AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF BIRD DAMAGE IN VINEYARDS OF THE MARLBOROUGH REGION

Production Economics,

Bits and Bytes: The Carnivore Initiative and the Search and Seizure of Electronic Mail

This Note examines the application of Fourth Amendment search and seizure doctrines to the interception of electronic mail within the context of the FBI Carnivore initiative. The author argues that the traditional law of electronic surveillance\u27s understanding of communication is outdated and never contemplated new technologies like Carnivore and their far reaching implications. Consequently, the author argues, that to protect our long-understood expectations of privacy, the search and seizure of electronic documents should be analyzed under the traditional papers analysis. To do so, the Supreme Court would afford the interception electronic documents the highest form of constitutional protect available under law

Enabling Robots to Communicate their Objectives

The overarching goal of this work is to efficiently enable end-users to correctly anticipate a robot's behavior in novel situations. Since a robot's behavior is often a direct result of its underlying objective function, our insight is that end-users need to have an accurate mental model of this objective function in order to understand and predict what the robot will do. While people naturally develop such a mental model over time through observing the robot act, this familiarization process may be lengthy. Our approach reduces this time by having the robot model how people infer objectives from observed behavior, and then it selects those behaviors that are maximally informative. The problem of computing a posterior over objectives from observed behavior is known as Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL), and has been applied to robots learning human objectives. We consider the problem where the roles of human and robot are swapped. Our main contribution is to recognize that unlike robots, humans will not be exact in their IRL inference. We thus introduce two factors to define candidate approximate-inference models for human learning in this setting, and analyze them in a user study in the autonomous driving domain. We show that certain approximate-inference models lead to the robot generating example behaviors that better enable users to anticipate what it will do in novel situations. Our results also suggest, however, that additional research is needed in modeling how humans extrapolate from examples of robot behavior.Comment: RSS 201

Termination of Parental Rights in Washington

Prior to 1978, Washington allowed trial judges broad discretion to decide, on a case by case basis, the necessity of terminating parental rights. The recently adopted Juvenile Court Act in Cases Relating to Dependency of A Child and the Termination of a Parent and Child Relationship represents a legislative attempt to nurture the family unit by severely limiting trial court discretion. The new law provides standards making judicial termination of parental rights difficult in all cases. The Institute of Judicial Administration and the American Bar Association also have jointly proposed standards limiting trial court discretion in termination proceedings. The ABA proposal, however, differs markedly from the Washington legislation. Attempting to limit the duration of foster care placements, the ABA would require the trial judge to order termination in many cases of extended foster care. This comment contrasts the system of broad discretion under the previous Washington law with the two very different systems of limited discretion embodied in the Juvenile Court Act and the ABA proposal

Termination of Parental Rights in Washington

Prior to 1978, Washington allowed trial judges broad discretion to decide, on a case by case basis, the necessity of terminating parental rights. The recently adopted Juvenile Court Act in Cases Relating to Dependency of A Child and the Termination of a Parent and Child Relationship represents a legislative attempt to nurture the family unit by severely limiting trial court discretion. The new law provides standards making judicial termination of parental rights difficult in all cases. The Institute of Judicial Administration and the American Bar Association also have jointly proposed standards limiting trial court discretion in termination proceedings. The ABA proposal, however, differs markedly from the Washington legislation. Attempting to limit the duration of foster care placements, the ABA would require the trial judge to order termination in many cases of extended foster care. This comment contrasts the system of broad discretion under the previous Washington law with the two very different systems of limited discretion embodied in the Juvenile Court Act and the ABA proposal

An Examination of Multicultural Competence and Racial Colorblindness Among School Psychologists

The field of school psychology has developed a strong commitment to culturally competent practice. However, there is a lack of literature examining multicultural competence among school psychologists. The present study sought to address this need using a two-pronged approach. First, the study expanded the research base for a self-report multicultural competence scale by administering the measure to a sample of practicing school psychologists. Second, the study investigated the relationship between racial colorblindness and self-perceived multicultural competence among school psychologists by administering an additional racial colorblindness measure. Given that similar fields have identified the negative impact of racial colorblindness on multicultural competence, it is important to explore the interrelation between these factors in school psychology. A total of 141 practicing school psychologists completed an online survey. Quantitative analyses highlighted the importance of multicultural education and opportunities for increased interactions with diverse populations in school psychology training programs. Furthermore, the findings emphasized the need to address colorblind attitudes in the field, particularly as they impact service delivery among White and older school psychologists. Implications for school psychology training, practice, and service delivery are discussed