Letter to the editor. NAA and JFK: Can revisionism take us home?

Occasionally during the course of the human learning experience we are faced with an anomaly. An aberration of sorts, which try as we might, defies appropriate classification. The recent paper by Spiegelman et al.--Chemical and forensic analysis of JFK assassination bullet lots: Is a second shooter possible?--is one such aberration. It is riddled with both misconceptions and errors of fact. Purporting to cast doubt on the NAA (neutron activation analysis) work conducted by Dr. Vincent Guinn in the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it fails miserably. The paper offers two central conclusions, one which is demonstrably false, and the other which is specious. The authors opine; ``If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely, as the additional bullet would not be attributable to the main suspect, Mr. Oswald.'' This statement relating to the likelihood of a second assassin based on the premise of three or more separate bullets is demonstrably false. The available evidence indicates that Oswald fired three shots, one of which is believed to have missed. However, on the off chance that all three shots hit (even though there is absolutely no other supporting forensic evidence for such a notion) those three shots alone in no way would indicate then that ``a second assassin is likely.'' The authors' erroneous conclusion was achieved because they have either been misled (which I personally believe is the case) or they simply aren't familiar with the evidence.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS153 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Complex Impedance as a Diagnostic Tool for Characterizing Thermal Detectors

The complex ac impedance of a bolometer or microcalorimeter detector is easily measured and can be used to determine thermal time constants, thermal resistances, heat capacities, and sensitivities. Accurately extracting this information requires an understanding of the electrical and thermal properties of both the detector and the measurement system. We show that this is a practical method for measuring parameters in detectors with moderately complex thermal systems.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX, Review of Scientific Instruments, in pres

Health Savings Accounts: Participation Increased and Was More Common among Individuals with Higher Incomes

[Excerpt] he number of individuals participating in HSA-eligible health plans and HSAs increased significantly between 2004 and 2007; however, in all years, many HSA-eligible plan enrollees did not open an HSA. The number of individuals covered by HSA-eligible plans increased significantly between September 2004 and January 2007 from about 438,000 to approximately 4.5 million, according to industry estimates. Despite the growth, these plans represented a small share of individuals with private health coverage about 2 percent in 2006. The number of tax filers reporting HSA activity also increased, nearly tripling between 2004 and 2005, from about 120,000 to about 355,000. Industry estimates suggest continued growth in HSA participation in 2006 and 2007. Despite the growth in HSA participation, nationally representative survey estimates from 2005, 2006, and 2007 found that more than 40 percent of HSA-eligible health plan enrollees did not open an HSA. Tax filers who reported HSA activity in 2005 had higher incomes on average than other tax filers. Among tax filers between the ages of 19 and 64, the average AGI for filers reporting HSA activity was about $139,000 compared with about$57,000 for all other filers. The income differences existed across all age groups. The total value of all HSA contributions reported to IRS in 2005 was about twice that of withdrawals$754 million compared with$366 million. Among all filers reporting HSA activity in 2005, average contributions were about $2,100, compared to average withdrawals of about$1,000. Survey estimates of the contributions employers made to employees\u27 HSAs in 2007 varied. One employer survey reported average contributions for single coverage of $626 among large employers, while another employer survey reported average contributions for single coverage of$806 among small and large employers. More than a third of surveyed employers that offered HSA-eligible plans made no HSA contributions

Rural Alaska Corrections Plan (A Summary)

Efforts to improve correctional services in the rural, predominantly Native communities of Alaska have been going on since before statehood. Complete implementation of plans developed by the Alaska Criminal Justice Planning Agency during the 1970s have been hampered by a number of factors: (1) the scope of the planning has tended to be confined to correctional facilities; (2) the problems faced by corrections in Alaska are complicated by diversity of communities served; (3) financial requirements have exceeded available resources; (4) the authority and responsibility for achieving the plans' objectives were unclear. This document offers proposals for a rural corrections plan which offers a comprehensive, systemic — rather than purely correctional — approach for improving public safety and corrections in rural Alaska. It describes the existing situation, philosophy, coordination and planning, organizational proposals, financing, and implementation.Alaska Corrections Master Plan CommitteeTentative Recommendations / Introduction / Background / Philosophy / Coordination / Organization: Statewide Operations; Local Community Operations / Financing / Implementation / Ma

The Hubble Hypothesis and the Developmentalist's Dilemma

Developmental psychopathology stands poised at the close of the 20th century on the horns of a major scientific dilemma. The essence of this dilemma lies in the contrast between its heuristically rich open system concepts on the one hand, and the closed system paradigm it adopted from mainstream psychology for investigating those models on the other. Many of the research methods, assessment strategies, and data analytic models of psychology’s paradigm are predicated on closed system assumptions and explanatory models. Thus, they are fundamentally inadequate forstudying humans, who are unparalleled among open systems in their wide ranging capacities for equifinal and multifinal functioning. Developmental psychopathology faces two challenges in successfully negotiating the developmentalist’s dilemma. The first lies in recognizing how the current paradigm encourages research practices that are antithetical to developmental principles, yet continue to flourish. I argue that the developmentalist’s dilemma is sustained by long standing, mutually enabling weaknesses in the paradigm’s discovery methods and scientific standards. These interdependent weaknesses function like a distorted lens on the research process by variously sustaining the illusion of theoretical progress, obscuring the need for fundamental reforms, and both constraining and misguiding reform efforts. An understanding of how these influences arise and take their toll provides a foundation and rationale for engaging the second challenge. The essence of this challenge will be finding ways to resolve the developmentalist’s dilemma outside the constraints of the existing paradigm by developing indigenous research strategies, methods, and standards with fidelity to the complexity of developmental phenomena

The contribution of quality aspects to process control

Process operators often have difficulties with quality supervision and control for the following reasons: (i) analytical results are infrequent and much delayed, (ii) conventional automatic control cannot sufficiently reduce quality deviations, and (iii) several set values can be candidates for correction of quality deviations. Control performance is discussed with regard to these problems, in relation to the degree of buffering, and types of process perturbations and measuring errors. Some methods are discussed for improving the situation, namely, on-line quality estimation from simpler measurements, and integration of off-line quality measurements and on-line quality measurement and estimation by means of state estimators