Black police officers disciplined disproportionately for misconduct, research finds

by Indiana University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An examination of racial differences in the disciplining of police officers in three of the largest U.S. cities consistently found that Black officers were more frequently disciplined for misconduct than White officers, despite an essentially equal number of allegations being leveled. This included allegations of severe misconduct.


"We found a consistent pattern of racial differences in the formal recording of disciplinary actions in three different major metropolitan cities: Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles," wrote a group of six management professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "Our results showed that Black officers were more likely to have recorded cases of misconduct, despite there being no difference between Black and white officers in the number of allegations made against them.

"It is impossible to know whether these differences are due to racial bias versus some other unmeasured factors. However, it is noteworthy that the pattern of results is in line with what theories of racial bias would predict and with evidence of racial disparities in punishment in other settings.

Authors of the article, "The Race Discipline Gap: A Cautionary Note on Archival Measures of Behavioral Misconduct," are Sheri Walter, Eric Gonzalez-Mulé, Cristiano Guarana, Ernest O'Boyle Jr., Chris Berry and Tim Baldwin. All are in Kelley's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship. The article is forthcoming in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Using archival data, they found that Black officers in Chicago were disciplined at a 105 percent higher rate than white officers. In Philadelphia, Black officers were 48 percent more likely than white officers to have been disciplined. Allegations of misconduct include lack of service and verbal or physical assault.

After controlling for the number of allegations of misconduct, they found that Black officers were disciplined at an even higher rate—132 percent more often than white officers.

"Just as organizational leaders have implemented policies and procedures to mitigate adverse impact in hiring, they may need to implement checks to ensure that there is no adverse impact in the detection and enforcing of organizational misconduct," the Kelley professors wrote. "Just as bias by police against citizens has been very slow to change, it is likely that any bias within police departments has also been slow to change."

The professors analyzed archival information from the Citizens Police Data Project, which features information collected by the Chicago Police Department from 2001 to 2008 and 2011 to 2015, as well as administrative records from the Philadelphia Police Department from 1991 to 1998.

They also used data collected by the Analysis Group for the City of Los Angeles in 2003 and 2004 to assess whether there are race differences in the number of allegations made against officers. The results of their analysis of data from Chicago and Los Angeles found no differences in allegations between Black and white officers. Results were mixed for Hispanic and Asian officers.

The purpose of the study was to examine the use of archival organizational records as measures of behavioral misconduct. Given prior studies that Black people are more likely to be arrested, receive longer prison sentences and be suspended from school, the researchers set out to study whether Black employees—when compared to white employees—were subject to systematic differences in the documentation of misconduct.

"Similar to the issues facing the criminal justice and education systems, where racial disparities in punishment are well-documented, organizations face a difficult challenge in detecting and enforcing misconduct," researchers wrote. "Even when organizations adopt seemingly objective policies for addressing misconduct, it is still possible for certain groups to be disproportionately accused of misconduct and/or disciplined.


Explore further

Only 2% of black Chicagoan' allegations of police misconduct were sustained

More information: Sheryl L. Walter et al, The race discipline gap: A cautionary note on archival measures of behavioral misconduct, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.010

Journal information: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Provided by Indiana University

Indigenous Peoples' Day: These are the states that have ditched Columbus Day

By Scottie Andrew and AJ Willingham, CNN 

Columbus Day has been a political lightning rod for states, cities and municipalities around the US for years now. Some have decided to do something about it.  

© AFP Contributor/AFP/AFP/Getty Images A statue of Christopher Columbus at a downtown Los Angeles park is surrounded by a chain-link fence on October 9, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Virginia is the latest state to officially observe "Indigenous Peoples' Day" instead, a holiday to recognize the native populations that were displaced and decimated after Christopher Columbus and other European explorers reached the continent.

Technically, Columbus Day is a federal holiday, which means it is recognized by the US government and thus brings the closure of non-essential government offices, and, usually, places like post offices and banks.

But states and local governments can choose not to observe a federal holiday. And, as is the case with a growing number of places, change the name and intent of the October holiday altogether.

Not listed here are more than 130 cities that have ditched Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples Day -- and the list grows yearly.

States that officially celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day

Alaska: Observes Indigenous Peoples' Day as of 2017

Gov. Bill Walker signed observances of the holiday in 2015 and 2016 before making the switch official in 2017.

Hawaii: Observes Discoverers' Day in place of Columbus Day

Maine: Observes Indigenous Peoples' Day as of 2019

New Mexico: Observes Indigenous Peoples' Day as of 2019

Oregon: Observes Indigenous Peoples Day as of 2017

South Dakota: Observes Native American Day as of 1990

Vermont: Observes Indigenous Peoples' Day as of 2019


States and DC that observe Indigenous Peoples Day via proclamations

Iowa: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds made a proclamation in 2018 designating Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Louisiana: The Pelican State doesn't recognize Columbus Day. Gov. John Bel Edwards declared October 14, 2019, the state's first Indigenous Peoples' Day but hasn't issued a 2020 proclamation yet.

Michigan: On October 14, 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared the day to be Indigenous Peoples' Day "to uplift our country's indigenous roots, history, and contributions."

Minnesota: In 2019, Gov. Tim Walz signed a proclamation declaring the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples' Day. The state is home to 11 Tribal Nations.

North Carolina: Gov. Roy Cooper has made yearly proclamations designating the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Virginia: In 2020, Gov. Ralph Northam declared Monday the first Indigenous Peoples' Day in Virginia, calling it an "important step in creating an inclusive, honest Commonwealth." The state is home to 11 native tribes.

Wisconsin: Gov. Tony Evers established Indigenous Peoples' Day via an executive order days before the observance in 2019.

Washington, DC: The DC Council voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day a few days before the 2019 observance.


States that celebrate both holidays

Alabama: The state celebrates both Columbus Day and American Indian Heritage Day.

Oklahoma: In 2019, the state voted to move Native American Day to the same day as Columbus Day so the two could be celebrated concurrently.

