Maintaining Cultural Ties in the City: Perspectives of Four Generations of Urban-based American Indians on the Evolving Nature of Cultural Connectedness

Session 1: Cultural Ties and Acculturation. Presenter: Nancy M. Lucero, Ph.D., University of Denver (2009) - "Maintaining Cultural Ties in the City: Perspectives of Four Generations of Urban-Based American Indians on the Evolving Nature of Cultural Connectedness".The Ohio State University College of Social Wor

Obesity Policy Stringency Over Time: A Four State Policy Design

Over the past several decades obesity rates in the United States have increased exponentially, reaching epidemic proportions and placing heavy financial and health-related burdens on states. States could reduce their obesity-related spending by billions of dollars, however, if they reduced their obesity prevalence by five percent by 2030, which would reduce medical costs, loss of productivity, and loss of life. Despite the incentive to improve obesity rates, not all states are taking advantage of obesity-related policy as a means to combat obesity. Using a multiple case study design and policy design as the theoretical foundation, this study explores whether or not state policy design stringency, reflecting policy design prescriptiveness, changes as states experience an increase in obesity prevalence. This study also seeks to identify the factors that contribute to variation in state obesity-related policy stringency. The results of this study indicate that states enacting a large number of highly stringent obesity-related policies will experience an improvement in obesity prevalence over time. States making minimal improvements will experience consistent obesity rates over time, while states that take no significant obesity-reducing policy steps will experience worsening obesity prevalence over time. In terms of the factors that lead to variation in policy design stringency, party sponsorship of obesity-related policy plays a key role, as does state affluence, and party in control of the state legislature in some cases. Party of the governor and contributions from health interest groups were not consistently present in years of high obesity policy stringency. This dissertation also offers implications of the findings and plans for future research

DNA Mixture statistics using a likelihood ratio software tool: effect of variations in drop-out rates and number of contributors

Complex DNA mixtures can be very probative evidence, but comparisons to a person of interest can be affected by allelic drop-out and uncertainty regarding the number of individuals having contributed DNA to a sample. Scientific organizations such as the International Society of Forensic Genetics (Gill et al., 2006) recommend that likelihood ratios should be used to provide a statistical weight when a positive association is made between the DNA profile of a person of interest and an evidentiary DNA sample. To this effect the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) developed a software program, Forensic Statistical Tool (FST), which calculates likelihood ratios for different scenarios taking into account empirically developed drop-out and drop in rates for different types of mixtures. The FST software was used to explore the effect of underestimation of a contributor’s true drop-out rate and effect of the incorrect estimation of the number of contributors on LR calculations. It was found that underestimating the allelic dropout rate for a true contributor almost always led to an either equal or lower LR than when the original dropout rate was used. It was also found that when the number of contributors was misspecified, there was an increase or decrease in LR values for true contributors. Variation of resulting LRs was higher for more complex mixtures. Finally, LRs for comparisons to individuals, whose DNA was known to not be present in the test mixtures, were lower when using the lower drop-out rates than when using the true drop-out rates