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This report describes a study undertaken to estimate examiner (not laboratory) error rates for false Identifications and false Eliminations when comparing an unknown to a collection of three known cartridge cases. Volunteer active examiners with Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners (AFTE) membership or working in laboratories that participate in the Association of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD) were provided with 15 sets of three known and one questioned cartridge cases fired from a collection of 25 new Ruger SR9 handguns. Remington 9-mm Luger (manufacturer designation L9MM3) ammunition was used and comparison sets were made up of cartridge cases fired within 100 cartridges of each other for each gun. Examiners were provided with a background survey, an answer sheet allowing for the AFTE Range of Conclusions, and return shipping materials. In addition to determining whether the known and questioned cartridge cases were fired with the same handgun, examiners were also asked to assess how many of the three knowns in each set were suitable for comparison, providing an estimated rate of how often each firearm used in the study produces useable, quality marks. The participating examiners were provided with both same-source and different-source comparison sets allowing the study to assess both error rates. Responses were received from 218 participating examiners. The overall rate of false Eliminations was estimated as 0.367% from comparisons known to be from the same firearm but reported as Eliminations. The overall rate of false Identifications was estimated as 1.01% from comparisons known to be from different firearms but reported as Identifications. The rates are not uniform across the sample population with a few examiners providing most of the false Identification responses. Rates of poor-quality mark production varied across the 25 sample handguns; those rates were 2.3% ( ± 1.4%). Both false Elimination and false Identification rates are comparable to or lower than the rate of production of poor-quality marks by the firearms used in this study. •In the this study, the estimated rates of false Elimination and false Identification were 0.367% and 0.939%, respectively.•Relatively few examiners were responsible for most of the false Identification responses.•Both error rates were comparable to or lower than the production rate of poor-quality marks observed in this study.

A comparative analysis of the computational complexity and probability of false recognition for object identification methods in images, which are based on a comparison with a pattern, viz., correlation-extreme method, contour analysis method, and stochastic gradient identification algorithm. Possibilities of parametric optimization of the studied methods are considered.

In this paper, we analyze the construction of identification codes. Identification codes are based on the question: “Is the message I have just received the one I am interested in?”, as opposed to Shannon’s transmission, where the receiver is interested in not only one, but any, message. The advantage of identification is that it allows rates growing double exponentially in the blocklength at the cost of not being able to decode every message, which might be beneficial in certain applications. We focus on a special identification code construction based on two concatenated Reed-Solomon codes and have a closer look at its implementation, analyzing the trade-offs of identification with respect to transmission and the trade-offs introduced by the computational cost of identification codes.

What does it mean for Kyrgyzstani migrant workers in contemporary Russia to be legally legible to the state when informal agencies market fictive residency documents and \"clean fake\" work permits? Examining the uncertainty around being authentically documented provides insight into a mode of governance in urban Russia that thrives less on rendering subjects legible than on working the space of ambiguity between life and law. This dynamic has significant social consequences for the way certain bodies come to be scrutinized as particularly untrustworthy, particularly liable to fakery, and, thus, particularly legitimate targets for document checks, fines, and threats of deportation. The ambiguity with which migrants are forced to live highlights the need to explore how documentary regimes, structures of feeling, and racializing practices coincide.

Ethnopharmacological relevance: The past couple of decades have witnessed the global resurgence of medicinal plants in the field of herbal-based health care. Increased consumption of medicinal plants and their derivative products is the major cause of the adulteration issues in herbal industries. As a result, the quality of herbal products is affected by spurious and unauthorized raw materials. Recent development in molecular plant identification using DNA barcodes has become a robust methodology to identify and authenticate the adulterants in herbal samples. Hence, rapid and accurate identification of medicinal plants is the key to success for the herbal industry. Aim of the study: This paper provides a comprehensive review of the application of DNA barcoding and advanced technologies that have emerged over the past 10 years related to medicinal plant identification and authentication and the future prospects of this technology. Materials and methods: Information on DNA barcodes was compiled from scientific databases (Google Scholar, Web of Science, SciFinder and PubMed). Additional information was obtained from books, Ph.D. thesis and MSc. Dissertations. Results: Working out an appropriate DNA barcode for plants is challenging; the single locus-based DNA barcodes ( rbcL , ITS, ITS2, matK, rpoB, rpoC, trnH-psbA ) to multi-locus DNA barcodes have become the successful species-level identification among herbal plants. Additionally, multi-loci have become efficient in the authentication of herbal products. Emerging advances in DNA barcoding and related technologies such as next-generation sequencing, high-resolution melting curve analysis, meta barcodes and mini barcodes have paved the way for successful herbal plant/samples identification. Conclusion: DNA barcoding needs to be employed together with other techniques to check and rationally and effectively quality control the herbal drugs. It is suggested that DNA barcoding techniques combined with metabolomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics could authenticate the herbal products. The invention of simple, cost-effective and improved DNA barcoding techniques to identify herbal drugs and their associated products of medicinal value in a fool-proof manner will be the future thrust of Pharmacopoeial monograph development for herbal drugs.

