Evolutions in DNA Forensics

Criminal law expert Ken Strutin’s new article is yet another research tour de force – a collection of recent and notable developments concerning DNA as forensic science, metric of guilt, herald of innocence, and its emerging place in the debate over privacy and surveillance. The increasing use of DNA evidence to support assumptions of an individual’s guilt and less frequently as a tool to prove the innocence of prisoners wrongly convicted, reflects many facets of the changing fabric of the American criminal justice, the role of the Fourth Amendment and the increasing collection of a wide range of biological evidence from crime scenes whose metadata then is searchable within the national DNA database.

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Subjects: Criminal Law, Discovery, Legal Research

Book Review of Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World

Alan Rothman’s article presents an engaging and enlightening perspective on the elements of serendipity and prodigious talent engaged in the world of inventors and their inventions, as well providing readers with an excellent book review. This new book about inventology spans many decades and is interwoven with historical events that provided impetus to some of the inventors.

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Subjects: Book Reviews

Legal Research at Your Fingertips: Lexis Views, Bestlaw, and Google for Lawyers?

Ashley Ahlbrand is the Educational Technology at Librarian Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. Her expert teaching and training skills offer readers insights into the role of Google as well as integrative browser add-ons like Lexis Views in preparing students to effectively and comprehensively complete research assignments.

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Subjects: Internet Resources - Web Links, Internet Trends, Law Librarians, Legal Research, Legal Research Training, LEXIS, News Resources, Online Legal Research Services, Open Source, Technology Trends

Feat First: New Findings on the Relationship Between Walking and Creativity

Many cities in America offer regular opportunities to experience the benefits of daily outdoor exercise, an activity now universally acknowledged beneficial to mental and physical health. New Yorker Alan Rothman’s perspective on the positive experience of regularly walking in his city includes references to recent university research in fields that include physiology and engineering. So, walk on, and know that it is good for you in all manner of ways throughout your life.

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Subjects: Health

Introducing a New Success Framework for Information Professionals

Author, librarian, and professor Bruce Rosenstein’s article clearly articulates key deliverables that librarians and information professionals can frame, communicate about and deliver – specifically expert knowledge services, data curation, research, training and leadership skills – to organizations in a wide range of sectors.

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Subjects: Information Management, Libraries & Librarians, Training

Grid, Distributed and Cloud Computing Resources 2016

Marcus Zillman’s guide is a comprehensive listing of grid resources, distributed computing resources, cloud computing resources, clusters, and parallel computing sites on the Internet. These resources and sources will help you to find the latest grid and distributed computing resources and sites to evaluate for potential implementation within your environment.

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Subjects: Internet Resources

You Say Aggregate, I Say Curate

Zena Applebaum, a law firm competitive intelligence director, defines an important development in the way that critical business information is shared within laws firms and similar organizations. Applebaum defines and aligns the role of “content curation,” a practice and skill wherein information from all the content in the world is provided to stakeholders through a precise, focused and filtered process with the result of direct benefits to specific groups, teams and projects.

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Subjects: Business Research, Communication Skills, Competitive Intelligence, KM, Libraries & Librarians, Library Marketing

Global Skills for U.S. JD Students

This article by Theresa Kaiser-Jarvis, Assistant Dean for International Affairs, University of Michigan Law School, discusses a pivotal issue that represents an increasingly significant development in the practice of law in the United States. Kaiser-Jarvis shines a bright light on the skills, knowledge and abilities that are now required of attorneys as the business world becomes less focused on the United States. She supports the position that as law firms search for new revenue streams and as American internal demographics become more diverse, we can expect that all U.S. lawyers will eventually need to be prepared for global practice.

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Subjects: Business Research, Comparative/Foreign Law, Competitive Intelligence, International Legal Research, Job Hunting, Legal Education, Legal Profession, Legal Research

The Mediachain Project: Developing a Global Creative Rights Database Using Blockchain Technology

Alan Rothman’s article focuses on a creative, innovative effort to deploy the blockchain as a form of global registry of creative works ownership – specifically a global rights database for images. The co-founders of a new metadata protocol they call the Mediachain enables creators working in digital media to write data describing their work along with a timestamp directly onto the blockchain. The implications of this technology impact multiple sectors such as: legal, financial, libraries, museums and archives, and social media.

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Subjects: Copyright, Job Hunting

Cognitive Reality and the Administration of Justice

Ken Strutin writes in his latest article as follows -“science has much to say about how individual behavior and group wide phenomena influence the core issues of criminal justice. From self-incrimination to self-representation, from prosecuting to judging, from trial to punishment the law recognizes that there are subtle psychologics at work. Indeed, there is one long continuum of cognitive realities that pervade every precinct of criminal justice. And now, scientific study and legal scholarship has uncovered hidden biases in the deliberations of justice as well as overt barriers to cognitive functioning associated with confinement. This article is a collection of research into the cognitive nature of criminal justice participants, the constraints of confinement, and the administration of justice.”

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Subjects: Criminal Law
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