Protesters in Portland topple statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt

Rachel Elbaum and Kurt Chirbas and Caroline Radnofsky 


Protesters in Portland, Oregon, pulled down statues of former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and broke windows late Sunday amid a demonstration on what organizers called an “Indigenous Day of Rage,” NBC local affiliate KGW reported.  

© Provided by NBC News Image: A group of protesters toppled statues of former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in Portland's South Park Block (Sean Meagher / AP)

Monday is the federal holiday Columbus Day, which some cities and states have renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Earlier in the evening, police tweeted that a mass gathering had formed and that some protesters were trying to “pull down a statue with a chain.”

An hour later, police declared the protest a riot, ordered protesters to disperse and said that those who chose to stay would be subject to “arrest, citation, or crowd control agents, including, but not limited to tear gas and impact weapons.”

Photos taken after the protest showed the Lincoln statue resting on its head with spray paint on the base, while the Roosevelt statue rested on its side with orange spray paint on the base. In addition to the toppling of the statues, the glass front and doors of the Oregon Historical Society were smashed.

Video: Protesters topple statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt in Portland (NBC News)


In the announcement of the protest on Saturday, organizers Generational Resistance called on social media for an “end to colonialism” and the abolishment of the police in a post where they also asked for no photos or video to be taken.

They also warned indigenous people who wanted to bring “drums, medicine or regalia” that it “might not be the best event to bring things that are sacred to you.”

It was not immediately clear whether the statues were defaced by protesters involved in the Generational Resistance march.

Portland has become a flashpoint for sometimes violent political conflict. The city saw months of nightly protests after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, with some protesters lighting fires and antagonizing the police. In July, there were weeks of intense protests in the city after U.S. agents from the Department of Homeland Security were sent to guard a federal courthouse.

President Donald Trump, who has frequently criticized the protests in Portland, on Monday published a series of tweets about Sunday night's demonstration, retweeting what appeared to be images of the damage and offering to send federal law enforcement.

In August, he praised a pro-Trump caravan of activists whose presence appeared to contribute to violent clashes in the city.

See all

The Dakota 38 execution was the largest mass execution in the United States and took place on December 26, 1862. On the day after Christmas in 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged under order of President Abraham Lincoln. The hangings and convictions of the Dakota 38 resulted from the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in southwest Minnesota.

The Traumatic True History and Name List of the Dakota 38

After demonstrations, Nigerian president pledges to punish police brutality

By Felix Onuah 

© Reuters/NIGERIA PRESIDENCY FILE PHOTO: Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari addresses the nation in Abuja

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari promised on Monday that the government would bring police officers responsible for misconduct to justice, after nearly a week of protests against police brutality that were met by a harsh response.

At least one person has been killed since the demonstrations began. Police have opened fire with guns at marchers, as well as using water canons and tear gas to disperse them. More than a thousand demonstrators returned to streets around Nigeria on Monday.

On Sunday, authorities announced they were disbanding the Special Anti-Robbery Squad police unit, known as SARS, the target of demonstrators who accuse it of beating up and killing Nigerians and extorting from them.

Rights groups and protesters said they were unconvinced by the promise to disband the SARS force, saying the authorities had pledged to dissolve or reform the unit in the past with little change.

In a statement on Monday, Buhari promised "extensive police reforms", acknowledging "genuine concerns and agitations by Nigerians about the excessive use of force and in some cases extra-judicial killings and wrongful conduct of the men of the Nigerian Police Force."

But he also described police misconduct as relegated to a "few bad eggs".

(Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Peter Graff)

Thai government says 'can handle' student-led protest

By Panarat Thepgumpanat 

© Reuters/SOE ZEYA TUN FILE PHOTO: Pro-democracy protesters attend a mass rally in Bangkok

THEY ARE USING THE THREE FINGERS SIGN FROM THE HUNGER GAMES

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The Thai government said on Monday it was not concerned about a student-led demonstration on Wednesday as protest leaders sought to escalate their push to demand a new constitution and oust Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

During three months of protests, anti-government activists have also broken a taboo by calling for reforms of the powerful monarchy of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who is "enthroned in a position of revered worship" according to the constitution.

Protesters, who drew tens of thousands of people to a demonstration last month, said they planned to gather on Wednesday at Bangkok's Democracy Monument before moving to Government House and would camp there overnight.

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters that he did not expect huge turnout.

"We're prepared and not worried," he said. "I think we can handle it."

The protest leaders, organising under the new banner of the People's Movement, said their focus would be a call for constitutional changes before a parliament sitting on Nov. 1.

"We also want to oust Prayuth," said Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, one of the leaders, adding that she expected even more people than at last month's protest in Bangkok.

Protesters say the constitution was engineered to ensure that Prayuth, who first seized power in a 2014 coup, continued in office after an election last year. He says the election was fair.

Some protesters also want a reduction in the king's powers to reflect Thailand's status as a constitutional monarchy.

Raising the prospect of an encounter between the king and the protesters, his motorcade is due to pass Democracy Monument on Wednesday as he presides over a ceremony at a royal temple during a rare visit to Thailand.

Police said they would urge protesters to choose another location or at least clear the way for the motorcade.

Arnon Nampa, another of the protest leaders, said last week that demonstrators would not obstruct the motorcade but would show a three-finger salute - a symbol of resistance - if it passed by.

(Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

A collapse of global tax talks could cost $100 billion, OECD says

© Reuters/Charles Platiau FILE PHOTO: Outside view of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, (OECD) headquarters in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) - The global economy could shed more than 1% of output if international talks to rewrite cross-border tax rules break down and trigger a trade war, the OECD said on Monday, after countries agreed to keep up negotiating to mid-2021.

Nearly 140 countries agreed on Friday to extend talks, after the pandemic outbreak and U.S. hesitation before the presidential election squashed hopes of reaching a deal this year.

