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In 2014, the Second Circuit held that the exclusionary rule does not apply in civil deportation hearings absent an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment. An egregious constitutional violation is one in which an individual is subjected to a seizure for no reason at all, or one in which a seizure is based on race, or some other grossly improper consideration. In Maldonado v. Holder, the Petitioners were seized based solely on their Latino appearance and their eagerness to seek work as day laborers. Despite the presence of an egregious constitutional violation, the Second Circuit declined to extend the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the Petitioners, choosing instead to uphold discriminatory police action, motivated by grossly improper considerations. Concluding that factors such as ethnicity, national origin, and occupational status do not qualify as raced-based or some other grossly improper consideration necessary to trigger the exclusionary rule in civil immigration removal proceedings, the court denied the Petitioners the fundamental human right to due process and a fair trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (2nd Continental Congress, 1776). In 1776, our founding fathers declared independence from the oppression of a foreign power and took action to create a free nation to be true to their ideals. Today, this freedom is being threatened by US dependence on oil supplied by foreign powers. This dependence is increasingly encroaching on the general welfare of the nation, in terms of our national security and economic well-being. US dependence on foreign energy imports is at an all-time high and will likely increase if current policies and strategies do not change. Since 2001, natural gas and oil prices have doubled largely due to lack of global capacity to supply world demand for energy. Fossil fuel prices will continue to rise over the next 20 years as world supplies of oil and natural gas struggle to keep up with rapidly increasing world demand and as countries compete for fossil fuel supplies. Energy supply and prices affect the cost of all products produced in the US. Furthermore, energy supply greatly impacts US strategic decision-making, influencing our decisions on how we confront international crises in terms of deciding which countries to ally with, and which countries to tolerate despite ideological differences. Our standard of living, economic well-being, and national security will be compromised within the next 10 years, if current energy goals are not changed to address imbalances between global supply and demand of fossil fuels. It is important that new policies be implemented immediately because oil and gas prices have already greatly increased due to a lack of excess supply and are already having an impact on our economy. With the growing gap between energy supplies and demand, the US will be increasingly dependent on energy-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Argentina. Furthermore, competition with Europe and Asia for energy supplies will increase. The bottom line: The US standard of living, economy, and national security are likely to suffer due to dependence on energy from countries that influence world supply and demand. Therefore, the US should take decisive steps to greatly reduce dependence on oil and natural gas by 2015 and to achieve energy independence by 2025. The US should position itself as a leader of high technology energy solutions that can free it and the world from an unstable fossil fuel market, thereby alleviating or preventing an all-out world energy crisis. To address this global situation, US priorities should be directed toward increasing the supply of nuclear, solar and biofuel power. Most Americans agree that the US must work toward energy independence, but they disagree strongly on methods to achieve that goal. Not only is it not clear to most Americans which methods are feasible and practical, the issue is further complicated by the actions energy industries take in competition for resources, markets, and favorable legislation. Industries and other constituencies undercut each other, slowing progress. Resource allocations and policy could be improved through an integrated, unbiased look at the world's energy systems. This article examines the issue of US energy dependency from the perspective of an independent citizen looking at what would be best for the US. It analyzes the interdependencies of world supply, world demand, political implications, technologies, current policies, and recent strategies, and recommends an integrated national energy strategy that could make the US energy independent. First, the article reviews how competition for energy supplies is affecting the US, its allies, and the world. Next, the article discusses how other nations can and are using their energy resources for political gain, and demonstrates how increased dependence on energy limits the US's pursuit of its national interests. The article also examines in detail how, over the last ten years, Russia has masterfully honed its energy strategy as an instrument of national power and how this kind of "energy politics" will increase as other energy-producing countries learn how to exert the same sort of influence. The economic cost to the US and the world for energy independence and some benefits of moving toward energy independence will also be presented, to clarify which energy options for reducing energy independence are available and practical for the US. The article concludes with a recommended plan to curtail a potentially significant energy crisis in the 2015 timeframe and to end America's energy dependence by 2025. The plan focuses on America's current technical capabilities to produce energy that will generate jobs and increase economic prosperity for the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates an important battle-front of the Cold War: the competition on consumption. It focuses on the year 1959, year of the Soviet exhibition in New York, of the American exhibition in Moscow and of Xruščev's trip to the U.S., considering the Soviet attempts to develop alternative models of modernity. The "consumption contest" is here analyzed with a particular emphasis on the Soviet culture of consumption in its differences with the American one. The paper uses both official and popular Soviet sources as well as the American press when this helps to clarify the difference between Soviet and American propaganda attitudes, as well as archival documents from the RGAE (Russian State Archive of the Economy). As far as the popular press is concerned, here we have mostly used the Soviet weekly magazine "Ogonek" and the monthly "L'Union Soviétique". As regards popular American sources, the article takes into consideration the "Ogonek" counterpart "Life". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which aims to map the terrain of mid-career faculty experience. Researchers from the University of Michigan in East Lansing, Michigan focus on mid-career tenured faculty and department chairs who shared their experiences, needs, and opinions. It summarizes key themes and topics on the subject for the sake of personnel committees, chairs, faculty developers, and other administrators of research universities. They also offer the study's findings, implications, insight, and recommendations.

