Calif. bill would let non-citizens serve on juries

SACRAMENTO, California (AP) ? The California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.

Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, said his bill, AB1401, would help California widen the pool of prospective jurors and help integrate immigrants into the community.

It does not change other criteria for being eligible to serve on a jury, such as being at least 18, living in the county that is making the summons, and being proficient in English.

The bill passed 45-25 largely on a party-line vote in the Democratic-controlled Assembly and will move on to the Senate. One Democrat ? Assemblyman Adam Gray, of Merced ? voted no, while some other Democrats did not vote.

Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill said there is no correlation between being a citizen and a juror, and they noted that there is no citizenship requirement to be an attorney or a judge. Republican lawmakers who opposed Wieckowski's bill called it misguided and premature.

Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, said there is no shortage of jurors.

"Jury selection is not the problem. The problem is trial court funding," Harkey said before the vote. "I hope we can focus on that. Let's not break something; it's not broken now. Let's not whittle away at what is reserved for U.S. citizens. There's a reason for it."

Wieckowski's office said the bill is the first of its kind in the nation and suggested that courts regularly struggle to find enough prospective jurors because jury duty is often seen as an inconvenience, if not a burden. His office did not cite any statistics but pointed to a 2003 legislative report that said numerous articles have noted high rates of non-participation.

A 2007 survey by the Center for Jury Studies said 20 percent of courts across the country reported a failure to respond or failure to appear rate of 15 percent or higher. The center is run by the National Center for State Courts, a Virginia-based nonprofit dedicated to improving court systems.

It's not clear, however, if that rate translates to a shortage of jurors in California.

Noting that women were once kept off juries, Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, said the judicial system should be changed to allow a person to be judged by their peers.

"This isn't about affording someone who would come in as a juror something," Perez said. "But rather understanding that the importance of the jury selection process of affording justice to the person in that courtroom."

An estimated 10 million Californians are summoned for jury duty each year and about 4 million are eligible and available to serve, according to the Judicial Council, which administers the state's court system. About 3.2 million complete the service, meaning they waited in a courthouse assembly room or were placed on call.

In 2010-2011, the most recent year available, only about 165,000 people were sworn in as jurors.

The judicial branch has not taken a position on AB 1401.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/calif-bill-let-non-citizens-serve-juries-231314163.html

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Archeologists unearth new information on origins of Maya civilization

Apr. 25, 2013 ? The Maya civilization is well-known for its elaborate temples, sophisticated writing system, and mathematical and astronomical developments, yet the civilization's origins remain something of a mystery.

A new University of Arizona study to be published in the journal Science challenges the two prevailing theories on how the ancient civilization began, suggesting its origins are more complex than previously thought.

Anthropologists typically fall into one of two competing camps with regard to the origins of Maya civilization. The first camp believes that it developed almost entirely on its own in the jungles of what is now Guatemala and southern Mexico. The second believes that the Maya civilization developed as the result of direct influences from the older Olmec civilization and its center of La Venta.

It's likely that neither of those theories tells the full story, according to findings by a team of archaeologists led by UA husband-and-wife anthropologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan.

"We really focused on the beginning of this civilization and how this remarkable civilization developed," said Inomata, UA professor of anthropology and the study's lead author.

In their excavations at Ceibal, an ancient Maya site in Guatemala, researchers found that Ceibal actually predates the growth of La Venta as a major center by as much as 200 years, suggesting that La Venta could not have been the prevailing influence over early Mayan development.

That does not make the Maya civilization older than the Olmec civilization -- since Olmec had another center prior to La Venta -- nor does it prove that the Maya civilization developed entirely independently, researchers say.

What it does indicate, they say, is that both Ceibal and La Venta probably participated in a broader cultural shift taking place in the period between 1,150-800 B.C.

"We're saying that the scenario of early Maya culture is really more complex than we thought," said UA anthropology graduate student Victor Castillo, who co-authored the paper with Inomata and Triadan.

"We have this idea of the origin of Maya civilization as an indigenous development, and we have this other idea that it was an external influence that triggered the social complexity of Maya civilization. We're now thinking it's not actually black and white," Castillo said.

