Deception Detection Theory as a Basis for an Automated Investigation of the Behavior Analysis Interview

Although over 150,000 law enforcement personnel have been trained to use the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI), the interview technique has been subjected to very little scrutiny in the laboratory setting. Building on theories of deception from communication and psychology literature, I propose to mine key lexical features from the verbal content of responses to the Behavior Analysis Interview. I expect to find that the responses from deceptive interviewees will differ from truthful responses across multiple lexical dimensions. In addition, I expect responses in high-stakes environments to differ from responses in low- or medium-stakes contexts

What Does That Mean? Investigating Obfuscation and Readability Cues as Indicators of Deception in Fraudulent Financial Reports

Building on theories of obfuscation and deception from accounting and communication literature, we examined 202 fraudulent and non-fraudulent 10-Ks by focusing on 25 linguistic cues. Our findings suggest that authors of fraudulent 10-Ks chose more complex words, signaling words of achievement and cause, and qualifying conjunctions. We found that truthful 10-Ks displayed more present tense verbs and were easier to read as indicated by the FRE readability measure. Those who construct 10-Ks may choose to deceive strategically by hiding bad news in more complicated content while trumpeting good news and achievements

Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data

There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the U.S. over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some showing downward trends, and some showing no trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data. This paper summarizes the results of a project attempting to reconcile these findings with four different data sets and six different data series--three survey and three administrative data series, including two which match survey respondent data to their administrative data. Using common specifications, measures of volatility, and other treatments of the data, four of the six data series show a lack of any significant long-term trend in male earnings volatility over the last 20-to-30+ years when differences across the data sets are properly accounted for. A fifth data series (the PSID) shows a positive net trend but small in magnitude. A sixth, administrative, data set, available only since 1998, shows no net trend 1998-2011 and only a small decline thereafter. Many of the remaining differences across data series can be explained by differences in their cross-sectional distribution of earnings, particularly differences in the size of the lower tail. We conclude that the data sets we have analyzed, which include many of the most important available, show little evidence of any significant trend in male earnings volatility since the mid-1980s

Prevalence and Factors Associated With Mental Health Symptoms in Adults Undergoing Covid-19 Testing

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Understanding the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on persons receiving COVID-19 testing will help guide mental health interventions. We aimed to determine the association between sociodemographic factors and mental health symptoms at 8 weeks (baseline) after a COVID-19 test, and compare prevalence of mental health symptoms at baseline to those at 16-week follow-up. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective cohort study of adults who received outpatient COVID-19 testing at primary care clinics. Logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between sociodemographic characteristics and COVID-19 test results with mental health symptoms. Mental health symptoms reported at baseline were compared to symptoms at 16 weeks follow-up using conditional logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: At baseline, a total of 124 (47.51%) participants reported at least mild depressive symptoms, 110 (42.15%) participants endorsed at least mild anxiety symptoms, and 94 participants (35.21%) endorsed hazardous use of alcohol. Females compared to males were at increased risk of at least mild depressive symptoms at baseline (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 2.08; 95% CI: 1.14-3.79). The odds of at least mild depressive symptoms was significantly lower among those residing in zip codes within the highest quartile compared to lowest quartile of household income (AOR: 0.37; 95% CI: 0.17-0.81). Also, non-Hispanic Whites had significantly higher odds of reporting hazardous alcohol use compared to non-Whites at baseline (AOR: 1.94; 95% CI: 1.05-3.57). The prevalence of mental health symptoms remained elevated after 16 weeks. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE: We found a high burden of symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as hazardous alcohol use in a diverse population who received testing for COVID-19 in the primary care setting. Primary care providers need to remain vigilant in screening for symptoms of mental health disorders in patients tested for COVID-19 well after initial testing

Maternal Cigarette Smoking during Pregnancy and Offspring Externalizing Behavioral Problems: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis

A body of empirical research has revealed that prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke is related to a host of negative outcomes, including reduced cognitive abilities, later-life health problems, and childhood behavioral problems. While these findings are often interpreted as evidence of the causal role that prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke has on human phenotypes, emerging evidence has suggested that the association between prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke and behavioral phenotypes may be spurious. The current analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) revealed that the association between prenatal exposure to cigarette smoke and externalizing behavioral problems was fully accounted for by confounding factors. The implications that these findings have for policy and research are discussed