Public pressure is growing on big, profitable multinationals to pay their share under international tax rules after the COVID-19 pandemic strained national budgets, the countries said in an agreed statement.The aim is to update international tax rules for the age of digital commerce, in particular to discourage big Internet companies like Google , Facebook and Amazon from booking profits in low-tax countries like Ireland, regardless where their customers are.

In the absence of a new international rulebook, a growing number of governments are planning their own digital services taxes, which has prompted threats of trade retaliation from the Trump administration.

"The alternative to finding an agreement would be a trade war ... The last thing you want at this time with COVID-19 is to have to deal with further trade tensions," OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria told journalists.

In such a worst-case scenario, trade disputes could knock global GDP back by more than 1%, the OECD, which has been steering the global tax talks, estimated in an impact assessment.

Conversely, new rules for digital taxation and a proposed global minimum tax would increase global corporate income tax worldwide by 1.9% to 3.2%, or about $50 billion to $80 billion per year.

That could reach $100 billion when including an existing U.S. minimum tax on overseas profits, amounting to 4% of global corporate income tax, the OECD said. Meanwhile, any drag on global growth would be no more than 0.1% in the long term.

At the same time, new digital taxation rules would shift the right to tax $100 billion in corporate profits to big consumer- market countries, largely at the expense of low-tax investment hubs where such profits currently get booked.

While countries agreed on OECD blueprints for a future deal, the key remaining issue to be solved was the scope of businesses to be covered, which would then make it easier to agree the technical parameters, OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans said.

The Trump administration had insisted on an opt-in option for U.S. companies, which has been broadly rejected by other countries in the talks.

Nonetheless, regardless of the results of the U.S. presidential election next month, there was bipartisan support in Washington to move forward, Gurria said.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas, editing by Larry King)

Fed's Kashkari says the recovery has 'flattened' out and warns thousands of small businesses will collapse without further support from Washington

insider@insider.com (Saloni Sardana) 

© Reuters President of the Federal Reserve Bank on Minneapolis Neel Kashkari speaks during an interview in New York Reuters

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari told CBS "Face the Nation" on Sunday the recovery from the pandemic is stalling and called for more for fiscal aid.

 

He said: "If 11 million Americans can't pay their bills, can't put food on the table, can't make their credit card payments, their car payments, that has spillover effects to other sectors of the economy." 

 

Democrats rejected an increased offer of $1.8 trillion in fiscal aid by the White House over the weekend.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday the strong recovery seen in the US economy in recent months has "flattened" out and called on lawmakers in Washington to reach an agreement on another round fiscal aid.

"The recovery, the strong recovery that we saw in June and July, has really flattened out. The virus is climbing now again around the country, especially here in my region, in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin," Kashkari said. "And so you're seeing consumers pull back and not want to go out, and not want to take that risk again. And so, unfortunately, we still have a long way to go in this pandemic, and that means we need continued assistance."

He said job losses and bankruptcies in the travel and tourism industries, front-line service industries and restaurants will continue to spiral and "bleed on" if lawmakers don't reach a compromise. Democrats and Republicans have been caught in a stalemate since July over the size and scope of a new set of economic stimulus measures.



Video: Fed chair warns about need for another COVID stimulus (KSDK-TV St. Louis)

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/markets/fed-s-kashkari-says-the-recovery-has-flattened-out-and-warns-thousands-of-small-businesses-will-collapse-without-further-support-from-washington/ar-BB19Wnre?ocid=msedgntp

Southwest pilots' union bristles at 10% pay cut proposal
 

Southwest Airlines pilots' union took issue at a company proposal to cut pay rates by 10%.

Southwest has said it won't furlough or cut pay rates this year but is seeking concessions for next year.

The carrier has never furloughed an employee in its nearly 50 years of flying

.

© Provided by CNBC A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 (LN2318) on final-approach after a pre-delivery test flight at dusk.

Southwest Airlines pilots' union is pushing back on a company proposal to cut pay by 10% to avoid furloughs through the end of next year, the latest wrinkle in the Dallas-based carrier's efforts to cut costs in the pandemic.

Southwest is trying to preserve its record of never having furloughed workers in its nearly 50 years of flying, but its CEO Gary Kelly warned earlier this month that it would seek concessions from the labor unions that make up the bulk of its workforce.

"Our goal is to protect every pilot job so we can be prepared to take advantage of revenue opportunities when customer demand returns," Southwest said in an emailed statement. "Until then, we must also begin to restore our balance sheet by more closely aligning our loss in revenue with lower costs."

All U.S. airlines are struggling with a plunge in revenue from the sharp drop in travel demand because of the virus. In the first 10 days of the month, the Transportation Security Administration screened an average of 804,302 people a day, down nearly 66% from the same period a year ago.

On Friday, Southwest proposed the 10% pay rate cut to its roughly 9,000 pilots. The union, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association took issue with the across-the-board reduction and force majeure clauses, which it feared the airline could lean on to furlough pilots anyway.

"This addition would not protect us from furloughs or ensure us that our hourly trip rates would snap back after the term of any agreement," the union said in a memo to members.

The union pointed to other options like voluntary time off at reduced pay and early retirement packages.

"We have a revenue and short-term cash problem that cannot be fixed by concessions alone," the union said in a memo on Friday. Its president Jon Weaks, told CNBC the company's proposal is "dead on arrival" but that the union is open to further talks on cost-cutting measures.

The dispute comes as competitors American Airlines and United Airlines earlier this month began cutting more than 30,000 jobs after the terms of billions in federal aid expired. Southwest doesn't plan to furlough workers this year but earlier this month said it would seek concessions from unions for a committment to keep jobs through 2021.

United Airlines pilots agreed to reduce minimum hours in order to prevent close to 3,000 furloughs planned this year.

