Lots of economic, environmental and political predictions are hardly better than horoscopes. Others are reliable enough to be thought of a "fundamentals." I'm more interested in the latter. Here are a few:
1. China's economic growth rate will be greater for medium term time periods (e.g. three years or more) than that of the United States for the foreseeable future, because it is engaged in "catch up growth," while the United States is not.
2. China will experience a notable economic crash in the next decade or so, because it hasn't had one for a long time and periods of even strong sustained growth are almost always interrupted periodically by economic crashes.
3. India's economic growth rate will be greater for medium term time periods than that of the United States for the foreseeable future, because it is engaged in "catch up growth," while the United States is not.
4. India's economic growth rate will exceed that of China sometime in the next ten to fifteen years, because China's per capita GDP is significantly greater than that of India, leaving India with more "catch up growth" potential than China.
5. Oil dependent nations in the Middle East will each experience serious economic contractions not long as oil production in the nation in question starts to fall due to exhaustion of the nation's oil supply. These nations are heavily reliant on oil revenues to sustain their standard of living with imported goods and temporary immigrant workers, both of which will be harder to come by when there are not new oil revenues available.
6. Countries in Africa that experience war and authoritarian governments will experience less economic growth than those with sustained periods of peace and democratic government.
7. In the developing world, it will be a long time before environmental and climate change concerns have enough political clout to cause air pollution to be reduced more rapidly than the increasing scope of economic activity increases air pollution. As a result, emissions will not be reduced rapidly enough to stop continued global warming.
8. Nuclear power will spread to more countries.
9. Oil more be more expensive in real terms in 2020 and more expensive again in real terms in 2030 than it is today. Rising oil prices will make technologies that are powered by energy sources other than oil more attractive. This trend will be a global one, because oil trades in a global marketplace.
10. Oil rich countries that are not close to exhausting their reserves will receive an economic boost from rising oil prices.
11. North Korea's political and economic system will collapse, probably within a couple of decades, if it fails to open itself up to the rest of the world. If it does collapse, it will probably be reabsorbed by South Korea.
12. Public health measures will improve in most of the developing and undeveloped world that are not war torn as patents on new effective drugs expire and make those drugs more affordable.
13. Global fertility rates will fall as more countries become more economically developed.
14. Developing countries will become less religious as they become more economically developed in fairly close synch with falling fertility rates.
15. The need to impose taxes as oil revenues decline will force Middle Eastern monarchs who have not already been deposed in revolutions and democratized of their own free will to make genuine democratic reforms.
16. The proportion of the world population engaged in farming will fall steadily for decades to come.
17. Some small island nations will be swallowed up by the sea and forced to relocate all or most of their populations as sea levels rise with global warming sometime in the next century.
18. A large share of the world's languages, probably half or more, will die in the next few decades.
19. A significant number of plant and animal species will go extinct in the next few decades.
20. The proportion of Africans who are Christians will increase significantly over the next decade.
21 January 2011
20 January 2011
Experts Make Bad Prophets
When based on the same evidence, the predictions of SPRs [statistical prediction rules] are at least as reliable as, and are typically more reliable than, the predictions of human experts for problems of social prediction. . . even when experts are given the results of SPRs, they still can't outperform those SPRs.
From here.
This is something that I've know for a long time, but the post linked is notable because it shows the extent to which this tendency is widespread and pervasive.
Some of the better known examples of statistical prediction rules that are actually used on a regular basis include:
1. Pre-trial services evaluations of criminal defendants for pre-trial release.
2. A formula used by the Colorado Department of Corrections to assign new state prison inmates to the most appropriate security level prison facility.
3. Credit scores for making loan decisions, and determining the likelihood that a borrower will go bankrupt.
4. Test score and GPA formula based college admissions decisions.
5. Test score based standard for whether or not to accept military recruits into particular military services and into military occupational specialities.
There is a simple SPR for predicting marital happiness, and I recent heard an NPR report describing an SPR that predicted the likelihood that unmarried couples would stick together based on the extent to which their speech patterns were similar.
Uncritical reliance on test scores by low level bureacrats produces better results than consideration of these scores as one factor out of many by highly qualified experts. Finessing the result with expert analysis undermines the virtues that make SPRs work.
There are lots of situations where there simply aren't SPRs available, and in those cases, experts may be the next best thing, but when you have a regularized situation where there is an advantage to be had from making accurate predictions, you are better off devising an SPR from a good data set than relying on experts to make the calls. And, in the era of mass data collection and cheap computing resources to mine it, it is much easier to create a decent SPR than it used to be.
This isn't the only situation where the general cognitive bias towards undue faith in capacity of experts or decision-makers with access to large amounts of data to goods better judgments comes into play. Studies have shown that attorneys systemically overestimate the strength of their cases. People like judges and juries who are able to watch the demeanor of witnesses on the stand testifying are less effective at distinguishing true from untrue statements than people forced to rely on transcripts of the same testimony.
One of the main things that an SPR does is to toss out of the model all of the factors that somebody thought might be relevant but don't actually have an empirical predictive power. But, experts and others with a wider fact set are tempted to consider all of the information, even the irrelevant bits, which inserts non-empirically support biases into the decision making process.
Indeed, one way to understand the structure of legal rules in statutes and precedents is as SPRs that force a highly diverse set of legal expert judges to consider only a small subset of all the facts in a situation according to a particular formula to get a result, rather than relying on the totality of their life experience in making those kinds of decisions.
Limits of SPRs
This doesn't mean that SPRs are the be all and end all solution to all of society's woes.
It is possible to design rules like look like SPRs but don't have the empirical grounding linking potential causes and potential effects accurate or are based on incorrect data or assumptions. Perhaps the classic example of this can be found in the United States Sentencing Guidelines which relied on assumptions like a 100:1 crack cocaine to powder cocaine ratio that was just plain wrong and produced grossly unfair results as a result. Indeed, that example is an apt cautionary tale, because a bad SPR affects large numbers of people in a systemic way, while mistakes by experts tend to be diffuse and to vary in differing directions from the correct prediction.
It is also possible to build a SPR that is the best possible SPR given the data that is used to build it, but remains quite inaccurate because there are factors that it fails to consider. For example, an SPR designed to predict natural gas usage that fails to consider average monthly temperature as an input is going to be much less accurate than one that does considers it.
One can also build a suboptimal SPR by designing it to predict something other than the thing that you actually want to measure. A recent practical example of that kind of problem is the use of law school grades by large law firms to predict law firm success. Law school grades are an important factor, (indeed better than social class or law school prestige) but it turns out that it is a factor that has diminishing returns when you reach a point where all of your applicants have very good law school grades and academic ability. Indeed, lawyers with good law school grades from less prestigious schools, who on average had lower LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs than their peers at more prestigious schools, actually perform better when hired by big law firms and are happier than lawyers with the same law school grades from more pestigious schools. There are other factors that matter too that aren't measured, but work to develop efficient ways to test these factors in a format such as a two hour test, is in its infancy.
This is a classic case of an SPR with a design problem. LSATs and undergraduate grades predict law school grades, particularly in the first year of law school, as well as any other measure available, but there are far more abilities that are relevant to the practice of law than there are to being a law student. Two dimensions (correlated strongly with each other, but more weakly with "g heavy" LSATs and academic grade point averages) were multiple choice tests of "situational judgment" and "biographical information" which were calculated to predict effectiveness measures such as practical judgment, organization, self-discipline, creativity, and effectiveness in interpersonal communication.
Another problem is SPRs is that they are often formulated in one context and then used in another that they are ill suited to, where they are not validated to work. For example, an IQ test administered in the Standard American English works just fine as a predictor of academic success and many other things when the people taking the test are native speakers of Standard American English. But, it works rather less well when the people taking the test are native speakers of Spanish or Chinese and have only been learning English for a few years.
A recent Army test designed to measure "spiritual fitness" may be reasonable reliable for the Christians who make up most soldiers and for a significant number of people who practice other religions. But, the questions it presents may present category errors that aren't valid when given to people who are considered atheists and agnostics. The fact that the test was developed by a psychologist who also inspired the CIA's torture program also casts real doubt on the methodology used to create it.
More generally, one should be suspicious of SPRs in any situation where there are two or more populations of people who are very different in relevant ways, one of those populations is much larger than another, and the SPR isn't separately validated for each subpopulation. For example, the body measurements that indicate optimal fitness for men aren't likely to be the body measurements that indicate optimal fitness for women.
Likewise, SPRs in the criminal justice system that are predominantly validated with normal "blue collar" criminal defendants and show validity across of wide range of those kinds of criminal defendants, may not necessarily be very useful in accurately predicting how "white collar" criminal defendants, who make up a tiny part of the validation sample but are different in a great many respects from blue collar defendants demographically and otherwise, will act.
Further, many SPRs only make sense for individuals within the "normal range" of whatever they were designed to measure. SAT scores from high school, for example, are a poor instrument to use to distinguish between graduate students who will go on to be professors at less prestigious institutions from graduate students who will go on to be professors at more prestigious institutions. Everyone who finishes graduate school and goes on to become a professor is very academically able, and the SAT is not very discriminating at the high end of the scale. Similarly, an SAT is a poor instrument for distinguishing between someone who has a mild and a severe developmental disability, because it isn't designed to be particularly discriminating or accurate at the very low end of the scale.
Using Imperfect SPRs
Expert supplementation of SPRs is probably best when one knows what an SPR does measure, what factors were ruled out as irrelevant in the formulation of SPR, what flaws have been demonstrated in the SPR, and what factors are known to be relevant but are not measured by the SPR.
For example, credit scores are probably as good as one is going to get at predicting propensity to default on loans. Any loan officer effort to second guess propensity to default on loans from other data (like "good character") is likely to be counterproductive. But, credit scores don't measure ability to pay factors such income and assets. For example, default rates and bad debt losses are extremely low in the case of purchase money mortgages involving large down payments, even when the borrower has very low credit scores.
Similarly, an expert may be helpful in identifying circumstances when an SPR (perhaps a "second best" one) is and is not likely to have validity. Someone who got high SAT scores in high school almost certainly mentally retarded unless some sort of brain injury has taken place since then. But, in the case of someone who got low SAT scores in high school, the SAT may be unhelpful.
19 January 2011
Learning v. Sorting in Higher Education
No one denies that people who go to college do far better socio-economically than people who do not. The hard question is why that is the case. Is it because what you learn adds value? Or, is it because the people who go to college are smarter and more together than their non-college bound peers on average, and hence more desirable in the world of work?
Prior Indications That Higher Education May Not Be Adding Much Value For Marginal Students
One little factoid that has favored the sorting theory over the learning theory is that the socio-economic benefits of being admitted to college and dropping out are almost indistinguishable from the socio-economic benefits of obtaining an associates degree (i.e. a two year college degree, typically in skill heavy pre-professional field like nursing or engineering technology). An associates degree provides some benefit relative to merely attending and dropping out of college without earning a degree (and interestingly, a huge advantage as measured through likelihood of ending up in prison), but the benefit is stunningly modest.
Another suggestive nugget of data is that the socio-economic benefits of college appear to arise despite the fact that many college graduates work in jobs that don't actually require a college education to perform: "More than one-third of current working graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, and the proportion appears to be rising rapidly."
From a study by Richard Vedder and co-authors on the topic.
A Large Share of College Students Aren't Learning Much In College
A new study adds more direct evidence to the case that a large share of the benefits of a college education for a large share of people who go to college comes from its sorting role, rather than as a result of what is learned while one is in college.
The extent to which colleges add value or merely sort students matters a lot from a public policy perspective, because it is far cheaper to establish a system that ranks people by ability (for all involved) than it is to go through the motions of having people go to college for many years if they aren't going to learn much in the process.
Has Higher Education Expanded Too Much?
Put another way, the higher education system does seem to be imparting considerable value to the traditional students at selective institutions in arts and science majors taking rigorous courses and studying a lot who were the only people that higher education served in the pre-World War II era, and is doing so on a far more meritocratic and democratic basis than it did then when wealth, rather than academic ability, was the key to admission.
Since then, there has been a dramatic expansion of higher education: "in 1960, only 7.7% of American adults over the age of 25 possessed college degrees. This proportion has increased in every year since 1960 for which data is available, with the exception of both 1992 and 2005, and by 2008, 29.4% of Americans 25 years of age and older held college degrees." This has happened mostly in dramatically expanding state college systems with less selective admissions, much larger enrollments, and a large share of students taking pre-professional majors like marketing and communication seems to have added less value than one might of hoped, in terms of actual increasing ability as a result of the experience.
The Least Academically Able Students Who Dropping Out Most Learn The Least
The fact that learning is weakest in the least rigorous programs at the least selective institutions suggests that there is a heavy overlap between the students who are learning the least and those who are most likely to drop out of college.
The Associated Press report quoted above doesn't make clear (although perhaps the book it relies upon does), how the change in learning data relate to retention. All but the most selective institutions of higher education have high drop out rates. The most selective public colleges and universities in Colorado graduate two-thirds of their entering students, the least selective four year public colleges and universities graduate one-third of their entering students, and community colleges lose half to 70% of their entering students in the first year. In general, the less selective the institution, the higher the dropout rate. Retention rates are generally even worse for African-American students.
