Novice Ideas: Handwriting Comparisons Conducted by an Untrained Individual

Forensic analysis of questioned documents includes chemical analyses of paper and ink as well as handwriting comparisons. Several elements affect handwriting analyses, including the presence of discriminatory factors that can individualize a handwriting sample and whether the handwriting has been disguised. Five handwriting samples were gathered from six individuals comprising of one reference, three natural unknowns, and one disguised sample per person. A novice conducted analyses on every collected sample and conducted comparisons of the reference sample to the unknown and disguised samples in an attempt to correctly source the unknown and disguised samples. The novice showed a high level of accuracy in correctly sourcing the natural sample but made erroneous conclusions when analyzing the disguised samples

Lacking Regulated Policy for DNA Evidence

Despite its strong presence in criminal justice, DNA analysis is still a minimally regulated area. This minimal regulation devalues DNA evidence through the inconsistencies in these areas. The analysis methods of low template DNA lack a uniform method resulting in varying levels of reliability. Utilizing familial searches to assist in criminal investigations can potentially violate citizen rights. Such violations can also be found in the collection of DNA samples before an arrestee is tried or convicted. There are, however, regulations that could be applied universally to combat the problems that were discussed

Resolving Doppler-factor crisis in AGNs: non-steady magnetized outflows

Magnetically-driven non-stationary acceleration of jets in AGNs results in the leading parts of the flow been accelerated to much higher Lorentz factors than in the case of steady state acceleration with the same parameters. The higher Doppler-boosted parts of the flow may dominate the high energy emission of blazar jets. We suggest that highly variable GeV and TeV emission in blazars is produced by the faster moving leading edges of highly magnetized non-stationary ejection blobs, while the radio data trace the slower-moving bulk flow. Model predictions compare favorably with the latest Fermi gamma-ray and MOJAVE radio VLBI results

Globalization in Question: Hierarchies, States and Gender. NCRE Online Paper No. 01/03

[From the Introduction] Globalization is the pervasive buzzword of the day as we enter the new millennium. From the BBC's Reith lecturers to first-year undergraduates at Bradford University, almost everybody on the ground has a pretty shrewd idea of what globalization means - the rise of the global society, economy and polity. Nevertheless, the perception is widespread that the term 'globalization' is persistent, over-used and under-defined (Devetak and Higgott l999). The first section below investigates further what globalization means or is - and whether it can really be demonstrated to exist. Globalization, whether conceived primarily in terms of markets or in its political or other ramifications, leads us to view the world 'in the round' (Keens-Soper 2000, 54). The Courier (l997) also emphasized the importance of the geographical dimension of globalization in French and other Latinbased languages. But this article argues that the spherical shape of globalization is misleading; globalization is more like a pyramid with powerful elite states, corporations and persons (the latter mostly male) at the top and the more powerless, peripheral and disproportionately female entities at the bottom

Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section and Forward-Backward Asymmetry at the Tevatron

We present recent results on top quark pair production cross section and forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron. Three new cross section measurements from CDF and one new measurement from DO are presented that utilize the full dataset available. A new DO top cross section combination gives a ttbar production cross section of sigma_ttbar = 7.83 + 0.46-0.45 (stat) + 0.64-0.53 (syst) +-0.48 (lumi). The new CDF cross section combination for ttbar production is found to be 7.0 +- 0.3 (stat) +- 0.4 (syst) +- 0.4 (lumi) pb giving a total uncertainty of 9%, very close to the that of the current best theoretical predictions. It is important to measure the top cross section in as many different channels as possible and investigate their compatibility. This is useful as new physics might show up differently in the different channels. Thus any significant discrepancy could be a sign of new physics. Three new measurements of the forward-backward asymmetry are also presented. The two CDF measurements unfold the observed asymmetry back to parton level in order to directly compare the values obtained with theoretical predictions. The DO measurement is not unfolded and therefore does not depend on the specific method used for unfolding.Comment: Parallel talk at ICHEP08, Philadelphia, USA, July 200