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UMKC Law School professor Allen Rostron did not begin his legal career intending to work in the area of Second Amendment rights, or be a full-time law professor. After graduating from Yale Law School, he worked as a tax attorney. He soon found, however, that he did not enjoy the work. At the time of his change of focus, gun control was getting a lot of media attention and when an opportunity presented itself, he took a position at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The decision began a path that he still follows today.

Rostron was recently invited to be part of a planning team on former New York City Mayor Michael Bloombergs gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety. As part of this group, Rostron focuses on recent decisions about the Second Amendment made by the Supreme Court after many years of the court not having any significant opinions about it.

When the Supreme Court decides something and you think well, that answers the question, it raises just as many questions, Rostron said.

That leaves lower courts around the country trying to figure out which laws are fine as they are written and which laws need some adjustment or even to be struck down. Groups on both sides of the issue gather to strategize to influence those decisions.

According to its website, Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities. Their voices of the movement are moms, mayors and survivors.

There are groups that oppose gun control because they see it as an infringement upon the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Rostron said that in the recent Supreme Court decisions, the court has said that there needs to be a historical point of view taken. If a gun law is being decided on, a modern public policy perspective should not be the only perspective. The Supreme Court says that these decisions should begin by looking at what the right to keep and bear arms traditionally meant.

That creates a real need to know the history, Rostron said. There is a real need for historians to delve back into what was the situation with guns 200 years ago or more. What kind of laws did they have and what did they think you had a right to do and what did the right not cover. Its a very rich, interesting, historical exploration.

The courses Rostron teaches at UMKC have a healthy amount of discussion. He teaches a Seminar on Gun Law & Safety, but all of his courses have some amount of discussion about rights that citizens hold.

Students are willing to debate the gun control issue because its not as personal as more hot-button issues like abortion or affirmative action.

I have found guns to be in the category of some other things like maybe religion very controversial and people have very strong views about it, but theyre not afraid to get into it a little bit with other students or with the teacher, Rostron said.

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Law professor focuses work on Second Amendment

Globetrotting pop duo THE TING TINGS have just announced 2015 North American tour dates, kicking off January 19 in Toronto. The U.K. natives are touring in support of their new album SUPER CRITICAL, available now in the U.S. digitally, with a physical release on January 13, 2015 via Finca/[PIAS].

The tour will include stops in New York City on January 20 at Bowery Ballroom and an intimate show on January 21 at Brooklyns Rough Trade NYC. Next, theyll shoot over to the West Coast for shows in San Francisco, Sacramento and wrap in Los Angeles on January 26 at the legendary Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA. Tickets for all shows are on sale this Friday, November 21 and more info will be available at http://www.thetingtings.com/tour.html.

THE TING TINGS--known for their massive hits Thats Not My Name and Shut Up and Let Me Go, among others--approached this new album differently.

While in Ibiza, someone introduced Katie and Jules to Duran Durans stalwart guitarist Andy Taylor who offered to help sift through some old demos and became co-producer of this project. Songs began emerging. It felt like making a record while partying in your bedroom, which is pretty much exactly how we made the first album, Jules explains. In 9 months we became like family. It was a massive education for us. His old analogue approach, the studio set-ups he used in the 80s with Duran were perfect for the sound we were looking for. That approach isnt around anymore. Studio people dont know how to achieve it.

Fans were first given a glimpse into the groups new direction with the release of the albums first single Wrong Club. Check out the songs music video here. Wrong Club addresses their frustrations with current club music. Katie explains, Its about what happened to nightclubs that made them not sexy, how the tempo became so fast that nobody moves any more, they just jerk, its gesture not rhythm. We wanted to make a song that felt exactly like the opposite of that. Its very Ting Tings to do a sad song with uplifting music. Thats just who we are.

Last month (10/13), the music video for their latest single Do It Again became the first-ever to premiere via WeTransfer. Watch it now here. This track was inspired by the groups experience with recording and releasing their last album, 2012s Sounds from Nowheresville. Its about the need to do something wrong again, says Jules. Katie adds, Not being lazy, needing to lighten up, stop the paralysis of criticism, just doing anything that makes you feel good.

SUPER CRITICAL is about going away to come back home. Where we are right now feels exactly where we should be, says Katie. I feel like dressing up and going out again, says Jules. And that feels perfect.