The odds that a study will drop out is very strongly correlated to the quality of that student's academic preparation and academic ability, and with traditional v. non-traditional student status. Students who drop out are very disproportionately those who are least academically able:
Many students starting college these days are not very well qualified to do so. Many Colorado students who started college in the fall of 2008 need remedial work, especially at the community college level, and in math:
I don't think anyone would be surprised by a study showing that students who need remedial work going into college are less likely to graduate and less likely to learn much while they are in college.
Implications For Admissions
If the students who are prevented from going to college by more selective admissions requirements are students who are at extremely elevated risk of dropping out, and show a high likelihood of achieving no significant learning even if they do manage to graduate, then the social costs of tightening admissions standards (and thereby reducing higher education spending or making the package more generous for those who do attend) may not be as great as they seem.
But, people are not statistics. Selectivity is a good option only to the extent that we can accurately predict in the case of an individual who will learn and graudate, and who will not learn and not graduate. The fact that the retention rate at the most selective institutions in Colorado is still only two-thirds, while a third of students at the least selective institutions graduate suggest that the clear statistical trend may be far less clear at the level of the individual students. Even pretty decent students may have a pretty good chance of learning little and of dropping out, while pretty marginal students may have a not insubstantial change of learning a lot and graduating.
Certainly, there are a lot of students who start college who are doomed from the start. Their need for remedial work in multiple subjects, low high school grades, and poor college admissions test scores make clear that they have an extremely low chance of graduating with any kind of degree.
Mostly, the system does a pretty good job of steering these students to community colleges, where the per student cost of education is the lowest, and overwhelmingly, these students decide for themselves to drop out of college after one or two semesters of trying. Students who are clearly not academically ready and go to less selective four year colleges (which are the least expensive per student in the system), likewise overwhelmingly drop out in the first one or two years.
Indeed, these students may even be subsidizing the educations of students who go to college and do take their studies seriously. At the very least, they are imposing financial burden on the system that is far less than the raw number of unprepared students who enter college each year might imply.
The fact that transfer students from community colleges do just as well in four year colleges as their peers who started there suggests that the quality of the instruction at community colleges isn't materially different for those who can hack it.
Caveats
The new value added learning report is also notable for being in tension with some prior findings in the field. Group studying has been linked to better academic performance in other studies. Also, social engagement has been fairly strongly linked to retention (i.e. socially unattached students are more likely to drop out), and Greek system participants have had grades comparable, if not better, to their non-Greek system peers.
These findings are suspect unless the contradictions in the findings can be better resolved.
Higher Ed Does Make A Difference For Millions And Can Be Improved
There is also a glass half-empty, or half-full element to these results. Significant contributions to learning in a majority of students after two years -- by seven percentiles of entering student performance -- and two-thirds of students after four years, is nothing to sniff at. The study states that for most students, and in particular, for two-thirds of students who manage to stick it out for four years and graduate, that college really is adding significant value in the form of increased learning. I suspect that by that measure, U.S. institutions of higher education would compare favorably to their peers in Europe and Japan, which are notorious for having rigorous college examinations at the end of high school, but mediocre teaching and a lack of rigor for undergraduates.
The link between rigorous academic classes and learning made by the study makes the case for more stringent curricular requirements at colleges and universities.
If we can predict in advance that curricular changes, like more rigorous expectations from professors in college courses, and admissions changes that make higher education as a whole more selective, can make the proportion of students who are learning and increasing their academic abilities in college greater, then we can take a system that is adding considerable value in a pretty wasteful way into one that is more consistently adding value.
Means Based Financial Support Is Worthwhile
This doesn't mean that there isn't a strong case for government funding of higher education. There is one. Students who can start college right after high school and are academically prepared learn the most and are most likely to graduate. But, a large share of lower income kids who are academically able aren't going to college and aren't graduating because they can't afford it. About one in five low income kids in the top quartile of academic ability don't go to college because they can't afford it. In the next quartile of academic ability, about a quarter of low income kids are prevented from going to college for financial reasons.
Ability to pay is a major barrier to the ability of academically talented low and medium income students to start or finish college:
Similarly and unsurprisingly, more generous financial aid packages for low income students have been empirically demonstrated to significantly improve retention rates.
Footnote: Are Some Majors Bad Choices?
The study seems to indicate that there is less learning in majors outside the traditional arts and sciences.
I'd be curious to see how the learning rates differ in particular college majors, and also to see information beyond starting salary at graduation to validate the concept that some majors may add considerable value, while others may be a waste of time for their students.
There have been studies looking at the return on investment from different college majors such as this rather ill designed one, and those usually show great benefits from a college education (with the exception of culinary school). But, few of those studies are designed to capture the distinction between value added from the material studies and benefits largely attributable to sorting people by ability.
Prior Indications That Higher Education May Not Be Adding Much Value For Marginal Students
One little factoid that has favored the sorting theory over the learning theory is that the socio-economic benefits of being admitted to college and dropping out are almost indistinguishable from the socio-economic benefits of obtaining an associates degree (i.e. a two year college degree, typically in skill heavy pre-professional field like nursing or engineering technology). An associates degree provides some benefit relative to merely attending and dropping out of college without earning a degree (and interestingly, a huge advantage as measured through likelihood of ending up in prison), but the benefit is stunningly modest.
Another suggestive nugget of data is that the socio-economic benefits of college appear to arise despite the fact that many college graduates work in jobs that don't actually require a college education to perform: "More than one-third of current working graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, and the proportion appears to be rising rapidly."
The push to increase enrollments has led to a majority of the increment of our stock of college graduates finding employment in relatively low skilled jobs, most of which are not particularly high paying (although there are exceptions). We added roughly 20 million college graduates to the population between 1992 and 2008, for example, but the number of graduates holding jobs requiring less-than-college education skill sets rose during that same period by about 12 million; in other words, 60 percent of the total increase in graduates over the past two decades was underemployed. . . . [This raises] real questions about the desirability of pushing to increase the proportion of Americans attending and graduating from four year colleges and universities.
From a study by Richard Vedder and co-authors on the topic.
A Large Share of College Students Aren't Learning Much In College
A new study adds more direct evidence to the case that a large share of the benefits of a college education for a large share of people who go to college comes from its sorting role, rather than as a result of what is learned while one is in college.
[A study] of more than 2,300 undergraduates . . . [from a representative sample of 24 colleges and universities described in] the book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses." . . . found an average-scoring student in fall 2005 scored 7 percentage points higher in the spring of 2007 on the [College Learning] assessment [which measures critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing]. In other words, those who entered college in the 50th percentile would rise to the equivalent of the 57th after their sophomore years. . . . After four years, 36 percent of students did not demonstrate significant improvement, compared with 45 percent after two [years].
Students who studied alone, read and wrote more, attended more selective schools and majored in traditional arts and sciences majors posted greater learning gains. . . .
Students who spent more time studying with peers showed diminishing growth, and students who spent more time in the Greek system had decreased rates of learning . . .
[A]ctivities such as working off campus, participating in campus clubs and volunteering did not affect learning.
Students from families with different levels of parental education enter college with different learning levels but learn at about the same rates while attending college. . . .
Black students improve their assessment scores at lower levels than whites.
The extent to which colleges add value or merely sort students matters a lot from a public policy perspective, because it is far cheaper to establish a system that ranks people by ability (for all involved) than it is to go through the motions of having people go to college for many years if they aren't going to learn much in the process.
Has Higher Education Expanded Too Much?
Put another way, the higher education system does seem to be imparting considerable value to the traditional students at selective institutions in arts and science majors taking rigorous courses and studying a lot who were the only people that higher education served in the pre-World War II era, and is doing so on a far more meritocratic and democratic basis than it did then when wealth, rather than academic ability, was the key to admission.
Since then, there has been a dramatic expansion of higher education: "in 1960, only 7.7% of American adults over the age of 25 possessed college degrees. This proportion has increased in every year since 1960 for which data is available, with the exception of both 1992 and 2005, and by 2008, 29.4% of Americans 25 years of age and older held college degrees." This has happened mostly in dramatically expanding state college systems with less selective admissions, much larger enrollments, and a large share of students taking pre-professional majors like marketing and communication seems to have added less value than one might of hoped, in terms of actual increasing ability as a result of the experience.
The Least Academically Able Students Who Dropping Out Most Learn The Least
The fact that learning is weakest in the least rigorous programs at the least selective institutions suggests that there is a heavy overlap between the students who are learning the least and those who are most likely to drop out of college.
The Associated Press report quoted above doesn't make clear (although perhaps the book it relies upon does), how the change in learning data relate to retention. All but the most selective institutions of higher education have high drop out rates. The most selective public colleges and universities in Colorado graduate two-thirds of their entering students, the least selective four year public colleges and universities graduate one-third of their entering students, and community colleges lose half to 70% of their entering students in the first year. In general, the less selective the institution, the higher the dropout rate. Retention rates are generally even worse for African-American students.
The odds that a study will drop out is very strongly correlated to the quality of that student's academic preparation and academic ability, and with traditional v. non-traditional student status. Students who drop out are very disproportionately those who are least academically able:
[F]ewer than 38 percent of high school students who plan to get a college degree actually do so within 10 years of graduating. Of those with poor high school grades, less than 14 percent achieve their college plans. . . . 92 percent of students with low grades planning to earn an A.A. failed to do so—even higher than the 86 percent of those who abandoned their plans to earn a BA.
Many students starting college these days are not very well qualified to do so. Many Colorado students who started college in the fall of 2008 need remedial work, especially at the community college level, and in math:
Of those starting two year college:
52.7% needed remedial help in math, reading or writing.
40% needed remedial help in math.
17% needed remedial help in math, reading and writing.
Of those starting four year college:
19% needed help in math, reading, or writing.
16% needed help in math
I don't think anyone would be surprised by a study showing that students who need remedial work going into college are less likely to graduate and less likely to learn much while they are in college.
Implications For Admissions
If the students who are prevented from going to college by more selective admissions requirements are students who are at extremely elevated risk of dropping out, and show a high likelihood of achieving no significant learning even if they do manage to graduate, then the social costs of tightening admissions standards (and thereby reducing higher education spending or making the package more generous for those who do attend) may not be as great as they seem.
But, people are not statistics. Selectivity is a good option only to the extent that we can accurately predict in the case of an individual who will learn and graudate, and who will not learn and not graduate. The fact that the retention rate at the most selective institutions in Colorado is still only two-thirds, while a third of students at the least selective institutions graduate suggest that the clear statistical trend may be far less clear at the level of the individual students. Even pretty decent students may have a pretty good chance of learning little and of dropping out, while pretty marginal students may have a not insubstantial change of learning a lot and graduating.
Certainly, there are a lot of students who start college who are doomed from the start. Their need for remedial work in multiple subjects, low high school grades, and poor college admissions test scores make clear that they have an extremely low chance of graduating with any kind of degree.
Mostly, the system does a pretty good job of steering these students to community colleges, where the per student cost of education is the lowest, and overwhelmingly, these students decide for themselves to drop out of college after one or two semesters of trying. Students who are clearly not academically ready and go to less selective four year colleges (which are the least expensive per student in the system), likewise overwhelmingly drop out in the first one or two years.
Indeed, these students may even be subsidizing the educations of students who go to college and do take their studies seriously. At the very least, they are imposing financial burden on the system that is far less than the raw number of unprepared students who enter college each year might imply.
The fact that transfer students from community colleges do just as well in four year colleges as their peers who started there suggests that the quality of the instruction at community colleges isn't materially different for those who can hack it.
Caveats
The new value added learning report is also notable for being in tension with some prior findings in the field. Group studying has been linked to better academic performance in other studies. Also, social engagement has been fairly strongly linked to retention (i.e. socially unattached students are more likely to drop out), and Greek system participants have had grades comparable, if not better, to their non-Greek system peers.
These findings are suspect unless the contradictions in the findings can be better resolved.
Higher Ed Does Make A Difference For Millions And Can Be Improved
There is also a glass half-empty, or half-full element to these results. Significant contributions to learning in a majority of students after two years -- by seven percentiles of entering student performance -- and two-thirds of students after four years, is nothing to sniff at. The study states that for most students, and in particular, for two-thirds of students who manage to stick it out for four years and graduate, that college really is adding significant value in the form of increased learning. I suspect that by that measure, U.S. institutions of higher education would compare favorably to their peers in Europe and Japan, which are notorious for having rigorous college examinations at the end of high school, but mediocre teaching and a lack of rigor for undergraduates.
The link between rigorous academic classes and learning made by the study makes the case for more stringent curricular requirements at colleges and universities.
If we can predict in advance that curricular changes, like more rigorous expectations from professors in college courses, and admissions changes that make higher education as a whole more selective, can make the proportion of students who are learning and increasing their academic abilities in college greater, then we can take a system that is adding considerable value in a pretty wasteful way into one that is more consistently adding value.
