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Capt. Underpants sues the city Again! Here we go Boulder
Sep 13th
In a recent phone call from Seth Brigham to Boulder Channel 1 news , he said that he had retained famed civil rights attorney, David Lane, and planned on suing the city of Boulder for arresting him again. Below is tonights email from Brigham and court documents for discovery. (In full disclosure David Lane is the personal attorney of Jann Scott and Boulder Channel 1 in matters of civil rights violations by the city of Boulder. Seth Brigham has been a columnist for Boulder Channel 1 and has produced videos for us)
Atty David Lane
My lawyer requested all evidence from the prosecutor and from the police department files, has or had, three weeks ago!
The prosecutor has refused to release all the evidence! Nada, nothing.
Tom Carr is essentially the supervisor to the prosecutor.
>My case is open, the charges have not been dropped.
My lawyer is filing a motion this week, but, I think one should wonder about our “Justice System” in Boulder and the ethics of our City Attorney, Tom Carr.
Why is it necessary? What is our City Attorney afraid of?
He was one who wrote up the most draconian Press Release concerning my arrest, and the charges against me regarding the “incident” on June 3rd, 2011.
A defendant may file a motion requesting a subpoena to call forth all witnesses and evidence that could favorably determine the outcome of the case, at no cost.
George Thomas, a professor of criminal procedure at Rutgers Law School in Newark, said he has not heard of a case where prosecutors denied a defendant all access to probable cause and doubts such a practice would be found constitutional.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that probable cause must be present before a defendant can be arrested.
He said it is only logical that the defense should be able to challenge the adequacy of the probable cause.
And, I, Seth Brigham, have always maintained that I was arrested without probable cause, and, in fact, the police we’re abusing their positions, had no probable cause to question the homeless group, ID them and do background checks. And, in any case, I did not obstruct any police investigation.
For all of Tom Carr’s harsh rhetoric and lies concerning the case, no wonder he fears to release evidence yet received by my attorney, for example, taped interviews of two witnesses and photographs of the scene.
He is full of himself and was reckless with his statements. He spoke to my attorney in response to my attorney’s “upset” over the unethical nature of his Press Release.
He said he would not apologize or correct his statements in any way. I feel a need to redeem my name.
I’ve been able to find at least four witnesses that seem to have a recollection of the arrest much like mine.
The prosecutor, who told my lawyer that this deferred prosecution had no bearing on a possible civil suit I might pursue in the future, I find it disconcerting that she will now not cooperate.
TOM??? Do you have a response as to why you are circumventing my rights?
Seth Brigham
3383 Madsion Avenue #W225
Boulder, Colorado
80303
720-298-6711”
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MUNICIPAL Court, city of boulder, state of Colorado Court Address: 1777 – Sixth Street, Boulder, CO 80302 Court Phone: 303.441.1842 |
COURT USE ONLY |
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Attorney Name: Philip Bienvenu, 206 UCB, UMC 311 Boulder, CO 80309-0206 Attorney Reg. #: 10412 Attorney Phone: 303.492.6813 Attorney Fax: 303.735.5398 Attorney Email: bienvenu@colorado.edu |
Case Number: CR-2011-0009268-GE Division Courtroom |
MOTION FOR DISCOVERY |
Defendant in this case agreed to a Deferred Prosecution on 8-17-11. The following week, Defense Counsel informed the City Prosecutor that we wished to move forward with further discovery, in particular any contents of the case file maintained at the Boulder Police Department, whether or not those materials had yet been turned over to the City Prosecutor’s Office for its file. We are aware that such a separate file is routinely maintained in Municipal Court Criminal cases and the materials sometimes not turned over until the eve of trial. We were informed by the Prosecutor Ms. Michels that she considered the case files and materials no longer discoverable because the Deferred Prosecution is in effect. Defendant’s position is that the case has not been dismissed and is in fact subject to reopen on the Prosecution’s judgment call. There is nothing precluding continuing investigation and preparation for possible trial by either party to the case. We therefore maintain that discovery rights have not been waived or abandoned by the Defendant and should be honored as with any pending case not yet dismissed. The only way the Prosecution could cut off further discovery rights under the case would be full dismissal, which has not happened. Delaying discovery burdens and prejudices Defendant’s right to prepare for possible trial and to be ready should that eventuality become necessary. There can be no claim of prejudice or unfair burden on the Prosecution if this request is granted, because these are just rights the Defendant has in any pending criminal case, and concomitant duties of the Prosecution in any pending criminal case.
We therefore ask the Court to Order continuing discovery of all relevant materials in the case, including all material in the Police Department’s case file, including photos, interview tapes and/or notes, and all materials.
Respectfully,
_______________________________
Philip Bienvenu #10412
Attorney for Defendant
UNEXPECTED ADHESION PROPERTIES OF GRAPHENE MAY LEAD TO NEW NANOTECHNOLOGY DEVICES
Aug 23rd
Graphene, considered the most exciting new material under study in the world of nanotechnology, just got even more interesting, according to a new study by a group of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The new findings — that graphene has surprisingly powerful adhesion qualities — are expected to help guide the development of graphene manufacturing and of graphene-based mechanical devices such as resonators and gas separation membranes, according to the CU-Boulder team. The experimentsshowed that the extreme flexibility of graphene allows it to conform to the topography of even the smoothest substrates.
Graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms chemically bonded in a hexagonal chicken wire lattice. Its unique atomic structure could some day replace silicon as the basis of electronic devices and integrated circuits because of its remarkable electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, said Assistant Professor Scott Bunch of the CU-Boulder mechanical engineering department and lead study author.
