Criminal Procedure as Defined by the Tennessee Supreme Court

The Tennessee Supreme Court, elected simultaneously for the first time since the early 1900\u27s, assumed office in September 1974 amid speculation concerning future judicial policy. The court, com-posed of Chief Justice William H. D. Fones and Justices Ray L.Brock, Jr., Robert E. Cooper, William J. Harbison, and Joe W.Henry, immediately indicated the importance of a uniform judicial policy governing criminal procedure by creating a special commission to revise the state rules of criminal procedure. Additionally,during its present term the court has decided numerous cases directed toward the formation of well-defined rules under which criminal allegations can be adjudged. This Special Project will examine the supreme court\u27s criminal procedure opinions, focusing specifically on the following areas: jury selection, right to counsel, scope of discovery, admissibility of evidence, limitations on proper prosecutorial argument to the jury, jury instructions, sentencing procedures, and expungement of criminal records.\u27 The Tennessee position will be compared with the policies enunciated by the United States Supreme Court, the federal circuit courts, and various uniform acts and standards proposed by legislative advisory groups. Although this Project does not attempt to extract any singular theme underlying the decisions discussed, its analysis should assist in understanding the court\u27s present judicial guidelines in the field of criminal procedure and should indicate the policies that the court will adhere to in future criminal decisions

A flexible distribution class for count data

The Poisson, geometric and Bernoulli distributions are special cases of a flexible count distribution, namely the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson (CMP) distribution – a two-parameter generalization of the Poisson distribution that can accommodate data over- or under-dispersion. This work further generalizes the ideas of the CMP distribution by considering sums of CMP random variables to establish a flexible class of distributions that encompasses the Poisson, negative binomial, and binomial distributions as special cases. This sum-of-Conway-Maxwell-Poissons (sCMP) class captures the CMP and its special cases, as well as the classical negative binomial and binomial distributions. Through simulated and real data examples, we demonstrate this model’s flexibility, encompassing several classical distributions as well as other count data distributions containing significant data dispersion

Using step width to compare locomotor biomechanics between extinct, non-avian theropod dinosaurs and modern obligate bipeds

How extinct, non-avian theropod dinosaurs locomoted is a subject of considerable interest, as is the manner in which it evolved on the line leading to birds. Fossil footprints provide the most direct evidence for answering these questions. In this study, step width—the mediolateral (transverse) distance between successive footfalls—was investigated with respect to speed (stride length) in non-avian theropod trackways of Late Triassic age. Comparable kinematic data were also collected for humans and 11 species of ground-dwelling birds. Permutation tests of the slope on a plot of step width against stride length showed that step width decreased continuously with increasing speed in the extinct theropods (p < 0.001), as well as the five tallest bird species studied (p < 0.01). Humans, by contrast, showed an abrupt decrease in step width at the walk–run transition. In the modern bipeds, these patterns reflect the use of either a discontinuous locomotor repertoire, characterized by distinct gaits (humans), or a continuous locomotor repertoire, where walking smoothly transitions into running (birds). The non-avian theropods are consequently inferred to have had a continuous locomotor repertoire, possibly including grounded running. Thus, features that characterize avian terrestrial locomotion had begun to evolve early in theropod history

The effects of changes in the order of verbal labels and numerical values on children's scores on attitude and rating scales

Research with adults has shown that variations in verbal labels and numerical scale values on rating scales can affect the responses given. However, few studies have been conducted with children. The study aimed to examine potential differences in children’s responses to Likert-type rating scales according to their anchor points and scale direction, and to see whether or not such differences were stable over time. 130 British children, aged 9 to 11, completed six sets of Likert-type rating scales, presented in four different ways varying the position of positive labels and numerical values. The results showed, both initially and 8-12 weeks later, that presenting a positive label or a high score on the left of a scale led to significantly higher mean scores than did the other variations. These findings indicate that different arrangements of rating scales can produce different results which has clear implications for the administration of scales with children

