Paper finds employers increasingly willing to hire workers with criminal records

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA

A new paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that many American businesses are willing to hire workers with criminal records. Such companies become even more interested in hiring such workers if offered crime and safety insurance.

Employers are unlikely to interview or hire workers with criminal records compared to otherwise similar workers. In 2008, the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people—27%—was higher than the U.S. unemployment rate for the general population at any point in history, including during the Great Depression.

In this paper, researchers used a field experiment to test several approaches to increasing the demand for workers with criminal backgrounds that directly address the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks. The researchers offered nearly 1,000 businesses crime and safety insurance to address risk concerns, as well as screening based on past performance reviews and the time since the most recent criminal records. The researchers also provided objective information on the average performance of workers based on their backgrounds to address risk and productivity concerns. They compared these approaches to the effects of a wage subsidy, essentially paying businesses to hire people with criminal records, a very expensive way to increase the demand for workers with criminal records, if a simple one.  

The context for the study is a leading online labor platform used by thousands of businesses in the United States to employ workers for short-term jobs. The companies use the platform to connect with workers to fill a range of entry-level jobs in sectors including general labor, hospitality, and transportation, as well as entry-level jobs in customer-facing or administrative sectors that are traditionally more averse to hiring people with criminal backgrounds. Businesses using the platform do not decide whether to work with individual workers. The platform extends the job offer to workers who meet minimum job qualifications. Potential workers can then accept or reject these job offers on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Researchers here found that 39% of businesses using the platform are willing to hire people with criminal backgrounds at baseline. Some 45% of businesses are willing to hire such employees for jobs that do not involve customer interactions. The researchers found that 51% of businesses without high-value inventory were willing to hire employees with criminal backgrounds. If employers are having difficulty filling positions the demand increases to 68%. Investigators found that demand increased by 10 percentage points when they offered employers the option of crime and safety insurance, a single performance review, or the ability to screen the most recent criminal records.

According to the study, limiting workers with criminal records to those who had completed a prior job on the platform increased demand for their services by 11 percentage points, the equivalent of the effect of an 80% wage subsidy. Limiting workers to those who had not been arrested or convicted in the past year increased demand by 21 percentage points, the equivalent of the effect of a 100% wage subsidy to employers. The researchers conclude that policies related to providing employers with crime and safety insurance and screening for workers based on past performance and the time since the most recent crime can significantly increase the demand for workers with criminal records at a fraction of the cost of providing employees with subsidies to hire such workers.

“With cost-effective policies, platforms can integrate workers with past involvement in the criminal justice system without deterring employers,” said the paper’s lead author, Zoë Cullen. “This is a promising approach to expanding labor supply, and simultaneously addressing a pressing social challenge.”

The paper, “Increasing the demand for workers with a criminal record,” is available (at midnight on August 30th ) at: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/qje/qjac029.

Zoë B. Cullen
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Rock Center Rm. 211
Boston, MA 02163
zcullen@hbs.edu

To request a copy of the study, please contact:
Daniel Luzer 
daniel.luzer@oup.com

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JOURNAL

The Quarterly Journal of Economics

DOI

10.1093/qje/qjac029 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Increasing the demand for workers with a criminal record

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Aug-2022

ALMA discovers birth cry from a baby star in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OSAKA METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: (LEFT): WIDE-FIELD FAR-INFRARED IMAGE OF THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD OBTAINED WITH THE HERSCHEL SPACE OBSERVATORY. (RIGHT): AN IMAGE OF THE MOLECULAR OUTFLOW FROM THE BABY STAR Y246. CYAN AND RED COLORS SHOW THE BLUESHIFTED AND REDSHIFTED GAS OBSERVED IN CARBON MONOXIDE EMISSION. THE CROSS INDICATES THE POSITION OF THE BABY STAR. view more 

CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), TOKUDA ET AL. ESA/HERSCHEL

The heavy elements in interstellar matter significantly impact the mechanism of star formation.  In the early universe, the abundance of heavy elements was lower than in the present universe because there was not enough time for nucleosynthesis to produce heavy elements in stars.  It has not been well understood how star formation in such an environment differs from present-day star formation.

An international team led by Professor Toshikazu Onishi, Osaka Metropolitan University, and Project Assistant Professor Kazuki Tokuda, Kyushu University/NAOJ, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe high-mass young stellar objects in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is characterized by a low abundance of elements heavier than helium, similar to the galaxies 10 billion years ago.  The target provides a detailed observational view thanks to the relatively close distance from the earth. In this study, researchers detected a bipolar gas stream flowing out of the "baby star" Y246 and determined that the molecular flow has a velocity of more than 54,000 km/h in both directions.