There is no denying the striking similarities between Ceibal and La Venta, such as evidence of similar ritual practices and the presence of similar architecture -- namely the pyramids that would come to be the hallmark of Mesoamerican civilization but did not exist at the earlier Olmec center of San Lorenzo.

However, researchers don't think this is the case of simply one site mimicking the other. Rather, they suspect that both the Maya site of Ceibal and the Olmec site of La Venta were parts of a more geographically far-reaching cultural shift that occurred around 1,000 B.C., about the time when the Olmec center was transitioning from San Lorenzo to La Venta.

"Basically, there was a major social change happening from the southern Maya lowlands to possibly the coast of Chiapas and the southern Gulf Coast, and this site of Ceibal was a part of that broader social change," Inomata said. "The emergence of a new form of society -- with new architecture, with new rituals -- became really the important basis for all later Mesoamerican civilizations."

The Science paper, titled "Early Ceremonial Constructions at Ceibal, Guatemala, and the Origins of Lowland Maya Civilization," is based on seven years of excavations at Ceibal.

Additional authors of the paper include Japanese researchers Kazuo Aoyama of the University of Ibaraki, Mito and Hitoshi Yonenobu of the Naruto University of Education, Tokushima.

"We were looking at the emergence of specific cultural traits that were shared by many of those Mesoamerican centers, particularly the form of rituals and the construction of the pyramids," Inomata said. "This gives us a new idea about the beginning of Maya civilization, and it also tells us about how common traits shared by many different Mesoamerican civilizations emerged during that time."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Alexis Blue.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. T. Inomata, D. Triadan, K. Aoyama, V. Castillo, H. Yonenobu. Early Ceremonial Constructions at Ceibal, Guatemala, and the Origins of Lowland Maya Civilization. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 467 DOI: 10.1126/science.1234493

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/uVkWQnVLzNQ/130425142343.htm

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Sheriff: Woman killed by lion after she left cage door open

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Authorities in Central California said Thursday that a volunteer worker killed in a lion attack at an animal park accidentally caused her own death by leaving the animal's door open.

Fresno County Sheriff's Capt. Steve Wilkins said that his office has closed its investigation of Dianna Hanson's death by determining it was an "unfortunate accident."

"We've determined that it was an accident and there was no criminal liability toward the park's owner," Wilkins said. "Based on the results of the investigation, it was an accident."

Wilkins said Hanson, a 24-year-old intern at Cat Haven, failed to secure the door to a feeding cage where the lion was sitting while she cleaned an adjacent closure.

Hanson's family had been kept in the loop as the sheriff's office probe was taking place, Wilkins said. They were notified quickly when the investigation was completed, the sheriff's captain said.

"She accidentally left the door open. It was an unfortunate accident," Wilkins added. "The case is closed."

A 550-pound Barbary lion named Cous Cous escaped from the partially closed feeding cage on March 6 and struck Hanson, who died immediately from a broken neck, according to the coroner's autopsy report.

Sheriff's deputies shot the lion after it couldn't be coaxed away from Hanson's body.

The sheriff's office investigation comes after the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently found that Cat Haven, a 100-acre private zoo run by the nonprofit group Project Survival, had proper safety procedures in place for feeding the animals and cleaning the enclosures.

Hanson's family told The Associated Press last month that they believe no rules were broken at the wild animal park in Dunlap, Calif., and that her death was not a mauling, but rather a tragic accident.

"We're thankful to know she didn't suffer," Hanson's brother, Paul R. Hanson, said. "It wasn't a vicious attack ... because you would expect severe lacerations and biting on the neck and that was not the case."

Hanson had been working for two months as an intern at Cat Haven. Her father, Paul Hanson, described his daughter last month as a "fearless" lover of big cats and said her goal was to work with the animals at an accredited zoo.

She died doing what she loved, he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sheriff-woman-killed-lion-left-door-open-014546937.html

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Kansas judge blocks auction of 'In Cold Blood' files

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) ? A judge ruled Tuesday that investigation materials pertaining to the 1959 "In Cold Blood" murders that a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent kept at home may not be auctioned off or publicly revealed until he's had a chance to review them.

Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks said the state could face "irreparable harm" if the materials found in Harold Nye's home became public. The materials include Nye's personal journals, copies of records and other materials about the investigation that inspired the Truman Capote classic. Crime scene photos in his possession were returned to the state last year by his son, according to lawyers.

Ronald Nye, of Oklahoma City, kept the materials after his father's 2003 death and gave them to Seattle memorabilia dealer Gary McAvoy to auction off. But the Kansas attorney general's office contends the materials belong to the state, and it is suing to get them back. The case is scheduled to go to trial in November.

Hendricks said his order will remain in place until the case is settled, but he left open the possibility that he could rescind it after reviewing the documents to determine how much private material they contain.

"Folks, I think I need to see them," he said from the bench. "I need to look at them."

McAvoy and Ronald Nye now say they don't plan to auction off the materials, and that instead they plan to write their own book about the killing of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their children at their remote farmhouse in Holcomb. Hendricks' order bars them from even speaking about the files' contents publicly.

The hunt for the killers mesmerized the nation and drew journalists from across the U.S. to the small western Kansas town. The state executed two parolees, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, for the killings in 1965. Four years later, Harold Nye began a two-year stint as the KBI's director.

Capote's book about the murders, Hickock and Smith's trial and their executions is celebrated because it reads like a novel. However, scholars have debated its accuracy since it was published.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter at http://twitter.com/apjdhanna

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-judge-blocks-cold-blood-files-175907974.html

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NASA Is Firing Cell Phones Into Space

Today, in NASA Is the Best: The space agency this week took a handful of cheap but powerful smartphones, slapped them to a gigantic rocket and blasted them into low-earth orbit to see how they'd fare. The project, called PhoneSat, is one of those wacky experiments that seems at first to have nothing to do with science. But it's not a stunt.

The phones ? ordinary Nexus Ones, the kind made by HTC and once sold by Google ? are being tested as a kind of prototype satellite, and they provide a glimpse of a possible future where ordinary commercial technology that we take for granted winds up powering and controlling larger sensing devices (or even becoming full-fledged research platforms themselves). Smartphones are already remarkably well-equipped for space: They're small. They've got powerful batteries and processors. They have gyroscopes and accelerometers, and high-quality cameras. For a budget-conscious organization like NASA that's increasingly turning away from manned space missions, PhoneSat makes a lot of sense. The three devices orbiting earth right now are cutely named Alexander, Graham and Bell, respectively, in a nod to the man commonly credited with inventing the telephone. After about 10 days from Sunday's launch, the phones will re-enter the atmosphere, burning up in the process (ouch).

Even more interesting than the hardware NASA's using is the software -- and how it was developed.

"The satellites almost came out of the box ready-made," said Bruce Yost, one of the project's lead scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "But all the things that made it interesting are software. The intent is to be like the software community: Build, test, break, rebuild, and keep the cycle going and see if you can spiral your way to success."

Thanks to Google's open-source Android OS, each PhoneSat includes a specially developed app that helps the phones transmit information back to earth from orbit. At regular intervals, the devices beam down data about their health and status, and take up to 100 photos of their surroundings at a time, Yost said. The app then automatically selects the best shots (ones with the earth's horizon in them) and broadcasts them wirelessly to the ground, where any amateur radio operator can pick up the signal.?

Because each hobbyist receives a different piece of the same photo, it takes a group effort to recompile the whole thing -- a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle. The hobbyists upload what they've got back to NASA, where all the data that's coming in is built into a composite. So far, some 200 packets of data have been recorded, said Jim Cockrell, another project lead.

Researchers are still a long way from totally replacing big pieces of orbital machinery with tiny iPhones or Android handsets, although one of the three phones that went up Sunday is equipped with a working solar panel array, just like their bigger cousins. It's a promising sign of how much we can accomplish just by taking advantage of the tools we've already got to hand. Watch the phones' positions change in real-time here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-firing-cell-phones-space-060502017--politics.html

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