Means Based Financial Support Is Worthwhile
This doesn't mean that there isn't a strong case for government funding of higher education. There is one. Students who can start college right after high school and are academically prepared learn the most and are most likely to graduate. But, a large share of lower income kids who are academically able aren't going to college and aren't graduating because they can't afford it. About one in five low income kids in the top quartile of academic ability don't go to college because they can't afford it. In the next quartile of academic ability, about a quarter of low income kids are prevented from going to college for financial reasons.
Ability to pay is a major barrier to the ability of academically talented low and medium income students to start or finish college:
High academic achievement kids in high income families have a 97% chance of going to college, while it is 78% for low income kids. For those in the second quartile of academic achievement kids in high income families have a 90% chance of going to college, while it is 63% for low income kids. For those in the third quartile of academic achievement 85% chance of going to college, while it is 50% for low income kids. For those in the bottom quartile of academic achievement kids in high income families have a 77% chance of going to college, while it is 36% for low income kids.
Similarly and unsurprisingly, more generous financial aid packages for low income students have been empirically demonstrated to significantly improve retention rates.
Footnote: Are Some Majors Bad Choices?
The study seems to indicate that there is less learning in majors outside the traditional arts and sciences.
I'd be curious to see how the learning rates differ in particular college majors, and also to see information beyond starting salary at graduation to validate the concept that some majors may add considerable value, while others may be a waste of time for their students.
There have been studies looking at the return on investment from different college majors such as this rather ill designed one, and those usually show great benefits from a college education (with the exception of culinary school). But, few of those studies are designed to capture the distinction between value added from the material studies and benefits largely attributable to sorting people by ability.
Comment Spam Purged And Comments Analyzed
I've finished reviewing every single comment ever made on this blog in order to purge comment spam and have removed about two hundred spam comments. The signal to noise ratio isn't bad. Only about one in twenty was spam (although this doesn't reflect an almost equal number that I had found and deleted along the way before now). I may have missed a handful of subtle spam comments, but I think I have it reasonably well in hand. Comment spam will not, of course, be tolerated in the future either and is routinely deleted.
I also reviewed the spam filter cache that I didn't know that I had, which contained 44 comments at the time, of which about 4 were not spam (and were restored to the blog) and the rest were spam. It is annoying that legitimate comments were being withheld without my knowledge, but I know now and a 10% false positive rate isn't horrible.
The effort was made possible by the new Blogger comment tab feature, although I wish it was possible to review comments in a way that screened contributors whom I know to be non-spammer, as about 90% of the comments on this blog have come from me or one of about eight regulars. Likewise, if I could protect these individuals from the spam filter, the false positive rate of the filter's spam detection would go way down. The good aspect of the Blogger comment tab feature is that it makes it much easier to be on the lookout for spam directed at old posts without having to shut down comments at those posts and without having to receive an e-mail every time a comment is made to the blog.
The biggest comment spam offenders are selling prescription drugs (sex and non-sex related), subprime lending (e.g. payday, mortgage and car title loans), criminal lawyers, personal injury lawyers, vacations, real estate, and jobs in third world countries.
I also removed one death threat directed at me by an anonymous poster in connection with a post about the anti-Islamic comic matter, which is notable and only the second death threat that I've ever received in my life. The other was a variant on the Nigerian money transfer scam which I received via e-mail a few years ago (and reported to the appropriate authorities), demanding a payoff or my life in short order.
Once the spam was removed, it turns out that there are roughly six comments on this blog for every ten posts. About half of them are from me, either as updated to old posts or in response to other comments. This leaves about three comments per ten posts from everyone else. Perhaps eighty percent of those (perhaps 750) are from the small group of people who comment regularly, about ten percent (perhaps 160) are on the dozen or so posts that have attracted a great deal of comment activity (Kent Hovind, Rich Dad-Poor Dad, Against Planners, New Orleans Is Doomed, Shane Co. bankuptcy, How Safe Are Motorcycles, and a few others). The rest are isolated comments to posts from people who don't comment regularly.
I also reviewed the spam filter cache that I didn't know that I had, which contained 44 comments at the time, of which about 4 were not spam (and were restored to the blog) and the rest were spam. It is annoying that legitimate comments were being withheld without my knowledge, but I know now and a 10% false positive rate isn't horrible.
The effort was made possible by the new Blogger comment tab feature, although I wish it was possible to review comments in a way that screened contributors whom I know to be non-spammer, as about 90% of the comments on this blog have come from me or one of about eight regulars. Likewise, if I could protect these individuals from the spam filter, the false positive rate of the filter's spam detection would go way down. The good aspect of the Blogger comment tab feature is that it makes it much easier to be on the lookout for spam directed at old posts without having to shut down comments at those posts and without having to receive an e-mail every time a comment is made to the blog.
The biggest comment spam offenders are selling prescription drugs (sex and non-sex related), subprime lending (e.g. payday, mortgage and car title loans), criminal lawyers, personal injury lawyers, vacations, real estate, and jobs in third world countries.
I also removed one death threat directed at me by an anonymous poster in connection with a post about the anti-Islamic comic matter, which is notable and only the second death threat that I've ever received in my life. The other was a variant on the Nigerian money transfer scam which I received via e-mail a few years ago (and reported to the appropriate authorities), demanding a payoff or my life in short order.
Once the spam was removed, it turns out that there are roughly six comments on this blog for every ten posts. About half of them are from me, either as updated to old posts or in response to other comments. This leaves about three comments per ten posts from everyone else. Perhaps eighty percent of those (perhaps 750) are from the small group of people who comment regularly, about ten percent (perhaps 160) are on the dozen or so posts that have attracted a great deal of comment activity (Kent Hovind, Rich Dad-Poor Dad, Against Planners, New Orleans Is Doomed, Shane Co. bankuptcy, How Safe Are Motorcycles, and a few others). The rest are isolated comments to posts from people who don't comment regularly.
18 January 2011
Key Piece of Genetic Autism Puzzle Discovered
Boys shows signs of autism spectrum disorders more often than girls. But, autism is strongly hereditary. What's going on? The most parsimonious assumption is that there are one or more X chromosome linked genes that are protective against problems created by autism causing genes elsewhere in the genome.
The DIA1R gene (which stands for "deleted in autism one related" because it influeces the expression of the autosomal DIA1 gene on chromosome 3 which is "deleted in autism") seems to fit the bill:
Another similar X linked gene with the same kind of protective role that was previously discovered was DDX53-PTCHD1.
Since girls have two X chromosomes and since one protective gene seems to provide at least some benefit even if that girl also has a deleted DIA1R gene, girls are more likely to have some protection from their deleterious autism related genes. But, a boy with a deleted DIA1R gene in his one X chromsome lacks to XLMR/autism spectrum disorder protective trait and shows more autism spectrum disorder or retardation symptoms. A girl with some, but not all of the protective X linked genes, may sometimes not be symptom free but may still experience a milder autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) than a boy who lacks more of these protective genes.
Since this basic genetic model involving autosomal autism causing traits that frequently arise by novel mutation and X linked protective genes was proposed in 2007, scientists have identified at least the two key X linked protective genes described above and have gained some insight into what at least one of them does. Researchers have also in the last three and a half years, increasingly come to conclude that there is not a single primary autism causing gene, although all of the known autism causing genes do appear to be dominant rather than recessive in effect.
Researchers also know that the gene DIA1, and probably other genes appear to contribute to autism, but that there also appear to be a whole host of other autism causing mutations. About two-thirds of these arise from new mutations in sperm cells that are not present in the parent, while the other third are inherited from a less symtomatic mother or a mildly symptomatic father, or both.
The brain chemistry system that genes like DIA1R and DDX53-PTCHD1 protect is apparently highly prone to malfunction from a large number of other genes, none of which is predominant as a cause of autism, perhaps because the process impacted is intricate and delicate, without these protective genes. But, we actually have only a dim idea of precisely which process or processes in the brain that autism disrupts, and in general. We know what happens when this process, whatever it is, goes wrong, in great detail, but not why a problem with this process causes this effect. This is, of course, unfortunate, since it is hard to treat autism in people who have it already until we have a better idea of what is broken that causes these symptoms. But, the more we can pin down the genes produce autism spectrum disorders, the more we can engage in a narrow and targeted effort to understand how this process in the brain works and what these genes do to disrupt its normal functioning.
The DIA1R gene (which stands for "deleted in autism one related" because it influeces the expression of the autosomal DIA1 gene on chromosome 3 which is "deleted in autism") seems to fit the bill:
[M]utations in DIA1R are associated with X-linked mental retardation (XLMR) and DIA1R deletion is associated with syndromes with ASD-like traits and/or XLMR. . . . [DIA1 and DIA1R synthesize two very similar] signal peptides for targeting to the secretory pathway [probably for the same system in the brain]. Both genes are ubiquitously expressed, including in fetal and adult brain tissue.
Another similar X linked gene with the same kind of protective role that was previously discovered was DDX53-PTCHD1.
Since girls have two X chromosomes and since one protective gene seems to provide at least some benefit even if that girl also has a deleted DIA1R gene, girls are more likely to have some protection from their deleterious autism related genes. But, a boy with a deleted DIA1R gene in his one X chromsome lacks to XLMR/autism spectrum disorder protective trait and shows more autism spectrum disorder or retardation symptoms. A girl with some, but not all of the protective X linked genes, may sometimes not be symptom free but may still experience a milder autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) than a boy who lacks more of these protective genes.
Since this basic genetic model involving autosomal autism causing traits that frequently arise by novel mutation and X linked protective genes was proposed in 2007, scientists have identified at least the two key X linked protective genes described above and have gained some insight into what at least one of them does. Researchers have also in the last three and a half years, increasingly come to conclude that there is not a single primary autism causing gene, although all of the known autism causing genes do appear to be dominant rather than recessive in effect.
Researchers also know that the gene DIA1, and probably other genes appear to contribute to autism, but that there also appear to be a whole host of other autism causing mutations. About two-thirds of these arise from new mutations in sperm cells that are not present in the parent, while the other third are inherited from a less symtomatic mother or a mildly symptomatic father, or both.
The brain chemistry system that genes like DIA1R and DDX53-PTCHD1 protect is apparently highly prone to malfunction from a large number of other genes, none of which is predominant as a cause of autism, perhaps because the process impacted is intricate and delicate, without these protective genes. But, we actually have only a dim idea of precisely which process or processes in the brain that autism disrupts, and in general. We know what happens when this process, whatever it is, goes wrong, in great detail, but not why a problem with this process causes this effect. This is, of course, unfortunate, since it is hard to treat autism in people who have it already until we have a better idea of what is broken that causes these symptoms. But, the more we can pin down the genes produce autism spectrum disorders, the more we can engage in a narrow and targeted effort to understand how this process in the brain works and what these genes do to disrupt its normal functioning.
Ivory Coast Type Election Issues In Cincinnati
Hamilton County, Ohio, whose principal city is Cincinnati, is faced with an election law issue pertaining to an open, elected partisan juvenile court judgeship election dispute upon which the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio Secretary of State have ruled one way (don't count the ballots), but a federal district court judge, Chief Judge Susan J. Dlott of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio has reached a contrary result.
What is the Board of Elections member (the Board itself is split two to two and does not agree) to do? The officials in question now face a contempt of court hearing today, which puts the officials at risk of personally going to jail or being fined, for failing to honor a federal court order that is contrary to a state court order.
Generally, elections are matters of state law. But, if a federal constitutional right or federal statute is implicated, federal law supersedes state law. And, while the 11th Amendment prevents state governments from having to deal with cases in federal trial courts, state and local government officials in suits not seeking money damages and arising under federal law, and suits against governmental entities distinct from state governments are not subject to that limitations. Doctrines that one learns when studying the federal courts generally provide that a final ruling of either a federal court or state court is binding on the parties who may not then forum shop for another judge with a more favorable outlook on the case. In particular, a federal trial court may not generally sit as an appellate body with regard to a state court ruling in a civil matter. But, since the law in this federal v. state jurisdiction area is so complex, even in cases arising out of purely state office elections (which are far simpler than cases arising out of federal elections, like Bush v. Gore, where a host of special constitutional rules apply), judicial rulings are sometimes hard to predict in this cases and judges come to different conclusions in the face of hot partisan conflict that often sees judges and elections officials lining up along the lines that their political histories would suggest, despite their duties to enforce the laws impartially.
Partisan, Personal and Federalism Issues Involved
There is a partisan dimension to this struggle as there is in most election law cases.
The Board of Elections is split two posts for Republicans, two for Democrats, split evenly by design.
The Ohio Secretary of State is an elected Republican and favors the Ohio Supreme Court position that lets the Republican judge win. Six of the seven officially non-partisan elected justices on the Ohio Supreme Court were nominated by the Republican party and known to have Republican affinities.
The Democrats on the Board, however, would like a recount, as the federal judge, who was appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat, in 1995 when Democrat John Glenn and Republican Mike DeWine were U.S. Senators from Ohio, has ordered. Dayton native Dlott is married to Stanley M. Chesley (a trial lawyer more familiar to me than almost any lawyer in Denver by name, despite the fact that I haven't lived in the area for a copule of decades), lives in the most expensive single-family home ever listed in Greater Cincinnati, shows dogs, and has won praise for her racial sensitivity and even handed management and resolution of complex cases.