In the present universe, growing "baby stars" are thought to have their rotational motion suppressed by this molecular outflow during gravitational contraction, accelerating the star growth. The discovery of the same phenomenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud suggests that this process of star formation has been common throughout the past 10 billion years.  The team also expects this discovery to bring new perspectives to studying stars and planet formation.

###

About OMU

Osaka Metropolitan University is a new public university established by a merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University in April 2022. For more science news, see https://www.upc-osaka.ac.jp/new-univ/en-research/, and follow @OsakaMetUniv_en, or search #OMUScience.

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JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

10.3847/2041-8213/ac81c1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The first detection of a protostellar CO outflow in the Small Magellanic Cloud with ALMA

Reintroducing bison to grasslands increases plant diversity, drought resilience, K-State study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Email App

 

IMAGE: A BISON HERD GRAZES ON THE KONZA PRAIRIE BIOLOGICAL STATION. A NEW STUDY LED BY A KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER SHOWS REINTRODUCING BISON TO GRASSLANDS INCREASES PLANT DIVERSITY AND DROUGHT RESILIENCE. view more 

CREDIT: BARBARA VAN SLYKE

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2210433119 

ARTICLE TITLE

Reintroducing bison results in long-running and resilient increases in grassland diversity

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Aug-2022

Frog forelimbs may be adapted for love and war as well as jumping

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: THE RADIUS AND ULNA OF ADULT FROG FOREARMS ARE ALWAYS FUSED INTO A SINGLE STRUCTURE, AS SHOWN IN THIS 3D MODEL OF THE NATAL GHOST FROG, HADROMOPHRYNE NATALENSIS. view more 

CREDIT: FLORIDA MUSEUM MODEL BY THE BLACKBURN LAB

Hold out your arm with your palm facing downward. Now rotate your hand 90 degrees to give a thumbs-up without moving your elbow. If you look closely, you’ll notice the two bones in your forearm, called the radius and ulna, move around each other as you rotate your hand. We’re able to do this because the radius and ulna meet up at the elbow and wrist but are otherwise unconnected.

For frogs, it’s a different story. A frog’s radius and ulna are fused into a single bone, which scientists think acts as a shock absorber when jumping. In a new study published in the Journal of Anatomy, researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History show that their quirky legs might also be an adaption for fighting and for grasping mates during reproduction.

According to lead author Rachel Keeffe, who recently obtained her doctoral degree in zoology at the University of Florida, the results make intuitive sense, given that not all frogs are so keen on the whole jumping idea.

“Many people think frogs jump, and a lot of them do. But there are also frogs that live their entire lives underground; there are frogs that glide; there are arboreal frogs that mostly climb like monkeys; there are frogs who primarily live underwater; and then there are frogs that just mostly walk. Frogs have evolved to move in so many ways, but the radius and ulna bones are always fused together,” Keeffe said. 

Having some degree of fusion between these two bones is not a trait unique to frogs. Animals like horses, goats and bats have semifused radii and ulnae, which likely helps make them such great runners and flyers.

Fusion between bones is also beneficial for jumping animals, of which frogs are the unparalleled champions among vertebrates. Bullfrogs, for example, are some of the largest frogs on record and can jump a distance of up to six feet. For a human male of average height to achieve a comparable feat, he would need to jump about 50 feet forward.

Scientists assumed frogs long ago traded in forearm flexibility for stronger bones to aid in jumping.

To investigate this question, Keeffe used 3D modeling to determine how well frog bones held up during jumping while adding in simulations for mating as well. Frog reproduction typically involves the male clinging to the back of the female with his forearms, a behavior referred to as amplexus.

The Florida Museum has a large collection of digitized specimens thanks to the openVertebrate (oVert) project, which meant Keeffe had several references to choose from for modeling the arm bones. Over the course of several months in 2020 and 2021, she created a model of a bullfrog forearm from a museum specimen along with hypothetical models with varying degrees of fusion between the radius and ulna.

She created a model in which the two bones were separate, one in which the bones were partially fused like they are in horses and bats, and one with a single bone instead of two. Each of these models had a variant in which the bones were solid instead of hollow as they are in life.

Keeffe ran jumping simulations with software often used by engineers when building things like bridges and space shuttles. In each case, she modeled a large amount of force on the end of the bone connected to the foot to create a worst-case scenario.

Her results weren’t immediately intuitive. In both jumping and mating simulations, the hypothetical semifused model experienced smaller amounts of stress than the model of a fused radioulna that frogs actually have. This was the case for every simulation, regardless of whether the bones were hollow or solid.

