9,928 research outputs found
Environmental Injustice/Racism in Flint, Michigan: An Analysis of the Bodily Integrity Claim in Mays v. Snyder as Compared to Other Environmental Justice Cases
This Note examines the merits of the “bodily integrity” claim that the Flint residents have alleged in Mays (but does not discuss any claims asserted in Earley, the case Mays was consolidated with on appeal), and asserts that they should be successful on this claim on remand, assuming that the facts alleged in the Flint residents’ complaint are true. This Note outlines the alleged facts and then discusses the existing case law on bodily integrity claims generally, both in the non-environmental justice and environmental justice fields. Following is an explanation of the specific bodily integrity claim the Flint residents have made and an application of the existing case law (from both the non-environmental justice and environmental justice fields) to the alleged facts. Lastly, this Note compares this federal Flint case to the parallel Flint-related state class action suit filed with the Michigan Court of Claims. Although there might be some legal hurdles that the Flint residents will have to overcome, their bodily integrity claim can be successful on remand and will likely not be precluded by federal statute if appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result, similar bodily integrity claims should be used as a remedy for contamination of other public drinking water sources across the country. The Flint residents should be able to establish that: (1) defendants’ actions occurred “under color of state law,” and (2) a constitutional right exists and was deprived. The Flint residents can best establish this by showing that defendants’ conduct was “outrageous and shocking” to the point where it “shocks the conscience” of the judiciary, as the defendants’ actions exhibited “deliberate indifference” to plaintiffs’ rights to clean water. On remand, no deference should be given to the district judge’s initial dismissal of the case because the district court made virtually no findings of fact and did not consider the merits of whether defendants actually violated the Flint residents’ established constitutional right to bodily integrity. Within the environmental justice context specifically, the magnitude of defendants’ intrusion on plaintiffs’ bodily integrity rights far outweighs the public health benefit (if there is any in this case) and its innocuous effect on the Flint residents resulting from defendants’ actions
Statistical and Computational Tradeoffs in Stochastic Composite Likelihood
Maximum likelihood estimators are often of limited practical use due to the
intensive computation they require. We propose a family of alternative
estimators that maximize a stochastic variation of the composite likelihood
function. Each of the estimators resolve the computation-accuracy tradeoff
differently, and taken together they span a continuous spectrum of
computation-accuracy tradeoff resolutions. We prove the consistency of the
estimators, provide formulas for their asymptotic variance, statistical
robustness, and computational complexity. We discuss experimental results in
the context of Boltzmann machines and conditional random fields. The
theoretical and experimental studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the
estimators when the computational resources are insufficient. They also
demonstrate that in some cases reduced computational complexity is associated
with robustness thereby increasing statistical accuracy.Comment: 30 pages, 97 figures, 2 author
Asymptotic Analysis of Generative Semi-Supervised Learning
Semisupervised learning has emerged as a popular framework for improving
modeling accuracy while controlling labeling cost. Based on an extension of
stochastic composite likelihood we quantify the asymptotic accuracy of
generative semi-supervised learning. In doing so, we complement
distribution-free analysis by providing an alternative framework to measure the
value associated with different labeling policies and resolve the fundamental
question of how much data to label and in what manner. We demonstrate our
approach with both simulation studies and real world experiments using naive
Bayes for text classification and MRFs and CRFs for structured prediction in
NLP.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Analytical Model for the Optical Functions of Indium Gallium Nitride with Application to Thin Film Solar Photovoltaic Cells
This paper presents the preliminary results of optical characterization using
spectroscopic ellipsometry of wurtzite indium gallium nitride (InxGa1-xN) thin
films with medium indium content (0.38<x<0.68) that were deposited on silicon
dioxide using plasma-enhanced evaporation. A Kramers-Kronig consistent
parametric analytical model using Gaussian oscillators to describe the
absorption spectra has been developed to extract the real and imaginary
components of the dielectric function ({\epsilon}1, {\epsilon}2) of InxGa1-xN
films. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images are presented to examine film
microstructure and verify film thicknesses determined from ellipsometry
modelling. This fitting procedure, model, and parameters can be employed in the
future to extract physical parameters from ellipsometric data from other
InxGa1-xN films
A Revised Exoplanet Yield from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has a goal of detecting
small planets orbiting stars bright enough for mass determination via
ground-based radial velocity observations. Here we present estimates of how
many exoplanets the TESS mission will detect, physical properties of the
detected planets, and the properties of the stars that those planets orbit.
This work uses stars drawn from the TESS Input Catalog Candidate Target List
and revises yields from prior studies that were based on Galactic models. We
modeled the TESS observing strategy to select approximately 200,000 stars at
2-minute cadence, while the remaining stars are observed at 30-min cadence in
full-frame image data. We placed zero or more planets in orbit around each
star, with physical properties following measured exoplanet occurrence rates,
and used the TESS noise model to predict the derived properties of the detected
exoplanets. In the TESS 2-minute cadence mode we estimate that TESS will find
1250+/-70 exoplanets (90% confidence), including 250 smaller than 2
Earth-radii. Furthermore, we predict an additional 3100 planets will be found
in full-frame image data orbiting bright dwarf stars and more than 10,000
around fainter stars. We predict that TESS will find 500 planets orbiting
M-dwarfs, but the majority of planets will orbit stars larger than the Sun. Our
simulated sample of planets contains hundreds of small planets amenable to
radial velocity follow-up, potentially more than tripling the number of planets
smaller than 4 Earth-radii with mass measurements. This sample of simulated
planets is available for use in planning follow-up observations and analyses.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS. Table 2 is available in
machine-readable format from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.613767
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