Security and privacy requirements for a multi-institutional cancer research data grid: an interview-based study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Data protection is important for all information systems that deal with human-subjects data. Grid-based systems – such as the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) – seek to develop new mechanisms to facilitate real-time federation of cancer-relevant data sources, including sources protected under a variety of regulatory laws, such as HIPAA and 21CFR11. These systems embody new models for data sharing, and hence pose new challenges to the regulatory community, and to those who would develop or adopt them. These challenges must be understood by both systems developers and system adopters. In this paper, we describe our work collecting policy statements, expectations, and requirements from regulatory decision makers at academic cancer centers in the United States. We use these statements to examine fundamental assumptions regarding data sharing using data federations and grid computing.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An interview-based study of key stakeholders from a sample of US cancer centers. Interviews were structured, and used an instrument that was developed for the purpose of this study. The instrument included a set of problem scenarios – difficult policy situations that were derived during a full-day discussion of potentially problematic issues by a set of project participants with diverse expertise. Each problem scenario included a set of open-ended questions that were designed to elucidate stakeholder opinions and concerns. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. For quantitative analysis, data was aggregated at the individual or institutional unit of analysis, depending on the specific interview question.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Thirty-one (31) individuals at six cancer centers were contacted to participate. Twenty-four out of thirty-one (24/31) individuals responded to our request- yielding a total response rate of 77%. Respondents included IRB directors and policy-makers, privacy and security officers, directors of offices of research, information security officers and university legal counsel. Nineteen total interviews were conducted over a period of 16 weeks. Respondents provided answers for all four scenarios (a total of 87 questions). Results were grouped by broad themes, including among others: governance, legal and financial issues, partnership agreements, de-identification, institutional technical infrastructure for security and privacy protection, training, risk management, auditing, IRB issues, and patient/subject consent.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The findings suggest that with additional work, large scale federated sharing of data within a regulated environment is possible. A key challenge is developing suitable models for authentication and authorization practices within a federated environment. Authentication – the recognition and validation of a person's identity – is in fact a global property of such systems, while authorization – the permission to access data or resources – mimics data sharing agreements in being best served at a local level. Nine specific recommendations result from the work and are discussed in detail. These include: (1) the necessity to construct separate legal or corporate entities for governance of federated sharing initiatives on this scale; (2) consensus on the treatment of foreign and commercial partnerships; (3) the development of risk models and risk management processes; (4) development of technical infrastructure to support the credentialing process associated with research including human subjects; (5) exploring the feasibility of developing large-scale, federated honest broker approaches; (6) the development of suitable, federated identity provisioning processes to support federated authentication and authorization; (7) community development of requisite HIPAA and research ethics training modules by federation members; (8) the recognition of the need for central auditing requirements and authority, and; (9) use of two-protocol data exchange models where possible in the federation.</p

1936: Abilene Christian College Bible Lectures - Full Text

Delivered in the auditorium of Abilene Christian College, Abilene, Texas, February 193

D-cycloserine augmentation of exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data

Importance: Whether and under which conditions D-cycloserine (DCS) augments the effects of exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders is unclear. Objective: To clarify whether DCS is superior to placebo in augmenting the effects of cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders and to evaluate whether antidepressants interact with DCS and the effect of potential moderating variables. Data Sources: PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO were searched from inception to February 10, 2016. Reference lists of previous reviews and meta-analyses and reports of randomized clinical trials were also checked. Study Selection: Studies were eligible for inclusion if they were (1) double-blind randomized clinical trials of DCS as an augmentation strategy for exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy and (2) conducted in humans diagnosed as having specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder. Data Extraction and Synthesis: Raw data were obtained from the authors and quality controlled. Data were ranked to ensure a consistent metric across studies (score range, 0-100). We used a 3-level multilevel model nesting repeated measures of outcomes within participants, who were nested within studies. Results: Individual participant data were obtained for 21 of 22 eligible trials, representing 1047 of 1073 eligible participants. When controlling for antidepressant use, participants receiving DCS showed greater improvement from pretreatment to posttreatment (mean difference, -3.62; 95% CI, -0.81 to -6.43; P = .01; d = -0.25) but not from pretreatment to midtreatment (mean difference, -1.66; 95% CI, -4.92 to 1.60; P = .32; d = -0.14) or from pretreatment to follow-up (mean difference, -2.98, 95% CI, -5.99 to 0.03; P = .05; d = -0.19). Additional analyses showed that participants assigned to DCS were associated with lower symptom severity than those assigned to placebo at posttreatment and at follow-up. Antidepressants did not moderate the effects of DCS. None of the prespecified patient-level or study-level moderators was associated with outcomes. Conclusions and Relevance: D-cycloserine is associated with a small augmentation effect on exposure-based therapy. This effect is not moderated by the concurrent use of antidepressants. Further research is needed to identify patient and/or therapy characteristics associated with DCS response.2018-05-0