Keeffe suspects the answer likely has to do with a balancing act between how high a frog can jump and how much of an impact it can withstand upon landing.

“The semifused model has less stress, but it also has slightly more volume, and thus weight, than the bullfrog model we tested,” she said. “If you fuse two bones together, you’re improving the strength while decreasing the weight.”

Thicker and lighter bones are useful for jumpers that can’t afford to get weighed down by a heavy skeleton.

This didn’t explain why non-jumping frogs retained the fused bone, however. According to her results, the fused bones of males receive more stress during the mating practice of amplexus than semifused bones. Amplexus can last weeks or even months in some species and generate up to 52 times the weight of the male frog in clasping force. Male frogs are often known to be territorial and regularly use their forelimbs to fight over potential mates, all of which results in the very real possibility that their bones might fracture or break if not strong enough.

Keeffe noticed that the impact of landing was distributed throughout much of the forearm. During amplexus, however, the stress was restricted to a single location: the exact point where a tendon connected to the bone. It also happened to be where the two combined bones were sturdiest. While clasping exerted less pressure on the partially fused bones, the tendon creating that pressure could only be attached to either the radius or the ulna in the hypothetical model, both of which are weaker structures on their own.

In the future, she hopes to create more models based on different species and hopes to re-create this experiment for other types of locomotion, using these models as a point of comparison. She also plans to 3D-print the current models to see how well they hold up to the digital simulations. “Hopefully, I’m going to use them as much as possible, considering how long it took to make them,” she said. 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Anatomy

DOI

10.1111/joa.13737 

ARTICLE TITLE

Diversity and function of the fused anuran radioulna

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321804249_The_case_of_the_midwife_toad_revisited

(PDF) The case of the midwife toad revisited - ResearchGate 

Dec 14, 2017 ... PDF | In a recent paper it was suggested that results published by Kam-merer ... Koestler suggested that the midwife toad under scruti-.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358507875_The_Midwife_Toad_Challenge_After_Half_a_Century

(PDF) The Midwife Toad Challenge After (Half) a Century 

Jul 5, 2022 ... The Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer (1880-1926) would by now be long forgotten if Arthur Koestler had not published "The case of the Midwife ...

https://archive.org/details/caseofmidwifetoa0000koes

The case of the midwife toad : Koestler, Arthur, 1905-1983 

Dec 26, 2019 ... 14 day loan required to access EPUB and PDF files. IN COLLECTIONS. Books to Borrow. Internet Archive Books. Uploaded by station10 ...

https://www.academia.edu/10401616/Paul_Kammerers_Experiments_on_the_Midwife_Toad_1905_1910_

Paul Kammerer's Experiments on the Midwife Toad (1905- 1910) 

Download Free PDFView PDF. A feeling for Lamarckism: The making, reception and impact of Arthur Koestler's The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971).

https://vargaslab.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/kammerer-science.pdf

The Case of the Midwife Toad: Fraud or Epigenetics? 

Sep 3, 2009 ... cized evidence came from the midwife toad, ... preferences, midwife toads lack nuptial ... case by Arthur Koestler, a TV documentary,.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01066805

The case ofThe Case of the Midwife Toad - Springer 

The facts concerning Kammerer's case are reviewed. Koestler's view that Kammerer was unjustly accused is presented and shown to be incorrect.

Developing an automated, AI-based programming coach to provide instantaneous and formative feedback to students

Grant and Award Announcement

SINGAPORE MANAGMENT UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: SMU ASSISTANT PROFESSOR DON TA IS PIONEERING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED, AI-BASED PROGRAMMING COACH TO MAKE AI-ENABLED EDUCATION A REALITY. view more 

CREDIT: SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY

By Jovina Ang

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer – “Correct. Good job.” “Wrong. Try again.”

These are the typical outcome-based feedback provided by most computer programming grading tools including commercial ones like Gradescope.

“Existing grading tools, including many research prototypes, are not enough to meet the needs of instructors teaching computer programming,” Assistant Professor of Computer Science (Education) Don Ta told the Office of Research & Tech Transfer.

“While some tools are good for summative assessment, they are incapable of providing a holistic assessment on the cognitive process and approach taken by students when working on algorithm design or writing code to solve a problem,” he continued.

“Thus, to provide constructive feedback, Computing and Information Systems (CIS) instructors like myself have to review hundreds and, sometimes, thousands of lines of code. This is a long-drawn process as there can be 400-500 students enrolled in the introductory programming course at SMU,” he added.

