Restorative justice in cases of sexual violence: current and future directions in the UK

Restorative justice seeks to repair the harm caused by crime by bringing together victims, offenders, and affected parties in a facilitated dialogue. Restorative justice is often viewed negatively in relation to cases of sexual violence, due to fears of revictimization, retraumatization, and power imbalances. This paper provides a critical analysis of current literature on restorative justice as a response to sexual violence. It presents findings from a small study (n = 25) held after a one-day conference on sexual violence and restorative justice. Findings include support for restorative justice in cases of sexual offending being contingent on the process being victim/survivor-led and specialist training being provided for restorative practitioners who deal with such cases

On a minimal model for estimating climate sensitivity

In a recent issue of this journal, Loehle (2014) presents a "minimal model" for estimating climate sensitivity, identical to that previously published by Loehle and Scafetta (2011). The novelty in the more recent paper lies in the straightforward calculation of an estimate of transient climate response based on the model and an estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity derived therefrom, via a flawed methodology. We demonstrate that the Loehle and Scafetta model systematically underestimates the transient climate response, due to a number of unsupportable assumptions regarding the climate system. Once the flaws in Loehle and Scafetta's model are addressed, the estimates of transient climate response and equilibrium climate sensitivity derived from the model are entirely consistent with those obtained from general circulation models, and indeed exclude the possibility of low climate sensitivity, directly contradicting the principal conclusion drawn by Loehle. Further, we present an even more parsimonious model for estimating climate sensitivity. Our model is based on observed changes in radiative forcings, and is therefore constrained by physics, unlike the Loehle model, which is little more than a curve-fitting exercise

Predicting September Arctic Sea Ice: A Multi-Model Seasonal Skill Comparison

Abstract This study quantifies the state-of-the-art in the rapidly growing field of seasonal Arctic sea ice prediction. A novel multi-model dataset of retrospective seasonal predictions of September Arctic sea ice is created and analyzed, consisting of community contributions from 17 statistical models and 17 dynamical models. Prediction skill is compared over the period 2001–2020 for predictions of Pan-Arctic sea ice extent (SIE), regional SIE, and local sea ice concentration (SIC) initialized on June 1, July 1, August 1, and September 1. This diverse set of statistical and dynamical models can individually predict linearly detrended Pan-Arctic SIE anomalies with skill, and a multi-model median prediction has correlation coefficients of 0.79, 0.86, 0.92, and 0.99 at these respective initialization times. Regional SIE predictions have similar skill to Pan-Arctic predictions in the Alaskan and Siberian regions, whereas regional skill is lower in the Canadian, Atlantic, and Central Arctic sectors. The skill of dynamical and statistical models is generally comparable for Pan-Arctic SIE, whereas dynamical models outperform their statistical counterparts for regional and local predictions. The prediction systems are found to provide the most value added relative to basic reference forecasts in the extreme SIE years of 1996, 2007, and 2012. SIE prediction errors do not show clear trends over time, suggesting that there has been minimal change in inherent sea ice predictability over the satellite era. Overall, this study demonstrates that there are bright prospects for skillful operational predictions of September sea ice at least three months in advance.</jats:p

A simple trick for constructing bayesian formulations of sparse kernel learning methods

Abstract — In this paper, we present a simple mathematical trick that simplifies the derivation of Bayesian treatments of a variety of sparse kernel learning methods. The incomplete Cholesky factorisation due to [1] is used to transform the dual parameter space, such that the covariance matrix of the Gaussian prior over model parameters becomes the identity matrix. The regularisation term is then the familiar weight-decay regulariser, allowing the Bayesian analysis to proceed straight-forwardly via the methods developed by [2–4]. As a bye-product, the incomplete Cholesky factorisation algorithm also identifies a subset of the training data forming an approximate basis for the remaining data in feature space, resulting in a sparse model. Bayesian treatments of the kernel ridge regression algorithm [5], with both constant and input dependent variance structures, are given as illustrative examples of the proposed technique, which we hope will be more widely applicable. I

A greedy training algorithm for sparse least-squares support vector machines

Suykens et al. [1] describes a form of kernel ridge regression known as the least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). In this paper, we present a simple, but efficient, greedy algorithm for constructing near optimal sparse approximations of least-squares support vector machines, in which at each iteration the training pattern minimising the regularised empirical risk is introduced into the kernel expansion. The proposed method demonstrates superior performance when compared with the pruning technique described by Suykens et al. [1], over the motorcycle and Boston housing datasets