Note it in your Outlook, folks. November 26, 2012: The date that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals officially acknowledged that the Supreme Court has overruled Tickles.
Don?t freak out. The italicized Tickles means that we?re talking about a case; not the start of a downward spiral into a world without snuggles, giggles, or happiness.
The beginning of the end of Tickles started with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA).
In 2011, Jonathan Berry pleaded guilty to possession of more than five grams of cocaine base in violation of 21 U.S.C. ? 844(a). The conduct giving rise to the offense took place before the FSA was enacted.
Under the pre-FSA version of 21 U.S.C. ? 844(a), possession of more than five grams of cocaine base was punishable by a sentence of 5 to 20 years imprisonment. The FSA amended the statute to remove the provision specific to cocaine base. Under the current version, possession of any controlled substance other than flunitrazepam is punishable by imprisonment for up to one year with no prior drug convictions; up to two years with one prior drug conviction; and up to three years with two prior drug convictions.
Berry received a pre-FSA sentence based on the date of his offense. He appealed.
Back in 2011, the Fifth Circuit held in U.S. v. Tickles that "the penalties prescribed by the FSA do not apply to federal criminal sentencing for illegal conduct that preceded the FSA's enactment." In June, however, the Supreme Court overruled Tickles, holding in Dorsey v. U.S. that the FSA's "more lenient mandatory minimum provisions do apply to ... pre-Act offenders." Based on Dorsey, the appellate court vacated Berry's sentence.
Technically, Berry's case is slightly different from Dorsey. In Dorsey, the Supreme Court dealt only with 21 U.S.C. ? 841, which prohibits possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, and did not specifically address the FSA's changes to the simple possession statute. Nevertheless, the Fifth Circuit concluded that the more lenient post-FSA version of ?844 applies to offenders sentenced after the FSA's enactment because holding otherwise would lead to simple possession being punished more severely than possession with intent to distribute.
While the end of tickles might be cause for distress, the end U.S. v. Tickles is a good thing for pre-FSA offenders.
This picture may remind you of an alien landscape, but it's actually a look at our own planet from hundreds of miles above. NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of a 35-mile-wide (55-kilometer-wide) alluvial fan in China's Xinjiang Province in 2003.
The geological feature spreads across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert. Terra's color-coded view shows water flowing down from the mountains along the left side of the fan. Vegetation appears in shades of red in the upper left corner. NASA says the lumpy-looking terrain at the top of the image consists of sand dunes at the edge of the Taklimakan, one of the largest sandy deserts on Earth.
This is one of the first images you'll see in "Earth as Art," a newly published 158-page book featuring satellite pictures of planet Earth. NASA is making the book freely available online in PDF format, but it can also be downloaded as an iPad app or purchased as a coffee-table book from the U.S. Government Printing Office's online store.
"Earth as Art" serves as a great kickoff for this year's Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which highlights views of Earth from space. Every day from now until Dec. 25, we'll pass along a fresh image for you to enjoy. The idea takes its inspiration from a traditional Advent calendar, which lets kids count down to Christmas with a daily treat.
If one cosmic treat a day just isn't enough, you're in luck: The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar has just started up over at The Atlantic's In Focus photo gallery, and Zooniverse is offering a cosmic Advent calendar as well. Feel free to fill your eyes, and your imagination, with all these non-fattening holiday goodies over the next 25 days.
More goodies from space:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Did you hear? Did you hear? I'll tell you everything, my dears. The pope didn't cancel Christmas after all!?
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Roughly one week ago, you were probably thought the Pope was a big, mean, grinchity old Grinch. What, with his green, wrinkly face, and all that snarling he does. "I hate that annoying Cindy Lou Who," he said during his weekly speech once. And don't forget the news?stories that?disparaged?the Pope's name because, they explain, in the Pope's new book he says Jesus was never born in a manger, and instead it was probably a cave. Jesus was born in a cramped, cold, dark cave and not a small, adorable, romantic and cozy manger. In case you don't know, people love mangers. On top of all that, some writers just made up that he disapproved of caroling, too! People love caroling, too. So, it was bad for the Pope. People weren't happy with him. Not one person was one bit happy with Mr. Benedict. He was not getting any of Gladys' fudge, that's for sure.?
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But, as Reuters' Phillip Pullella explained today, none of that is true. The thing the people writing those stories failed to do was keep reading the Pope's book. Like, past the line where he said the thing about the cave.?"What some neglected was that just a few sentences down, the pope states that even today, 'No representation of the crib is complete without the ox and the ass,'" Pullella tells us. The Pope actually approves of your traditional mangers, complete with your donkeys, and your oxes, and your three kings, and your Mother Marys, and whatever else people put in manger scenes theses days.?"The tradition of the ass and ox came from reflecting on parts of the Old and New Testaments. Christian iconography then adopted the motif early in Church history to show that even animals knew Jesus was the son of God," Pellula says. Oh, well, sorry Mr. Benedict.?
