Data for Change: A Statistical Analysis of Police Stops, Searches, Handcuffings, and Arrests in Oakland, Calif., 2013-2014

Law enforcement agencies across the United States are facing claims that they discriminate against community members of color. Inquiries into these claims typically take one of two approaches: either attack the agency for intentional racism, or deny the presence of racial disparities altogether. Yet neither of these approaches has yielded adequate progress toward many agencies' stated mission of serving their communities with fairness and respect. Taking a different approach, the City of Oakland engaged our team of Stanford social psychologists to examine relations between the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Oakland community, and then to develop evidence-based remedies for any racial disparities we might find. Since May 2014, our team has undertaken five research initiatives. We describe our research methods, findings, and recommendations in Strategies for Change: Research Initiatives and Recommendations to Improve Police-Community Relations in Oakland, Calif. We provide a technical report of our main research initiative, a thorough analysis of OPD stop reports, in Data for Change: A Statistical Analysis of Police Stops, Searches, Handcuffings, and Arrests in Oakland, Calif., 2013-2014

Novel Microbial System Developed from Low-Level Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant for Environmental Sustenance

A packed bed bioreactor efficiently treated low-level radioactive waste for years with a retention time of 24 h using acetate as the sole carbon source. However, there was generation of dead biomass. This bioreactor biomass was used to develop a bacterial consortium, which could perform the function within 4 h while simultaneously accumulating nitrate and phosphate. The dead mass was negligible. Serial dilution technique was used to isolate the world’s first pure culture of a nitrate accumulating strain from this consortium. This isolate could simultaneously accumulate nitrate and phosphate from solution. Its ability to form biofilm helped develop a packed bed bioreactor system for waste water treatment, which could optimally remove 94.46% nitrate within 11 h in batch mode while 8 h in continuous mode from waste water starting from 275 ppm of nitrate. The conventional approach revealed the strain to be a member of genus Bacillus but showed distinct differences with the type strains. Further insilico analysis of the draft genome and the putative protein sequences using the bioinformatics tools revealed the strain to be a novel variant of genus Bacillus. The sequestered nitrate and phosphate within the cell were visualized through electron microscopy and explained the reason behind the ability of the isolate to accumulate 1.12 mg of phosphate and 1.3 gm of nitrate per gram of wet weight. Transcriptome analysis proposed the mechanism behind the accumulation of nitrate and phosphate in case of this novel bacterial isolate (MCC 0008). The strain with the sequestered nutrients work as biofertilizer for yield enhancement in case of mung bean while maintaining soil fertility post-cultivation