The Secretary of State is (by design) normally a partisan tie breaker for county boards of election, in this case on the issue of whether the federal court ruling should be appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. If the 6th Circuit overules the trial judge, the conflict between the courts no longer exists, but, should the United States Court of Appeal for the 6th Circuit (which is neither particular conservative nor particularly liberal as federal appellate courts go in the United States at the moment) affirm the trial court's ruling (in which she is entitled to considerable deferrence in a number of respects), its authority vis-a-vis the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling is just as ambiguous as the trial court's ruling. Only the U.S. Supreme Court has clear jurisdiction over both the state and the federal judges in this case.
The case also pits concerns about federal involvement in state and local government operations against concerns about fairness in elections in a system controlled by political allies of the aggrieved candidate. Stereotypically (for modern times), it is the Republicans who are pressing a state's rights argument in this case, and the Democrats who are pressing for federal involvement in the interest of civil rights.
There is also a perceived racial element to the contest. Hamilton County is 70% white and 25% African-American, with the African-American population predominantly in Cincinnati, the central city, ahd the white population disproportionately in suburban Hamilton County. Democrat Tracie Hunter, a former public defender and guardian ad litem, who is also a pastor and radio personality is an African-American woman, while Republican John Williams, a former prosecutor campaigning with a tough on crime agenda in a court where most of the defendants are African-American juveniles and African-American parents, is a white man whose website prominently displays white Hamilton county suburbanites in the background, in a county just on the border between Northern leaning Ohio and Southern leaning border state Kentucky.
To be perfectly honest, if I had been forced to vote in that election, I wouldn't have been terribly happy with either of my choices. Both candidates are partisans seeking a post that demands neutrality and evenhandedness.
Voters were very evenly split in the race, and usually, in this kind of situation, where a significant number of provisional ballots are at issue, a recount will favor a Democrat. It wouldn't be surprising for an apparently heavy handed or partial ruling to lead to a riot in Cincinnati.
The Stakes
This all sounds like a very technical issue of civil procedure and election law, with valid legal considerations on both sides of the case.
The outcome of this case won't directly affect anyone who doesn't do have a connection to Hamilton County Juvenile Court, a county where 99.7% of the population of the United States doesn't live, and with which 95%+ of the population of Hamilton County will never have any business. It has one other judge in addition to the position at stake in this election, and the Juvenile Court's rulings are very important to those who are before the court, and who in making child custody decisions and juvenile delinquency sentencing decisions has immense discretion.
Life will go on with either resolution of the matter, so long as it is resolved, and there is really no room for compromise. Neither candidate has shown any basis for a do over of the election, only one can be elected for a long term to the only judgeship on the court, and the judicial ideologies and the personal experiences that the candidates bring to the court are very different. Either way, unhappen litigants can try to appeal rulings without a proper legal basis.
Cote D'Ivoire Compared
But, while this particular case in Ohio won't change the world, an extremely similar legal issue in Cote D'Ivoire's 2010 Presidential election, in West Africa, in a country only a little larger in size and area than Ohio (it has 20.6 million people up by a third in the last decade alone, while Ohio has about 11.5 million although probably a similar number of adults of voting age; it has 124,502 square miles, while Ohio has 44,825 square miles; both have strong regional and ethnic partisan divides), in which a Board of Elections and independent election observers came to one conclusion on the outcome of a contested election dispute arising out of vote counting concerns (in favor of the contesting candidate Alassane Ouattara), while the Constitutional Court of the country came to a contrary determination (in favor of the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo).
The election dispute in Cote D'Ivoire has brought that country to the brink of civil war, despite the absence of a complicated mix of federal courts. Scores or hundreds of people have died already in the several week old dispute. The international community has sided with the challenger (in part on the merits, and in part because the incumbent has manipulated the electoral process in undemocratic ways that were to be put behind the country in free and fair elections in 2010), while the incumbent appears to have practical control of most instruments of state power in the country.
UPDATE: The 6th Circuit has entered a stay in the case. All the original source documents you could ever want can be found here.
What is the Board of Elections member (the Board itself is split two to two and does not agree) to do? The officials in question now face a contempt of court hearing today, which puts the officials at risk of personally going to jail or being fined, for failing to honor a federal court order that is contrary to a state court order.
Generally, elections are matters of state law. But, if a federal constitutional right or federal statute is implicated, federal law supersedes state law. And, while the 11th Amendment prevents state governments from having to deal with cases in federal trial courts, state and local government officials in suits not seeking money damages and arising under federal law, and suits against governmental entities distinct from state governments are not subject to that limitations. Doctrines that one learns when studying the federal courts generally provide that a final ruling of either a federal court or state court is binding on the parties who may not then forum shop for another judge with a more favorable outlook on the case. In particular, a federal trial court may not generally sit as an appellate body with regard to a state court ruling in a civil matter. But, since the law in this federal v. state jurisdiction area is so complex, even in cases arising out of purely state office elections (which are far simpler than cases arising out of federal elections, like Bush v. Gore, where a host of special constitutional rules apply), judicial rulings are sometimes hard to predict in this cases and judges come to different conclusions in the face of hot partisan conflict that often sees judges and elections officials lining up along the lines that their political histories would suggest, despite their duties to enforce the laws impartially.
Republican John Williams leads Democrat Tracie Hunter by 23 votes in the official count, but the parties disagree on how to handle 849 provisional ballots that were not counted.
The ballots were set aside on Election Day because poll workers believed they were cast at the wrong precinct.
Dlott, however, has said 149 of those ballots were cast at the wrong precinct because of poll worker error and should be counted. Many may have been cast at the wrong table even though voters cast their ballot in the right building.
The [federal] judge said failing to count ballots that were disregarded through no fault of the voter would violate the 14th Amendment’s requirement that all citizens receive equal protection under the law.
Partisan, Personal and Federalism Issues Involved
There is a partisan dimension to this struggle as there is in most election law cases.
The Board of Elections is split two posts for Republicans, two for Democrats, split evenly by design.
The Ohio Secretary of State is an elected Republican and favors the Ohio Supreme Court position that lets the Republican judge win. Six of the seven officially non-partisan elected justices on the Ohio Supreme Court were nominated by the Republican party and known to have Republican affinities.
The Democrats on the Board, however, would like a recount, as the federal judge, who was appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat, in 1995 when Democrat John Glenn and Republican Mike DeWine were U.S. Senators from Ohio, has ordered. Dayton native Dlott is married to Stanley M. Chesley (a trial lawyer more familiar to me than almost any lawyer in Denver by name, despite the fact that I haven't lived in the area for a copule of decades), lives in the most expensive single-family home ever listed in Greater Cincinnati, shows dogs, and has won praise for her racial sensitivity and even handed management and resolution of complex cases.
The Secretary of State is (by design) normally a partisan tie breaker for county boards of election, in this case on the issue of whether the federal court ruling should be appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. If the 6th Circuit overules the trial judge, the conflict between the courts no longer exists, but, should the United States Court of Appeal for the 6th Circuit (which is neither particular conservative nor particularly liberal as federal appellate courts go in the United States at the moment) affirm the trial court's ruling (in which she is entitled to considerable deferrence in a number of respects), its authority vis-a-vis the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling is just as ambiguous as the trial court's ruling. Only the U.S. Supreme Court has clear jurisdiction over both the state and the federal judges in this case.
The case also pits concerns about federal involvement in state and local government operations against concerns about fairness in elections in a system controlled by political allies of the aggrieved candidate. Stereotypically (for modern times), it is the Republicans who are pressing a state's rights argument in this case, and the Democrats who are pressing for federal involvement in the interest of civil rights.
There is also a perceived racial element to the contest. Hamilton County is 70% white and 25% African-American, with the African-American population predominantly in Cincinnati, the central city, ahd the white population disproportionately in suburban Hamilton County. Democrat Tracie Hunter, a former public defender and guardian ad litem, who is also a pastor and radio personality is an African-American woman, while Republican John Williams, a former prosecutor campaigning with a tough on crime agenda in a court where most of the defendants are African-American juveniles and African-American parents, is a white man whose website prominently displays white Hamilton county suburbanites in the background, in a county just on the border between Northern leaning Ohio and Southern leaning border state Kentucky.
To be perfectly honest, if I had been forced to vote in that election, I wouldn't have been terribly happy with either of my choices. Both candidates are partisans seeking a post that demands neutrality and evenhandedness.
Voters were very evenly split in the race, and usually, in this kind of situation, where a significant number of provisional ballots are at issue, a recount will favor a Democrat. It wouldn't be surprising for an apparently heavy handed or partial ruling to lead to a riot in Cincinnati.
The Stakes
This all sounds like a very technical issue of civil procedure and election law, with valid legal considerations on both sides of the case.
The outcome of this case won't directly affect anyone who doesn't do have a connection to Hamilton County Juvenile Court, a county where 99.7% of the population of the United States doesn't live, and with which 95%+ of the population of Hamilton County will never have any business. It has one other judge in addition to the position at stake in this election, and the Juvenile Court's rulings are very important to those who are before the court, and who in making child custody decisions and juvenile delinquency sentencing decisions has immense discretion.
Life will go on with either resolution of the matter, so long as it is resolved, and there is really no room for compromise. Neither candidate has shown any basis for a do over of the election, only one can be elected for a long term to the only judgeship on the court, and the judicial ideologies and the personal experiences that the candidates bring to the court are very different. Either way, unhappen litigants can try to appeal rulings without a proper legal basis.
Cote D'Ivoire Compared
But, while this particular case in Ohio won't change the world, an extremely similar legal issue in Cote D'Ivoire's 2010 Presidential election, in West Africa, in a country only a little larger in size and area than Ohio (it has 20.6 million people up by a third in the last decade alone, while Ohio has about 11.5 million although probably a similar number of adults of voting age; it has 124,502 square miles, while Ohio has 44,825 square miles; both have strong regional and ethnic partisan divides), in which a Board of Elections and independent election observers came to one conclusion on the outcome of a contested election dispute arising out of vote counting concerns (in favor of the contesting candidate Alassane Ouattara), while the Constitutional Court of the country came to a contrary determination (in favor of the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo).
The election dispute in Cote D'Ivoire has brought that country to the brink of civil war, despite the absence of a complicated mix of federal courts. Scores or hundreds of people have died already in the several week old dispute. The international community has sided with the challenger (in part on the merits, and in part because the incumbent has manipulated the electoral process in undemocratic ways that were to be put behind the country in free and fair elections in 2010), while the incumbent appears to have practical control of most instruments of state power in the country.
UPDATE: The 6th Circuit has entered a stay in the case. All the original source documents you could ever want can be found here.
Fungi Are Gender Benders
One of the most fascinating discoveries that I made as a 9th grader sitting in the high school greenhouse taking biology at Talawanda High School was that there are some kinds of living things that have reproductive cycles far more complicated than that of simply dividing cloning cells, two gender system vertebrates, and multi-stage life cycle creatures like frogs (who early on look like fish called tadpoles) and butterflies (if you mother didn't tell you about the butterfly life cycle, you must have been an exceptionally beautiful and graceful child).
A received an echo of that moment again reading "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer, a little while ago, that has a story within a story sketch about an alien life form with a more complicated than two gender reproductive system.
Among the only reproductive concepts that have rivalled this revelation since then, most of which I have encountered first in science fiction, are the notion that viruses can change genomes, the discovery that some kinds of vertebrates can have virgin births in certain circumstances, the discovery that one can have mixed paternity twins (or even more amazingly mixed DNA individuals), the discovery that we are probably part Neanderthal, and the notion that ancient DNA might be used to create living versions of extinct creatures a la Jurassic Park: Japan has set out to resurrect the Mammoth by 2015.
Then, I came across a post at Replicated Typo today that recalled that moment for me. You see, some of the most complex reproductive systems of any living things are fungi.
There is a linguistic angle in the original post on gender agreement in language, but quite frankly, it doesn't interest me. But, amazing complex versions of sex do. What benefit do mushrooms receive from their more elaborate forms of reproduction? Are there downsides to it? How does it work? What are the general patterns of the diversity in reproductive arrangement in fungi?
I'm already familiar to some extent with fungi weirdness. In some ways they are more like animals (e.g. they don't generally produce their own food through photosynthesis). In other ways they are more like plants (e.g. they are generally sessile). Some fungi produces remarkable neurological responses. Fungi colonies have also proven to be far more elaborate multi-species ecosystems than most people had realized with lots of undiscovered complexity. But, complex reproductive mechanisms adds a whole new dimension to the brew. And, in an age where we may be nearing the "end of science" in physics and inorganic chemistry, seriously unexplored territory in biology is the place to learn new things whose utility was not previously recognized. Also, because researching fungi involves far less expensive laboratory equipment and conditions and staffing requirements than many other areas of science, while having an unusually large share of unanswered questions, it presents that possibility of pretty small scale scientific pioneers out of anywhere discovering cool new things.