VIDEO https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/news/southwest-pilots-union-bristles-at-10-pay-cut-proposal/ar-BB19WngE?ocid=msedgntp

Big businesses are protecting exec pay by rewriting bonus plans and changing performance targets during COVID-19, a report has found

insider@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

© Provided by Business Insider Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants was among the firms named in the Semler Brossy Consulting Group report. Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images

Big businesses are protecting executives' pay by rewriting bonus plans and changing performance targets, a report has found.

 

Companies have added non-financial targets and written off worst-performing months, Semler Brossy Consulting Group said.

 

For example, Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants modified its bonus plans so that lower sales at the peak of lockdown won't count against execs, the group said.

 

Many companies have cut employee pay and laid off staff, and adjustments that appear to protect executive pay "are likely to get outsized attention," Semler Brossy warned.

Big businesses are protecting their executives' pay during the pandemic by rewriting bonus plans and changing performance targets, a report has found.

Some companies have simply written off the worst-performing months, while others have added non-financial metrics to bonus-linked targets, according to Semler Brossy Consulting Group's investigation of 29 large US firms, reported by the Financial Times.

Ten companies modified the period that performance is measured over, typically to cover just a partial year. This means that executives' annual performance won't be dragged down by poor performance during the peaks of the pandemic.

Many companies have cut staff numbers or employee pay, and adjustments that appear to protect executive pay "are likely to get outsized attention," the group warned.

Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants modified its bonus plans so that lower sales at the peak of lockdown won't count against exec bonuses, Semler Brossy said, per an SEC filing.

Its 2021 bonus plan will use non-financial metrics during the first half of the fiscal year alongside financial results from the second half, and the board will use its discretion to award bonuses, the FT reported.

Gene Lee, Darden's CEO, was among a number of executives who pledged to take pay cuts in the early days of the pandemic, an apparent act of solidarity with struggling workers.

Lee said he would forgo his $1 million base salary in early April. As of early June, SEC filings showed his salary had already been reinstated.

Casino operator Wynn Resorts, which runs the world's largest five-star resort, modified bonus goals for some executives for the second half of 2020 to encourage saving cash, rather than generating earnings, with "significantly reduced target incentive levels" for the year, the Semler Brossy report found, per an SEC filing.

Both Darden and Wynn Resorts did not immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment. Representatives from Wynn Resorts and Darden declined to comment to the FT.

The report found that, among the 29 large companies, new performance metrics included cash flow, strategic and operational health measures, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

Semler Brossy argued that, while incentives are important to keep executives motivated, any rewards "must be proportionate and aligned with the broader impact of COVID-19 on shareholders, on employees, and on society at large."

Boards should acknowledge other stakeholders when planning their executive bonus programs, Semler Brossy said.

"The media are actively looking for stories of corporate greed in a pandemic, and even innocuous seeming changes, such as shifting some performance-based awards to time-based vesting, have resulted in negative stories," the company added.

Denver shooting suspect not a licensed security guard, city says
Jordan Freiman 

The suspect in Saturday's fatal shooting in Denver, Colorado, is not a licensed security guard, CBS Denver reports. Security guards are required to have a license in order to operate in the city of Denver.

© CBS Denver art-museum-shooting-3.jpg

SECURITY GUARD IS WHITE WHICH IS WHY HE IS ALIVE

Matthew Dolloff, 30, was taken into custody Saturday after allegedly shooting and killing a man in the midst of dueling rallies between left- and right-wing protesters. Local NBC News affiliate KUSA-TV said the person taken into custody for the shooting was a private security guard hired by the station.

"There is no record for an active licensed security guard now or ever for an individual named Matthew Doloff or Dolloff. If he was operating as a security guard, he was in violation of the law," The Denver Department of Excise and Licenses told CBS Denver's Andrea Flores.

"A security guard operating without a license could be fined up to $999 dollars and face up to a year in jail," the department told CBS News. "The company he works for is also legally responsible for making sure all their security guard employees have a license and could face administrative action against their required security guard employer license if they have security guards working without a license."

"Security guards are prohibited from carrying or using a firearm without getting an armed firearm endorsement for their license," the department added. "All security guards in Denver are required to get a federal background check before they receive their license."

Security guards operating in Denver are also supposed to be in uniform, which Dolloff does not appear to be wearing in videos of the shooting posted to social media. The videos appear to show the victim spraying mace at Dolloff right before the shooting.

KUSA-TV said it hired Dolloff through the Pinkerton security firm, according to The Associated Press. AP also reports Dolloff's name does not appear in the city's database of licensed security guards. Pinkerton did not respond the AP's request for comment.

Dolloff is currently being held on first degree murder charges without bail, CBS Denver reports. Police have not identified the man who was killed.

Mallinckrodt files for bankruptcy protection amid U.S. opioid litigation

(Reuters) - Mallinckrodt Plc filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, saddled with lawsuits alleging it fueled the U.S. opioid epidemic and after it lost a court battle to avoid paying higher rebates to state Medicaid programs for its top-selling drug.

© Reuters/George Frey FILE PHOTO: Bottles of prescription painkillers Oxycodone Hydrochloride, 30mg pills, made by Mallinckrodt

The company listed both assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion in a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District Of Delaware.

More than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed accusing drug manufacturers of engaging in deceptive marketing that promoted the use of addictive painkillers, fueling an epidemic that since 1999 has resulted in more than 450,000 overdose deaths.

The company had in February said it planned to have its generic drug business file for bankruptcy as part of a tentative $1.6 billion opioid settlement to resolve claims by state attorneys general and U.S. cities and counties.

It further warned on Aug. 4 the parent company and other units may also seek bankruptcy protection after a judge allowed the federal government to force it to pay higher rebates to state Medicaid programs for its multiple-sclerosis drug H.P. Acthar Gel.

Its per-vial price has risen from about $50 in 2001 to $38,892 in 2019 and it generated 30.1% of the company's net sales last year.

The drugmaker said it will implement a restructuring support agreement that would provide for an amended proposed opioid claims settlement and a financial restructuring.