Catch THE TING TINGS on tour early 2015 (more dates to be added):

http://www.thetingtings.comwww.facebook.com/thetingtingswww.twitter.com/thetingswww.instagram.com/thetingtingsyeahwww.youtube.com/tingtingsofficialwww.youtube.com/thetingtingsvevo

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THE TING TINGS Announce 2015 North American Tour Dates

Arctic Bison Mummy!
SciShow News explains how Wikipedia has been used to track, and even predict, outbreaks of disease all over the world, and then introduces you to the most complete naturally mummified bison...

By: SciShow

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Arctic Bison Mummy! - Video

Can public health experts tell that an infectious disease outbreak is imminent simply by looking at what people are searching for on Wikipedia? Yes, at least in some cases.

Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory were able to make extremely accurate forecasts about the spread of dengue fever in Brazil and flu in the U.S., Japan, Poland and Thailand by examining three years worth of Wikipedia search data. They also came up with moderately success predictions of tuberculosis outbreaks in Thailand and China, and of dengue fevers spread in Thailand.

However, their efforts to anticipate cases of cholera, Ebola, HIV and plague by extrapolating from search data left much to be desired, according to a report published Thursday in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. But the researchers believe their general approach could still work if they use more sophisticated statistics and a more inclusive data set.

Accurate data on the spread of infectious diseases can be culled from a variety of sources. Government agencies typically get it from patient interviews and laboratory test results. Other data sources include calls to 911 lines, emergency room admissions and absences from work or school.

The problem with these methods is that they can be time-consuming and costly. By the time the numbers are crunched, an outbreak may be in full swing.

If you want to stop an outbreak before it starts -- and if you want to save lives and money, you certainly do -- what you need is a forecast that is both accurate and timely. And so the Los Alamos researchers turned to the treasure trove that is Wikipedia.

In addition to the about 30 million articles on topics ranging from quantum foam to the First English Civil War to Kim Kardashian, Wikipedia also collects data on the approximately 850 million search requests it gets each day. In previous studies, researchers have used this publicly available data to predict ticket sales for new movies and the movement of stock prices.

When it comes to health, people have found correlations between interest in certain health topics on Wikipedia and sales of medications. Others have linked searches for flu-related topics by American Wikipedia users to actual flu spread in the U.S.

Five members of the LANLs Defense Systems and Analysis Division thought they could do more. Their goal was to get a read on current and future trends not just for flu in the U.S. but for several diseases in several countries. Ideally, they hoped to come up with a model that could be trained with data from a place where its available and then applied to another place where it wasnt.

The researchers decided to focus on seven diseases (cholera, dengue fever, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, influenza, plague and tuberculosis) in nine countries (Brazil, China, Haiti, Japan, Norway, Poland, Thailand, Uganda and the U.S.). They mixed and matched to get models for 14 location-disease contexts.

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Scientists use Wikipedia search data to forecast spread of ...

MOSCOW Fri Nov 14, 2014 2:51pm EST

Wikipedia webpage in use on a laptop computer is seen in this photo illustration taken in Washington, January 17, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Gary Cameron

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia plans to create its own "Wikipedia" to ensure its citizens have access to more "detailed and reliable" information about their country, the presidential library said on Friday.

Citing Western threats, the Kremlin has asserted more control over the Internet this year in what critics call moves to censor the web, and has introduced more pro-Kremlin content similar to closely controlled state media such as television.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled and written by Internet users around the world, has pages dedicated to nearly every region or major city within Russia's 11 time zones, but the Kremlin library said this was not good enough.

"Analysis of this resource showed that it is not capable of providing information about the region and life of the country in a detailed or sufficient way," the state news agency RIA quoted a statement from the presidential library as saying.

"The creation of an alternative Wikipedia has begun." It was not known whether the project might affect Russians' access to the existing Wikipedia in any way.

President Vladimir Putin has branded the Internet a "CIA special project", and the Kremlin has said it must protect its online realm from threats from the West, as ties between the Cold War-era foes have hit a new bottom over the Ukraine crisis.

Since August, bloggers in Russia with more than 3,000 followers must register with the Moscow's mass media regulatory agency and conform to rules applied to larger media outlets.

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Russia plans alternative version of 'Wikipedia' | Reuters