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Science and Law - Part 0

In the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Volume 34, Number 2, there’s an article titled “Just evidence: The Limits of Science in the Legal Process”, written by Sheila Jasanoff. It talks about the reliance on science in the legal process. What follows is a summary, with some short notes added.

It starts with an introduction about the Massachusetts governor, who tried to reintroduce the death penalty, mainly because science would produce failsafe/infallible results. Science produces a lot of facts, and with the help of the self-corrective nature of science, the reliance on those facts is high. Peer reviews are important in this respect. Organized skepticism, communalism, universalism and disinterestedness are important notions in the science community, as noted by the sociologist of science Robert K. Merton.

The law and science have different frameworks, different contexts, for producing facts. Therefore, the law shouldn’t always defer to “science’s overriding commitment to self-correction”. Trial judges should act as “surrogates for the scientific community in determining admissibility”. This isn’t a perfect solution, however. For example, in the post about the Monty Hall problem, there were a lot of math professors who didn’t agree with the solution. When science ultimately decides about someone’s life or death, these failures can’t be tolerated.

Science can’t proceed the same way in the courtroom, as it would outside it. It simply can’t remove the uncertainty that the law itself would have when convicting/judging a suspect.

DNA and Truth-Telling

“Science may be a social activity, but when executed correctly, the results are viewed as no longer bearing traces of human subjectivity.” Because of the removal of human elements, the facts that are produced by scientists, are very reliable kinds of evidence. The transition from the subjective legal definitions to more objective scientific notions, through the removal of fallible human interpretations in criminal law through diagnostic instruments, is a process we already see happening with the advance of DNA technology. “The hope is that technology, through its mechanical reproducibility, will be impervious to context and will provide unbiased and reliable evidence about the facts of the matter.” Again, DNA technology is a good example. The enormous discrimination possible with DNA (random match probabilities of 1 in a billion for a complete profile) are negligible with respect to the chance a mistake is made by a human factor: problems with taking samples, mixed up profiles, contamination, holes in the chain of custody, etc. Those factors are far more likely to occur, and illustrate that an overreliance of DNA profiles is dangerous. Also, the human element in the law, and the urge of the public prosecutor to convict somebody (e.g. bias), are noteworthy components that shouldn’t be forgotten. The ability of DNA to establish identity is not questioned; it’s the interpretation of the results that should be questioned. Alternative explanations, no matter how unlikely, should all be removed before there’s a certainty for a rightful conviction.

Three more propositions will be investigated:

• “Truth-seeking in science is equivalent to truth-seeking in the law” (See part 1)
  
• “Law enforcement (or forensic) science establishes the truth as reliably as science in pure research contexts” (See part 2)
  
• “Genetic science is a particularly dependable source of truth, especially in disputes concerning human identity” (See part 3)
  

Free online games (MMORPG)

So I've been browsing the net for free games and I've stumbled apon a few nifty ones.
It seems that the gaming community on the net is getting better and better. No need to buy any games in the shops anymore! XD
The games I'm currently playing are mostly multi mass online role playing games. Don't know what those are? Do World of Warcraft or Guild wars sound familiar? Exactly ;) No one, who is a real gaming fanatic, hasn't heard of those. They are the creme de la creme at the moment. Millions of people gather around behind their compies to log on and play for hours. Well I've searched the net for gaming pleasure of the same quality! Well, at least the same influence on your mental health.
The addiction factor, quality of the graphics, user friendly gameplay and community have been reviewed.
I'll post a list of a few games that will be looked at, installed and tested.
(I will try at least ^w^)

Silkroad
Tales of Pirates
Flyff (Fly for Fun)
Trickster
Goonzu
Myth war

Do note that these games are 2D and 3D games. The text based ones have been excluded, cos I'm not a big fan of those. That does not mean that one can't love a text base role play game. There are a lot of fans for those kinds as well.

SILKROAD
I've installed Silkroad a few months back and it's a great game. Oriental theme and very much like Guild wars. The graphics are great for a free game, but there are a few problems with logging in. Their servers are always full, so you need to be very lucky to get on. That was my main problem, when playing it. I hope they added a few more servers to keep their users satisfied, cos that was a real pain in the ass. It was the main reason that I booted it from my compy.

Leveling and in game quests are fairly easy to do. You need to read up on all the features, else you will get into a bit of trouble. The fighting part is not the problem. Knowing to trade and the alchemy is somewhat difficult. These things are very important in Silkroad. Just as it was in the past with the silkroad/route of Asia. The storyline is quite nice in my opinion.