This report describes an analysis of how examiners used the Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners (AFTE) Range of Conclusions in a controlled study undertaken to estimate examiner error rates in comparing cartridge cases. Results of the error rate analysis are reported in [1]; this paper focuses on a broader analysis of how the entire collection of classification categories, especially those in the Inconclusive range, were used by the participating examiners. Volunteer active examiners with AFTE membership or working in laboratories that participate in Association of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD) were provided with 15 sets of three known and one questioned cartridge cases fired from a collection of 25 new Ruger SR9 handguns. Remington 9-mm Luger (manufacturer designation L9MM3) ammunition was used and comparison sets were made up of cartridge cases fired within 100 cartridges of each other for each gun. Examiners were provided with a background survey, an answer sheet allowing for the AFTE Range of Conclusions, and return shipping materials. The participating examiners were provided with both same-source and different-source comparison sets allowing the study to assess both error rates. Responses were received from 218 participating examiners. The overall rate of false-negatives was estimated as 0.367 % from comparisons known to be from the same firearm but reported as eliminations. The overall rate of false-positives was estimated as 1.01 % from comparisons known to be from different firearms but reported as identifications. In the case of true different-source examinations, it is clear that the three Inconclusive categories and the Elimination category are not used consistently by all examiners. We identify five different apparent patterns of use of the AFTE Range of Conclusions scale, and discuss possible reasons for and implications of these differences. •In the reported black-box study, far more different-source sets than same-source sets were graded as Inconclusive.•It is clear that the three Inconclusive categories and the Elimination category are not used consistently by all examiners.•We identify five patterns of use of the AFTE Range of Conclusions, and discuss possible reasons for these differences.

Memory interference theories hold that exposure to more similar information to a target item impairs memory of the target item. The dud effect refers to the finding in eyewitness lineup identification that fillers dissimilar to the suspect cause more false identification of the suspect than similar fillers, contrary to the interference concept. Previous studies on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory typically showed a testing priming effect that a larger number of studied items presented at test leads to a higher level of false recognition of the critical lure (CL). In the present study, either all, or all but one studied item were replaced by unrelated distractors at test. Subjects made more false recognitions of the CL in the no- or only-one-studied item than in the multiple-studied-item condition, supporting the dud-effect account. The slower response time in the “dud” condition suggested a deliberate, monitoring-like approach taken by subjects in that condition.

Solar energy plays a major role in the transition to renewable energy. To ensure that large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants operate at their full potential, their monitoring is essential. It is common practice to utilize drones equipped with infrared thermography (IRT) cameras to detect defects in modules, as the latter can lead to deviating thermal behavior. However, IRT images can also show temperature hot-spots caused by inhomogeneous soiling on the module’s surface. Hence, the method does not differentiate between defective and soiled modules, which may cause false identification and economic and resource loss when replacing soiled but intact modules. To avoid this, we propose to detect spatially inhomogeneous soiling losses and model temperature variations explained by soiling. The spatially resolved soiling information can be obtained, for example, using aerial images captured with ordinary RGB cameras during drone flights. This paper presents an electrothermal model that translates the spatially resolved soiling losses of PV modules into temperature maps. By comparing such temperature maps with IRT images, it can be determined whether the module is soiled or defective. The proposed solution consists of an electrical model and a thermal model which influence each other. The electrical model of Bishop is used which is based on the single-diode model and replicates the power output or consumption of each cell, whereas the thermal model calculates the individual cell temperatures. Both models consider the given soiling and weather conditions. The developed model is capable of calculating the module temperature for a variety of different weather conditions. Furthermore, the model is capable of predicting which soiling pattern can cause critical hot-spots.

Clark (2012) highlights an important issue that has received inadequate attention in the eyewitness memory literature: lineup procedures that reduce the false identification rate (a desirable effect) often tend to reduce the correct identification rate as well (an undesirable effect). Determining which procedure is diagnostically superior under those conditions is not easy. Clark (2012) showed that the procedure with the lower false identification rate could be associated with higher overall costs to society once costs and benefits are both taken into consideration. Beyond the issue of cost, we argue that Clark's (2012) observation has far reaching implications for evaluating the diagnostic performance of a lineup procedure. Specifically, the field of eyewitness memory has attempted to differentiate between lineup procedures by using various measures of probative value (such as the diagnosticity ratio). However, contrary to intuition, probative value is not a relevant consideration. Instead, lineup procedures should be compared using receiver operating characteristic analysis, as is routinely done in other applied fields (such as radiology).

Finding disease-relevant tissues and cell types can facilitate the identification and investigation of functional genes and variants. In particular, cell type proportions can serve as potential disease predictive biomarkers. In this manuscript, we introduce a novel statistical framework, cell-type Wide Association Study (cWAS), that integrates genetic data with transcriptomics data to identify cell types whose genetically regulated proportions (GRPs) are disease/trait-associated. On simulated and real GWAS data, cWAS showed good statistical power with newly identified significant GRP associations in disease-associated tissues. More specifically, GRPs of endothelial and myofibroblasts in lung tissue were associated with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, respectively. For breast cancer, the GRP of blood CD8 + T cells was negatively associated with breast cancer (BC) risk as well as survival. Overall, cWAS is a powerful tool to reveal cell types associated with complex diseases mediated by GRPs.