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.     

Unsupervised Routine Activities as a Mediator of the Parental Knowledge–Delinquency Relationship

The principal aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parents (parental knowledge) and peers (unsupervised routine activities) in predicting delinquency. Enlisting all 1,170 male members of the Pathways to Desistance study and a causal mediation model, baseline and Wave 1 measures of parental knowledge and unsupervised routine activities were cross-lagged and then regressed onto Wave 2 delinquency. Consistent with the view that parenting precedes peer influence when it comes to predicting delinquency, the target pathway (baseline parental knowledge → Wave 1 unsupervised routine activities → Wave 2 delinquency) achieved significance and the comparison pathway (baseline unsupervised routine activities → Wave 1 parental knowledge → Wave 2 delinquency) did not. These results suggest that weak parental knowledge may increase delinquency by failing to divert the child from involvement in unsupervised routine activities with peers.     

Citizen Satisfaction: A Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis

Governments across Europe face the challenge of responding to public demand for more valuable, responsive, and efficient and effective services. In this article we will evaluate the public services in Greece. More specifically, this article refers to a citizen's satisfaction web survey for Citizens’ Service Centers. The analysis of the data is based on the MUSA (Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis) method. MUSA is an ordinal regression model which is based on the principles of multicriteria decision analysis. The method is an instrument to evaluate quantitative global and partial satisfaction levels and to determine the weak and strong points of citizens Service Centers. Furthermore the results of this study will help the Citizens Service Centers to develop more effective services.     

mStories: exploring semiotics and praxis of user-generated mobile stories

Innovations in information and communication technologies have allowed people to actively author multimodal content and engage in new meaning-making practices. New Literacies research has gone some way to understanding new meaning-making behaviours. However, this research often derives its understandings from studies undertaken with students enrolled in formal educational settings. Mobile technologies are increasingly situated outside such domains; the informal use of these devices by adults remains on the periphery of scholarly focus. mStories is a creative participatory digital mobile storytelling project. Taking a multidimensional perspective, this article presents the in-depth case analysis of one participant and their mStory. A semiotic analysis found that the user-generated content demonstrated complex and sophisticated multimodal sense relations. However, control over the textual or compositional meta-function of the text was determined largely by the computer interface, with users habituated to relinquishing authorial control over this element. Within this study, mobile literacy praxis was characteristically ad hoc and contextually embedded, and though mobile technology invites such practices, users were neither determined nor limited by this, and happily turned to other devices where necessary.     

Resettlement and development in Indonesia

This article deals with resettlement management in Indonesia, which involves a number of policy and implementation issues concerning land acquisition, compensation, and resettlement practices in development projects.¹ The principal objective of this article is to identify a set of policy measures gleaned from past experiences in Indonesia and to present a comparative review of how other countries have addressed land acquisition and resettlement issues, including the latest donor policies concerning resettlement of people affected by the development processes. Several resettlement case studies in Indonesia are briefly presented to identify past mistakes and successes. The Indonesian experience is then assessed in the light of international “best practices” for retooling policy, including adoption of an appropriate resettlement policy in Indonesia. The role of local government bodies, non-government and community-based organizations in resettlement management and their beneficial involvements in resettlement planning and implementation is briefly discussed.     

浅议公安系统网络安全与建设

公安信息网的安全管理是一个全方位、多层次的问题,是一个不断完善和不断提升的过程。没有一种技术可以绝对保证网络安全,人的因素也很重要。因此,要做好内部的网络安全,不仅仅需要高新的安全技术手段、周密的安全策略,更需要不断提高系统管理人员和系统使用人员的安全意识,让网络中的每一个用户都对网络安全问题重视起来,做好信息安全防范工作,这才是最关键、最好的、最有效的解决方案。     

Identifying Unit-Dependency and Time-Specificity in Longitudinal Analysis: A Graphical Methodology

Longitudinal analysis in criminology and other social sciences has become an important research tool because it allows us to draw conclusions from observing how multiple units change over time. Unfortunately, its results are more vulnerable to potential influences of unusual observational units or periods of time. Current leverage diagnostics are designed for cross-sectional analysis and are fallible when applied to longitudinal models. This article introduces a graphical diagnostic methodology to systematically examine the sensitivity of longitudinal results to extreme observational units and periods of time—unit-dependency and time-specificity. Further the article illustrates its use with an example testing policy effects on black and white female victimization of intimate partner homicide. Results are displayed in an easily understood graph that provides a snapshot of the results' time-specific patterns and robustness to unit-dependency. Currently, comparable tests for panel analysis are tedious and cumbersome. With this new illuminating methodology, researchers and policy-makers can easily decide whether a time-specific or unit-dependent pattern is consequential.     

“大数据杀熟”行为政府治理路径探讨

“大数据杀熟”行为严重损害了消费者权益.相对于传统商业“杀熟”行为, “大数据杀熟”行为更隐蔽,消费者维权更艰难.这种利用算法应用技术损害消费者权益的行为严重违背商业伦理,不仅关乎消费者个人权益,更会影响公共利益,仅凭市场调节难以纠正,需要通过法律进行救济.政府应在遵循辅助性原则的前提下,通过算法应用技术备案、建立“政...     

恶意透支型信用卡诈骗罪“持卡人”的认定

恶意透支型信用卡诈骗罪中的＂持卡人＂不仅包括信用卡申领人,也包括实际使用信用卡的人。在信用卡申领人将信用卡交付他人使用的过程中,信用卡申领人和使用人往往能构成利益共同体,其在恶意透支上,可能构成共同犯罪的行为,在此种情况下,应将信用卡申领人和信用卡实际使用人都认定为＂持卡人＂。     

Improving automatic face recognition with user interaction

Face recognition systems aim to recognize the identity of a person depicted in a photograph by comparing it against a gallery of prerecorded images. Current systems perform quite well in controlled scenarios, but they allow for none or little interaction in case of mistakes due to the low quality of images or to algorithmic limitations. Following the needs and suggestions of investigators, we present a guided user interface that allows to adjust from a fully automatic to a fully assisted modality of execution, according to the difficulty of the task and to amount of available information (gender, age, etc.): the user can generally rely on automatic execution and intervene only on a limited number of examples when a failure is automatically detected or when the quality of intermediate results is deemed unsatisfactory. The interface runs on top of a preexistent automatic face recognition algorithm in such a way to guarantee full control over the execution flow and to exploit the peculiarities of the underlying image processing techniques. The viability of the proposed solution is tested on a classic face identification task run on a standard publicly available database (the XM2VTS), assessing the improvement to user interaction over the automatic system performance.