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And the whole thing about him hating caroling wasn't true, either. The Pope loves caroling, obviously, because he is a human with a real human heart and emotions and feelings. ?It even says so, in his book, on the record. It says that he approves of caroling, because angels spoke in song.?Only a real Grinch would hate caroling. Gladys is making a special batch of fudge right away.
Code fundamentally shapes how we how we interact with the world. Some of these ways are so subtle as to be barely palpable. The law professor Lawrence Lessig famously propounded the maxim that ?code is law,? but code is more than that. Code shapes the way I make a song with a piece of software, and what that song might sound like. Code is embedded in our phones, ATMs, voting machines, buildings, social interactions, culture. Code leads us down mazes, of a sort, in our everyday lives.
10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10, a new book collaboratively written by 10 authors, takes a single line of code?inscribed in the book?s mouthful of a title?and explodes it.
That one line, a seemingly clumsy scrap of BASIC, generates a fascinatingly complicated maze on a Commodore 64. Run the little program on an emulator?or on an actual Commodore 64, if you happen to have one collecting dust in your basement?and a work of art unfolds before your very eyes, as the screen slowly fills up in a mesmerizing fashion. (Run it on another old-school computer, like an Apple II, and you won?t get the same transfixing result, for details that have to do with the Commodore 64?s character set, called PETSCII.)?
The line of code seems basic, even for BASIC. There aren?t any variables. It uses a GOTO instead of a more elegant loop.? How could something so short and simple generate such a complex result? What can this one line??10 PRINT,? to use the authors? shorthand?teach us about software, and culture at large?
The book, which has also been released for free download under a Creative Commons license, unspools 10 PRINT?s strange history and dense web of cultural connections, winding its way through the histories of mazes and labyrinths, grids in modern art, minimalist music and dance, randomness, repetition, textiles, screensavers, and Greek mythology. There are forays into early computer graphics, hacking, Cold War military strategy and Pac-Man. References abound, from the Commodore 64 user?s manual to Roland Barthes? S/Z. This is a book where Dungeons and Dragons and Abstract Expressionism get equal consideration.
Though 10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10 is occasionally whiplash-inducing in its headlong rush through history, the connections it makes over 294 pages are inspired. One of the most compelling sections of the book discusses the cultural history of mazes, relating 10 PRINT?s maze back to the labyrinth of Knossos, where, according to the great Greek myth, Theseus waged battle with the terrifying Minotaur.
?The Knossos myth is best understood in terms of Theseus?s narrative path through it, not as the space of the labyrinth itself,? the authors write. ?This transformation from multicursal, unknowable confusion to a marked and bounded pathway reflects the mastery of any system, from challenging, mysterious, threatening, and deadly to easy, known, mapped, and tamed.??
The user of 10 PRINT, they write, is more like Daedalus?the architect of the bewildering labyrinth at Knossos?than she is like the conqueror Theseus. 10 PRINT ?is a blueprint for a maze, not just a structure or image that appears without any history or trace of its making,? the authors argue. ?And at the same time, 10 PRINT itself takes the role of maze creator: the programmer may be the maze?s architect, but the program is its builder.? As the 1980s progressed, more users became familiar with mazes as they appeared in computer games, which reached new levels of complexity. ?Would the user be Theseus or Daedalus?? the authors write. ?The scientist or the rat? Pac-Man or Zaxxon? And would programming be meditating, dancing, escaping, solving, or architecting a maze?? There are no clear-cut answers, and part of the richness of the maze, and of programming, comes from its mystery.
Mazes and computer games, of course, are highly relevant. Pac-Man is obvious. Dance Dance Revolution is less so. Is Dance Dance Revolution a maze? Mazes and dance, the authors argue, have shared a cosmic link through time immemorial. ?It may seem odd to think of Dance Dance Revolution as a maze game,? they write, ?but its arrows do show a labyrinthine path that the dancer, standing in place, is supposed to navigate. Missing a step is allowed, but the perfect performance will be as ritualized a motion through space as a Pac-Man pattern.??
The book moves forward and backward through time in ways that are heady and sometimes disorienting. 10 PRINT is imbued with ?spiritual mystery,? the authors write, opening the gates for a discussion of 11th-century French church mazes. An exploration of old English hedge mazes collides headfirst into a discourse on psych-lab maze experiments in the 1950s.
DEAR ABBY: My wife and I have been married for five years. I recently discovered that she made between 10 and 20 porn videos when she was 19. We got married when she was 27. We have four kids from two previous marriages.I am devastated. When I confronted her about it, she cried harder than I had ever seen. She said she was lost, and it's the biggest regret of her entire life.I understand how hard it can be to tell someone you have done something like this. I haven't led a perfect life either, and I have my own skeletons and things that I would never mention. But still, I can't get over this. ...
The colour of love: Zebrafish perform colorful courtship displaysPublic release date: 30-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Sarah Zala sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at 43-148-909-15852 University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna
Elaborate secondary sexual displays are often overlooked because many species attract mates through sensory modalities imperceptible to humans, including ultraviolet light, ultrasound, electrical signals, or pheromones. Also, sexual coloration may only be expressed briefly during courtship (ephemeral courtship dichromatisms) to avoid attracting predators. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a widely studied model organism, though there have been few studies on their mating behaviour. Like many schooling fish, zebrafish do not appear sexually dichromatic to humans; there are no obvious differences in the colour of males and females. Previous studies suggest that colour and stripe patterns influence their social and reproductive behaviour, but surprisingly, body colouration has not been quantitatively studied before in this fish.
