-range magnetic order and instead behave like a "quantum spin liquid" - a state of matter where the orientations of electron spins fluctuate wildly. This unexpected discovery by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland may offer support for the idea that this novel condensed state of matter is a precursor to the ...

Under federal and West Virginia state laws, you have the right to work free from gender discrimination or harassment. Most people know that sexual harassment is wrong, but they don't know exactly what the term means. Simply put, sexual harassment is -- according to Black's Law Dictionary -- "a type of employment discrimination consisting of verbal or physical abuse of a sexual nature." Admittedly, this is a somewhat vague definition. Fortunately, though, laws and court rulings have provided guidance to employers and employees alike as to what sorts of behaviors ...

Athens, Ga. – The Internet is often thought of as a forum that enables egalitarian communication among people from diverse backgrounds and political persuasions, but a University of Georgia study reveals that online discussion groups display the same hierarchical structure as other large social groups. "About 2 percent of those who start discussion threads attract about 50 percent of the replies," said study author Itai Himelboim, assistant professor in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. "So although we have this wide range and diversity of ...

This release is available in German. The kea, a New Zealand parrot, and the New Caledonian crow are members of the two most intelligent avian families. Researchers from the Department of Cognitive Biology of the University of Vienna investigated their problem solving abilities as well as their innovative capacities. They are publishing two new studies – one in cooperation with members of the Behavioral Ecology Research Group in Oxford – in the scientific journals PLoS ONE and Biology Letters. Parrots and Corvids frequently astonish researchers investigating animal ...

The past two years have seen an increase in the rate of denial of applications for adjustment of status. With the denial of these applications, particularly employment-based adjustment of status, the USCIS is almost immediately issuing a Notice to Appear (NTA) in removal proceedings. With the USCIS sending almost all employment cases to the Nebraska Service Center (NSC), employers and their sponsored workers can almost expect to receive a Request for Evidence (RFE) from USCIS on the I-140, I-485 or both at some point during the protracted process. The USCIS is brazenly ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — By digging a little deeper, researchers may have found a potential target for reversing the deadly blood infection sepsis. Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System looked at microRNA, a type of RNA that does not code for a protein itself but that can regulate the expression of other genes and proteins. They found that by attacking the right microRNA they could influence a key trigger of inflammatory diseases such as sepsis. Traditionally, researchers have gone after a bigger target, attempting to find compounds that directly control ...

Yes, it's that time of year again: The H-1B visa quota for FY 2012 will finally open up on April 1, 2011, making 65,000 new H-1B visa numbers available for new employment beginning on October 1, 2011. Since the H-1B quota for the last several fiscal years has closed well before the next fiscal year commenced, thousands of applicants are already preparing their H-1B Petitions to be filed on or soon after April 1, 2011, which is the earliest date on which an employer may submit a new petition. Absent some extraordinary Congressional action, the recent trend of early-exhaustion ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – With the completion of a successful prototype, engineers at Oregon State University have made a major step toward addressing one of the leading problems in energy use around the world today – the waste of half or more of the energy produced by cars, factories and power plants. New technology is being developed at OSU to capture and use the low-to-medium grade waste heat that's now going out the exhaust pipe of millions of automobiles, diesel generators, or being wasted by factories and electrical utilities. The potential cost savings, improved energy ...

Every year, I write hundreds of articles for the press dealing, in general terms, with new immigration laws, regulations and interpretations impacting hundreds of thousands of immigrants both inside and outside the US. Rather than start off this New Year with an article regarding new changes in the law or changing interpretations as to what can be done, legally, for clients in certain circumstances; I decided to publish an article about how things should be done, in practice, for clients seeking the highest quality legal representation. Clients should be aware that when ...

This release is available in Spanish. A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-led consortium of scientists has fully sequenced the genome of the pathogen that causes the wheat disease known as septoria tritici blotch, which can cause significant yield losses. According to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, losses can reach as high as 50 percent if fungicides are not used to protect susceptible wheat lines. Thise disease is found in every wheat-growing area in the world, including the United States. The research, published in PLoS Genetics, ...