From Behind the Lens: Police Officer Perceptions as Body-Worn Cameras are Introduced Into the New York City Police Department

In 2014, the U.S. District Court ordered the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to test the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) after finding that their stop, question, and frisk practices violated the rights of some minority New Yorkers. The ruling in Floyd v. City of New York (2013) mandated the recording of future interactions to determine if behavior would be influenced. A total of 54 volunteer officers wore a BWC for a 1-year period and were assigned to six precincts, all selected due to the high frequency of stop, question, and frisk reports prepared by patrol officers. This research examined patrol officer perceptions of the BWC from the lens of the NYPD’s two-officer patrol car. The study revealed unique access to 54 volunteer officers and their non-camera-wearing patrol partners, as they recorded citizen interactions during this pilot period. Further, this study examined the extent officers were open to the adoption of BWCs, providing some of the first-ever evidence for or against claims of increased transparency, accountability and improvements in both officer and citizen behavior during encounters. The respondents’ demographic data were analyzed to determine any relationship with particular viewpoints toward the BWC. The results suggest that patrol officers are in favor of the adoption of a BWC program, and that the BWC had little to no effect on their patrol partnerships. Results also suggest that officers felt comfortable wearing BWCs, and that regardless of their age, gender, years of police experience or years partnering, the existence of the BWC made for better police service in New York City

S2ST: Image-to-Image Translation in the Seed Space of Latent Diffusion

Image-to-image translation (I2IT) refers to the process of transforming images from a source domain to a target domain while maintaining a fundamental connection in terms of image content. In the past few years, remarkable advancements in I2IT were achieved by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which nevertheless struggle with translations requiring high precision. Recently, Diffusion Models have established themselves as the engine of choice for image generation. In this paper we introduce S2ST, a novel framework designed to accomplish global I2IT in complex photorealistic images, such as day-to-night or clear-to-rain translations of automotive scenes. S2ST operates within the seed space of a Latent Diffusion Model, thereby leveraging the powerful image priors learned by the latter. We show that S2ST surpasses state-of-the-art GAN-based I2IT methods, as well as diffusion-based approaches, for complex automotive scenes, improving fidelity while respecting the target domain's appearance across a variety of domains. Notably, S2ST obviates the necessity for training domain-specific translation networks.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

GENDER PERFORMANCE DISCOURSE ON TINDER PROFILE PICTURES IN LONDON, UK – A SOCIAL SEMIOTICS STUDY

ABSTRACT Cyclical and bidirectional relationship(s) between technology and today’s romantic gratifications have reformed how people seek romance. On another end, gender performances largely underpin humans’ romantic gratification. This is where Tinder, as a dating application, affords unique opportunities for those seeking romances through portraying gender performances. A number of studies concluded that, in romance-seeking ventures, male’s masculinity and female’s femininity generally remained conformist to their respective biological attributes. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate nuances of gender performances portrayed in dating apps such as Tinder. Since Tinder profile picture, as a form of visual text, is a source rife with gender performance cues, this study focused on the visual component – profile pictures. Profile Picture Protocol (PPP), derived from notable social semiotics frameworks, was established. This study revealed that, albeit a major affinity towards more saturated bright colors in the observed data, color choices in profile pictures were not conclusive to determine gender performatives, mainly due to possible duality in meanings when other elements (body gestures and clothing choices) were taken into consideration. Formal clothing choices were only found in the male group, which was conformist to the previous studies. Foregrounding bodily features was evident in both male and female group’s profile pictures, which indicated that the male group also exuded an element of femininity, which leaned towards contestating the previous findings. Actors’ angles that were frontal as well as eye-level, indicated a need for social closeness and friendliness emulation, were fashionable in both gender groups, which was initially prevalent in the female group. Limitations were put forth. Keywords; profile picture; visual text, social semiotics, gender performance, Tinder ABSTRAK Hubungan siklus dan dua arah antara teknologi dan gratifikasi romantisme dewasa ini telah mengubah cara orang mencari hubungan romansa. Di sisi lain, ekspresi gender umumnya mendukung gratifikasi romantis manusia. Di sinilah Tinder, sebagai aplikasi kencan, memberikan peluang unik bagi mereka yang mencari romansa melalui ekspresi gender. Sejumlah penelitian menyimpulkan bahwa, dalam usaha pencarian romansa, maskulinitas pria dan femininitas wanita umumnya tetap mengikuti atribut biologis masing-masing. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengevaluasi ekspresi gender yang digambarkan dalam aplikasi kencan seperti Tinder. Karena gambar profil Tinder, sebagai bentuk teks visual, adalah sumber penuh dengan isyarat ekspresi gender, penelitian ini berfokus pada komponen visual - gambar profil. Profile Picture Protocol (PPP), berasal dari kerangka kerja semiotika sosial terkemuka, dikonstruksikan. Studi ini mengungkap bahwa, meskipun memiliki ketertarikan umum terhadap warna-warna cerah yang lebih jenuh pada data yang diamati, pilihan warna dalam gambar profil tidak konklusif untuk menentukan ekspkresi gender, terutama karena kemungkinan dualitas dalam makna ketika elemen lain (gerakan tubuh dan pilihan pakaian) disertakan dalam pertimbangan. Pilihan pakaian formal hanya ditemukan pada kelompok pria, yang sesuai dengan penelitian sebelumnya. Gambaran tubuh terdepan terlihat dalam gambar profil kelompok laki-laki dan perempuan, yang menunjukkan bahwa kelompok laki-laki juga memancarkan unsur feminitas, yang condong ke arah mengontestasi temuan sebelumnya. Sudut para aktor yang frontal maupun setinggi mata, mengindikasikan keinginan atas kedekatan sosial dan emulasi keramahan, yang umum di kedua kelompok gender, yang awalnya lazim di kelompok perempuan. Keterbatasan penelitian disampaikan. Kata Kunci; teks visual, Semiotika Sosial, performa gender, aplikasi berkencan

