Hollingsworth v. Perry: Expressive Harm and the Stakes of Marriage

This commentary previews an upcoming Supreme Court case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, in which the Court may decide whether Proposition 8 violates either the Equal Protection Clause or the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution

A study of refrigeration and constricting band for early treatment of pip viper snakebite

Refrigeration and constricting band for early treatment of pit viper snakebit

Bolt: Accelerated Data Mining with Fast Vector Compression

Vectors of data are at the heart of machine learning and data mining. Recently, vector quantization methods have shown great promise in reducing both the time and space costs of operating on vectors. We introduce a vector quantization algorithm that can compress vectors over 12x faster than existing techniques while also accelerating approximate vector operations such as distance and dot product computations by up to 10x. Because it can encode over 2GB of vectors per second, it makes vector quantization cheap enough to employ in many more circumstances. For example, using our technique to compute approximate dot products in a nested loop can multiply matrices faster than a state-of-the-art BLAS implementation, even when our algorithm must first compress the matrices. In addition to showing the above speedups, we demonstrate that our approach can accelerate nearest neighbor search and maximum inner product search by over 100x compared to floating point operations and up to 10x compared to other vector quantization methods. Our approximate Euclidean distance and dot product computations are not only faster than those of related algorithms with slower encodings, but also faster than Hamming distance computations, which have direct hardware support on the tested platforms. We also assess the errors of our algorithm's approximate distances and dot products, and find that it is competitive with existing, slower vector quantization algorithms.Comment: Research track paper at KDD 201

Effective Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports: The Key to Dramatic Changes in Student Behavior

As education professionals continue to focus on the critical issue of behavior management, a number of schools are turning toward the use of Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS). As over a decade of research indicates, SWPBIS provides an effective, evidence-based approach to behavior management utilizing universal screening and the teaching of prosocial behavior across the campus. Reliance on data-based decision making has resulted in dramatic gains in positive student behavior for many schools utilizing a SWPBS program. As explained here, implementation of such a program requires specific but flexible steps that lead to the establishment of a SWPBS program tailored to the particular needs of a school

AN EXAMINATION OF THE TREND IN INDUSTRIAL DISPERSION IN OKLAHOMA FROM 1963 THROUGH 1974

Industrial Organization,

Gender Bias in Power Relationships: Evidence from Police Traffic Stops

[Excerpt] We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise. Examination of a pooled sample of traffic stops from five locations reveals no gender bias, but does show significant regional variation in the likelihood of citations. Analysis by location shows that women are more likely to receive citations in three of the five locations. Men are more likely to receive citations in the other two locations. To our knowledge, this study is the first to test for gender bias in traffic stops, and clearly refutes the conventional wisdom that police are more lenient towards women

Sensor data to measure Hawthorne effects in cookstove evaluation.

This data in brief article includes estimated time cooking based on temperature sensor data taken every 30 min from three stone fires and introduced fuel-efficient Envirofit stoves in approximately 168 households in rural Uganda. These households were part of an impact evaluation study spanning about six months to understand the effects of fuel-efficient cookstoves on fuel use and pollution. Daily particulate matter (pollution) and fuelwood use data are also included. This data in brief file only includes the weeks prior to, during, and after an in-person measurement team visited each home. The data is used to analyze whether households change cooking patterns when in-person measurement teams are present versus when only the temperature sensor is in the home

Creating a Culture of Completion in Two-Year Institutions: Examining the Influence of Participation in the Community College Completion Corps on Institutional Stakeholders

This applied dissertation assessed the effect of participation in Community College Completion Corps and associated activities on campus stakeholders’ perceptions of a culture of completion. The national initiative to increase completion rates at community colleges has resulted in a heightened awareness of this performance measurement. A number of community colleges have participated by hosting a C4 signing event, the hallmark activity associated with the movement. This inaugural event served as a public declaration of the two-year institution’s intention to provide an environment in which policy and practice, as well as theory and application, focus on supporting and increasing student completion. Post-event, the expectation is that community colleges will enact measurable activities, projects, and changes in key areas to influence completion. The researcher analyzed the perceptions and evidence of a culture of completion at two- year institutions that hosted a C4 signing event between 2010 and 2015. As most signing events include representation from campus stakeholders that include administrators, faculty, staff, and student leaders, this study included a representative of each of the identified groups, interviewed with the same questionnaire to determine their perceptions of any shifts in the campus’ culture and to identify changes in policy, programs, and initiatives that influenced student completion. An analysis of the data revealed a variety of institutional themes related to campus completion barriers and facilitators. Community college completion ceremonies served to highlight the importance of completion on campus and promote college-wide engagement and support of the initiatives. The interviews supported that these events provided an introductory and public showcase for institutional commitment to promoting community college completion and improved graduation rates. However, the study identified additional institutional focus on completion and alignment of administrative and academic policies and procedures to instill a culture of completion necessary for making substantive improvements in institutional completion rates