The Innocent Can Still Be Found Guilty

Wrongful convictions target specific groups of people within society in the U.S. The criminal justice and court systems are heavily influenced by the racial biases that surround their integral processes when it comes to convicting citizens of their accused crimes. African American men are heavily targeted when it comes to being convicted of a violent crime that they did not commit, when compared to that of white males. These racial biases can be viewed through careful observation of prior research and shows how these biases have been ingrained within the training police officers undergo. It is also evident that these biases are seemingly present in the minds of victims of violent crimes. As racial stereotypes obscure their sense of judgment when it comes to identifying the perpetrator of the crime from a group of people in a lineup. A lineup is a method of identification that is used in order to help victims identify the offender from a group of people who have been arrested and match a similar description. Statistics on the groups of people that are wrongfully convicted are analyzed, as well as cases that involve the use of different kinds of evidence which have led to wrongful convictions. The systems in place that are meant to fairly convict offenders of their crimes are heavily flawed and outdated as statistics clearly outline the margins of error included within every wrongful conviction that is made. These findings may also suggest which racial group is targeted the most when it comes to being wrongfully convicted as a result of errors created from these flawed systems. Changes in policies such as making it mandatory for investigators to film interrogation, could reduce the rate of wrongful convictions. However, the enforcement of policy changes can be ignored by those in power, in order to reap the underlying benefits that come with a wrongful conviction. Key Words: wrongful convictions, evidence, racial biases, eyewitness, policy, exonerate, racial stereotypes&nbsp

Conformal and non Conformal Dilaton Gravity

The quantum dynamics of the gravitational field non-minimally coupled to an (also dynamical) scalar field is studied in the {\em broken phase}. For a particular value of the coupling the system is classically conformal, and can actually be understood as the group averaging of Einstein-Hilbert's action under conformal transformations. Conformal invariance implies a simple Ward identity asserting that the trace of the equation of motion for the graviton is the equation of motion of the scalar field. We perform an explicit one-loop computation to show that the DeWitt effective action is not UV divergent {\em on shell} and to find that the Weyl symmetry Ward identity is preserved {\em on shell} at that level. We also discuss the fate of this Ward identity at the two-loop level --under the assumption that the two-loop UV divergent part of the effective action can be retrieved from the Goroff-Sagnotti counterterm-- and show that its preservation in the renormalized theory requires the introduction of counterterms which exhibit a logarithmic dependence on the dilaton field.Comment: LateX, 50 pages. Several points clarified; references added. New section on Weyl invariant renormalisation adde

Modelling of the intensified esterification using ozone-rich microbubbles for biodiesel production

The aim of this thesis is to model the intensified esterification in order to improve the pretreatment stage of biodiesel production, where the free fatty acids found in vegetable oils are converted to fatty acid methyl esters. The intensified esterification considers the use of a microbubble reactive distillation as an alternative to the acid pretreatment. The proposed set of reactions based on a free-radical mechanism would favour the process towards completion achieving a yield higher than 90%. This is achieved due to the respective water stripping and removal, leading to a higher efficiency of the process and avoiding inhibition caused by products. Both the 0-D irreversible and reversible model are built in order to portray the relevance of the reverse reaction, since it is known that esterification is a reversible reaction of second order. The rate constants obtained in these models are fed into the 2-D model, where the reaction kinetics, mass and heat transfer and surface reactions in the gas-liquid interface are studied. Some of the results obtained in the 2-D model for the reversible esterification are described below. A higher FAME concentration is obtained due to the free-radical direct injection into microbubbles with plasma and the water removal (Le Chatelier’s push and pull). An enhanced reaction kinetics is found with shorter residence times. An increase in temperature would mean an increase in both forward and reverse rate constants, favouring the forward rate constant (Esterification is endothermic). Decreasing the bubble size results in an increase of the FAME production due to the enhanced gas-liquid ratio at the interface and the increased vaporisation and stripping of water. Increasing the concentration of the O· radical results in an increase in the FAME concentration in the liquid domain. A higher bubble temperature results in a higher water concentration inside the bubble, leading to a higher reaction rate and water stripping. These findings are used in order to propose an esterification reversible model using J. platyphylla, which accounts shorter residence times lower than 1x10-4 s, in other words (τres<1x10-4 s), when the maximum water concentration in the bubble is reached before it reaches the chemical equilibrium

