How Priming Innocence Influences Public Opinion on Police Misconduct and False Convictions: A Research Note

Issues of innocence have become more salient to the public in recent years, including the problem of police misconduct. However, citizens also tend to be supportive of the police, perceiving them as ethical, honest, and trustworthy. Using a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample, we explore the degree to which public opinion toward police misconduct is influenced by priming respondents on the issue of innocence. We find that reminding citizens of these issues increases their willingness to admit police misconduct that contributes to this problem by roughly 7 percentage points overall. Moreover, this effect is driven by conservatives and, to a lesser extent, moderates, presumably because liberals do not need priming. In contrast, the efficacy of the prime was not affected (i.e., moderated) by the race of the respondent. We place these results in the context of the current debate regarding police use of force as well as the ideological divide in rhetoric surrounding the recent string of high-profile police shootings

Application of Market Models to Network Equilibrium Problems

We present a general two-side market model with divisible commodities and price functions of participants. A general existence result on unbounded sets is obtained from its variational inequality re-formulation. We describe an extension of the network flow equilibrium problem with elastic demands and a new equilibrium type model for resource allocation problems in wireless communication networks, which appear to be particular cases of the general market model. This enables us to obtain new existence results for these models as some adjustments of that for the market model. Under certain additional conditions the general market model can be reduced to a decomposable optimization problem where the goal function is the sum of two functions and one of them is convex separable, whereas the feasible set is the corresponding Cartesian product. We discuss some versions of the partial linearization method, which can be applied to these network equilibrium problems.Comment: 18 pages, 3 table

Reliability-Based Design of Thermal Protection Systems with Support Vector Machines

The primary objective of this work was to develop a computationally efficient and accurate approach to reliability analysis of thermal protection systems using support vector machines. An adaptive sampling approach was introduced informs a iterative support vector machine approximation of the limit state function used for measuring reliability. The proposed sampling approach efficient adds samples along the limit state function until the reliability approximation is converged. This methodology is applied to two samples, mathematical functions to test and demonstrate the applicability. Then, the adaptive sampling-based support vector machine approach is applied to the reliability analysis of a thermal protection system. The results of all three problems highlight the potential capability of the new approach in terms of accuracy and computational saving in determining thermal protection system reliability

Why is the Matrix Model Correct?

We consider the compactification of M theory on a light-like circle as a limit of a compactification on a small spatial circle boosted by a large amount. Assuming that the compactification on a small spatial circle is weakly coupled type IIA theory, we derive Susskind's conjecture that M theory compactified on a light-like circle is given by the finite $N$ version of the Matrix model of Banks, Fischler, Shenker and Susskind. This point of view provides a uniform derivation of the Matrix model for M theory compactified on a transverse torus $T^p$ for $p=0,...,5$ and clarifies the difficulties for larger values of $p$.Comment: 9 page

Baron Guillaume Dupuytren: when brilliance combats professionalism.

Baron Guilluame Dupuytren was a French anatomist and surgeon who practiced during the 1800s and is considered by some to be the most brilliant and gifted surgeons of his time. His contributions to the field of surgery are quite extensive, yet his eccentric personality and attitude toward his colleagues, students, and patients raises a very interesting question: could Dr. Dupuytren (Fig. 1) and his many contributions to the field of surgery have thrived in today’s era of professionalism? The concept of professionalism is emphasized to medical students starting from day one of their medical training. How would Dr. Dupuytren, an esteemed anatomist, react to the idea that students are introduced to the idea of professionalism before entering the cadaver laboratory

Robert Milton Zollinger, M.D., teacher, surgeon, soldier, and farmer.

From Humble roots, Dr. Robert Milton Zollinger worked his way to a position in history among the giants of American surgery. He was born on September 4, 1903, in the central Ohio town of Millersport, the son of Elmira and William Zollinger. Neither of his parents had a high school education, but they supported education and always expressed a confidence that young Robert would be successful at anything he attempted.1 He had aspirations of attending West Point, a dream that was never fulfilled when he decided to be a surgeon. On being informed of his son’s intentions, Zollinger’s father bestowed on him advice that he ostensibly adhered to throughout his career: ‘‘If you are going to be a doctor, be a good one.’

The Effect of Food-Away-from-Home and Food-at-Home Expenditures on Obesity Rates: A State-Level Analysis

Using state-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we investigate the effects of household food-away-from-home and food-at-home expenditures on overweight rates, obesity rates, and combined rates. Our random effects model estimates suggest that food-away-from-home expenditures are positively related to obesity and combined rates, while food-at-home expenditures are negatively related to obesity and combined rates. However, the magnitudes of these effects, while statistically significant, are relatively small. Both food-at-home and food-away-from-home expenditures do not significantly influence overweight rates.food-at-home expenditures, food-away-from-home expenditures, obesity, overweight, random effects model, state-level analysis, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, I18,