More deeply, and more to the point of the linguistics post cited, how does being forced to look at issues of gender in a far more generalized and complex way than we are now aware that human neurodiversity involves in sometimes rare permutations (male, female; gay, bi, straight; butch-femme; cis and trans gender; dimensions of gender; archaic human-modern human hybrids, etc.) enlighten our thinking about the combinations and interactions encountered by humans.
The details of how fungi do it in interesting systems will have to wait for future posts. But, I wanted to note some access points to start looking into again before the thought left me.
A received an echo of that moment again reading "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer, a little while ago, that has a story within a story sketch about an alien life form with a more complicated than two gender reproductive system.
Among the only reproductive concepts that have rivalled this revelation since then, most of which I have encountered first in science fiction, are the notion that viruses can change genomes, the discovery that some kinds of vertebrates can have virgin births in certain circumstances, the discovery that one can have mixed paternity twins (or even more amazingly mixed DNA individuals), the discovery that we are probably part Neanderthal, and the notion that ancient DNA might be used to create living versions of extinct creatures a la Jurassic Park: Japan has set out to resurrect the Mammoth by 2015.
Then, I came across a post at Replicated Typo today that recalled that moment for me. You see, some of the most complex reproductive systems of any living things are fungi.
Their reproductive mechanisms is rather unexpectedly complex, in that the normal conventions of sex do not apply. Not all fungi reproduce sexually, and many are isogamous, meaning that their gametes look the same and differ only in certain alleles in certain areas called mating-type regions. Some fungi only have two mating types, which would give the illusion of being like animal genders. However, others, like Schizophyllum commune, have over ten thousand (although these interact in an odd way, such that they’re only productive if the mating regions are highly compatible (Uyenoyama 2005)).
Some fungi are homothallic, meaning that self-mating and reproduction is possible. This means that a spore has within it two dissimilar nuclei, ready to mate – the button mushroom apparently does this (yes, the kind you buy in a supermarket.) Heterothallic fungi, on the other hand, merely needs to find another fungi that isn’t the same mating type – which is pretty easy, if there are hundreds of options. Other types of fungi can’t reproduce together, but can vegetatively blend together to share resources, interestingly enough. Think of mind-melding, like Spock. Alternatively, think of mycelia fusing together to share resources.
In short, the system is ridiculously confusing, and not at all like the simple bipolar genders of, say, humans (if we take the canonical view of human gender, meaning only two.) I’m still trying to find adequate research on the origins of this sort of system. Understandably, it’s difficult. Mycologists agree:
“The molecular genetical studies of the past ten years have revealed a genetic fluidity in fungi that could never have been imagined. Transposons and other mobile elements can switch the mating types of fungi and cause chromosonal rearrangements. Deletions of mitochondrial genes can accumulate as either symptomless plasmids or as disruptive elements leading to cellular senescence…[in summary,] many aspects of the genetic fluidity of fungi remain to be resolved, and probably many more remain to be discovered.” (Deacon, 1997: pg. 157)
There is a linguistic angle in the original post on gender agreement in language, but quite frankly, it doesn't interest me. But, amazing complex versions of sex do. What benefit do mushrooms receive from their more elaborate forms of reproduction? Are there downsides to it? How does it work? What are the general patterns of the diversity in reproductive arrangement in fungi?
I'm already familiar to some extent with fungi weirdness. In some ways they are more like animals (e.g. they don't generally produce their own food through photosynthesis). In other ways they are more like plants (e.g. they are generally sessile). Some fungi produces remarkable neurological responses. Fungi colonies have also proven to be far more elaborate multi-species ecosystems than most people had realized with lots of undiscovered complexity. But, complex reproductive mechanisms adds a whole new dimension to the brew. And, in an age where we may be nearing the "end of science" in physics and inorganic chemistry, seriously unexplored territory in biology is the place to learn new things whose utility was not previously recognized. Also, because researching fungi involves far less expensive laboratory equipment and conditions and staffing requirements than many other areas of science, while having an unusually large share of unanswered questions, it presents that possibility of pretty small scale scientific pioneers out of anywhere discovering cool new things.
More deeply, and more to the point of the linguistics post cited, how does being forced to look at issues of gender in a far more generalized and complex way than we are now aware that human neurodiversity involves in sometimes rare permutations (male, female; gay, bi, straight; butch-femme; cis and trans gender; dimensions of gender; archaic human-modern human hybrids, etc.) enlighten our thinking about the combinations and interactions encountered by humans.
The details of how fungi do it in interesting systems will have to wait for future posts. But, I wanted to note some access points to start looking into again before the thought left me.
17 January 2011
Does Recidivist Sentencing Work?
Making the length of a prison sentence conditional on an individual’s offense history is shown to be a powerful way of preventing crime. Under a law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001, prolific offenders could be sentenced to a prison term that was some ten times longer than usual. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in the moment of introduction and the frequency of application across 12 urban areas to identify the effect. We find the sentence enhancements to have dramatically reduced theft rates. The size of the crime-reducing effect is found to be subject to sharply diminishing returns.
From the abstract to Preventing Crime Through Selective Incapacitation by Ben Vollaard.
Some highlights:
[J]udges almost exclusively sentenced drug-using, older individuals under the law for whom there was thought to be no hope of preventing high-rate offending by any other means than incapacitation. Most of the convicted offenders were not able to maintain a normal life style. They were out of work and did not have stable housing. They committed theft for a living, collecting a daily income of some 50 to 100 euro ($70-130) to be able to maintain their habit, which implies stealing property valuing some 300 to 600 euro ($400-800) on a daily basis. By 2001, many of these highly prolific offenders were aged 40 or over: they had fallen victim of the heroin epidemic that swept Europe back in the 1980s. The offenders spent some three to four months in prison each year in absence of the new law, and some had as many as 300 offenses on their criminal record. On average, offenders had been convicted 31 times prior to being sentenced under the habitual offender law. The enhanced prison sentence was not only meant to reduce crime through incapacitation but to provide a window for coercive treatment as well. Incarceration was often combined with drug treatment and other rehabilitative services, such as social skills training. Evaluations of the law suggest the treatment programs had little effect on recidivism. . . .
The offense data show that 85 percent of all offenses known to the police were committed within the urban area an offender has been assigned to. The other 15 percent of offenses were mostly committed in smaller communities directly bordering the urban area. . . .
[T]he rate of theft is some 30 to 40 percent lower as a result of selective incapacitation of prolific offenders. The size of the drop in crime corresponds with the results of some back-of-the-envelope calculations. If 1,200 offenders are responsible for 70 percent of crime, as we argued above, then the close to 700 offenders serving time under the law by mid-2007 are responsible for 40 percent of crime. . . . The crime-reducing effect of the law is smaller than this percentage share, however, since some of the offenders would have been doing time also in absence of the law. Assuming 8 additional months of incarceration per year as a result of the law, the drop in crime can be put at some 30 percent, which is close to what we find. . . . under the assumption that the affected offenders spend 8 additional months in prison per year, the law prevents some 80 thefts from car and 9 domestic burglaries annually per long term incapacitated offender. That implies that the costs per crime prevented are equal to some 600 euros. In other words, if the social costs of a domestic burglary and a theft from car are higher than 600 euros, then the policy is welfare improving. Estimates of the costs of crime are surrounded by controversy. Ex post approaches estimate the cost of crime that has already occurred to identifiable victims. Based on jury awards, Roman (2009) estimates the average costs of a burglary to be $4,444 (3,300 euro). Accounting for all of the costs that are known to be related to crime, including damage and the costs of use of the criminal justice system, the Home Office produces a somewhat higher estimate of the costs of a burglary of 4,600 euro ($6,000) per incident. A separate estimate for the cost of a theft from car is only available from the Home Office study, which puts it at 1,200 euro ($1,600) per incident. . . .
A habitual offender law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001 allowed for a two to three year prison sentence for offenders with ten or more offenses on their criminal record. Although the group of offenders sentenced under the law accounted for only 5 percent of the prison population six years after its introduction, the sentencing policy lowered the rate of burglary and theft from car by an estimated 40 percent through the incapacitation effect alone. The estimated impact of the law is large, but in line with self-reported crime. In addition, police counts of active prolific offenders are found to go down proportionally with the number of prolific offenders serving extra time in prison as a result of the law. . . .
Even for this highly selective sentencing policy that only affected 1,400 offenders in the period 2001-2007 we find evidence for rapidly decreasing returns to scale. The marginal crime-reducing effect of incapacitating another prolific offender declines by more than half from the lowest to the highest rate of application of the law. The benefit-cost ratio drops sharply when more offenders are serving time under the habitual offender law. The social returns to selective incarceration remain positive over the whole range of application of the policy, however. . . .
The incapacitation effect may be particularly large in the case of the Netherlands as the habitual offender law primarily affected offenders that were addicted to drugs, heroin in particular. These offenders tend to have an age-crime curve that is flatter than that of other groups of offenders – even other prolific offenders. Possible negative effects of longer prison sentences on the life of offenders such as disruption of employment, relationships and housing were limited as most of the affected offenders were out of work and did not have stable housing.
The Dutch policy of selective incapacitation started from a low base. The rate of incarceration in the Netherlands around 2001 was similar to the rate in the beginning of the 1970s in the US, for instance. Enhancing prison sentences of a few weeks or months to three years is likely to have a greater payoff in terms of preventing crime than enhancing prison sentences that are already many years long. To compare: an enhanced prison sentence for burglary of 2 to 3 years based on the Dutch habitual offender law is comparable to the default sentence for burglary in the United States. Our finding that the habitual offender law adopted in the Netherlands had a large incapacitation effect should therefore not be interpreted as evidence that all policies of selective incapacitation are likely to have a similarly favorable cost-benefit ratio. Given the rapidly diminishing returns to incarceration, the high costs of the enhanced prison sentences may soon exceed the benefits of crime prevented.
The delicacy with which the Dutch approach a very modest habitual offender law that applies only to those with ten previous offenses (although many of those would be misdemeanors under U.S. law and generally not within habitual offender provisions except under laws that allow aggravation of multiple theft amounts into a single felony theft prosecution), is itself fascinating. Habitual non-violent felony property crime defendants in Colorado and most U.S. states receive sentences many times as long.
Also, the fact that someone in the Dutch public policy process is even seriously trying to quantify the cost-benefit ratio of incarcerating habitual thieves for long periods of time, and considering even the economic impact of the sentence on the thieves themselves, is itself interesting. So too is the fact that somebody in the Dutch criminal justice policy making world finds bicycle thefts, larcenies from cars, and non-violent burglaries of unoccupied dwellings worth of interest at all. By comparison, most American criminal justice policymakers are so interested in reducing violent crime that any other objective is virtually irrelevant.
Felony Sentencing In The United States
A link to the latest data on felony sentencing in the United State can be found here (almost no state or national level statistics are kept on misdemeanor sentencing apart from overall jail incarceration rates, records of court cases commenced, and sometimes a distinction between the share of those in jail who are awaiting trial and those who are actually convicted). This year's highlights:
* In 2006 an estimated 69% of all persons convicted of a felony in state courts were sentenced to a period of confinement--41% to state prison and 28% to local jails.
* State prison sentences averaged 4 years and 11 months in 2006.
* Men (83%) accounted for a larger percentage of persons convicted of a felony, compared to their percentage (49%) of the adult population.
* Most (94%) felony offenders sentenced in 2006 pleaded guilty.
Jury trial rates do not exceed 5% for any category of crimes other than serious violent crimes. Even 61% of murder convictions are the result of guilty pleas.
The average burglary sentence in the U.S. in 2006 was 44 months of incarceration where incarceration is imposed (median 24 months), and the average larceny sentence was 22 months (median 12 months) of incarceration where incarceration is imposed. Of course, many and probably most of those sentences don't involve recidivist offenders.
Life sentences are imposed in the U.S. in about 25% of murders, 5% of rapes, 1.5% of robberies, 0.8% of non-rape sexual assault cases, 0.6% of aggravated assaults, 0.4% of other violent crimes, and 0.1% of non-violent crimes for which incarceration in prison is imposed as a sentence.
Surprisingly, no fine is imposed in 55% or more of cases for every particular kind of felony. Overall, fines are not imposed 62% of the time.
Colorado Sentencing in 2009
In Colorado, there were 42 habitual offender commitments to prison in fiscal year 2009 (see page 23 of the pdf), compared to 26-66 per year in years since 2005. These included a 40 year sentence for forgery, a 25 year sentence for burglary, four cases with an average 36 year sentence for burglary, three theft sentences of an average of 18 years each, four for trespassing or criminal mischief for an average of 11 years each, a 6 year forgery sentence, a 6 year perjury sentence, and an 11 year trespassing/criminal mischief sentence. Three habitual offender sentences were for escape, fourteen were for violent or weapon related crimes, six were for drug crimes, and two were for a felony traffic offense. All but one of the 42 habitual offenders were men and the trigger for habitual offender sentencing is two or three prior felonies of the relevant type under each habitual offender statute (there are several). While these terms are long, they are far more lenient in most cases than under California's controversial three strikes law. The average Colorado prisoner serves about half their full sentence due to good time and other considerations.
About 3% of offenders in Colorado prisons were sentenced under habitual criminal statutes. In all there were 22,961 people in Colorado prisons as of June 30, 2009. Another 12,773 were on parole.