Understanding Preeclampsia, Through Community Outreach, to Suggest Possible Interventions

In recent decades, maternal mortality rates in the US have been consistently rising; these rates are currently higher than any other developed nation. Preeclampsia, a disorder of pregnancy involving hypertension, protein in urine, and water retention, affects about 18% of pregnancies worldwide. Some of the most important risk factors for Preeclampsia include chronic hypertension prior to or during the pregnancy, previous history of preeclampsia or family history of preeclampsia, multiple pregnancies, race, lack of prenatal care, and advanced maternal age. Preeclampsia/eclampsia result in 6.8% of maternal deaths in the United States. Considering there are about 700-900 maternal deaths per year, this means that every year about 48 – 61 women die due to preeclampsia. About 60% of preeclampsia deaths had a good to strong chance of being prevented. Stories were collected from women who were either currently or had recently been pregnant to get a perspective of the issue through the lenses of those that experienced it. Based on the DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) model that was made with the stories in mind, a two-pronged intervention was designed. One focuses on health professionals while the other prong would focus on the education of the general public.Psychology, Department ofHonors Colleg

A rapid narrative review of the clinical evolution of psychedelic treatment in clinical trials

Pre-prohibition psychedelic research with complex psychiatric patients generated a wealth of treatment methodologies and practices, providing invaluable clinical insights pertaining to the medical administration of psychedelics in various mental health diagnoses. Building upon these early studies, which lack the rigor and research tools available today, contemporary psychedelic research has focused on investigating the safety and efficacy of psychedelics in randomized controlled trials via psychometric measures and symptom assessments. Both then and now, the treatment context and the role of clinicians in psychedelic treatment has been recognized as an essential feature for positive patient outcomes. To broaden the knowledge base of modern psychedelic research and support the training of clinicians conducting medically supervised psychedelic research studies, this paper provides a review of pre-prohibition clinical research narratives pertaining to the phenomenology of psychedelic treatment and the role of the non-pharmacological treatment factors in the patient experience. Lastly, this paper explores a range of clinician perspectives and psychological interventions employed in pre-prohibition psychedelic research to inform future research directions and best practice guidelines

The Effect of Modern Standard Arabic Orthography on Speech Production by Arab Children With Hearing Loss

This article examined the effect of Modern Standard Arabic orthography on speech production quality (syllable stress and vowels) by 23 Arabic-speaking children with severe or profound hearing loss aged 8–12 years. Children produced 15 one-syllable minimal pairs of words that differed in vowel length (short vs. long) and 20 two-syllable minimal pairs differing in stress pattern. Each word was produced in three tasks: reading partially or fully vowelized words and imitation of aural stimuli. Results showed that fully vowelized words ensured vowel production: high-quality productions appeared on 99%, 74%, and 59% of productions on reading fully vowelized words, partially vowelized words, and on imitation, respectively. Moreover, correct vowel production affected correct consonant production. Correct production of stress was best on reading fully vowelized words, appearing on 54%, 21%, and 33% of productions for fully vowelized words, partially vowelized words, or imitation, respectively. Findings suggest the need to present fully vowelized written texts when teaching speech production to children with hearing loss. Such presentations enable more accurate productions that result in more intelligible speech

Memory-Based Mismatch Response to Frequency Changes in Rats

Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes (‘deviants’) in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli (‘standards’). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the primary auditory cortex of urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, tone frequency was used to differentiate deviants interspersed randomly among a standard tone. Mismatch responses were observed at 60–100 ms after stimulus onset for frequency increases of 5% and 12.5% but not for similarly descending deviants. The response diminished when the silent inter-stimulus interval was increased from 375 ms to 600 ms for +5% deviants and from 600 ms to 1000 ms for +12.5% deviants. In comparison to the oddball condition the response also diminished in a control condition in which no repetitive standards were presented (equiprobable condition). These findings suggest that the rat mismatch response is similar to the human MMN and indicate that anesthetized rats provide a valuable model for studies of central auditory processing