退休政策的经济学分析及调整

退休政策通过影响劳动力的投入和养老负担对社会产出和就业人口、退休人口的福利水平产生影响，因此要对退休政策进行调整须进行较为充分的经济论证。研究对单人经济的退休年龄分析显示：存在一个基于个人一生效用最大化的“最佳”退休年龄，可合理平衡一生总产出和退休后的休闲。同理，一个多人经济社会也存在一个平均的“最佳”退休年龄。研究的结论如下：现有的退休年龄政策背景下，中国将面临日益沉重的养老负担，说明中国的退休年龄政策亟须调整；延迟退休年龄至少在长期对就业无负面影响，且可增加GDP:将暂时多余的社保基金用于金融投资无助于社会养老负担的缓解，养老金空账运行并无问题。为完善中国的退休政策，研究提出适时延长退休年龄、提高养老金标准和降低养老保险费率、对职工上缴的养老保险实施记账等建议。     

A method for calculating the strength of evidence associated with an earwitness's claimed recognition of a familiar speaker

The present paper proposes and demonstrates a method for assessing strength of evidence when an earwitness claims to recognize the voice of a speaker who is familiar to them. The method calculates a Bayes factor that answers the question: What is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was the suspect versus what is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was not the suspect but some other speaker from the relevant population? By “claim” we mean a claim made by a cooperative earwitness not a claim made by an earwitness who is intentionally deceptive. Relevant data are derived from naïve listeners' responses to recordings of familiar speakers presented in a speaker lineup. The method is demonstrated under recording conditions that broadly reflect those of a real case.     

Use of pepper spray in policing: retrospective study of situational characteristics and implications for violent situations

Pepper spray (OC) is a policing tool aimed to prevent or stop aggressive behavior by quickly and temporarily incapacitate without injuring. To date, few studies have investigated OC’s operational usefulness and limitations. OC reduced violent behavior in 93% of the 936 incidents investigated. However, the operative range was often <2 m and it took between 3 and 5 s of spraying before obtaining effect, partly owing to the difficulties of hitting a small, sometimes erratically moving target. Collateral hits were noted in 24% of the incidents, whereof 90% were other officers. Noteworthy, in 21% of incidents officers put themselves at large personal risk by using OC at close range against people armed with lethal weapons. Hence, OC emerges as a suitable tool for handling low threat situations but lacks key traits to ensure safe and efficient policing of high threat situations, e.g., handling armed assailants.     

性别因素对企业年金替代率影响的实证分析

当前我国企业年金制度设计中没有充分考虑性别因素,导致男女职工的企业年金替代率存在较大差异,退休女性职工的企业年金养老金收入明显少于男性,加剧了性别不公平.延长女性职工退休年龄与提高女性职工缴费率等措施能够有效缩小企业年金替代率的性别差异,弥补企业年金制度的设计缺陷.     

Choosing relatives for DNA identification of missing persons

DNA-based analysis is integral to missing person identification cases. When direct references are not available, indirect relative references can be used to identify missing persons by kinship analysis. Generally, more reference relatives render greater accuracy of identification. However, it is costly to type multiple references. Thus, at times, decisions may need to be made on which relatives to type. In this study, pedigrees for 37 common reference scenarios with 13 CODIS STRs were simulated to rank the information content of different combinations of relatives. The results confirm that first-order relatives (parents and fullsibs) are the most preferred relatives to identify missing persons; fullsibs are also informative. Less genetic dependence between references provides a higher on average likelihood ratio. Distant relatives may not be helpful solely by autosomal markers. But lineage-based Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers can increase the likelihood ratio or serve as filters to exclude putative relationships.     

Validating TrueAllele® DNA mixture interpretation

Abstract: DNA mixtures with two or more contributors are a prevalent form of biological evidence. Mixture interpretation is complicated by the possibility of different genotype combinations that can explain the short tandem repeat (STR) data. Current human review simplifies this interpretation by applying thresholds to qualitatively treat STR data peaks as all‐or‐none events and assigning allele pairs equal likelihood. Computer review, however, can work instead with all the quantitative data to preserve more identification information. The present study examined the extent to which quantitative computer interpretation could elicit more identification information than human review from the same adjudicated two‐person mixture data. The base 10 logarithm of a DNA match statistic is a standard information measure that permits such a comparison. On eight mixtures having two unknown contributors, we found that quantitative computer interpretation gave an average information increase of 6.24 log units (min = 2.32, max = 10.49) over qualitative human review. On eight other mixtures with a known victim reference and one unknown contributor, quantitative interpretation averaged a 4.67 log factor increase (min = 1.00, max = 11.31) over qualitative review. This study provides a general treatment of DNA interpretation methods (including mixtures) that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative review. Validation methods are introduced that can assess the efficacy and reproducibility of any DNA interpretation method. An in‐depth case example highlights 10 reasons (at 10 different loci) why quantitative probability modeling preserves more identification information than qualitative threshold methods. The results validate TrueAllele^® DNA mixture interpretation and establish a significant information improvement over human review.     

Human dental age estimation by calculation of pulp-tooth volume ratios yielded on clinically acquired cone beam computed tomography images of monoradicular teeth

Abstract: Secondary dentine is responsible for a decrease in the volume of the dental pulp cavity with aging. The aim of this study is to evaluate a human dental age estimation method based on the ratio between the volume of the pulp and the volume of its corresponding tooth, calculated on clinically taken cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images from monoradicular teeth. On the 3D images of 111 clinically obtained CBCT images (Scanora^®3D dental cone beam unit) of 57 female and 54 male patients ranging in age between 10 and 65 years, the pulp–tooth volume ratio of 64 incisors, 32 canines, and 15 premolars was calculated with Simplant^® Pro software. A linear regression model was fit with age as dependent variable and ratio as predictor, allowing for interactions of specific gender or tooth type. The obtained pulp–tooth volume ratios were the strongest related to age on incisors.     

A Two‐Level Model for Evidence Evaluation in the Presence of Zeros*

Abstract: Likelihood ratios (LRs) provide a natural way of computing the value of evidence under competing propositions. We propose LR models for classification and comparison that extend the ideas of Aitken, Zadora, and Lucy and Aitken and Lucy to include consideration of zeros. Instead of substituting zeros by a small value, we view the presence of zeros as informative and model it using Bernoulli distributions. The proposed models are used for evaluation of forensic glass (comparison and classification problem) and paint data (comparison problem). Two hundred and sixty‐four glass samples were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, coupled with an energy dispersive X‐ray spectrometer method and 36 acrylic topcoat paint samples by pyrolysis gas chromatography hyphened with mass spectrometer method. The proposed LR model gave very satisfactory results for the glass comparison problem and for most of the classification tasks for glass. Results of comparison of paints were also highly satisfactory, with only 3.0% false positive answers and 2.8% false negative answers.     

治安管理处罚的谦抑性探析

刑罚中应用比较普遍的谦抑性原则在行政处罚领域却鲜有提及,这对控制同样是我国对公民权惩处方式的行政处罚而言是不足的。而在与刑罚衔接最为密切的行政处罚种类治安管理处罚中,其调整对象、指导理念和行为要求方面却都有谦抑性的要求和体现。研究治安管理处罚的谦抑性,首先表现为治安管理处罚权的设定和存在必须谦抑,其次是治安管理处罚权的行使和调处过程要体现谦抑。