The researchers studied sexually mature wild-derived zebrafish and a domesticated strain to compare the sexes and the two populations both in the morning, when mating and spawning occur, and again later in the day, when the fish only shoal. To assess the colour properties the scientists used non-invasive techniques such as digital photography, computer software and human observations and they photographed the fish in the water, while interacting with each other. The photographs allowed them to analyse hue, saturation, and brightness and to obtain numerical estimates of three colour properties.
They found that both males and females changed their colour (dark and light stripes) only during spawning, and that some sex differences in stripes were larger or only became apparent during this time. They also observed that individual males that appeared more colourful and conspicuous to the human eye engaged in courtship more often than less conspicuous males. These observations support the hypothesis that body colouration plays a role in the courtship and mating behaviour of zebrafish.
Both wild-derived and the laboratory strain of zebrafish showed this ephemeral dichromatism, but there were differences in the colour properties of the two populations, and reduced individual variation in the laboratory strain.
Further studies are needed to determine the underlying mechanisms and signalling functions of fleeting different colour expressions in zebrafish. Genetic analyses could help explain individual variation in nuptial colouration and provide insights into the evolutionary functions of this sexual dichromatism.
###
The article "Ephemeral sexual dichromatism in zebrafish (Danio rerio)" by Sophie Hutter, Attila Hettiyey, Dustin Penn, and Sarah Zala is published in the current issue of the journal "Ethology" (Vol. 118 (2012): 1208).
Abstract of the scientific article online (full text for a fee or with a subscription):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eth.12027/abstract
About the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine
The University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna is the only academic and research institution in Austria that focuses on the veterinary sciences. About 1000 employees and 2300 students work on the campus in the north of Vienna, which also houses the animal hospital and various spin-off-companies.
http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at
Contact
Dr. Sarah Zala
Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
T +43 1 4890915-852
E sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at
Klaus Wassermann
Public Relations/Science Communication
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
T +43 1 25077-1153
E klaus.wassermann@vetmeduni.ac.at
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The colour of love: Zebrafish perform colorful courtship displaysPublic release date: 30-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Sarah Zala sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at 43-148-909-15852 University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna
Elaborate secondary sexual displays are often overlooked because many species attract mates through sensory modalities imperceptible to humans, including ultraviolet light, ultrasound, electrical signals, or pheromones. Also, sexual coloration may only be expressed briefly during courtship (ephemeral courtship dichromatisms) to avoid attracting predators. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a widely studied model organism, though there have been few studies on their mating behaviour. Like many schooling fish, zebrafish do not appear sexually dichromatic to humans; there are no obvious differences in the colour of males and females. Previous studies suggest that colour and stripe patterns influence their social and reproductive behaviour, but surprisingly, body colouration has not been quantitatively studied before in this fish.
The researchers studied sexually mature wild-derived zebrafish and a domesticated strain to compare the sexes and the two populations both in the morning, when mating and spawning occur, and again later in the day, when the fish only shoal. To assess the colour properties the scientists used non-invasive techniques such as digital photography, computer software and human observations and they photographed the fish in the water, while interacting with each other. The photographs allowed them to analyse hue, saturation, and brightness and to obtain numerical estimates of three colour properties.
They found that both males and females changed their colour (dark and light stripes) only during spawning, and that some sex differences in stripes were larger or only became apparent during this time. They also observed that individual males that appeared more colourful and conspicuous to the human eye engaged in courtship more often than less conspicuous males. These observations support the hypothesis that body colouration plays a role in the courtship and mating behaviour of zebrafish.
Both wild-derived and the laboratory strain of zebrafish showed this ephemeral dichromatism, but there were differences in the colour properties of the two populations, and reduced individual variation in the laboratory strain.
Further studies are needed to determine the underlying mechanisms and signalling functions of fleeting different colour expressions in zebrafish. Genetic analyses could help explain individual variation in nuptial colouration and provide insights into the evolutionary functions of this sexual dichromatism.
###
The article "Ephemeral sexual dichromatism in zebrafish (Danio rerio)" by Sophie Hutter, Attila Hettiyey, Dustin Penn, and Sarah Zala is published in the current issue of the journal "Ethology" (Vol. 118 (2012): 1208).
Abstract of the scientific article online (full text for a fee or with a subscription):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eth.12027/abstract
About the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine
The University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna is the only academic and research institution in Austria that focuses on the veterinary sciences. About 1000 employees and 2300 students work on the campus in the north of Vienna, which also houses the animal hospital and various spin-off-companies.
http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at
Contact
Dr. Sarah Zala
Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
T +43 1 4890915-852
E sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at
Klaus Wassermann
Public Relations/Science Communication
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
T +43 1 25077-1153
E klaus.wassermann@vetmeduni.ac.at
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 30-Nov-2012
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