The people are also very friendly and helpful. There are a lot of young people and most are asians. You see a lot of asian chatter floating past, so be aware that you'll probably meet a lot of people lacking english. The thing that had caught my attention was the personal messaging system. It's a one on one pop up box and not some text on the screen. The messages have a cap, so you can't rant and have long and boring stories xD

Nonetheless a big thumbs up.

For a free game (total): +
Addiction: 0 (I have Guild wars, so it wasn't too attractive for me >w<)
Graphics: +
Gameplay: +
Community: +

Click the pics for a bigger view ;)

Vegetables

In the May edition of Scientific American, there's an article about consciousness of coma / vegetable patients. It's titled "Eyes Open, Brain Shut", and written by Steven Laureys.

When people slip into a coma, they don't open their eyes, but some of them may show some reflex movements of the limbs. If people come out of their coma, they can enter a vegetative state, in which they remain unconscious; they are awake, but not aware. For instance, they have sleep/wake cycles, and some form of movement which is not purposeful but only reflexive.


How do you measure the awareness of a patient? How do you diagnose a vegetative state? This may be helpful to distinguish between patients who may recover or not. A MRI or CT scan can show how damaged the brain is, but it's impossible to see if the patient has some level of consciousness. An EEG (ElectroEncephaloGram) measures the brain's electrical activity which is able to show the state of wakefulness, but not a reliable change in awareness.

With the use of a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanner, the metabolic activity can be viewed (measured by its consumption of glucose). In the vegetative state this metabolism is lower. When the patient is at rest, it can't successfully distinguish between the vegetative and minimally conscious state. This changes when external stimuli like pain and spoken words are added to the equation. This makes sense, because the awareness in a vegetative state is lower then in a minimally conscious state.
Persons in a vegetative state may very well understand commands: there is a "conscious linguistic processing in the vegetative patient". Furthermore, in some "mental imagery tasks", the patient understood the tasks (tasks like: imagine walking through the rooms of your house). These responses were indistinguishable from that seen in the healthy subjects. However, there may be a possibility that the patient was transitioning to a minimally conscious state, in which the awareness is raised.

It's a well written article; so if you have access to it, I'd recommend reading it.

Received LPs / CDs

A few days ago (saturday), just 5 days after it was shipped, I received the LPs/CDs I ordered a few days before that from constellation records. A few albums from Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Do Make Say Think, Exhaust, Fly Pan Am, and a compilation CD.

They're amazing; especially the LPs look great, and the F#A#∞ album includes a penny crushed by a train, hand-glued picture on the front, de-bossed titles ... Simply amazing.
Some cd's look silkscreened; it has a very nice touch... I'm not sure if the word is correct, but suffice it to say it looks good.

These people really deserved my money; they're really in it for the music, and you can hear it.

Monty Hall problem

I was thinking about the Monty Hall problem, a problem my statistics teacher once told me about. In short it's about the following:

You appear on a game show. There are three doors, behind one there is a prize. The other two are empty.
Assuming you want to win the prize, you guess which door holds the prize: A,B or C. The gamehost subsequently shows one door behind which the prize doesn't reside. The question is, should you alter your choice or not?

The counterintuitive but correct answer is: Yes.
It's sufficient to look at the two situations: either you alter your choice, or you don't.

If you don't swap:
Two things can happen:

• You choose a door. You have a chance of 1/3 to choose the right door immediately.
• Hence you have a chance of 2/3 to choose the wrong door.

Chance of failing: 2/3
Chance of winning: 1/3


If you do swap:
Two things can happen:

• You choose the door behind which the prize is (chance is 1/3). The gamehost then shows you a door behind which the prize doesn't reside. Two closed doors remain. You change your choice to the other door, so that your final choice will be the wrong one (you fail).
• You choose a door behind which the prize doesn't reside (chance is 2/3). The gamehost then shows you a door behind which the prize doesn't reside. Again two closed doors remain. You change your choice to the other door, and hence your final choice will be the right one (you win).

Chance of failing: 1/3
Chance of winning: 2/3


You see it's better to change your choice in such a situation.