From 1997 to 2001 the number of nonemployer businesses, mostly partnerships, grew faster than conventional firms in the United States, a country with the mildest asymmetries between the two types of enterprises with respect to taxation, administrative entry barriers, and other institutional aspects. Partnerships are smaller than conventional firms, and their different speeds of net entry could be the result of internal organization that makes them swifter and better equipped to be fast-growing industries. In a continuous-time stochastic environment with sunk costs, we model entry as a growth option. Partnerships and conventional firms display specific patterns in terms of output price and size in that they appear to react in diverse fashions to market uncertainty. In most cases, the partnership is less risky and better suited to enter under conditions of high volatility, as between 1997 and 2001 in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the speciation of Hg in two estuaries, Lavaca Bay (Texas) and the Venice Lagoon (Italy). Both are large, shallow embayments that are contaminated by direct discharges from mercury-cell chlor-alkali plants and dominated by rapid tidal flushing. Although contaminated by discharges into Lavaca Bay from 1966 to 1979 and into the Venice Lagoon from 1951 to 1989, Hg concentrations have dwindled to similar moderate levels in sediments (200-2,000 ng g-1) and water (1-3 ng L-1 dissolved) since the advent of pollution abatement. The Venice Lagoon contains lower levels of CH3Hg than Lavaca Bay, which is surprising, given the much larger degree of wetlands coverage in the lagoon. A narrow temporal peak in methylation was seen in early spring at both sites, although it was much stronger in Lavaca Bay. Data indicated that sediment CH3Hg is more strongly correlated with variables such as habitat and seasonality than with total Hg. In Lavaca Bay, because of high sedimentation rates and low remixing, the highest levels of Hg are buried 10-30 cm below the surface. Combined with previous observations of strong Hg methylation after dredging activities, this argues for leaving Hg-contaminated sediment in place, to be buried by the deposition of cleaner sediments. In Venice Lagoon, decisions may be complicated by continuous remixing of the upper sediment layers, moving the highest levels of Hg toward the surface and distributing it over a far larger area than has been seen in Lavaca Bay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accelerator based ion beam analysis method of proton induced X-ray emission (PIXE) has been used for analysing up to 14 elements in the blood serum of patients, collected from rehabilitation centres for the mentally retarded and from Medical College Hospital, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. The experimental subjects of the different groups displayed significant variations in their levels of certain trace elements such as zinc, iron, copper, phosphorus, chlorine, and rubidium. The results are compared with those of healthy control subjects and are discussed in detail in this paper. Hence, PIXE as a method of trace element analysis can be used to determine trace element content in mentally challenged patients. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The HESI-led RISK21 effort has developed a framework supporting the use of twenty-first century technology in obtaining and using information for chemical risk assessment. This framework represents a problem formulation-based, exposure-driven, tiered data acquisition approach that leads to an informed decision on human health safety to be made when sufficient evidence is available. It provides a transparent and consistent approach to evaluate information in order to maximize the ability of assessments to inform decisions and to optimize the use of resources. To demonstrate the application of the framework's roadmap and matrix, this case study evaluates a large number of chemicals that could be present in drinking water. The focus is to prioritize which of these should be considered for human health risk as individual contaminants. The example evaluates 20 potential drinking water contaminants, using the tiered RISK21 approach in combination with graphical representation of information at each step, using the RISK21 matrix. Utilizing the framework, 11 of the 20 chemicals were assigned low priority based on available exposure data alone, which demonstrated that exposure was extremely low. The remaining nine chemicals were further evaluated, using refined estimates of toxicity based on readily available data, with three deemed high priority for further evaluation. In the present case study, it was determined that the greatest value of additional information would be from improved exposure models and not from additional hazard characterization.

The Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI)-coordinated Risk Assessment in the 21st Century (RISK21) project was initiated to develop a scientific, transparent, and efficient approach to the evolving world of human health risk assessment, and involved over 120 participants from 12 countries, 15 government institutions, 20 universities, 2 non-governmental organizations, and 12 corporations. This paper provides a brief overview of the tiered RISK21 framework called the roadmap and risk visualization matrix, and articulates the core principles derived by RISK21 participants that guided its development. Subsequent papers describe the roadmap and matrix in greater detail. RISK21 principles include focusing on problem formulation, utilizing existing information, starting with exposure assessment (rather than toxicity), and using a tiered process for data development. Bringing estimates of exposure and toxicity together on a two-dimensional matrix provides a clear rendition of human safety and risk. The value of the roadmap is its capacity to chronicle the stepwise acquisition of scientific information and display it in a clear and concise fashion. Furthermore, the tiered approach and transparent display of information will contribute to greater efficiencies by calling for data only as needed (enough precision to make a decision), thus conserving animals and other resources.