A paper on the subject was published online in the Aug. 14 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Co-authors on the study included CU-Boulder graduate students Steven Koenig and NarasimhaBoddeti and Professor Martin Dunn of the mechanical engineering department.
“The real excitement for me is the possibility of creating new applications that exploit the remarkable flexibility and adhesive characteristics of graphene and devising unique experiments that can teach us more about the nanoscale properties of this amazing material,” Bunch said.
Not only does graphene have the highest electrical and thermal conductivity among all materials known, but this “wonder material” has been shown to be the thinnest, stiffest and strongest material in the world, as well as being impermeable to all standard gases. It’s newly discovered adhesion properties can now be added to the list of the material’s seemingly contradictory qualities, said Bunch.
The CU-Boulder team measured the adhesion energy of graphene sheets, ranging from one to five atomic layers, with a glass substrate, using a pressurized “blister test” to quantify the adhesion between graphene and glass plates.
Adhesion energy describes how “sticky” two things are when placed together. Scotch tape is one example of a material with high adhesion; the gecko lizard, which seemingly defies gravity by scaling up vertical walls using adhesion between its feet and the wall, is another. Adhesion also canplay a detrimental role, as in suspended micromechanical structures where adhesion can cause device failure or prolong the development of a technology, said Bunch.
The CU research, the first direct experimental measurements of the adhesion of graphene nanostructures, showed that so-called “van der Waals forces” — the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between molecules — clamp the graphene samples to the substrates and also hold together the individual graphene sheets in multilayer samples.
The researchers found the adhesion energies between graphene and the glass substrate were several orders of magnitude larger than adhesion energies in typical micromechanical structures, an interaction they described as more liquid-like than solid-like, said Bunch.
The CU-Boulder study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The importance of graphene in the scientific world was illustrated by the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics that honored two scientists at Manchester University in England, Andre K. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for producing, isolating, identifying and characterizing graphene.
There is interest in exploiting graphene’s incredible mechanical properties to create ultrathin membranes for energy-efficient separations such as those needed for natural gas processing or water purification, while graphene’s superior electrical properties promise to revolutionize the microelectronics industry, said Bunch.
In all of these applications, including any large-scale graphene manufacturing, the interaction that graphene has with a surface is of critical importance and a scientific understanding will help push the technology forward, he said.
Evidence of global climate in Southern Hemisphere
Aug 22nd
Aug. 22, 2011
SOUTHERN SOUTH AMERICAN WILDFIRES
EXPECTED TO INCREASE, SAYS CU STUDY
A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates a major climate oscillation in the Southern Hemisphere that is expected to intensify in the coming decades will likely cause increased wildfire activity in the southern half of South America.
The research team used tree rings dating to 1506 to track past wildfire activity in the forests of Patagonia tied to the Southern Annular Mode, or SAM, a climate oscillation that creates low atmospheric pressure in the Antarctic that is tied to warmer and drier conditions in southern South America. The tree rings showed that when SAM was in its positive phase, there were widespread fires in both dry woodlands and rainforests in Patagonia, a region that straddles Argentina and Chile, said CU-Boulder Research Associate Andres Holz, lead study author.
“Our study shows for about the past 250 years, the Southern Annular Mode has been the main driver in creating droughts and fires in two very different ecosystems in southern South America,” said Holz. “Climate models suggest an increase in SAM beginning in the 1960s due to greenhouse gas increases and Antarctic ozone depletion probably will cause this region to be drought-prone and fire-prone for at least the next 100 years.”
A paper on the subject by Holz and CU-Boulder geography Professor Thomas Veblen was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Holz and Veblen compared past wildfire records for two ecologically distinct regions in Patagonia — the relatively dry region of southern Patagonia in Argentina and the temperate rainforest of Patagonia in northern Chile. While the tree ring historical record showed increased fires in both regions correlated with a positive SAM, the trend has been less pronounced in northern Patagonia in the past 50 years, likely because of fire-suppression efforts there, Holz said.
But the decades of fire suppression have caused the northern Patagonian woodlands to become denser and more prone towildfire during hot and dry years, Holz said.
“Even in areas of northern Patagonia where fire suppression previously had been effective, record surface areas of woodlands and forests have burned in recent years of extreme drought,” said Veblen. “And since this is in an area of rapid residential growth into wildland-urban interface areas, this climate-driven trend towards increasing fire risk is becoming a major problem for land managers and homeowners.”
The two CU-Boulder researchers studied reconstructions of tree rings going back more than 500 years from 432 trees at 42 sample sites in northern Argentina and southern Chile — the largest available data set of annual, readable tree ring records in the Southern Hemisphere. The tree rings, which indicate climate cycles and reveal the scars of old fires, showed that wildfires generally increased in both regions when SAM was in its strong, positive phase.
Although the Antarctic ozone hole stopped growing in about 2000 as a result of a ban on ozone-depleting gases and now appears to be slowly repairing itself, a 2011 paper by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder indicates ozone recovery and greenhouse gas influences essentially will cancel each other out, preventing SAM from returning to its pre-1960s levels.
“Before the Industrial Revolution, SAM intensified naturally at times to create drought situations in Patagonia,” Holz said. “But in the last 80 years or so, the natural variation has been overwhelmed by a bias toward a positive SAM phase because of ozone-depleting chemicals and greenhouse gases we have put in the atmosphere.”
The research effort was supported by the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the CU Beverly Sears Small Grants Program and the Council on Research and CreativeResearch of the CU Graduate School.
“As warming and drying trends continue, it is likely that wildfire activity will increase even in woodland areas where fire suppression has previously been effective,” Holz and Veblen wrote in Geophysical Research Letters.