Helping the Working Poor: Employer- vs. Employee-Based Subsidies

In the United States and Europe there has been renewed interest in subsidizing firms that employ disadvantaged workers as a means of addressing poverty and other social problems. In contrast, the prevailing practice is largely to provide social welfare benefits directly to individuals. Which approach is better? We re-examine the relative merits of employee- versus employer-based labor market subsidies and conclude there are good reasons to continue to rely on the direct, employee-based approach. In practice, low-wage workers are seldom either low-skill or low-income workers. Furthermore, workers who might quality for a firm-based subsidy are reluctant to so identify themselves for fear of being stigmatized or labeled as needy. Thus, employer-based subsidy programs have lower participation rates and correspondingly higher per capita expenditures than employee-based subsidy programs

The Natural Product Domain Seeker NaPDoS: A Phylogeny Based Bioinformatic Tool to Classify Secondary Metabolite Gene Diversity

New bioinformatic tools are needed to analyze the growing volume of DNA sequence data. This is especially true in the case of secondary metabolite biosynthesis, where the highly repetitive nature of the associated genes creates major challenges for accurate sequence assembly and analysis. Here we introduce the web tool Natural Product Domain Seeker (NaPDoS), which provides an automated method to assess the secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene diversity and novelty of strains or environments. NaPDoS analyses are based on the phylogenetic relationships of sequence tags derived from polyketide synthase (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) genes, respectively. The sequence tags correspond to PKS-derived ketosynthase domains and NRPS-derived condensation domains and are compared to an internal database of experimentally characterized biosynthetic genes. NaPDoS provides a rapid mechanism to extract and classify ketosynthase and condensation domains from PCR products, genomes, and metagenomic datasets. Close database matches provide a mechanism to infer the generalized structures of secondary metabolites while new phylogenetic lineages provide targets for the discovery of new enzyme architectures or mechanisms of secondary metabolite assembly. Here we outline the main features of NaPDoS and test it on four draft genome sequences and two metagenomic datasets. The results provide a rapid method to assess secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene diversity and richness in organisms or environments and a mechanism to identify genes that may be associated with uncharacterized biochemistry

Integrated genomic characterization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

We performed integrated genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic profiling of 150 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) specimens, including samples with characteristic low neoplastic cellularity. Deep whole-exome sequencing revealed recurrent somatic mutations in KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A, SMAD4, RNF43, ARID1A, TGFβR2, GNAS, RREB1, and PBRM1. KRAS wild-type tumors harbored alterations in other oncogenic drivers, including GNAS, BRAF, CTNNB1, and additional RAS pathway genes. A subset of tumors harbored multiple KRAS mutations, with some showing evidence of biallelic mutations. Protein profiling identified a favorable prognosis subset with low epithelial-mesenchymal transition and high MTOR pathway scores. Associations of non-coding RNAs with tumor-specific mRNA subtypes were also identified. Our integrated multi-platform analysis reveals a complex molecular landscape of PDAC and provides a roadmap for precision medicine

Interstate migration of the US poverty population: Immigration “pushes” and welfare magnet “pulls”

This study evaluates the social and demographic structure of poverty migration during the 1985–90 period based on an analysis of recent census data. Particular attention is given to the roles of two policy-relevant factors that are proposed to be linked to poverty migration. The first of these is the role of immigration from abroad and its effect on the net out-migration of longer-term residents with below-poverty incomes, from States receiving the highest volume of immigrants. Such a response, it is argued, could result from job competition or other economic and social costs associated with immigration. The second involves the poverty population “magnet” effect associated with State welfare benefits (AFDC and Food Stamp payments) which has come under renewed scrutiny in light of the impending reform of the federal welfare program. The impact of both of these factors on interstate poverty migration is evaluated in a broader context that takes cognizance of other sociodemographic subgroups, and State-level attributes that are known to be relevant in explaining internal migration. This research employs an exceptionally rich data base of aggregate migration flows, specially tabulated from the full migration sample of the 1990 US census (based on the “residence 5 years ago” question). It also employs an analysis technique, the nested logit model, which identifies separately the “push” and “pull” effects of immigration, welfare benefits, and other State attributes on the migration process. Our findings are fairly clear. The high volume of immigration to selected US States does affect a selective out-migration of the poverty population, which is stronger for whites, Blacks and other non-Asian minorities as well as the least-educated. These results are consistent with arguments that internal migrants are responding to labor market competition from similarly educated immigrants. Moreover, we found that the impact of immigration occurs primarily as a “push” rather than a reduced “pull.” In contrast, State welfare benefits exert only minimal effects on the interstate migration of the poverty population—either as “pulls” or “pushes,” although some demographic segments of that population are more prone to respond than others. In addition to these findings, our results reveal the strong impact that a State's racial and ethnic composition exerts in both retaining and attracting migrants of like race and ethnic groups. This suggests the potential for a greater cross-state division in the US poverty population, by race and ethnic status.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43484/1/11111_2005_Article_BF02208337.pd