"The company has agreed to pay $260 million over seven years and reset Acthar Gel's Medicaid rebate calculation as of July 1, 2020, such that state Medicaid programs will receive 100% rebates on Acthar Gel Medicaid sales, based on current Acthar Gel pricing," Mallinckrodt said in a statement.

During the bankruptcy protection, the company said it aims to resolve opioid-related claims and to reduce its debt by about $1.3 billion, while surviving on cash on hand and cash generated from operations.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Arun Koyyur)

Simone De Beauvoir’s tragic lesbian love story is finally published

By Agence France-Presse

Simone de Beauvoir STF AFP:File


A tragic love story that Simone de Beauvoir thought “too intimate” to publish during her lifetime will finally see the light of day Wednesday, 34 years after her death.

The great feminist writer recounts her teenage crush for another girl in “Les Inseparables”, the story of a “passionate and tragic friendship between two rebellious young girls.”

But de Beauvoir put the deeply autobiographical novel into a bottom drawer after her partner Jean-Paul Sartre “held his nose” when he read it.

The author of “The Second Sex” wrote how she became “instantly charmed by her new classmate”, Elisabeth “Zaza” Lacoin, who died of encephalitis at the age of 21.

“From the day I met you,” she wrote, “you were everything for me.”

In the novel, the de Beauvoir character does “her all in order to make Andree (a thinly-disguised Zaza) love her back,” said the 2Seas literary agency, who handled the foreign rights for the book.

Described as “moving, gripping coming-of-age novel” that “outlines Simone de Beauvoir’s personal battle against the conventional expectations”, de Beauvoir finished it in 1954, five years after her feminist masterpiece was published.

It’s theme of “the friendship between two young women struggling against conventional ideas of what a woman should be in early 20th-century Paris” echoed “The Second Sex”.

The book’s English publishers, Vintage, said the two girls were expected to be “devout, obedient and obliged from a young age to set aside her own interests and passions” for the men in their lives.

– Unrequited passion –

The writer went on to have several other relationships with women, some of whom were also Sartre’s lovers.

De Beauvoir first evoked her relationship with Zaza in her “Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter”.

The two were so close during World War I and the 1920s that fellow students and teachers at their school called them the “inseparables”.

Zaza’s relationship with the communist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom she had met through de Beauvoir, scandalised her traditionalist Catholic family.

He appears as a charismatic student in the story, and one of his classmates was none other than Sartre.

The pair quarrelled and then permanently fell out over Soviet communism around the time the novel was written.

By then the object of de Beauvoir’s unrequited love was long dead.

Some have questioned whether Sartre’s rift with Merleau-Ponty may have also played a part in de Beauvoir putting the book to one side.

“It is said that it was Jean-Paul Sartre himself who advised De Beauvoir not to publish the novel, considering it of little interest,” the philosopher Paul B. Preciado wrote in the French daily Liberation.

But Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, the writer’s adopted daughter, thinks that it was she herself who finally renounced it despite several rewrites.

In the preface to the book — which will be published in English next year — she argued that de Beauvoir found “the final fictional transcription of [her love for Zaza] unsatisfying”.

© 2020 AFP

AIR-Act2Act: A dataset for training social robots to interact with the elderly

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Three of the interaction scenarios considered by the researchers, which were recorded using Kinect sensors and included in the AIR-Act2Act dataset. Fig. 2(b) Credit: Ko et al.

To interact with humans and assist them in their day-to-day life, robots should have both verbal and non-verbal communication capabilities. In other words, they should be able to understand both what a user is saying and what their behavior indicates, adapting their speech, behavior and actions accordingly.

To teach social robots to interact with humans, roboticists need to train them on datasets containing human-human verbal and non-verbal interactions. Compiling these datasets can be quite time consuming, hence are currently fairly scarce and are not always suitable for training robots to interact with specific segments of the population, such as children or the elderly.

To facilitate the development of robots that can best assist the elderly, researchers at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in South Korea recently created AIR-Act2Act, a dataset that can be used to teach robots non-verbal social behaviors. The new dataset was compiled as part of a broader project called AIR (AI for Robots), aimed at developing robots that can help older adults throughout their daily activities.

"Social robots can be great companions for lonely elderly people," Woo-Ri Ko, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "To do this, however, robots should be able to understand the behavior of the elderly, infer their intentions, and respond appropriately. Machine learning is one way to implement this intelligence. Since it provides the ability to learn and improve automatically from experience, it can also allow robots to learn social skills by observing natural interactions between humans."

Ko and her colleagues were the first to record interactions between younger and older (i.e., senior) adults with the purpose of training social robots. The dataset they compiled contains over 5000 interactions, each with associated depth maps, body indexes and 3-D skeletal data of the interacting individuals.

One of the interaction scenarios considered by the researchers, which was recorded using Kinect sensors and included in the AIR-Act2Act dataset. Fig. 3. Credit: Ko et al.

"AIR-Act2Act dataset is the only dataset up to date that specifically contains interactions with the elderly," Ko said. "We recruited 100 elderly people and two college students to perform 10 interactions in indoor environments and recorded data during these interactions. We also captured depth maps, body indexes and 3-D skeletal data of participants as they interacted with each other, using three Microsoft Kinect v2 cameras."

At a later stage, the researchers manually analyzed and refined the skeletal data they collected to identify instances in which the Kinect sensor did not track movements properly. This incorrect data was then adjusted or removed from the dataset.

Unlike other existing datasets for training social robots, AIR-Act2Act also contains representations of the movements that should be emulated or learned by a robot. More specifically, Ko and her colleagues calculated the actions that a humanoid robot called NAO would need to perform based on its joint angles to emulate the non-verbal behavior of human participants interacting in their data samples.

"Previous research used human-human interaction datasets to generate two social behaviors: handshakes and waiting," Ko said. "However, larger datasets were essential to generate more diverse behavior. We hope that our large-scale dataset will help advance this study further and promote related research."

