The Effect of \u3cem\u3eBlakely v. Washington\u3c/em\u3e on Upward Departures in a Sentencing Guideline State

One of the problems facing the criminal justice system is unwarranted disparity as a result of unbridled discretion. Although disparity, by itself, does not necessarily indicate a problem in the criminal justice system, disparity unwarranted does present a problem. Disparity becomes unwarranted when, controlling for legal factors, extralegal factors such as race/ethnicity, gender, and age influence court processing decisions. The greater the discretion one possesses, the higher the likelihood of unwarranted disparity in one’s decisions (Albonetti, 1991; Meeker, Jesilow, & Aranda, 1992; Bushway & Piehl, 2001). Within the criminal court system, judicial discretion in sentencing has received the most scrutiny

Counter Closure and Knowledge despite Falsehood

Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show that the principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory--in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things

Knowledge, Safety, and Questions

Safety-based theories of knowledge face a difficulty surrounding necessary truths: no subject could have easily falsely believed such a proposition. Failing to predict that ill-grounded beliefs in such propositions do not constitute knowledge, standard safety theories are therefore less informative than desired. Some have suggested that the subjects at issue could easily have believed some related false proposition; but they have given no indication as to what makes a proposition related. I suggest a solution to this problem: a belief is safe iff its subject could not easily have believed a false answer to the same question.Keywords: epistemology, knowledge, problem of necessary truths, questions, safety

Controlled Release Characteristics of Aqueous PEO‐PPO‐PEO Micelles With Added Malachite Green, Erythrosin, and Cisplatin Determined by UV–Visible Spectroscopy

Dynamic diffusion experiments were performed on aqueous polymeric micelles mixed with malachite green (0.05% mass v−1), erythrosin (0.1% mass v−1), and cisplatin (0.1% mass v−1) to gauge release from sequestered structures using ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy. The additives were formulated with 20% mass v−1 aqueous solutions of polyethylene oxide‐polypropylene oxide‐polyethylene oxide, PEO‐PPO‐PEO (F127). Each additive was tested neat at room temperature, neat at 40 °C, and formulated with F127 at room temperature, and 40 °C. After constructing calibration curves, the dynamic release for each ternary additive and corresponding diffusion coefficients were calculated. Results show that F127 retards permeation at room temperature. In general, the neat additives at 40 °C showed the highest permeability for both malachite green and erythrosin. Malachite green released almost 90% of the dye by 60 min of permeation. When formulated with F127 at 40 °C, sizeable release was still noted, but with an induction period of 10–30 min to register release. The behavior with cisplatin was more complicated as the first 5 h of permeation resulted in a burst delivery with cisplatin (6% total release with cisplatin‐F127‐RT compared to 4% total release cisplatin‐RT) but with overall lower release. The higher fluence at elevated temperature is attributed to reducing the blocking effect of the amphiphiles on the walls of the dialysis tubing as they are directed to form colloidal gels. There is also likely a correlation between higher temperature and higher overall permeability if the membrane pores also expand with temperature.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142528/1/jsde12001.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142528/2/jsde12001_am.pd

Supernova Remnants, Pulsars and the Interstellar Medium - Summary of a Workshop Held at U Sydney, March 1999

We summarise the proceedings of the SRCfTA workshop on ``Supernova Remnants, Pulsars and the Interstellar Medium'' that was held at the University of Sydney on Mar 18 and 19, 1999.Comment: 13 pages, Latex. To be published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 2000, Vol 17, No

Blockmodeling Techniques for Complex Networks.

The class of network models known as stochastic blockmodels has recently been gaining popularity. In this dissertation, we present new work that uses blockmodels to answer questions about networks. We create a blockmodel based on the idea of link communities, which naturally gives rise to overlapping vertex communities. We derive a fast and accurate algorithm to fit the model to networks. This model can be related to another blockmodel, which allows the method to efficiently find nonoverlapping communities as well. We then create a heuristic based on the link community model whose use is to find the correct number of communities in a network. The heuristic is based on intuitive corrections to likelihood ratio tests. It does a good job finding the correct number of communities in both real networks and synthetic networks generated from the link communities model. Two commonly studied types of networks are citation networks, where research papers cite other papers, and coauthorship networks, where authors are connected if they've written a paper together. We study a multi-modal network from a large dataset of Physics publications that is the combination of the two, allowing for directed links between papers as citations, and an undirected edge between a scientist and a paper if they helped to write it. This allows for new insights on the relation between social interaction and scientific production. We also have the publication dates of papers, which lets us track our measures over time. Finally, we create a stochastic model for ranking vertices in a semi-directed network. The probability of connection between two vertices depends on the difference of their ranks. When this model is fit to high school friendship networks, the ranks appear to correspond with a measure of social status. Students have reciprocated and some unreciprocated edges with other students of closely similar rank that correspond to true friendship, and claim an aspirational friendship with a much higher ranked individual a fraction of the time. In general, students with more friends have higher ranks than those with fewer friends, and older students have higher ranks than younger students.PhDPhysicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108855/1/briball_1.pd