Small matlab code:
(Note: ceil(3.*rand(1,1)) means that a random number is generated, not higher than 3, rand(1,1) is a random 1x1 matrix).
Sorry for the fucked up code; blogger doesn't like tabs :\.

function findprize=findprize(repeat, swap)

WIN=0;
FAIL=0;
if swap==1;
for i=1:1:repeat
prizenumber=ceil(3.*rand(1,1));
choosenumber=ceil(3.*rand(1,1));

if prizenumber==choosenumber;
FAIL=FAIL+1;
else
WIN=WIN+1;
end
end
end

if swap==0;
for i=1:1:repeat
prizenumber=ceil(3.*rand(1,1));
choosenumber=ceil(3.*rand(1,1));

if prizenumber==choosenumber;
WIN=WIN+1;
else
FAIL=FAIL+1;
end
end
end

FAIL, WIN

This gives:
no swap:
findprize(100000,0) gives: 66625 failures, 33375 wins

swap:
findprize(100000,1) gives: 33438 failures, 66562 wins

There ya go.

Sisters wallpapers

I was a little bored this afternoon, and while browsing the heartland forum, I thought about making some wallpapers myself. Here they are. Credits go to the person who vectorized the logos, and the persons who made the background layer.
Hope you like them; most of them are 1600x1200, in PNG.
The first 10 or so are almost the same, only a different layer style.
(please leave a comment if you like them)

PER3 Polymorphism Predicts Sleep Structure and Waking Performance

The latest edition of current biology holds an article about the connection of VNTRs on genes and sleep behaviour. (Current Biology 17, 1–6, April 3, 2007)
The genetic background about sleep and waking patterns is largely unknown. This paper writes something about it; not everything is understandable for me, as I have a limited background in biology (actually, no background in biology), but with the use of wikipedia I could draw some conclusions.
Individuals were monitored in their sleep-wake cycles, after which some intensive physiological tests were done. This was done in normal conditions, and in conditions of sleep loss. The persons, selected on basis of their genotype and homozygosity for the PER3 -gene, showed no significant differences in bed time, wake time or sleep duration.

Note: PER3[4/4] means that the person is a homozygote, with 4 repeats of the characteristic amino acid.

In their normal patterns, there was no significant difference in the different stages of sleep (REM sleep, stage 1 sleep, stage 2 sleep, total sleep time), but

"PER3[5/5] subjects fell asleep more readily than PER3[4/4] subjects"

When the PER3[5/5] were kept awake for a long time, the subjects performed worse than PER3[4/4] persons on spatial, reaction-time, and logic tests, especially in the late night and early morning hours:

"Most strikingly, PER3[5/5] homozygotes performed very poorly during the hours after the melatonin midpoint. The decrement in waking performance in the PER3[4/4] homozygotes was far less. These major differences in performance between the two genotypes occurred during the late-night and early-morning hours, a time known from both laboratory and field studies as the nadir of the circadian timing system and during which performance is poorest and sleep propensity at its peak. "

"The PER3 5-repeat allele, which is the less frequent one in most ethnic groups, has been associated with extreme morning preference, while the 4-repeat allele has been linked with DSPS in our previous study."

DSPS is a delayed sleep phase syndrome; people with this syndrome tend to fall asleep late at night, and have difficulty waking up in the morning. Furthermore, for a lot of these persons it doesn't matter at what time they go to bed, because they fall asleep at approximately the same time anyway. DSPS is a syndrome from the bigger family of Circadian rhytm sleep disorders; a well known member from this Circadian rhytm sleep syndrome is the jet lag. This may mean that there's a problem with a part of the brain that produces melatonin, which receives information from the eyes about light and dark.

These results, among others,

" (...) led us to consider it as a candidate for mediating some of the marked individual differences in sleep-wake regulation. These individual differences include the preferred timing of sleep-wake cycles, the structure of sleep, EEG patterns during sleep and wakefulness, and their response to sleep loss and circadian-phase misalignment."
"Our results indicate that the PER3 polymorphism may contribute to the marked individual differences in performance decrement during sleep loss."

All in all, this may signify that there's a relation between day- and nightpeople.

"Conclusions
The effects of the PER3 polymorphism on SWS (slow wave sleep), SWA (slow wave activity), and the decrements of waking performance during the biological night, as observed in this study, are significant and substantial. This implies that this polymorphism may be an important marker for individual differences in sleep and susceptibility to sleep loss and circadianphase misalignment, which are major causes of health problems and accidents in our society."

Of course, there are still a lot of open questions: what happens for example with heterozygotes? Or with a smaller number of VNTRs on the PER3 gene? Is there a connection, or is it just a correlation? I'm not in the position to answer these questions, as I could barely understand the article ;).

From: Viola et al., PER3 Polymorphism Predicts Sleep Structure and Waking Performance, Current Biology (2007), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.01.073