Ko and her colleagues published AIR-Act2Act on GitHub, along with a series of useful python scripts, so it can now be easily accessed by other developers worldwide. In the future, their dataset could enable the development of more advanced and responsive humanoid robots for assisting the elderly that would be able to reproduce human non-verbal social behaviors.

"We are now conducting research exploring end-to-end learning-based social behavior generation using our dataset," Ko said. "We have already achieved promising results, which will be presented at the SMC 2020 conference. In the future, we plan to further expand on this research."

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End-to-end learning of co-speech gesture generation for humanoid robots

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More information: Ko et. al., AIR-Act2Act: Human-human interaction dataset for teaching non-verbal social behaviors to robots. arXiv:2009.02041 [cs.RO]. arxiv.org/abs/2009.02041

© 2020 Science X Network

Can the voice of healthcare robots influence how they are perceived by humans?

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Healthbot, a Healthcare robot developed at The University of Auckland. In the image a user is interacting with Healthbot using a touch screen. (Credit: Centre for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science, University of Auckland)

Robots are gradually making their way into hospitals and other clinical facilities, providing basic assistance to doctors and patients. To facilitate their widespread use in health care settings, however, robotics researchers need to ensure that users feel at ease with robots and accept the help they can offer. This could potentially be achieved by developing robots that communicate in empathetic and compassionate ways.


With this in mind, researchers at the University of Auckland and Singapore University of Technology & Design have been using speech synthesis techniques to create robots that sound more empathetic. In a recent paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics, they presented the results of an experiment exploring the effects of using an empathetic synthesized voice on users' perception of robots.

"Our recent study is based on approximately three years of research aimed at developing a synthetic voice for health care robots," Jesin James, one of the researchers who carried out the study told TechXplore. "Past studies have shown that the type of synthesized voice used by robots can impact how users perceive them, which can encourage or discourage users from initiating interactions."

The speech research group at the University of Auckland and the Center for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science have been trying to develop health care robots that can assist people in care homes for several years now. Recently, they have been focusing their efforts on trying to identify voices that could make robots more acceptable in the eyes of humans they interact with.

"A lot of research and development efforts in robotics focus on broadening the capabilities of robots," James explained. "However, users may be entirely discouraged from using robots if they perceive a lack of reciprocal empathy. We felt that a robot's voice plays an important role in how people perceive it, which is what ultimately inspired us to carry out our recent study."

A participant taking part in the perception test carried out by the researchers. (Credit: James et al.)

First, James and her colleagues tested the hypothesis that a robot's voice can impact how users perceive it by conducting a simple experiment using a robot called Healthbot. The robot's voice was that of a professional voice artist, who was recorded while reading dialogs in two tone variations: a flat monotone and an empathetic voice.

The researchers recruited 120 participants and asked them to share their perceptions after they had watched videos of Healthbot talking with these two different voices. The vast majority of participants said that they perceived the robot as more empathetic when it spoke using the more empathetic voice. These initial results encouraged the researchers to explore the possibility of producing a synthetic voice that reproduced the empathetic tone used by the professional voice artist.


"Our study had two key objectives," James said. "One was to determine what type of synthesized voice is best for creating a health care robot that is perceived as empathetic. Once we identified it, we tried to use speech synthesis techniques to produce this voice."

When they analyzed the findings of a short pilot study, the researchers realized that the emotions that most influenced whether a human user perceived a voice as empathetic or not were not the primary emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, joy and fear), but more subtle, secondary emotions. These are complex emotions that are often conveyed by the tone of voice of human speakers, which could be, for instance, apologetic, anxious, confident, enthusiastic or worried. This realization inspired James and her colleagues to compile a new dataset of speech recordings conveying these secondary emotions, called JLCorpus.

By analyzing speech samples from this dataset, the team was able to produce a model that outlined the emotional qualities that a synthesized voice should have to be perceived as empathetic by human listeners. This model accounts for characteristics such as pitch, as well as speech rate and intensity. They then produced a synthesized voice that matched the emotional qualities they identified.

Mind map of reasons why participants did not prefer the robotic voice without empathetic emotions, based on the responses given by participants in the perception test. Credit: James et al.

Subsequently, James and her colleagues carried out a second perception test, during which users viewed videos of Healthbot speaking with the synthetized voice they had created and shared their perceptions of the robot.

"In this second perception test, participants saw a video of the health care robot speaking with the synthesized voice and rated the perceived empathy on a five-point scale based on the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity (MITI) module," James said. "This is a five-point scale used to rate a clinician's empathy, and the same scale was used here with modifications done to suit the health care robot."

In the videos that the researchers showed participants, Healthbot had a neutral facial expression and its speech was not accompanied by any particular hand gestures. This means that it could only convey emotions and empathy via its voice. The vast majority of those who took part in the second test said that they perceived the robot as highly empathetic, rating it high on the five-point scale MITI module.

"Our findings suggest that people can perceive empathy from voice alone, without any supporting facial expressions or gestures," James said. "This implies that a robot's voice plays a key role in how humans perceive it. This voice is not just a medium of communicating with humans; it can actually impact their perceptions."

In addition to highlighting the important role that a robot's voice plays in how humans perceive it, the recent study carried out by James and her colleagues shows that subtle, secondary emotions are what ultimately make a voice sound more empathetic. These findings could pave the way towards new studies exploring secondary emotions, which have so far been seldomly investigated.

Mind map of reasons why participants did not prefer the robotic voice without empathetic emotions, based on the responses given by participants in the perception test. Credit: James et al.

"These emotions are subtle in nature, can be culture-specific and are sometimes difficult to define and reproduce, but this is the exciting part about analyzing them," James said. "We are not exactly sure about what we could find and that makes it all the more interesting. There is a lack of resources and databases to study secondary emotions, so developing these resources would be the next step forward."

In the future, the synthesized voice produced by this team of researchers could be used to create health care robots that sound more empathic and human-like. Meanwhile, the researchers plan to continue exploring how humans convey subtle secondary emotions in speech, so that they can synthesize robot voices that are increasingly convincing and empathetic. They would also like to develop emotion recognition models that can automatically detect these emotions in the voice of human speakers.

