stm: An R Package for Structural Topic Models

This paper demonstrates how to use the R package stm for structural topic modeling. The structural topic model allows researchers to flexibly estimate a topic model that includes document-level metadata. Estimation is accomplished through a fast variational approximation. The stm package provides many useful features, including rich ways to explore topics, estimate uncertainty, and visualize quantities of interest

Rolling Back Transparency in China\u27s Courts

Despite a burgeoning conversation about the centrality of information management to governments, scholars are only just beginning to address the role of legal information in sustaining authoritarian rule. This Essay presents a case study showing how legal information can be manipulated: through the deletion of previously published cases from China’s online public database of court decisions. Using our own dataset of all 42 million cases made public in China between January 1, 2014, and September 2, 2018, we examine the recent deletion of criminal cases from the China Judgements Online website. We find that the deletion of cases likely results from a range of overlapping, often ad hoc, concerns: the international and domestic images of Chinese courts, institutional relationships within the Chinese Party-State, worries about revealing negative social phenomena, and concerns about copycat crimes. Taken together, the decision(s) to remove hundreds of thousands of unconnected cases shape a narrative about the Chinese courts, Chinese society, and the Chinese Party-State. Our findings also provide insight into the interrelated mechanisms of censorship and transparency in an era in which data governance is increasingly central. We highlight how courts seek to curate a narrative that protects the courts from criticism and boosts their standing with the public and within the Party-State. Examining how Chinese courts manage the removal of cases suggests that how courts curate and manage information disclosure may also be central to their legitimacy and influence

Spectrometry and Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Urban Road Infrastructure

Based on a comprehensive regional spectral library from spectrometer ground measurements and high-resolution hyperspectral AVIRIS data, this research investigates generic spectral characteristics, and related mapping capabilities and limitations for extracting roads of various types, delineating road centerlines, and surveying pavement quality within the urban environment. The methods are generally successful in identifying roads and road pavement types, but inaccuracies arise from spectral similarities between asphalt surfaces and specific roofing materials. Findings indicate that it is possible to spectrally characterize and estimate age of pavement and a few specific asphalt surface quality parameters (e.g. raveling). Finally, this research argues that the complex spectral characteristics of the urban environment result in distinct limitations in mapping urban areas using common multispectral sensor data. Sensors with an optimized set of narrow spectral bands would be preferred for prospective applications

Mass Digitization of Chinese Court Decisions: How to Use Text as Data in the Field of Chinese Law

Over the past five years, Chinese courts have placed tens of millions of court judgments online. We analyze the promise and pitfalls of using this remarkable new data source through the construction and examination of a dataset of 1,058,990 documents from Henan province. Courts posted judgments in roughly half of all cases in 2014 and, although the percent of cases posted online has likely risen since then, the single greatest challenge facing researchers remains documenting gaps in the data. We find that missing data varies widely by court, and that intermediate courts disclose significantly more documents than basic level courts. But court level, GDP per capita, population, and mediation rates are insufficient fully to explain variation in disclosure rates. Further work is needed to better understand how resources and incentives might be skewing the data. Despite incomplete information, however, a topic model of 20,321 administrative court judgments demonstrates how mass digitization of court decisions opens a new window into the practice of everyday law in China. Unsupervised machine learning combined with close reading of selected cases reveals surprising trends in administrative disputes as well as important research questions. Taken together, our findings suggest a need for humility and methodological pluralism among scholars seeking to use large-scale data from Chinese courts. The vast amount of incomplete data now available may frustrate attempts to find quick answers to existing questions, but the data excel at opening new pathways for research and at adding nuance to existing assumptions about the role of courts in Chinese society

A survey of services for the speech and hearing handicapped in New England

Thesis (Ed. M.)--Boston University, 195

A survey of services for the speech and hearing handicapped in New England

Thesis (Ed. M.)--Boston University, 195

On Constructing a Knowledge Base of Chinese Criminal Cases

We are developing a knowledge base over Chinese judicial decision documents to facilitate landscape analyses of Chinese Criminal Cases. We view judicial decision documents as a mixed-granularity semi-structured text where different levels of the text carry different semantic constructs and entailments. We use a combination of context-sensitive grammar, dependency parsing and discourse analysis to extract a formal and interpretable representation of these documents. Our knowledge base is developed by constructing associations between different elements of these documents. The interpretability is contributed in part by our formal representation of the Chinese criminal laws, also as semi-structured documents. The landscape analyses utilize these two representations and enable a law researcher to ask legal pattern analysis queries.Comment: submitted to JURIX 201

Proposal for a low cost close air support aircraft for the year 2000: The Raptor

The Raptor is a proposed low cost Close Air Support (CAS) aircraft for the U.S. Military. The Raptor incorporates a 'cranked arrow' wing planform, and uses canards instead of a traditional horizontal tail. The Raptor is designed to be capable of responsive delivery of effective ordnance in close proximity to friendly ground forces during the day, night, and 'under the weather' conditions. Details are presented of the Raptor's mission, configuration, performance, stability and control, ground support, manufacturing, and overall cost to permit engineering evaluation of the proposed design. A description of the design process and analysis methods used is also provided