5,859 research outputs found

    The Admissibility of TrueAllele: A Computerized DNA Interpretation System

    Full text link

    The Constitutional Regulation of Forensic Evidence

    Get PDF
    The Constitution increasingly regulates the use of forensic evidence in criminal cases. This is a remarkable shift. In decades past, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to provide strong due process protection against destruction of forensic evidence or to obtain defense access to experts. In contrast, in recent years, the Court’s series of Confrontation Clause rulings tightened requirements to present live testimony in the courtroom. Perhaps far more significant, I will argue, the Court has strengthened obligations of defense counsel to litigate forensics, twice underscoring in little noticed opinions: “Criminal cases will arise where the only reasonable and available defense strategy requires consultation with experts or introduction of expert evidence.” In this Essay, I describe how despite decades of missed opportunities to adequately regulate forensics, in recent rulings the Court and to a far greater degree, lower state and federal courts, increasingly focus on sound litigation of forensics. In an era of plea bargaining, the accuracy of forensic analysis depends far less on cross-examination at trial, and far more on sound lab techniques, full disclosure of strengths and limitations of forensic evidence to prosecutors and the defense, and careful litigation. The changing judicial understanding of the constitutional significance of forensic evidence in criminal cases may follow from a new appreciation that forensic evidence is not only increasingly important in criminal cases, but that many traditional techniques lack adequate reliability and validity. The Sixth Amendment and the Due Process Clauses are emerging as promising constitutional sources for improved regulation of forensics, including through ineffective assistance of counsel and Brady v. Maryland rulings focusing on investigations and plea bargains. How meaningful courts will make those dual constitutional protections in the years to come will be a crucial test of our commitment to accuracy in criminal justice

    It was information based : Student Reasoning when Distinguishing Between Scholarly and Popular Sources

    Get PDF
    Scholarly and popular sources are a longstanding construct in library instruction. A quick Google search brings up an abundance of LibGuides and tutorials on the subject. However, we have found that teaching students to identify and classify information sources using a rigid binary categorization is problematic. In an effort to better understand the ways students conceptualize and evaluate sources, we stepped back to ask: what kind of reasoning do students apply when distinguishing between scholarly and popular sources

    Credibility: A multidisciplinary framework

    Full text link
    No Abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61241/1/1440410114_ftp.pd

    Generation Z: Facts and Fictions

    Get PDF
    Libraries have long embraced service-oriented, user-centered approaches. Consider Ranganathan’s 1931 theory Five Laws of Library Science, which includes three clearly user-centered tenants (every reader his/her book, every book its reader, save the time of the reader) and two that arguably hint at a user-centered approach (books are for use, the library is a growing organism). Despite such early user-focused theories, early research into information seeking focused not on user needs and behaviors but on “the artifacts and venues of information seeking: books, journals, newspapers, [...] and the like”; this method of investigation persisted through the 1960s (Case, 2002, p. 6). The 1970s, however, heralded a shift toward user-centered investigations. Of particular influence was the work of Brenda Dervin, who challenged ten assumptions she determined dominated and distracted research concerning information seeking. While Dervin’s research focused on adult public library users and their general, everyday information needs, her ten assumptions resonated with academic libraries serving the more formalized information needs of the higher education student. Along with other like-minded researchers and practitioners, Dervin’s challenges of these “flawed” assumptions led to a paradigm shift in both library theory and practice. In the spirit of the ever-evolving library organism and in support of user-centered academic library services, resources, and spaces, the authors propose repurposing Dervin’s ten assumptions and challenges to better reflect and serve today’s traditional higher education student. Even a cursory glance at the literature concerning today’s traditional student will reveal stark differences in the information environment, practices, and behaviors of these students as compared to Dervin’s original population. The proposed study will focus on students entering higher education now--more specifically, the newly identified and emerging Generation Z. Loosely encompassing those born in the mid 1990s through 2010, Generation Z overlaps the Millennials; however, Generation Z can be distinguished from the Millennials in that its members have never lived in a “disconnected world.” The ubiquity of smart mobile devices with direct connections to multitudes of free web authoring services, online social networks, information outlets, and collaborative platforms empowers these students to consume and produce information in ways heretofore unimagined. Likewise, from SMS, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to Google+ Hangouts, FaceTime, and Skype, this generation is developing an instinctive set of behaviors and expectations about information access, consumption, and creation. Such technologies allow content to be ever-changing, individualized, and personal, requiring students to develop critical skills to recognize and accommodate for these information characteristics. How exactly does this collaborative, individualized, evolving information environment affect Generation Z’s information seeking behaviors? More importantly, do the behaviors and expectations of this new generation call for a new approach to our so-called user-centered services? By examining the literature, conducting student surveys, and observing student behaviors, all through the lens of Dervin’s assumptions, the authors hope to define and challenge similar assumptions about and by Generation Z in order to realize the possible implications of such assumptions on our interactions with these students and the faculty we work with to serve them

    Morph Creation and Vulnerability of Face Recognition Systems to Morphing

    Get PDF
    Face recognition in controlled environments is nowadays considered rather reliable, and very good accuracy levels can be achieved by state-of-the-art systems in controlled scenarios. However, even under these desirable conditions, digital image alterations can severely affect the recognition performance. In particular, several studies show that automatic face recognition systems are very sensitive to the so-called face morphing attack, where face images of two individuals are mixed to produce a new face image containing facial features of both subjects. Face morphing represents nowadays a big security threat particularly in the context of electronic identity documents because it can be successfully exploited for criminal intents, for instance to fool Automated Border Control (ABC) systems thus overcoming security controls at the borders. This chapter will describe the face morphing process, in an overview ranging from the traditional techniques based on geometry warping and texture blending to the most recent and innovative approaches based on deep neural networks. Moreover, the sensitivity of state-of-the-art face recognition algorithms to the face morphing attack will be assessed using morphed images of different quality generated using various morphing methods to identify possible factors influencing the probability of success of the attack

    Machine Learning, Automated Suspicion Algorithms, and the Fourth Amendment

    Get PDF

    Machine Learning, Automated Suspicion Algorithms, and the Fourth Amendment

    Get PDF
    • …
    corecore