"So far, we carried out perception tests using a video of the robot speaking to participants," James said. "We are now conducting perception tests in such a way that participants can actually sit near a physical robot and interact with it. We expect that the presence of the robot near the participants will impact their perception of the robot further."


Explore further Robots could learn to recognise human emotions, study finds

More information: Empathetic speech synthesis and testing for healthcare robots. International Journal of Social Robotics(2020). DOI: 10.1007/s12369-020-00691-4.

Emotional speech corpus: github.com/tli725/JL-Corpus

© 2020 Science X Network

Crabs are key to ecology and economy in Oman

by Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

The most abundant crab in Barr Al Hikman is the sentinel crab Macrophthalmus Sulcatus. Literally billions of these crabs live in the area. It is an essential food source for many shorebirds that winter in Barr Al Hikman. Credit: Jan van de Kam

The intertidal mudflats of Barr Al Hikman, a nature reserve at the south-east coast of the Sultanate of Oman, are crucial nursery grounds for numerous crab species. In return, these crabs are a vital element of the ecology, as well as the regional economy, a new publication in the scientific journal Hydrobiologia shows. "These important functions of the crabs should be considered when looking at the increasing human pressure on this nature reserve," first author and NIOZ-researcher Roeland Bom says.


Blue swimming crab

The mudflats of Barr Al Hikman are home to almost thirty crab species. For his research, Bom, together with colleagues in The Netherlands and at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, looked at the ecology of the two most abundant species. Bom notes, "Barr Al Hikman is also home to the blue swimming crab Portunus segnis. That is the species caught by local fishermen. This crab uses the mudflats of Barr Al Hikman as nursery grounds."

The counts of Bom and his colleagues show, that there are millions and millions of these crabs in Barr Al Hikman. They are food to hundreds of thousands of birds, both migrating species, as well as birds breeding in the area, such as crab plovers. The crabs live in holes in the ground. They forage on the seagrass beds that are still abundant in Barr Al Hikman. "Apart from the high primary production (algae) in Barr al Hikman, this reserve is also well suited for crabs because of the vastness of the area," Bom assumes. "The slopes of the mudflats are very gentle, so at low tide, the crabs have an immense area at their disposition."

Barr Al Hikman is an important nursery ground for Blue Swimming Crab Portunus segnis. This crab provides a major income for local fisheries. Credit: Jan van de Kam

Eco value

The value of the crabs is not just ecological, Bom stresses. "Local fishermen that catch the blue swimming crabs, distribute them not only through Oman, but also through the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and even to Japan. At approximately € 2,- per kilo, these crabs represent an important economic pillar, both under the region around Barr Al Hikman, as well as for the whole of Oman."

Reserve

The protection of the reserve of Barr Al Hikman is limited to national legislation. Efforts to acknowledge this reserve under the international Ramsar-convention were never effectuated. There is, however, increasing human pressure on the mudflats of Barr Al Hikman, the authors describe, that would justify further protection. For example, there are well-developed plans to start shrimp farming around this intertidal area. "When looking at the cost and benefits of these activities, it is important to look at the role of this reserve in the local ecology, as well as in the broader ecology of the many migratory birds that use the area," Bom says. "Moreover, our research shows that the unique ecosystem of Barr Al Hikman plays a key role in the economy as well."


Explore further Blue crab invasion spells doom for Albanian fishermen
More information: Roeland A. Bom et al, The intertidal mudflats of Barr Al Hikman, Sultanate of Oman, as feeding, reproduction and nursery grounds for brachyuran crabs, Hydrobiologia (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s10750-020-04418-4
Journal information: Hydrobiologia


Provided by Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

A home energy management system to achieve optimal control of heat pumps and photovoltaics

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

A screenshot of the interactive JuMP Julia visualization produced by the researchers’ system. Credit: Langer & Volling.

Over the past few decades, researchers worldwide have developed a growing amount of systems that can produce renewable energy, such as solar, wind or hydroelectric energy. While some companies and individuals have already started adopting these technologies, a complete transition to more sustainable energy systems is yet to take place. Tools that simplify the implementation and management of renewable energy systems in both industrial and residential settings could ultimately aid this transition.


With this in mind, researchers at Technische Universität Berlin have recently created an energy management system that is specifically designed to modulate photovoltaic (PV) technology and heat pumps residential environments. This new system, presented in a paper published in Elsevier's Applied Energy journal, was developed using JuMP, a modeling framework for mathematical optimization that is embedded in a programming language called Julia.

"Our main goal was to model a comprehensive optimal home energy management system that does not only include PVs and batteries but also a heat pump and thermal storages, in order to capture the seasonal effects of sector coupling," Lissy Langer, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "It was especially important for us to also publish the model code under an open license and use the open source optimization framework JuMP, in order to make our research reproducible."

As part of their study, Langer and her colleague Thomas Volling modeled a hypothetical building powered by a modulating air-sourced heat pump, a PV system, a battery and thermal storage systems for both floor heating and hot-water supply. Their model also includes a grid feed system that ensures that any surplus electricity produced by the PV technology is fed into the grid. The grid feed system implemented by the researchers takes the comfort of residents and fixed feed-in tariffs (i.e., financial incentives offered to renewable energy producers) into account.

"The home energy management system we proposed utilizes a classical model predictive control algorithm that derives optimal flows of a building under the assumption of perfect information," Langer said. "Due to the rolling horizon implementation of the system in Julia JuMP, we are able to analyze a whole year with a time resolution of 1h in just a couple of seconds."

The recent study carried out by Langer and her colleagues explores some of the common modeling effects associated with an optimization approach known as 'rolling horizon', which has the potential to improve modeling in energy management systems. In addition, the researchers calculated specific target states of charge that could be used as a reference to enhance rule-based energy management systems that are commonly used today.

