Gender, justice, and crime: an empirical analysis

This thesis consists of five chapters relating to gender justice, education, sanction law, and public policy. In the first chapter, I examine the effect of female leadership in local government on violence against women. Regression discontinuity estimates show that elections of female mayors decrease violence specifically targeted toward women but leave other violence unaffected. Moreover, the study explores behavioral responses by victims. Evidence suggests that female victims are more likely to report violence against them after female mayors take office. Importantly, female victories are followed by greater police responsiveness to violence against women. In the second chapter, I study the impact of the appointment of female chief officers in policing on female salient crimes. Evidence shows that appointing more female chief officers leads to a significant increase in recorded female salient crimes. Yet, this rise is good news, which is due not to a rise in actual crimes committed but, rather, to greater reporting or recording. I also find that the appointment of female chief officers decreases violence against women. The third chapter, joint with Prateek Chandra Bhan, studies the role modelling effect of historical statues. We conduct a Ramdomised Controlled Trail (RCT) and find that treatment with a virtual tour to four statues of distinct role models in Jaipur leads to an increase in students’ academic performance. Evidence from heterogeneity analysis suggests that the statues intervention affects only boys. In the fourth chapter, I study the effect of health care on domestic violence. I find that improving access to medical care significantly decreases domestic violence against women. I corroborate this by using an instrument variable approach. I close by examining the effect of expanding Medicaid coverage. Exploration of mechanisms suggests that expanding health insurance may save battered women’s lives by increasing economic independence for women. In the fifth chapter, I look into the impact of the severity of punishment on the behavior of victims, police, and potential criminals. Using multiple causal identification strategies, I study the felony theft thresholds. Evidence shows that the felony theft thresholds have significant effect on crime reporting: felony thefts are more likely to be reported to the police by victims. Moreover, raising the felony thresholds reduces deterrence, and therefore leads to a decline in law and order

DopplerBAS: Binaural Audio Synthesis Addressing Doppler Effect

Recently, binaural audio synthesis (BAS) has emerged as a promising research field for its applications in augmented and virtual realities. Binaural audio helps users orient themselves and establish immersion by providing the brain with interaural time differences reflecting spatial information. However, existing BAS methods are limited in terms of phase estimation, which is crucial for spatial hearing. In this paper, we propose the \textbf{DopplerBAS} method to explicitly address the Doppler effect of the moving sound source. Specifically, we calculate the radial relative velocity of the moving speaker in spherical coordinates, which further guides the synthesis of binaural audio. This simple method introduces no additional hyper-parameters and does not modify the loss functions, and is plug-and-play: it scales well to different types of backbones. DopperBAS distinctly improves the representative WarpNet and BinauralGrad backbones in the phase error metric and reaches a new state of the art (SOTA): 0.780 (versus the current SOTA 0.807). Experiments and ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2023 short paper; key words: binaural audio, stereophonic soun

Anchoring Cu 1 species over nanodiamond-graphene for semi-hydrogenation of acetylene

The design of cheap, non-toxic, and earth-abundant transition metal catalysts for selective hydrogenation of alkynes remains a challenge in both industry and academia. Here, we report a new atomically dispersed copper (Cu) catalyst supported on a defective nanodiamondgraphene (ND@G), which exhibits excellent catalytic performance for the selective conversion of acetylene to ethylene, i.e., with high conversion (95%), high selectivity (98%), and good stability (for more than 60 h). The unique structural feature of the Cu atoms anchored over graphene through Cu-C bonds ensures the effective activation of acetylene and easy desorption of ethylene, which is the key for the outstanding activity and selectivity of the catalyst

Tin Assisted Fully Exposed Platinum Clusters Stabilized on Defect-Rich Graphene for Dehydrogenation Reaction

Tin assisted fully exposed Pt clusters are fabricated on the core-shell nanodiamond@graphene (ND@G) hybrid support (a-PtSn/ND@G). The obtained atomically dispersed Pt clusters, with an average Pt atom number of 3, were anchored over the ND@Gsupport by the assistance of Sn atoms as a partition agent and through the Pt-C bond between Pt clusters and defect-rich graphene nanoshell. The atomically dispersed Pt clusters guaranteed a full metal availability to the reactants, a high thermal stability, and an optimized adsorption/desorption behavior. It inhibits the side reactions and enhances catalytic performance in direct dehydrogenation of n-butane at a low temperature of 450 °C, leading to \u3e98% selectivity toward olefin products, and the turnover frequency (TOF) of a-PtSn/ND@G is approximately 3.9 times higher than that of the traditional Pt3Sn alloy catalyst supported on Al2O3 (Pt3Sn/Al2O3)

Mixed Methods EvAluation of the high-volume low-complexity Surgical hUb pRogrammE (MEASURE): a mixed methods study protocol

Introduction The waiting list for elective surgery in England recently reached over 7.8 million people and waiting time targets have been missed since 2010. The high-volume low complexity (HVLC) surgical hubs programme aims to tackle the backlog of patients awaiting elective surgery treatment in England. This study will evaluate the impact of HVLC surgical hubs on productivity, patient care and the workforce. Methods and analysis This 4-year project consists of six interlinked work packages (WPs) and is informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. WP1: Mapping current and future HVLC provision in England through document analysis, quantitative data sets (eg, Hospital Episodes Statistics) and interviews with national service leaders. WP2: Exploring the effects of HVLC hubs on key performance outcomes, primarily the volume of low-complexity patients treated, using quasi-experimental methods. WP3: Exploring the impact and implementation of HVLC hubs on patients, health professionals and the local NHS through approximately nine longitudinal, multimethod qualitative case studies. WP4: Assessing the productivity of HVLC surgical hubs using the Centre for Health Economics NHS productivity measure and Lord Carter’s operational productivity measure. WP5: Conducting a mixed-methods appraisal will assess the influence of HVLC surgical hubs on the workforce using: qualitative data (WP3) and quantitative data (eg, National Health Service (NHS) England’s workforce statistics and intelligence from WP2). WP6: Analysing the costs and consequences of HVLC surgical hubs will assess their achievements in relation to their resource use to establish value for money. A patient and public involvement group will contribute to the study design and materials. Ethics and dissemination The study has been approved by the East Midlands—Nottingham Research Ethics Committee 23/EM/0231. Participants will provide informed consent for qualitative study components. Dissemination plans include multiple academic and non-academic outputs (eg, Peer-reviewed journals, conferences, social media) and a continuous, feedback-loop of findings to key stakeholders (eg, NHS England) to influence policy development

Atomic-layered Au clusters on α-MoC as catalysts for the low-temperature water-gas shift reaction

The water-gas shift (WGS) reaction (where carbon monoxide plus water yields dihydrogen and carbon dioxide) is an essential process for hydrogen generation and carbon monoxide removal in various energy-related chemical operations. This equilibrium-limited reaction is favored at a low working temperature. Potential application in fuel cells also requires a WGS catalyst to be highly active, stable, and energy-efficient and to match the working temperature of on-site hydrogen generation and consumption units. We synthesized layered gold (Au) clusters on a molybdenum carbide (α-MoC) substrate to create an interfacial catalyst system for the ultralow-temperature WGS reaction. Water was activated over α-MoC at 303 kelvin, whereas carbon monoxide adsorbed on adjacent Au sites was apt to react with surface hydroxyl groups formed from water splitting, leading to a high WGS activity at low temperatures