The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction

A New Reality - Afghan Women’s Perspectives on their Rights in Afghanistan

This thesis aims to shed light on the perspectives of Afghan women on their women’s rights in Afghanistan between May and October 2021. The purpose of this thesis is to elaborate on the perceptions of those women through thematic analysis, utilising women’s rights, and the human rights-based approach as the theoretical framework and key concepts. This qualitative research analyses eight published texts containing Afghan women’s various experiences during the period following the imposition of regulations by the Taliban restricting their rights. This analysis reflects on the aspects of the Afghan women’s experiences that are related to women’s rights. The qualitative research shows that the common theme in the texts is fear. Afghan women expressed fear about rights related to their self-development, safety, participation in society, and health. Perspectives on women’s rights differed between Afghan women from urban and rural parts of Afghanistan. This thesis explores the perspectives of several Afghan women on their ability to enjoy their women’s rights by addressing their position as women in vulnerable situations and by looking at them from a women’s rights perspective. The results indicate a need for further research on women in vulnerable situations and on the perspectives of Afghan women from rural areas. The data in this thematic analysis revealed further suggestions for the international community to get involved in promoting and maintaining women’s rights in Afghanistan

Voices on Innocence

In the summer of 2015, experts gathered from around the country to sit together and discuss one of the most pressing and important issues facing the American criminal justice system—innocence. Innocence is an issue that pervades various areas of research and influences numerous topics of discussion. What does innocence mean, particularly in a system that differentiates between innocence and acquittal at sentencing? What is the impact of innocence during plea bargaining? How should society respond to the growing number of exonerations? What forces lead to the incarceration of innocents? Has an innocent person been put to death and, if so, what does this mean for capital punishment? As these and other examples demonstrate, the importance and influence of the innocence issue is boundless. As the group—representing various perspectives, disciplines, and areas of research—discussed these and other questions, it also considered the role of innocence in the criminal justice system more broadly and examined where the innocence issue might take society in the future. What follows is a collection of short essays from some of those in attendance—essays upon which society might reflect as it continues to consider the varying sides and differing answers to the issue of innocence. My own research regarding innocence began as part of a deep analysis of another topic—the historical rise of plea bargaining in the United States. Today, more than ninety-seven percent of convictions in the federal system and approximately ninety-five percent of felony convictions in the state systems are the result of guilty pleas. Plea bargaining did not always occupy such a dominant role in America. For example, in the post-Civil War period, appellate courts regularly struck down attempts to engage in plea bargaining. According to one court from the period, plea bargaining was “hardly, if at all, distinguishable in principle from a direct sale of justice.” But plea bargaining did rise from the shadows—in the words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2012, “criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.” As I proceeded with my research on plea bargaining’s rise and its mechanics, I quickly came upon plea bargaining’s innocence issue. For example, in 2002, a seventeen-year-old high-school student named Brian Banks was accused of rape. He was offered a plea bargain that carried a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, though he was assured he would actually serve much less time. The alternative was to proceed to trial and face a sentence of forty-one years to life if he lost. As might be expected, Banks took the deal. Nearly a decade after the conviction, Banks’s accuser recanted, and his conviction was reversed on March 24, 2012. Stories such as this led to much debate and contemplation about the impact of plea bargaining on defendants accused of crimes they had not committed. Were the Brian Banks of the world an anomaly? In 1970, the Supreme Court stated that plea bargaining was constitutional. In part, this decision rested on the Court’s belief that innocent people do not plead guilty. Was the Court wrong in making that assumption? These questions led me and Dr. Vanessa Edkins to conduct a psychological study to test