The "need assessments" of Colorado prisoners is always notable.
Educationally, just 1% of those admitted to prison had an associates degree or more education although about 11% have some college, while 37% lacked a high school diploma with 36% being at least functionally illiterates who needed adult basic education instruction, rather than high school level GED instruction which would be too advanced for them. About two-thirds of those with either a high school diploma or GED had a GED rather than a high school diploma. So, less than a quarter of Colorado prison inmates graduated from high school in the ordinary course. In Colorado as a whole, 11% lack a high school diploma or GED, 89% of the age 25+ population has at least a high school diploma or GED, 65% have at least some college, 43% have an associates degree or higher degree, and 33% have a bachelor's degree.
About 8% had an IQ of under 81. A moderate to severe mental health problem is an issue for 30%. A moderate to severe substance abuse problem is an issue for 79%. A moderate to severe medical problem is present in 15%. Sex offenders make up 11% with another 5% suspected of having sex offense histories who are not convicted. An absence of adequate skills to get a job is a factor for 42%. Mental health needs differed considerably based on gender. A moderate to severe mental health problem was an issue for 22% of men and 55% of women.
The DOC doesn't include crosstabs in its annual report or relate needs data to recidivism data, although some data along that line are collected in a separate report and here. Offenders with mental health issues are slightly more likely to lack of high school diploma or GED (31%-32% v. 28%), to lack job skills (94% v. 91%), to be sex offenders (22%-24% v. 18%), to have substance abuse problems (80%-83% v. 78%) and to have anger issues (40%-41% v. 39%) than other inmates. They are much more likely to have medical problems (25%-28% depending on severity v. 16%), to have IQ below 81 (about 8% v. 4%), and to have suicidality issues (about 21% to 30% depending on severity v. 9%). Only 30% of inmates without a substance abuse problem have a high school diploma and 24% have neither that nor a GED.
Some mental health data don't make much sense. Those who were classified as having mental health issues often had prior psychiatric hospitalization (18%-24% depending on severity) and out patient mental health treatment (42%-47% depending on severity), but among those not classified as having mental health issues, 5% had prior psychiatriic hospitalization and 27% had prior outpatient mental health treatment, suggesting significant underdiagnosis of mental health issues by the DOC. Among those with mental health issues 23%-34% had a history of psychotropic medications, but so did 4% of those not so classified. Notably, less than 1% of inmates with mental health issues had a prior not guilty by reason of insanity case.
The most common mental health conditions were drug addiction, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, schitzophrenia and psychotic disorders, dsythmic disorders, "disorders usually diagnosed in childhood" like ADHD, and "sexual and gender identity disorders" 1%. In all 34% of disciplinary violations were attributed to the 25% of inmates classified as having mental health issues in the detailed study on the issue, and these inmates were much more likely to be in solitary confinement or "close" supervision than other inmmates (23%-24% v. 11%), despite generally similar offense severity.
The overall percentage of inmates with moderate to severe needs in some category other than job skills (which almost all inmates seem to lack) is probably in excess of 90%, and once job skills are considered is probably in excess of 95%.
The DOC also doesn't detail good time forfeitures or gang crime connections in its annual report, although it tracks both. About 7% of Colorado inmates are eligible for deportation upon release because they are not U.S. citizens. About 9% are foreign born (the same as the 9% of the general Colorado population that is foreign born foreign born), but the remainder are U.S. citizens not eligible for deportation. Colorado's inmates are 45% Anglo, 32% Hispanic, 20% African American, 3% Native American and 1% Asian. Colorado as a whole is 71% Anglo, 20% Hispanic, 4% African American, 1% Native American and 3% Asian.
For prisoners released in 2005 and for prisoners released in 2006, the three year return to prison rate was 53.2% (a little higher for men, a little lower for women). The largest proportions of returns to prison are for technical violations of parole. For example, looking at the cohort released in 2004, the percentage of the cohort commiting ofirst time technical violations or new crimes by number of years from release is as follows:
---------------New Crime----------Technical Violation
Year 1----------8.8%------------------24.1%
Year 2----------6.2%-------------------7.8%
Year 3----------3.6%-------------------1.9%
Year 4----------2.3%-------------------0.4%
Year 5----------1.8%-------------------0.3%
Even a 1.8% crime conviction rate per year is huge compared to the general population. But, inmates in Colorado prisons are highly atypical of the general population in a variety of "needs" categories as well as in having a history of having seriously violated the law. About 43%, however, will go five years from release from prison without a single technical violation forcing their return to prison or new crime, and about 77% will not be returned to prison for a new crime in that five year time period.
Recidivism rates are higher for those with moderate mental health issues than those with none or those with severe mental health issues.
The average annual cost of incarcerating an inmate in Colorado was $32,338 in fiscal year 2009. The state has 23 prisons. None of them was under 100% of capacity. Twelve were over 100% of capacity, in one case at 186% of capacity (Skyline Correctional Center). The state prison system employs more than 6,000 people full time. State prison populations did almost hold steady in 2009 (increasing by only 189 inmates), however, after many years of steady and rapid prison population growth due to both decreased admissions and increased releases. New crime convictions leading to prison sentences declined, while technical parole violations rose.
Community and Family Choirs
I've sung in many choirs - church youth choirs, school choirs, college chorals, and a community choral in Auckland among them. Most are targeted at singers of a particular age and faith. There are a number of choirs not affiliated with a particular church or educational institution, but most of these are highly selective audition only affairs oriented towards performing rather than experiencing music.
But, there is an emerging trend to develop choirs that serve entire communities rather than particular churches, and are inclusive in terms of ability expectations, such as the choirs of the Ubuntu Choirs Network (with many choirs in coastal British Columbia, two elsewhere in Canada, four in Washington State, two in Virginia, one in New York City, two in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts, one in Los Angeles and one in Arkansas). As the network explains:
This word has become commonplace, although not always with understanding, as the name of a popular version of the Linux operating system.
Another parallel and not unrelated trend is for communities to develop "family choirs" a.k.a. intergenerational choirs, such as the Boston Intergenerational Chorus, The Harmonious Family Choir of Victoria, British Columbia, the Singing in the Rain Family Choir in Seattle, WA, the Joyful Noise Family Choir in New York City, the Family Folk Chorale based in Arlington, MA, and The All Together Now Family Chorus in the Boston area, the Leverett Community Chorus in Leverett, MA.
The trend seems to be driven powerfully by imitation in the Pacific Northwest and Massachusetts, both Yankee strongholds that are trending secular, with only a handful elsewhere at this point. It may reflect the desire of unchurched people or people in mainline churches with fading memberships to enjoy the joy of choral singing that is hard to find in other institutions. It may reflect a trend toward reviving social capital in communities after a long period in which it has subsided. It may simply reflect some successful efforts to do something entirely new in a couple of places that have been copied because they worked. It will be interesting to see how this cultural trend evolves.
But, there is an emerging trend to develop choirs that serve entire communities rather than particular churches, and are inclusive in terms of ability expectations, such as the choirs of the Ubuntu Choirs Network (with many choirs in coastal British Columbia, two elsewhere in Canada, four in Washington State, two in Virginia, one in New York City, two in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts, one in Los Angeles and one in Arkansas). As the network explains:
“I am because we are.” This ancient concept, expressed in the Zulu word ubuntu, is at the root of many of the world’s wisdom traditions. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said so well: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. This is the interrelated structure of all reality. You can never be what you ought to be until I become what I ought to be.” The spirit of ubuntu reminds us of the power of joining soulfully with others.
This word has become commonplace, although not always with understanding, as the name of a popular version of the Linux operating system.
Another parallel and not unrelated trend is for communities to develop "family choirs" a.k.a. intergenerational choirs, such as the Boston Intergenerational Chorus, The Harmonious Family Choir of Victoria, British Columbia, the Singing in the Rain Family Choir in Seattle, WA, the Joyful Noise Family Choir in New York City, the Family Folk Chorale based in Arlington, MA, and The All Together Now Family Chorus in the Boston area, the Leverett Community Chorus in Leverett, MA.
The trend seems to be driven powerfully by imitation in the Pacific Northwest and Massachusetts, both Yankee strongholds that are trending secular, with only a handful elsewhere at this point. It may reflect the desire of unchurched people or people in mainline churches with fading memberships to enjoy the joy of choral singing that is hard to find in other institutions. It may reflect a trend toward reviving social capital in communities after a long period in which it has subsided. It may simply reflect some successful efforts to do something entirely new in a couple of places that have been copied because they worked. It will be interesting to see how this cultural trend evolves.
Wal-Mart and Target
Wal-Mart and Target are the two leading players in the discount retail industry right now. This didn't happen in a day, however. Each chain opened its first store of that brand, in Arkansas and Minnesota respectively, in 1962.
The Minimal 2012 Presidential Race Map
The Big Orange One has a nice map and post showing the amount of backsliding that could be tolerated with new census figures and the same relative political strength from state to state in order for Obama to win in 2012 (about eight percentage points). Obama could win while not securing Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, but would need to capture Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Hampshire (as well as Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada) to do so.
In theory, Colorado is the swing state, by margin of victory, although, like the author, I don't really think it will turn out that way. I worry more about states like Iowa and Wisconsin. The analysis of a potential shift in Virginia, in light of its increasingly Northern political and cultural climate is also appropriate.
Notably, Wisconsin's GOP Chair was just elected to replace Michael Steele as the chair of the RNC, so they're on to this plan. But, ultimately it comes down to who runs on the Republican side and how the economy is doing in the fall of 2012. If the economy improved in the next year and a half, and the Republicans nominate an idiot as they did in the Colorado Governor's race in 2010, then life is good and President Obama is re-elected. If the economy continues to stall and the Republicans nominate a solid candidate (the prospects of which seem rather dim at this point), then President Obama loses.
In theory, Colorado is the swing state, by margin of victory, although, like the author, I don't really think it will turn out that way. I worry more about states like Iowa and Wisconsin. The analysis of a potential shift in Virginia, in light of its increasingly Northern political and cultural climate is also appropriate.
Notably, Wisconsin's GOP Chair was just elected to replace Michael Steele as the chair of the RNC, so they're on to this plan. But, ultimately it comes down to who runs on the Republican side and how the economy is doing in the fall of 2012. If the economy improved in the next year and a half, and the Republicans nominate an idiot as they did in the Colorado Governor's race in 2010, then life is good and President Obama is re-elected. If the economy continues to stall and the Republicans nominate a solid candidate (the prospects of which seem rather dim at this point), then President Obama loses.
14 January 2011
New Physics and the CKM Matrix
Educated lay people who are even passingly familiar with particle physics know about the six kinds of quarks, three kinds of electrons, three kinds of neutrinos, three weak particle force carriers, photons, gluons and if they are particularly at the top of their game, the way that anti-particles, color charge, parity and polarization permutate these basic components of the Standard Model.
Most pertinently for this discussion, there are two kinds of quarks that make up ordinary protons and neutrons. The up which has charge +2/3 and the down which has the charge -1/3. A proton is made up two ups and one down. A neutron is made of two downs and one up. A wide variety of other combinations can be formed, but none are stable. There are heavier versions of each kind of quark that fall into three "generations." One set from lightest to heaviest is up, charm, top. The other set from lightest to heaviest is down, strange, bottom. Particles with second or third generation quarks, on average, rapidly decay via the weak force to lighter particles.
Less widely known, because it doesn't appear in the chart illustrating the different fundamental particles that go into the Standard Model is the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix, which is universally known as the CKM matrix, because spelling out proper names is just not what physics majors like to do. (The parallel matrix for electrons and neutrinos is the Pontecorvo–Maki–Nakagawa–Sakata matrix (PMNS matrix) for which good estimates for all of the constants have not been determined.)
Basically, the CKM matrix is a three by three matrix that summarizes the constants in the Standard Model that determine probability that the weak force will convert one kind of quark into another and predicts that a certain amount of CP violation will exist. The entries in the matrix correspond to and have values according to experiments conducted to date of approximately:
Up-Down (0.9743) : Up-Strange (0.225) : Up-Bottom (0.0035)
Charm-Down (0.225) :Charm-Strange (0.9735) : Charm-Bottom (0.041)
Top-Down (0.0086) : Top-Strange (0.040) : Top-Bottom (0.99915)
The matrix has a number of properties that cause the nine different entry values to be derivable from less than nine constants. Lincoln Wolfensten's parameterization derives its values with formulas that have four parameters, with their approximate values as follows: λ (0.226), A (0.81), ρ (0.14), and η (0.35). In Wolfenstein's model four of the entries (ud, us, cd, cs) depend only on λ, entry tb is exactly equal to one, two entries (ts and cb) depend on both λ and A, and two entries (td and ub) depend on all four constants of his parameterization.
As explained in a recent post at the blog Résonaances:
The B-meson processes that have recently been producing beyond the Standard Model experimental CP violations that don't match the theoretical prediction are dependent upon parameters called ρ and η, which are numbers that must be between zero and one that influence the td and ub values in the CKM matrix. If Wolfenstein's parameterization is correct, the ub value should be (ρ-iη), where i is the square root of negative one, times A times λ cubed, while the td value should be (1-ρ-iη) times A times λ cubed.
