Justifying Justice: Six Factors of Wrongful Convictions and Their Solutions

There have been over 300 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the history of the United States. While this number may initially seem significant, there is still an unfathomable population of wrongfully convicted prisoners who have yet to be considered for retrials. Unaddressed wrongful conviction cases highlight the unacceptable weaknesses in the U.S. justice system, weaknesses that include poor investigative tactics and the acceptance or allowance of inaccurate and unreliable evidence. This paper will dutifully analyze the causes that lead to wrongful convictions and amply discuss potential solutions, all of which includes eyewitness misidentification, improper forensics, false confessions, informants, government misconduct, and insufficient lawyering

Monographic revision of the genus Aegidinus Arrow (1904)and generic phylogeny of the world Orphninae(Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Orphninae).

A taxonomic revision was performed on the New World scarabaeoid genus Aegidinus Arrow (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Orphninae). Twelve new species and three previously described species are included in the revision. Keys to New World genera, species of the genus Aegidinus, and distribution maps are provided. Phylogenetic analyses of the world genera of the Orphninae were conducted using 30 adult, morphological characters from representatives of 13 of the 14 genera and three out-group taxa. The subfamily Orphninae is a strongly supported monophyletic group (bootstrap support 88-90%) with respect to the chosen out-group. Characters that support the Orphninae are: mandibles not sickle shaped, molar surface on the mandibles present, lacinia present, and stridulatory comb present. Separate Old and New World lineages are also supported by the phylogeny, when two genera, Goniorphnus Arrow and Stenosternus Karsch, are excluded from the analysis. The new species described are: Aegidinus cornutus Colby, A. crypticus Colby, A. howdenorum Colby, A. howeae Colby, A. oreibates Colby, A. petrovi Colby, A. simulatus Colby, A. sunidgea Colby, A. teamscaraborum Colby, A. tricornis Colby, A. unicus Colby, and A. venezuelensis Colby

Sound Scholarship: Scope, Purpose, Function and Potential of Phonorecord Archives

published or submitted for publicatio

Estimating the Value of Water in Alternative Uses

Many public and private decisions regarding water use, allocation, and management require estimation of water's value in alternative uses. This paper discusses economic concepts essential in valuing water, outlines and compares market and nonmarket based approaches used to estimate water values, and reviews the application of these methodologies for valuing water in instream, irrigation, municipal and industrial uses in the western United States

CHINA'S COTTON TRADE UNDER THE WTO

International Relations/Trade,

Reporting on Pathways to Health Insurance Coverage: California's Experience

The Affordable Care Act opened new and expanded pathways to public health insurance coverage. Since 2014, many states have broadened their eligibility criteria for Medicaid, and have introduced new access points for Medicaid enrollment. During this time, publicly subsidized health insurance coverage also became available through state health insurance exchanges and through the federal health insurance marketplace. Recognizing there is a great deal to learn about who applies for and obtains these types of public coverage, the federal government and some states have established new data reporting efforts on how people use both new and existing pathways to health insurance coverage. In 2014 and 2015, Mathematica Policy Research supported the launch of such a reporting effort in California, with funding from the California Health Care Foundation. In this brief, we describe California's experience in reporting on applications, eligibility determinations, enrollments and coverage renewals for public insurance, highlight some of the practical implications of California's first few reports, and offer lessons for other states that are launching comparable reporting efforts. Key Findings: The open enrollment period drives enrollment growth for both qualified health plans and Medi-Cal, even though Medi-Cal enrollment remains open year-round. Insurance coverage was more stable over time than expected. During the second open enrollment period, 92 percent of individuals enrolled in qualified health plans in California renewed their coverage from the previous year. During that same period about 80 percent of Medi-Cal beneficiaries remained eligible for coverage. California's experience with reporting on public insurance coverage suggests that significant effort is needed to carefully define measures, produce data that are meaningful to multiple audiences, and communicate findings clearly. Public data reporting can be a powerful tool for advancing transparency and identifying areas for improvement. State officials in California now have an opportunity to examine local variation in application and enrollment measures to identify policy or process differences that might be driving different outcomes across the state

Cross-Validation for Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models

Cross-validation is frequently used for model selection in a variety of applications. However, it is difficult to apply cross-validation to mixed effects models (including nonlinear mixed effects models or NLME models) due to the fact that cross-validation requires "out-of-sample" predictions of the outcome variable, which cannot be easily calculated when random effects are present. We describe two novel variants of cross-validation that can be applied to nonlinear mixed effects models. One variant, where out-of-sample predictions are based on post hoc estimates of the random effects, can be used to select the overall structural model. Another variant, where cross-validation seeks to minimize the estimated random effects rather than the estimated residuals, can be used to select covariates to include in the model. We show that these methods produce accurate results in a variety of simulated data sets and apply them to two publicly available population pharmacokinetic data sets.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figures To be published in the Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamic