Who Should Own Police Body Camera Videos?

Numerous cities, states, and localities have adopted police body camera programs to enhance police accountability in the wake of repeated instances of police misconduct, as well as recent reports of more deep- seated police problems. These body camera programs hold great promise to achieve accountability, often backed by millions of dollars in federal grants. But so far, this promise of accountability has gone largely unrealized, in part because police departments exercise near-total control over body camera programs and the videos themselves. In fact, the police view these programs chiefly as a tool of ordinary law enforcement rather than accountability—as helpful for gathering evidence against individuals in cases of resisting arrest, drug possession, vandalism, and so on. This disturbing drift has undermined the promise of body camera programs in two ways: first, police control erodes accountability. Police control the videos themselves and resist disclosure, making it impossible for communities to hold them accountable for misconduct. Second—the chief focus of this article—using these videos in ordinary law enforcement exacerbates the pernicious discovery asymmetry in the criminal justice system, affording police and prosecutors early access to these videos, but depriving defendants and their counsel of the very same evidence. Defendants once again find themselves pleading guilty or preparing for trial without access to the evidence against them or worse, evidence that might be exculpatory. We therefore propose a solution: shift ownership and control of police body camera videos from police departments to a neutral police accountability agency. This move would solve both problems: first, this new agency would disclose videos to the public and the media, especially in high-profile cases, according to neutral rules calibrated to enhance accountability. Second, this agency would disclose these videos in ordinary criminal cases to both sides equally—affording criminal defendants timely access to crucial evidence, which will promote a more just, accurate, and efficient criminal justice system

Learning spaces and well-being: what is happening in France

The impact of space and furniture on children starts to be taken into consideration in the mid 19thcentury, in France. New legislations change the face of the school and the reflection around architecture and learning spaces. Nowadays, learning spaces are an important part of the school design: numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of space on learning abilities, cognitive performances or well-being. In this piece, we are trying to explain the French point of view, and the goals to achieve regarding the relationship between space, architecture and happiness – as a holistic approach of the well-being and performance – at school

Novel Reduced GWP Refrigerant Compositions To Replace R-134a in Stationary Air-conditioning and Refrigeration

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) have replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as non-ozone depleting fluids in many applications, including as refrigerants, solvents, aerosols, and blowing agents for insulating foams. However, some HFCs have relatively high Global Warming Potential (GWP) and are coming under closer scrutiny due to the increasing concern over global climate change. The focus now is on the search for the next generation of environmentally sustainable working fluids with negligible direct environmental impact in terms of both ozone depletion and global warming potential. Development of low-GWP options should be balanced with respect to safety, performance, ease of use, and energy efficiency. Indeed, greenhouse gas emissions come not only from direct emissions but also largely from indirect sources based on energy consumption. It is therefore important that energy efficiency remain a primary consideration when implementing low-GWP solutions, as replacing a high-GWP fluid with a lower GWP, but less efficient option may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions, thereby degrading the overall Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP). This paper introduces a novel low GWP refrigerant composition to replace R-134a. Thermodynamic properties as well as theoretical and experimental evaluation of this refrigerant is being discussed. Results are compared to baselin

Performance and Stability of E-1233zd in Energy Recovery Applications

Developed and identified as a refrigerant for low pressure chillers, Trans-1-chloro-3,3,3-trifluoropropene (E-1233zd) an unsaturated molecule, with a GWP of 1, has also shown a high potential as a working fluid for energy recovery applications, such as organic Rankine cycle or high temperature heat pumps. As a refrigerant for low pressure chillers, E-1233zd has shown positive attributes of high performance and low environmental impact, while maintaining the safety benefits of refrigerants commonly used today, by being non-flammable and having a low toxicity. However, when significant heat is applied, the E-1233zd was found to undergo geometric isomerization, which could limit its performance in energy recovery applications where the system could see sustained temperatures higher than 150°C. This paper will present the work done to understand the parameters impacting the kinetic of isomerization of E-1233zd and will introduce the approaches taken to stabilize the molecule. The performance of E-1233zd in energy recovery applications will also be discussed

Construction faiblement supervisée d'un phonétiseur pour la langue Iban à partir de ressources en Malais

International audienceThis paper describes our experiments and results on using a local dominant language in Malaysia (Malay), to bootstrap automatic speech recognition (ASR) for a very under-resourced language : iban (also spoken in Malaysia on the Borneo Island part). Resources in iban for building a speech recognition were nonexistent. For this, we tried to take advantage of a language from the same family with several similarities. First, to deal with the pronunciation dictionary, we proposed a bootstrapping strategy to develop an iban pronunciation lexicon from a Malay one. A hybrid version, mix of Malay and iban pronunciations, was also built and evaluated. Following this, we experimented with three iban ASRs ; each depended on either one of the three different pronunciation dictionaries : Malay, iban or hybrid.Cet article décrit notre collecte de ressources pour la langue iban (parlée notamment sur l'île de Bornéo), dans l'objectif de construire un système de reconnaissance automatique de la parole pour cette langue. Nous nous sommes plus particulièrement focalisés sur une méthodologie d'amorçage du lexique phonétisé à partir d'une langue proche (le malais). Les performances des premiers systèmes de reconnaissance automatique de la parole construits pour l'iban (< 20% WER) montrent que l'utilisation d'un phonétiseur déjà disponible dans une langue proche (le malais) est une option tout à fait viable pour amorcer le développement d'un système de RAP dans une nouvelle langue très peu dotée. Une première analyse des erreurs fait ressortir des problèmes bien connus pour les langues peu dotées : problèmes de normalisation de l'orthographe, erreurs liées à la morphologie (séparation ou non des affixes de la racine)

USING MALAY RESOURCES TO BOOTSTRAP ASR FOR A VERY UNDER-RESOURCED LANGUAGE: IBAN

International audienceThis paper describes our experiments and results on using a local dominant language in Malaysia (Malay), to boot- strap automatic speech recognition (ASR) for a very under- resourced language: Iban (also spoken in Malaysia on the Borneo Island part). Resources in Iban for building a speech recognition were nonexistent. For this, we tried to take ad- vantage of a language from the same family with several similarities. First, to deal with the pronunciation dictionary, we proposed a bootstrapping strategy to develop an Iban pronunciation lexicon from a Malay one. A hybrid version, mix of Malay and Iban pronunciations, was also built and evaluated. Following this, we experimented with three Iban ASRs; each depended on either one of the three different pronunciation dictionaries: Malay, Iban or hybrid

Mid-infrared astronomy with the E-ELT: Performance of METIS

We present results of performance modelling for METIS, the Mid-infrared European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) Imager and Spectrograph. Designed by a consortium of NOVA (Netherlands), UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK), MPIA Heidelberg (Germany), CEA Saclay (France) and KU Leuven (Belgium), METIS will cover the atmospheric windows in L, M and N-band and will offer imaging, medium-resolution slit spectroscopy (R~1000-3000) and high-resolution integral field spectroscopy (R~100,000). Our model uses a detailed set of input parameters for site characteristics and atmospheric profiles, optical design, thermal background and the most up-to-date IR detector specifications. We show that METIS will bring an orders-of-magnitude level improvement in sensitivity and resolution over current ground-based IR facilities, bringing mid-IR sensitivities to the micro-Jansky regime. As the only proposed E-ELT instrument to cover this entire spectral region, and the only mid-IR high-resolution integral field unit planned on the ground or in space, METIS will open up a huge discovery space in IR astronomy in the next decade.Comment: 13 pages, submitted to SPIE Proceedings vol. 7735, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III (2010). Simulation code available at http://tinyurl.com/metis-sen