In the future, the home energy management system devised by this team of researchers could simplify and promote the implementation of technology for the production of renewable energy in residential sites. The Julia JuMP-based model they developed is open-source and can be easily accessed online, thus it could also serve as a reference for other teams who are trying to develop sustainable energy management systems.

"A subsequent paper currently under review analyzes the effects of market and tariff design in a peer-to-peer market consisting of prosumagers, prosumers and consumers, in instances that involve the use of similar home energy management systems," Langer said. "In our next paper, we also plan to introduce uncertainty into our model and see if a close-to-optimal policy can be achieved using a reinforcement learning approach."


Explore further Intelligent software for district renewable energy management 

More information: An optimal home energy management system for modulating heat pumps and photovoltaic systems. Applied Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115661.

© 2020 Science X Network

Data show big gains for offshore wind

by National Renewable Energy Laboratory

The U.S. offshore wind project pipeline grew more than 10% between 2018 and 2019. Credit: NREL

Global installed offshore wind capacity reached 27,064 MW in 2019—a 19% increase from the previous year. This and other trends can be found in the "2019 Offshore Wind Technology Data Update," released by NREL on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office.

Only one commercial offshore wind farm currently operates in the United States, but NREL's 2019 data show advancing technology, falling prices, and increased federal and state support for the U.S. offshore wind industry. The U.S. offshore wind project pipeline grew 10% by the end of 2019, while the amount of U.S. offshore wind capacity under federal and state permitting with a signed offtake agreement was 6,439 MW—a threefold increase from the previous year.

State investment has been a major driver of offshore wind's growth in the United States. State procurement commitments climbed nearly 10,000 MW between 2018 and 2019, exceeding the capacity potential of the current U.S. pipeline.

"It's stunning how fast state commitments have grown," said NREL Offshore Wind Lead Walt Musial. "These numbers show that the industry is progressing toward real projects that are likely to get built."

Wind Projects Proposed for Deeper Waters, Farther from Shore

Technological advancements helped offshore wind projects operate farther from shore in 2019. The average distance from shore was 47 kilometers (km) for installed projects, and project announcements indicate an increase to 70 km by 2025.

Projects are also being sited in deeper waters, with the capacity-weighted average depth of installed projects at 31 meters. Project announcements indicate that, over the next five years, offshore sites will increase to average depths to 43 meters for projects commencing operation in 2025.

Semisubmersible offshore wind platforms accounted for 89% of substructures in floating wind projects either installed or announced in 2019. Other projects may use spar or tension-leg platform substructures. Credit: Josh Bauer, NREL

"As the industry matures, projects are getting bigger, and they're being sited farther from shore," Musial said. "That means offshore wind projects become less visible from shore, which could make them more easily accepted by the communities they power."

NREL's research found that floating offshore wind—important for tapping deep-water offshore wind resources—has progressed as well, both in the United States and globally. In 2019, Maine's public utility commission approved an updated power purchase agreement (PPA) for the 12-MW Aqua Ventus floating demonstration project, which will help the state develop its predominantly deep-water offshore wind resource and could usher in U.S. commercial floating wind development.


Globally, up to 1,549 MW of floating offshore wind has reached the permitting stage, while the total global pipeline reached 7,663 MW at the end of 2019.

Falling Costs Drive Offshore Development

Industry analyst projections indicate that offshore wind costs will continue to decline globally over the next decade. Costs are anticipated to reach a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) range of $50 to $75 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for fixed-bottom systems by 2030. In the United States, PPAs and offshore renewable energy certificate prices have fallen 40% over the last two years, making offshore wind projects more competitive in these electricity markets.

The information in the "2019 Offshore Wind Technology Data Update" is intended to provide offshore wind policymakers, regulators, developers, researchers, engineers, financiers, supply chain participants, and other stakeholders with up-to-date quantitative information about the offshore wind market, technology, and cost trends in the United States and worldwide.


Explore further Floating wind turbines on the rise
More information: For more information, view slides that display and summarize the "2019 Offshore Wind Technology Data Update" or download a spreadsheet of the data.
Provided by National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Global Privacy Control initiative seeks to give users control over their Internet privacy wishes

by Bob Yirka , Tech Xplore

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

An ensemble of activist groups, tech companies and publishers has banded together to start a new initiative aimed at giving internet users more control over the way their data is used. The group has named the new initiative Global Privacy Control (GPC), and has announced its launch on their web page.


A decade ago, several entities in the tech and privacy sector proposed a feature for web browsers called Do Not Track. It was supposed to force websites to stop tracking user internet activities (which allows for creating targeted ads). Several browser companies implemented the feature, but it never caught on, mainly because website owners ignored it. That, proponents of the new initiative claim, was because they were not legally forced to do so. But that might be changing. Recently, the state of California passed legislation called the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which gives users in that state the right to demand that their data not be used unless they give their permission. Some European countries have passed similar legislation.

The new GPC initiative is backed and run by a diverse group, including the Washington Post, the Mozilla Foundation, and professors at Georgetown Law School. It is also still in its infancy, so the particulars of how users might go about exerting their possible new rights are still being worked out. On its website, the GPC group suggests that rather than set up a single feature, as was the case with Do Not Track, users should have multiple options. They can cease using Google or Microsoft Edge, for example, and switch to Mozilla or other browsers that offer privacy options. Or they can download and install browser add-ons.

Members of the GPC initiative are also working to pressure more states (and the federal government) to enact legislation similar to what is being done in California. For that to work, though, they will need broad support from the user and technology community. But for now, users who live in California can take advantage of the privacy tools now available and to start asking websites to stop tracking them—and if such sites refuse or ignore them, they can take legal action.


Explore further Firefox unveils major security upgrade: DoH protocol boosts user privacy

More information: Global Privacy Control: globalprivacycontrol.org/

Announcing Global Privacy Control: Making it Easy for Consumers to Exercise Their Privacy Rights: globalprivacycontrol.org/press … elease/20201007.html

© 2020 Science X Network