how likely it was that an innocent defendant might falsely confess and plead guilty in return for an offer of leniency. In the study, participants were made to believe that they were participating in a psychological inquiry into group work versus individual work. Participants were instructed that offering assistance to someone else during the individual work portion of the test was prohibited. Nevertheless, in approximately half of the cases, the participant was approached. Unbeknownst to the participants, however, the individual asking for the assistance was actually a confederate working with us on the study.16 This study design resulted in the creation of two pools of participants: Those who had been asked for assistance and agreed (the “guilty” condition) and those who had not been asked for assistance (the “innocent” condition). Regardless of condition, all participants were then accused of cheating and offered a plea bargain. Participants were informed that if they did not plead guilty, the case would proceed to a “trial” before an Academic Review Board (ARB). If found guilty before the ARB, the punishment would be more severe than if they accepted the bargain and confessed. After weighing their options, eighty-nine percent of the participants in the “guilty” condition took the deal and pled guilty to the charges of academic misconduct. Over fifty-six percent of the participants in the “innocent” condition also took the deal and, in their cases, falsely confessed to the charges of academic misconduct. Importantly, the data from this research supports the hypothesis that plea bargaining’s innocence issue is not limited to isolated cases like Brian Banks. Rather, it appears plea bargaining’s innocence issue may be much larger than originally perceived. The many contributing factors and potential solutions to plea bargaining’s innocence issue are too numerous to examine here. Plea bargaining, however, as illustrated above, is an important piece of the modern innocence debate and was the subject that prompted the 2015 innocence discussion. In the essays that follow, several others who participated in the roundtable share their perspectives on various nuances and facets of the issue of innocence. Professor Richard Leo begins the collection with an analysis of the shifting meaning of “innocence” in American scholarship over the last few decades. His analysis of the concepts of “factual innocence” and “exoneration” sets the stage for the innocence issues discussed in the remaining pieces. As Professor Leo states in his essay, “How we define innocence and classify wrongful convictions matters, both empirically and normatively.” Professor Meghan Ryan’s essay delves into the issue of the reliability of evidence and tactics during criminal proceedings and discusses the relationship between these concerns and wrongful convictions. Professor Ryan argues that those involved in the criminal justice system must “recognize and embrace their own fallibility.” Through such a recognition, she argues, a more critical examination of the system might occur. Professor Valena Beety examines the issue of scientific evidence and argues that wrongful convictions reveal significant issues regarding a “disconnect between forensic experts and officers of the court on scientific understanding and scientific ignorance.” In particular, Professor Beety discusses several examples of unreliable scientific evidence being admitted against defendants with little challenge from the bench or bar because of a “gap in knowledge.” Professor Gregory Gilchrist returns the discussion to plea bargaining and discusses the role of prosecutors and prosecutorial discretion in plea bargaining’s innocence issue. In an attempt to add greater transparency and accountability to the plea-bargaining machine, Professor Gilchrist proposes creating a public-review platform for the prosecutorial function. He writes, “If nothing else, exposure sustains public deliberation that itself might lead to better practices over time.” Finally, Professor William Berry examines how we might better learn from wrongful convictions and how we might better move forward after injustice is discovered. Professor Berry offers a restorative model of punishment as a means of addressing both goals while still “hold[ing) individuals who contribute to wrongful convictions accountable.” Such a model, argues Professor Berry, will create a mechanism for the wrongfully convicted to express themselves, for those involved in the conviction to offer an apology, and for the system as a whole to learn from the mistakes that have led to innocence issues. Through these diverse and innovative essays, the reader is able to glimpse the larger innocence discussion that occurred at the roundtable event in 2015. The ideas expressed in these pages begin a journey into an issue with many faces and many paths forward for discussion, research, and reform