It is possible to adjust values of ρ and η in the Standard Model to fit individual anamolous CP value results from experiments, but it is not quite possible to choose values for these parameters that predict results within three standard deviations of all of the experimental data, although if one believes that the published error estimates are underestimates, it is possible to get consistent values for these parameters that fit all of the data. The gap between the values that fit the experiments for ρ are comparatively modest -- the experimental best fits for individual experiments are between 0.1 and 0.2 and have significant error margins, so they almost reconcile. The canonical value of 0.135 for ρ is pretty close to an overlap of the error bars on existing measurements. The gap betwen the values that fit the experiments for η, which controls the magnitude of quark sector CP violations in the Standard Model, are bigger -- the best fit for one experiment for η is a little more than 0.45, while the best fit for another is a little less than 0.35.
If the experimental data's error bars are underestimated, then more experiments will reach consensus values for ρ and η that fit and make new physics in the quark flavor changing process unnecessary. But, if more experiments make it clear that there is no way that ρ and η can be chosen to fit the data, than Wolfenstein's parameterization is incorrect, the CKM matrix is "broken" and we need beyond the Standard Model physics to explain what we are observing.
For example, a "broken" CKM matrix could be an indication that there are actually four, rather than merely three generations of quarks, a possibility explored, for exampe, here. A four generation Standard Model would, if it existed, have a number of theoretical attractions:
Most pertinently for this discussion, there are two kinds of quarks that make up ordinary protons and neutrons. The up which has charge +2/3 and the down which has the charge -1/3. A proton is made up two ups and one down. A neutron is made of two downs and one up. A wide variety of other combinations can be formed, but none are stable. There are heavier versions of each kind of quark that fall into three "generations." One set from lightest to heaviest is up, charm, top. The other set from lightest to heaviest is down, strange, bottom. Particles with second or third generation quarks, on average, rapidly decay via the weak force to lighter particles.
Less widely known, because it doesn't appear in the chart illustrating the different fundamental particles that go into the Standard Model is the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix, which is universally known as the CKM matrix, because spelling out proper names is just not what physics majors like to do. (The parallel matrix for electrons and neutrinos is the Pontecorvo–Maki–Nakagawa–Sakata matrix (PMNS matrix) for which good estimates for all of the constants have not been determined.)
Basically, the CKM matrix is a three by three matrix that summarizes the constants in the Standard Model that determine probability that the weak force will convert one kind of quark into another and predicts that a certain amount of CP violation will exist. The entries in the matrix correspond to and have values according to experiments conducted to date of approximately:
Up-Down (0.9743) : Up-Strange (0.225) : Up-Bottom (0.0035)
Charm-Down (0.225) :Charm-Strange (0.9735) : Charm-Bottom (0.041)
Top-Down (0.0086) : Top-Strange (0.040) : Top-Bottom (0.99915)
The matrix has a number of properties that cause the nine different entry values to be derivable from less than nine constants. Lincoln Wolfensten's parameterization derives its values with formulas that have four parameters, with their approximate values as follows: λ (0.226), A (0.81), ρ (0.14), and η (0.35). In Wolfenstein's model four of the entries (ud, us, cd, cs) depend only on λ, entry tb is exactly equal to one, two entries (ts and cb) depend on both λ and A, and two entries (td and ub) depend on all four constants of his parameterization.
As explained in a recent post at the blog Résonaances:
During the last decade the Standard Model description of flavor transitions has been put to multiple tests, especially in the B-meson sector. [Ed.The B-meson is composed of a bottom antiquark and either an up, down, strange, or charm quark.] The overall agreement between theory and experiment is excellent. . . . Here and there, however, one finds a few glitches - most likely experimental flukes or underestimated theory errors but intriguing enough . . . . This year there has been a lot of commotion about the . . observation of the same sign di-muon asymmetry, since the Standard Model predicts this effect should be well below the current experimental precision. If the . . . result is confirmed, it would be a clear indication of new physics contribution to CP violation in the mixing of neutral B-mesons. Another, less publicized 3-sigma blip is the tension between:
* the CP asymmetry in the Bd meson decay into J/ψ + kaon,
* the branching fraction of the decay of a charged B meson into a tau lepton and a tau neutrino. . . .
The parameters λ and A are well measured in several different ways that yield consistent results. Therefore one is more interested in constraints on the remaining two parameters called ρ and η.
The B-meson processes that have recently been producing beyond the Standard Model experimental CP violations that don't match the theoretical prediction are dependent upon parameters called ρ and η, which are numbers that must be between zero and one that influence the td and ub values in the CKM matrix. If Wolfenstein's parameterization is correct, the ub value should be (ρ-iη), where i is the square root of negative one, times A times λ cubed, while the td value should be (1-ρ-iη) times A times λ cubed.
It is possible to adjust values of ρ and η in the Standard Model to fit individual anamolous CP value results from experiments, but it is not quite possible to choose values for these parameters that predict results within three standard deviations of all of the experimental data, although if one believes that the published error estimates are underestimates, it is possible to get consistent values for these parameters that fit all of the data. The gap between the values that fit the experiments for ρ are comparatively modest -- the experimental best fits for individual experiments are between 0.1 and 0.2 and have significant error margins, so they almost reconcile. The canonical value of 0.135 for ρ is pretty close to an overlap of the error bars on existing measurements. The gap betwen the values that fit the experiments for η, which controls the magnitude of quark sector CP violations in the Standard Model, are bigger -- the best fit for one experiment for η is a little more than 0.45, while the best fit for another is a little less than 0.35.
If the experimental data's error bars are underestimated, then more experiments will reach consensus values for ρ and η that fit and make new physics in the quark flavor changing process unnecessary. But, if more experiments make it clear that there is no way that ρ and η can be chosen to fit the data, than Wolfenstein's parameterization is incorrect, the CKM matrix is "broken" and we need beyond the Standard Model physics to explain what we are observing.
For example, a "broken" CKM matrix could be an indication that there are actually four, rather than merely three generations of quarks, a possibility explored, for exampe, here. A four generation Standard Model would, if it existed, have a number of theoretical attractions:
An additional fourth generation (SM4) is one of the simplest extensions of the SM, and retains all of its essential features: it obeys all the SM symmetries and does not introduce any new ones. At the same time, it can give rise to many new effects, some of which may be observable even at the current experiments. Even though the fourth-generation quarks may be too heavy to have been produced at the pre-LHC colliders, they may still affect low-energy measurements through their mixing with the lighter quarks. The up-type quark t′ would contribute to b → s and b → d transitions at the 1-loop level, while the down-type quark b′ would contribute similarly to c → u and t → c. The addition of a fourth generation to the SM leads to a 4 × 4 quark mixing matrix CKM4, which is an extension of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix in the SM. The parametrization of this unitary matrix requires six real parameters and three phases. The additional phases can lead to increased CP violation, and can provide a natural explanation for the deviations from the SM predictions seen in some measurements of CP violation in the B-meson system. A heavy fourth generation can play a crucial role in the dynamical generation of the electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking [8]. The large Yukawa couplings of the fourth generation quarks, together with the possible large phases, can help efficient EW baryogenesis. In addition, the SM4 is consistent with the SU(5) gauge couplings, and hence can be unified without supersymmetry.
13 January 2011
Short Takes
* I went to the Burger King restaurant in Cherry Creek earlier this week to get a cheap breakfast sandwich while I waited for the bank to open. The location was previously famous for being the parking nazi of Cherry Creek North, aggressively booting people in its lot. This time, I had to wait several minutes for anyone who worked there to appear, even after calling out an "anybody home?" Their bathroom is also the skankiest in all of Cherry Creek.
* Radio stations in Denver are in a slump. I have twelve FM and six AM pre-sets on my car radio, which I regularly revise with the best available options on the airwaves. Yet, several times in the last week, the elevator music in retail stores around town has been fresher and more interesting than what I can hear on any of those eighteen stations.
* Science Fair is over for another year. Next up, History Day.
* What is with all of the little banks on and around 1st Avenue in Cherry Creek? There must be twenty of them in the neighborhood, most with just one or two locations. You'd think it was Bern, Switzerland, or Luxembourg, or the Cayman Islands. I almost never see anyone actually doing business there, but presumably they have enough customers to stay afloat. I presume that they are catering mostly to a high end, local market clientele making loans to businesses, real estate developers, wealthy individuals and medium sized businesses, but I'm really not entirely clear what the business model is, although it seems to be a very similar business model for all of the banks that are not retail customer oriented.
* Even though Denver was almost 20% below average in precipitation in 2010, the snow pack in all of the state's major river basins was well above average, and since that is what really matters most for both Front Range water users and for the Colorado tourism industry, it's all good.
* Justice Kagan wrote her first U.S. Supreme Court opinion on the subject of the proper way to calculate the car expense in Chapter 13 plan calculations. The ruling was 8-1 with only Scalia dissenting. I agree that her reading was the better interpretation of the statute (it disallowed the expense when there was no actual loan or lease on a vehicle that had to be paid). The court took the case because there was a circuit split on the issue.
* The Article I immigration court based in Denver has a new judge who is married to one of the ICE prosecutors in the Denver office who presses these cases. The new administrative law judge must "must recuse herself from any case directed by her husband" but I have real doubts about whether that is sufficient to remove the appearance of impropriety in this situation.
In an ordinary court, only part of the docket involves cases brought by the government. But, all of the cases before this administrative law judge will be brought by the office of which her husband is a part. The pervasive association the new immigration judge has with one side of every single case before her creates a clear appearance of impropriety. I can't imagine how I could possibly be impartial in her shoes. Immigration judges have immense discretion. Statistically, the judge a person with a case in immigration court is assigned to is the single most important factor in determining the outcome of the case. Inappropriate use of that discretion by immigration judges, mostly to the detriment of immigrants, has flooded the federal appellate courts in recent years, and has cast grave disrepute on the credibility of the immigration courts as institutions where any meaningful kind of due process exists. This development certainly doesn't help the situation. If the recusal were from all cases with ICE involvement, that would probably resolve the problem, but that isn't a viable option for an immigration court judge.
I feel for the couple, who are no doubt both very smart, competent immigration lawyers, each of whom has a good federal government jobs. Neither has personally done anything wrong. But, maintaining this kind of status quo, even with recusals from cases where the other is personally involved really doesn't cut it. In government contexts the concern is not primarily ex parte communications about particular cases or personal gain (the government lawyers don't win or lose anything as a result of the outcome of particular cases), but about bias towards one side or the other on the part of the office, which is just as strong even without personal involvement in the same cases. We are not such a parochial backwater in Denver that we have no choice but to have a conflicted immigration court system because no one else is up to the job.
* Once again, Denver cops are being sued in a police brutality case and fraudulent police report case arising from a January 2009 traffic stop. Westword has more details.
* Marginal Revolution is a superior blog that I will add to my sidebar in due course.
* The percentage of women in Colorado's General Assembly (41 out of 99) is the highest of any state in the United States. The national average is 23.4%.
* Republicans are constantly accusing liberals of inventing constitutional rights that aren't supported by the language of the constitution. But, these days, the shoe is on the other foot. John Tomasic at the Colorado Independent nails it with this headline:
He goes on to explain:
Isn't funny how the rights Republicans want to invent always seem to be ones you have no desire to actually exercise?
* Radio stations in Denver are in a slump. I have twelve FM and six AM pre-sets on my car radio, which I regularly revise with the best available options on the airwaves. Yet, several times in the last week, the elevator music in retail stores around town has been fresher and more interesting than what I can hear on any of those eighteen stations.
* Science Fair is over for another year. Next up, History Day.
* What is with all of the little banks on and around 1st Avenue in Cherry Creek? There must be twenty of them in the neighborhood, most with just one or two locations. You'd think it was Bern, Switzerland, or Luxembourg, or the Cayman Islands. I almost never see anyone actually doing business there, but presumably they have enough customers to stay afloat. I presume that they are catering mostly to a high end, local market clientele making loans to businesses, real estate developers, wealthy individuals and medium sized businesses, but I'm really not entirely clear what the business model is, although it seems to be a very similar business model for all of the banks that are not retail customer oriented.
* Even though Denver was almost 20% below average in precipitation in 2010, the snow pack in all of the state's major river basins was well above average, and since that is what really matters most for both Front Range water users and for the Colorado tourism industry, it's all good.
* Justice Kagan wrote her first U.S. Supreme Court opinion on the subject of the proper way to calculate the car expense in Chapter 13 plan calculations. The ruling was 8-1 with only Scalia dissenting. I agree that her reading was the better interpretation of the statute (it disallowed the expense when there was no actual loan or lease on a vehicle that had to be paid). The court took the case because there was a circuit split on the issue.
* The Article I immigration court based in Denver has a new judge who is married to one of the ICE prosecutors in the Denver office who presses these cases. The new administrative law judge must "must recuse herself from any case directed by her husband" but I have real doubts about whether that is sufficient to remove the appearance of impropriety in this situation.
