A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy in the United States

Findings published in "A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy" in the United States disclose that since 1997, sixteen states have implemented policy reforms that have reduced the restrictiveness of these laws, and more than 600,000 people in seven states have regained their voting rights

Next Big Thing? Methamphetamine in the United States

A new major study disproving the popular belief that there exists a growing methamphetamine "epidemic" within the United States. 41 page

Online Defamation: Bringing the Communications Decency Act of 1996 in Line With Sound Public Policy

According to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a provider of an interactive computer service cannot be held liable for publishing a defamatory statement made by another party. In addition, the service provider cannot be held liable for refusing to remove the statement from its service. This article postulates that such immunity from producer and distributor liability is a suspect public policy, and argues that the statute should be amended to include a broad definition of development and a take-down and put-back provision

25-Year Quagmire: The "War On Drugs" and Its Impact on American Society

Analysis, based on an analysis of 25 years of government data regarding drugs and the criminal justice system, finds that the "war on drugs" has increasingly targeted low-level offenders for arrest and incarceration, and is largely failing to provide adequate treatment in prison. 33 pagesAnalysis, based on an analysis of 25 years of government data regarding drugs and the criminal justice system, finds that the "war on drugs" has increasingly targeted low-level offenders for arrest and incarceration, and is largely failing to provide adequate treatment in prison

Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity

Examines racial and ethnic disparities by state, and finds substantial variation in the degree of black-to-white incarceration. The report finds that African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites and Latinos at nearly double the rate. Five states, located in the Northeast and Midwest, incarcerate blacks at more than ten times the rate of whites. Recommended reforms include: addressing disparities through changes in drug policy, mandatory sentencing laws, reconsideration of "race neutral" policies, and changes in resource allocation

Variations in Refugee Acceptance Among Democratic States

What factors account for the variation in refugee acceptance? My review of existing literature and subsequent research paper will seek to further develop the understanding of this phenomenon by identifying and investigating factors that account for the differences in rates of migration flow among democratic states. The literature review will discuss the current body of research surrounding the topic, and the research itself will attempt to further the understanding of the impact of the given variables by using currently available data of international trends in migration, as well as a number of specific case studies. First, the paper will outline a number of variables expected to have an impact on migration flow and hypothesize the impact of each factor. Then the paper will compare differences in these factors among similarly industrialized countries and the corresponding differences in acceptance, attempting to answer the question “What factors influence migration flow into a country, and in what ways do these factors influence migration flow?”. A few case studies will be included to look more closely at the impact of specific policies and country specific factors that were not included in the quantitative analysis

We Need a Fracking Baseline

The article focuses on the theories of liability available to injured landowners and the evidentiary requirements\u27 prevention of an equitable resolution regardless of whether strict liability is imposed on hydraulicfracturing

Boosting Partial Channel Neural Architecture Search with Gradient Projection

Neural Architecture Search has led to the discovery of novel neural network architectures that are capable of outperforming expertly designed architectures with fewer resource requirements at deployment time. This has lead to high performing neural networks that are small enough to fit into embedded systems and mobile devices. Recently, methods have been developed to significantly reduce the computational resources and time required to derive custom neural architectures. Specifically, gradient based methods have leveraged backpropagation to design architectures while a network is being trained, reducing search time from nearly 1400 GPU days to 1. However, differentiable neural architecture search suffers from dominating parameterless operations, steep local minimums, and shallow architectures. A recent multitasking method was able to reduce gradient confliction, dominating gradients, and high curvatures within their domain by projecting conflicting gradients from each task onto each other. We utilize a similar method to project conflicting gradients of edges in a search cell. In this paper we test various methods of gradient projection to determine the best way to avoid the derivation of suboptimal architectures. We show that differentiable neural architecture search can be boosted with the use of gradient projection and partial channel connections. By doing so, we show that parameterless operations and steep local minimum can be related to dominating gradients and high curvatures that are overcome in the multitask setting