Voices on Innocence

In the summer of 2015, experts gathered from around the country to sit together and discuss one of the most pressing and important issues facing the American criminal justice system – innocence. Innocence is an issue that pervades various areas of research and influences numerous topics of discussion. What does innocence mean, particularly in a system that differentiates between innocence and acquittal at sentencing? What is the impact of innocence during plea bargaining? How should we respond to growing numbers of exonerations? What forces lead to the incarceration of innocents? Has an innocent person been put to death and, if so, what does this mean for capital punishment? As these and other examples demonstrate, the importance and influence of the innocence issue is boundless. As the group, representing various perspectives, disciplines, and areas of research, discussed these and other questions, it also considered the role of innocence in the criminal justice system more broadly and examined where the innocence issue might take us in the future. This article is a collection of short essays from some of those in attendance - essays upon which we might reflect as we continue to consider the varying sides and differing answers to the issue of innocence. Through these diverse and innovative essays, the reader is able to glimpse the larger innocence discussion that occurred in the summer of 2015. As was the case at the roundtable event, the ideas expressed in these pages begins a journey into an issue with many faces and many paths forward for discussion, research, and reform

Eating disorders and oral health: A review of the literature

This article is a review of the recent literature pertaining to the oral sequelae of eating disorders (EDs). Dentists are recognized as being some of the first health care professionals to whom a previously undiagnosed eating disorder patient (EDP) may present. However, despite the prevalence (up to 4 per cent) of such conditions in teenage girls and young adult females, there is relatively little published in the recent literature regarding the oral sequelae of EDs. This compares unfavourably with the attention given recently in the dental literature to conditions such as diabetes mellitus, which have a similar prevalence in the adult population. The incidence of EDs is increasing and it would be expected that dentists who treat patients in the affected age groups would encounter more individuals exhibiting EDs. Most of the reports in the literature concentrate on the obvious clinical features of dental destruction (perimolysis), parotid swelling and biochemical abnormalities particularly related to salivary and pancreatic amylase. However, there is no consistency in explanation of the oral phenomena and epiphenomena seen in EDs. Many EDPs are nutritionally challenged; there is a relative lack of information pertaining to non-dental, oral lesions associated with nutritional deficiencies

Dental erosion in asthma: A case-control study from south east Queensland

Background: Asthma medication places patients at risk of dental erosion by reducing salivary protection against extrinsic or intrinsic acids. But patterns of lesions in asthmatics may differ from patterns in non-asthmatics, because gastro-oesophageal reflux (GOR) is found in 60 per cent of asthmatics. Methods: The lesions in 44 asthma cases were compared to those of age and sex match controls with no history of asthma or medications drawn from the dental records of 423 patients referred concerning excessive tooth wear. The subjects were 70 males age range 15 to 55 years and 18 females age range 18 to 45. Anamnestic clinical data were compared between the two groups. Models of all 88 subjects were examined by light microscopy, and wear patterns were recorded on permanent central incisor, canine, premolar and first molar teeth. Results: Clinical differences were a higher incidence of tooth hypersensitivity; xerostomia, salivary gland abnormalities, gastric complaints, and self induced vomiting in the cases. No differences were found between the cases and controls on citrus fruit and acid soft drink consumption. More occlusal erosion sites were found in cases, whereas more attrition sites were found in the controls. There were no significant differences in palatal erosion on maxillary anterior teeth found between cases and controls. Lingual erosion of the mandibular incisors, found only in GOR patients, was not observed. Conclusions: A higher incidence of erosion was found in asthmatics. Gastro-oesophageal reflux symptoms were not associated with the sign of lingual mandibular incisor erosion. The clinical significance is that asthmatics are at risk of dental erosion from extrinsic acid, but GOR does not appear to contribute in a site-specific manner

Developmental Link between Sex and Nutrition; doublesex Regulates Sex-Specific Mandible Growth via Juvenile Hormone Signaling in Stag Beetles

Sexual dimorphisms in trait expression are widespread among animals and are especially pronounced in ornaments and weapons of sexual selection, which can attain exaggerated sizes. Expression of exaggerated traits is usually male-specific and nutrition sensitive. Consequently, the developmental mechanisms generating sexually dimorphic growth and nutrition-dependent phenotypic plasticity are each likely to regulate the expression of extreme structures. Yet we know little about how either of these mechanisms work, much less how they might interact with each other. We investigated the developmental mechanisms of sex-specific mandible growth in the stag beetle Cyclommatus metallifer, focusing on doublesex gene function and its interaction with juvenile hormone (JH) signaling. doublesex genes encode transcription factors that orchestrate male and female specific trait development, and JH acts as a mediator between nutrition and mandible growth. We found that the Cmdsx gene regulates sex differentiation in the stag beetle. Knockdown of Cmdsx by RNA-interference in both males and females produced intersex phenotypes, indicating a role for Cmdsx in sex-specific trait growth. By combining knockdown of Cmdsx with JH treatment, we showed that female-specific splice variants of Cmdsx contribute to the insensitivity of female mandibles to JH: knockdown of Cmdsx reversed this pattern, so that mandibles in knockdown females were stimulated to grow by JH treatment. In contrast, mandibles in knockdown males retained some sensitivity to JH, though mandibles in these individuals did not attain the full sizes of wild type males. We suggest that moderate JH sensitivity of mandibular cells may be the default developmental state for both sexes, with sex-specific Dsx protein decreasing sensitivity in females, and increasing it in males. This study is the first to demonstrate a causal link between the sex determination and JH signaling pathways, which clearly interact to determine the developmental fates and final sizes of nutrition-dependent secondary-sexual characters