Determinación del balance energético para el control adecuado del peso corporal de competición en desportistas juveniles de taekwondo

Documento en pdf.El peso corporal adecuado de competición cumple un papel fundamental en los atletas de deportes de combate donde se compiten por categorías, un peso corporal inferior o superior al de competición provocaría desventajas entre los competidores y problemas en la salud y rendimiento de los mismos. En el proceso de preparación de los atletas para la competencia principal no consta como parte del mismo la determinación del balance energético para un adecuado control del peso corporal de competición. Se plantea como objetivos alcanzar el peso corporal adecuado de competición para la contienda fundamental mediante la determinación del balance energético y el control y asesoramiento adecuado en su alimentación y entrenamiento deportivo, mediante la elaboración y aplicación de procedimientos para tal efecto. La investigación se desarrolló en la Federación Deportiva Provincial de Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, selección provincial de Taekwondo categoría juvenil durante los meses del macrociclo 2011 (enero a julio), se elaboraron fichas nutricionales y personales de los deportistas, así como se registraron las respectivas medidas antropométricas y se determinó su balance energético. Esta investigación fue factible porque desempeñé la función de Metodólogo en la Federación Deportiva Provincial de Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas y no hubo complicaciones para la medición antropométrica y aplicación de las entrevistas a los atletas. Con los resultados obtenidos se elaboraron las respectivas recomendaciones nutricionales y deportivas para que los diferentes deportes que se compiten por categoría de peso puedan aplicar en sus deportistas estas metodologías y así eviten las pérdidas de peso inadecuadas y sus respectivas complicaciones

Service level agreements (SLAs) for the Operations and Support Section

The development of Service Level Agreements will go a long way in helping the Operations and Support section at the South Carolina Department of Revenue effectively determine when additional resources are needed for customer support issues

Being Real: The Struggle for Authenticity in the Historian-Narrator Exchange

“Being Real: The Struggle for Authenticity in the Historian-Narrator Exchange” explores issues of authenticity, authority, and morality in oral history practice. Inspired by an oral history project with sharply different interpretative directions, this thesis examines these concepts—which are more often than not in tension with one another—using that project as a framework. Keywords: activism, authority, shared authority, authenticity, Columbia, history, ethics, morality, journalism, biograph

Deep Spatiotemporal Model for COVID-19 Forecasting

COVID-19 has caused millions of infections and deaths over the last 2 years. Machine learning models have been proposed as an alternative to conventional epidemiologic models in an effort to optimize short- and medium-term forecasts that will help health authorities to optimize the use of policies and resources to tackle the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Although previous machine learning models based on time pattern analysis for COVID-19 sensed data have shown promising results, the spread of the virus has both spatial and temporal components. This manuscript proposes a new deep learning model that combines a time pattern extraction based on the use of a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) over a preceding spatial analysis based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) applied to a sequence of COVID-19 incidence images. The model has been validated with data from the 286 health primary care centers in the Comunidad de Madrid (Madrid region, Spain). The results show improved scores in terms of both root mean square error (RMSE) and explained variance (EV) when compared with previous models that have mainly focused on the temporal patterns and dependencies.This work is part of the agreement between the Community of Madrid and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid for the funding of research projects on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 disease, project name “Multi-source and multi-method prediction to support COVID-19 policy decision making”, which was supported with REACT-EU funds from the European regional development fund “a way of making Europe”. This work was supported in part by the projects “ANALISIS EN TIEMPO REAL DE SENSORES SOCIALES Y ESTIMACION DE RECURSOS PARA TRANSPORTE MULTIMODAL BASADA EN APRENDIZAJE PROFUNDO” MaGIST-RALES, funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI, doi: 10.13039/501100011033) under grant PID2019- 105221RB-C44/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and “FLATCITY-APP: Aplicación móvil para FlatCity” funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union “NextGenerationEU/PRTR” under grant PDC2021-121239-C33