In an ordinary court, only part of the docket involves cases brought by the government. But, all of the cases before this administrative law judge will be brought by the office of which her husband is a part. The pervasive association the new immigration judge has with one side of every single case before her creates a clear appearance of impropriety. I can't imagine how I could possibly be impartial in her shoes. Immigration judges have immense discretion. Statistically, the judge a person with a case in immigration court is assigned to is the single most important factor in determining the outcome of the case. Inappropriate use of that discretion by immigration judges, mostly to the detriment of immigrants, has flooded the federal appellate courts in recent years, and has cast grave disrepute on the credibility of the immigration courts as institutions where any meaningful kind of due process exists. This development certainly doesn't help the situation. If the recusal were from all cases with ICE involvement, that would probably resolve the problem, but that isn't a viable option for an immigration court judge.
I feel for the couple, who are no doubt both very smart, competent immigration lawyers, each of whom has a good federal government jobs. Neither has personally done anything wrong. But, maintaining this kind of status quo, even with recusals from cases where the other is personally involved really doesn't cut it. In government contexts the concern is not primarily ex parte communications about particular cases or personal gain (the government lawyers don't win or lose anything as a result of the outcome of particular cases), but about bias towards one side or the other on the part of the office, which is just as strong even without personal involvement in the same cases. We are not such a parochial backwater in Denver that we have no choice but to have a conflicted immigration court system because no one else is up to the job.
* Once again, Denver cops are being sued in a police brutality case and fraudulent police report case arising from a January 2009 traffic stop. Westword has more details.
* Marginal Revolution is a superior blog that I will add to my sidebar in due course.
* The percentage of women in Colorado's General Assembly (41 out of 99) is the highest of any state in the United States. The national average is 23.4%.
* Republicans are constantly accusing liberals of inventing constitutional rights that aren't supported by the language of the constitution. But, these days, the shoe is on the other foot. John Tomasic at the Colorado Independent nails it with this headline:
King to Polis: Healthcare law infringes on right to have babies in garbage cans
He goes on to explain:
Iowa Rep. Steve King today on Capitol Hill at a Rules Committee hearing on the GOP plan to repeal the healthcare reform law. He ended up telling Colorado Rep. Jared Polis that the law is unconstitutional because, for instance, it forces uninsured women who deliver babies in garbage cans to buy health insurance. Polis, aghast, searched for words.
Isn't funny how the rights Republicans want to invent always seem to be ones you have no desire to actually exercise?
Colorado GOP Oblivious To Budget Reality
The dominant problem facing the Colorado General Assembly as it begins its 2011 legislative session is that the state needs to close a $1 billion gap in its $7 billion general fund budget.
So, what legislative proposals are GOP state legislators, who campaigned on fiscal responsibility offering at this critical juncture?
* Income tax cuts for parents who send their children to private schools.
* A repeal of hospital fees.
* Sales tax cuts for agricultural products producers.
What part of "we're broke" did they not see in the memo on the state budget? Cutting revenue is a wonderful thing, unless you can't pay your bills.
Bills to make it harder to register to vote are also on the Republican agenda.
So, what legislative proposals are GOP state legislators, who campaigned on fiscal responsibility offering at this critical juncture?
* Income tax cuts for parents who send their children to private schools.
* A repeal of hospital fees.
* Sales tax cuts for agricultural products producers.
What part of "we're broke" did they not see in the memo on the state budget? Cutting revenue is a wonderful thing, unless you can't pay your bills.
Bills to make it harder to register to vote are also on the Republican agenda.
The Problem Of Apathetic Copyright Owners
One of the big problems in the current regime of copyright, and more generally, intellectual property, is that the economic value of the right to be licensed is often modest relative to the transaction costs that go into locating an order and reaching a licensing agreement. This is a particular problem now, because the information technology revolution, in the patent area, and the Internet, in the content area, has favored innovations and new works that involve very small contributions from very large numbers of protected intellectual properties. The fair use doctrine addresses some of this problematic territory, but is not a comprehensive solution to the "micro-licensing" problem, nor is it a solution to the orphan copyright problem in which the copyright owner cannot be located to conduct negotiations with at an economically practicable price, or the apathetic intellectual property owner problem, in which the copyright owner is simply too distracted or busy to focus on a licensing possibility, even if it would make economic sense.
All of these problems flow from the default assumption in property law that non-responsiveness regarding a use of property means that it is a crime to use that property without express permission. But, since intellectual property can have more than one user at a single time, and is for practical purposes less amenable to locating an owner (e.g. because unlike real property it is often not "possessed" in a tangible sense and is not subject to annual taxation that keeps contact information current), this may not be an appropriate default assumption for intellectual property.
To the extent that intellectual property owners do not have ulterior non-economic motives for their behavior (and further, to the extent that we are not interested in providing strong legal protections to such ulterior motives out of free speech and anti-trust law concerns), it is reasonable to suppose that transaction costs and owner identification difficulties are important barriers that tempt those wishing to use intellectual property to neglect to obtain licensing rights at a market rate for the intellectual property, and that transaction costs are a key reason that intellectual property owners don't bother to make it easy to obtain licensing.
In circumstances where these transaction costs are avoided with a centralized and regularized system, such as the one used by newspapers within the Associated Press, or the one used by radio stations licensed by the major recording studios in omnibus agreements, the volume of individually low value use of intellectual property that would otherwise belong to someone else is very high and economically significant in the aggregate, and no one involved finds the absence of individualized consent to licensed uses from the authors of the works troubling.
One way to prevent copyright from posing the barrier it does to productive intelletual property activity in cases of micro-licenses, orphan works, and apathetic copyright owners would be to change the default rule from one requiring affirmative express consent, to one that would allow a license to be entered into according to some standardized default rate arrangement, similar to the one that exists for artists who wish to do a cover version of a song today without the owners permission, with royalties deposited into an account with the registrar of copyrights or patent office, as the case might be, until claimed by the owner, upon deliver of a notice of intent to use a work that does not receive a response within some reasonable time period, perhaps a month.
Apathetic owners who received a notice and ignored it, would have funds deposited at a standard rate into an account for their benefit that they could claim at any time. Owners who felt that the standard deal with inadequate could respond to the notice and expressly deny permission to use the work within the time period, or for any future new use of the work for which a standard rate contract had been established due to non-response the first time around.
This would be a middle ground between a pure property by analogy regime, and one that reconceptualized intellectual property as something actually more akin to a right to bring suit for unjust enrichment.
All of these problems flow from the default assumption in property law that non-responsiveness regarding a use of property means that it is a crime to use that property without express permission. But, since intellectual property can have more than one user at a single time, and is for practical purposes less amenable to locating an owner (e.g. because unlike real property it is often not "possessed" in a tangible sense and is not subject to annual taxation that keeps contact information current), this may not be an appropriate default assumption for intellectual property.
To the extent that intellectual property owners do not have ulterior non-economic motives for their behavior (and further, to the extent that we are not interested in providing strong legal protections to such ulterior motives out of free speech and anti-trust law concerns), it is reasonable to suppose that transaction costs and owner identification difficulties are important barriers that tempt those wishing to use intellectual property to neglect to obtain licensing rights at a market rate for the intellectual property, and that transaction costs are a key reason that intellectual property owners don't bother to make it easy to obtain licensing.
In circumstances where these transaction costs are avoided with a centralized and regularized system, such as the one used by newspapers within the Associated Press, or the one used by radio stations licensed by the major recording studios in omnibus agreements, the volume of individually low value use of intellectual property that would otherwise belong to someone else is very high and economically significant in the aggregate, and no one involved finds the absence of individualized consent to licensed uses from the authors of the works troubling.
One way to prevent copyright from posing the barrier it does to productive intelletual property activity in cases of micro-licenses, orphan works, and apathetic copyright owners would be to change the default rule from one requiring affirmative express consent, to one that would allow a license to be entered into according to some standardized default rate arrangement, similar to the one that exists for artists who wish to do a cover version of a song today without the owners permission, with royalties deposited into an account with the registrar of copyrights or patent office, as the case might be, until claimed by the owner, upon deliver of a notice of intent to use a work that does not receive a response within some reasonable time period, perhaps a month.
Apathetic owners who received a notice and ignored it, would have funds deposited at a standard rate into an account for their benefit that they could claim at any time. Owners who felt that the standard deal with inadequate could respond to the notice and expressly deny permission to use the work within the time period, or for any future new use of the work for which a standard rate contract had been established due to non-response the first time around.
This would be a middle ground between a pure property by analogy regime, and one that reconceptualized intellectual property as something actually more akin to a right to bring suit for unjust enrichment.
Musing On Neanderthal Admixture Possibilities
The blockbuster discoveries of 2010 in human evolution and genetics flows from comparisons of ancient Neanderthal and Denisovian whole genomes with those of modern humans. The studies concluded that all Eurasians have a roughly 1%-4% Neanderthal admixture with no clear geographic spread (relative to Africans) and that Melanesians had an additional significant Denisovian admixture leaving them with about 5% Denisovian genes and about 8% archaic human genes all together.
The Neaderthal and Denisovian bones from which the ancient DNA was extracted was from the Upper Paleolithic period during the era in which humans and Neanderthals were known to have shared territory in Europe and the Middle East.
One possibility that I haven't seen explored anywhere is that admixture did happen, but that we have the direction of the genetic link wrong. Why isn't it possible that an Upper Paleolithic Eurasian modern human population made a 4% contribution to the Upper Paleolithic Neanderthal population from which the ancient DNA samples were drawn, instead of the other way around? This would, among other things, provide a simple explanation for the apparent uniform admixture levels in modern Eurasians - it would simply reflect that fact that all Eurasains were genetically fairly close to the Out of Africa founding population ca. 30,000-50,000 years ago, but had by that time already acquired the genetic mutations that distinguish Eurasians from Africans.
Also, while this seems less likely, couldn't it be possible that one group of early Asian modern humans traveled to Melanesia, while another part of the same group broke away, ended up in Southern Siberia, and contributed about 5% to the genome of the Denisovians? The distribution of Y-DNA haplogroup D, which is found in Tibet, Japan and the Andaman Islands, among other places, is suggestive of the possibility that early modern humans in Asia could have had migrations on this kind of geographic scale could have taken place, without leaving traces in intermediate areas. The population associated with Y-DNA haplogroup D itself, however, would be a poor fit because there are no traces of it in Melanesians. One would have to imagine this migration involving Melanesian specific lineages.
If these scenarios is correct, it culd be proven by showing that the admixed genes seen in these late archaic humans would be absent in older ancient DNA from archaic humans. In the absence of this kind of evidence, one would have to look for signs that the apparently archaic human genes have a sufficiently shallow age depth to derive from a modern human subpopulation.
Since archaic humans were experiencing a population crash at around this time as their species was well on its way to extinction after contact with modern humans, the number of admixture events necessary to leave this kind of genetic trace would have been quite a bit smaller than it would have had to have been to produce that much admixture in the other direction.
Maybe there is some key fact that I'm missing that rules out this possibility. But, it seems to me that it bears consideration as at least one of the viable models to explain the data until proven otherwise.
The Neaderthal and Denisovian bones from which the ancient DNA was extracted was from the Upper Paleolithic period during the era in which humans and Neanderthals were known to have shared territory in Europe and the Middle East.
One possibility that I haven't seen explored anywhere is that admixture did happen, but that we have the direction of the genetic link wrong. Why isn't it possible that an Upper Paleolithic Eurasian modern human population made a 4% contribution to the Upper Paleolithic Neanderthal population from which the ancient DNA samples were drawn, instead of the other way around? This would, among other things, provide a simple explanation for the apparent uniform admixture levels in modern Eurasians - it would simply reflect that fact that all Eurasains were genetically fairly close to the Out of Africa founding population ca. 30,000-50,000 years ago, but had by that time already acquired the genetic mutations that distinguish Eurasians from Africans.
Also, while this seems less likely, couldn't it be possible that one group of early Asian modern humans traveled to Melanesia, while another part of the same group broke away, ended up in Southern Siberia, and contributed about 5% to the genome of the Denisovians? The distribution of Y-DNA haplogroup D, which is found in Tibet, Japan and the Andaman Islands, among other places, is suggestive of the possibility that early modern humans in Asia could have had migrations on this kind of geographic scale could have taken place, without leaving traces in intermediate areas. The population associated with Y-DNA haplogroup D itself, however, would be a poor fit because there are no traces of it in Melanesians. One would have to imagine this migration involving Melanesian specific lineages.
If these scenarios is correct, it culd be proven by showing that the admixed genes seen in these late archaic humans would be absent in older ancient DNA from archaic humans. In the absence of this kind of evidence, one would have to look for signs that the apparently archaic human genes have a sufficiently shallow age depth to derive from a modern human subpopulation.
Since archaic humans were experiencing a population crash at around this time as their species was well on its way to extinction after contact with modern humans, the number of admixture events necessary to leave this kind of genetic trace would have been quite a bit smaller than it would have had to have been to produce that much admixture in the other direction.
Maybe there is some key fact that I'm missing that rules out this possibility. But, it seems to me that it bears consideration as at least one of the viable models to explain the data until proven otherwise.
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