“Based on my years of experience teaching computing, I am aware that students learn best when they are given timely, frequent, formative and personalised feedback. The more students get feedback including suggestions for relevant code samples and are given additional programming tasks to work on their previous mistakes, the faster they will improve their skills in code reading, algorithm designing and code writing, which are among the core skills of any CIS student,” he went on.

In order to develop a tool that provides instantaneous and constructive feedback to students, Professor Ta and his three collaborators, SMU Associate Professor of Computer Science Shar Lwin Khin, SMU Professor of Information Systems (Education) Venky Shankararaman, and Associate Professor Hui Siu Cheng from the School of Computer and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, were recently awarded a Tertiary Education Research Fund (TRF) grant by the Ministry of Education. The project will realise a web-based tool named AP-Coach, which stands for Automated Programming Coach.

This research furthers Professor Ta’s prior work which focused on the accuracy and effectiveness of auto-scoring for codes and short text in natural languages.

The research

The AP-Coach will be tested out on a pilot class comprising first year undergraduate SMU students who are enrolled in the introductory programming Python course, starting January 2023. It will be rolled out to the rest of the students in subsequent semesters if it proves to be useful for learning.

The primary objectives of the AP-Coach are to automate the code reviewing process at scale, while at the same time, to enhance learning by providing instantaneous, constructive and personalised feedback to students by showing them hints on what should be the next steps, relevant code samples, and giving them additional suitable programming tasks to hone their learning in code reading, algorithm designing and code writing.

The AP-Coach will look at the code or pseudocode submitted by the students to generate relevant and personalised feedback with the use of similarity matching algorithms based on recent advances in AI (code embedding and natural language processing models), and software engineering techniques to assess abstract syntax structures of code.

To provide more practice tasks, the AP-Coach will be designed to auto-generate diverse programming exercises and pseudocode using AI techniques such as the OpenAI GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) model, which is an auto-regressive language model capable of producing human-like text and code.

The tool is also designed to monitor student progress. Each student will be given a summary of the mistakes made throughout the 13-week course. The students can also use the AP-Coach to review past programming exercises.

To ascertain the effectiveness of AP-Coach, student proficiency in code reading, algorithm designing, and code writing will be monitored over several consecutive semesters.

Implications of the research

There are three important implications from this research.

One, it has been found that immediate and relevant feedback is highly motivating for students. It also enables independent learning.

Second, effective and automatic coaching not only scales the code reviewing process, but it also significantly reduces the workload for instructors. Thus, instructors would have more time to help and guide the weaker students.

Third, the AP-Coach can be an important step towards making AI-enabled education in Computer Science a reality.

AI-enabled education is an exciting discipline in learning and teaching, and Professor Ta looks forward to finding out how the tool can be useful to students.

Republicans and Blacks most hesitant to get COVID vaccine, PSU spatial analysis finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Vaccine hesitancy remains a public health challenge that cuts across the country as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, but Republican voters and Black people are among the most hesitant to get the shot, according to a new Portland State University study.

Arun Pallathadka, a Ph.D. student in PSU's Earth, Environment and Society's program, and Heejun Chang, professor of geography, conducted a spatial analysis of vaccination data at the county level across the U.S. to identify the social, ecological and technological factors impacting vaccine rates.

Among the findings:

• Vaccine hesitancy is strong in many Republican counties across the U.S., especially in the Mountain States, Southwest and the South, which other research has shown to be fueled in part by the misinformation spread by politicians. In the Northeast, however, many Republican counties in the Virginias and New Jersey as well in New England states such as Maine and Vermont show higher vaccination rates, suggesting libertarian-leaning or moderate Republicans may differ on the issue of COVID-19 vaccines.
• Vaccine hesitancy is strong among the Black population, particularly in the South, Mountain States, Southwest as well as the Pacific Northwest. Prior research has shown that a combination of lack of healthcare access, medical racism and misinformation has led to that hesitancy.
• The most highly educated demographics are more likely to get vaccinated, and this trend is strong in many urbanized parts of the U.S., while populations with lower educational attainment show vaccine hesitancy in many of the relatively less urbanized counties in the South, Southwest and Mountain States.
• Populations with access to broadband internet and health facilities per 10,000 residents are also positively linked to vaccination rates. 

The researchers said that the findings indicate that a regional approach may better serve vaccination efforts than a universal approach.

"Public health officials and policymakers need to recognize that space matters to COVID-19 vaccination efforts," Pallathadka said. "This study demonstrates how spatially explicitly health policies are required to boost vaccination rates, especially targeted towards significant local factors we have emphasized in the study."

The findings were published in Environmental Research: Health. Daikwon Han, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Texas A&M, is also a co-author of the study.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Research Health

DOI

10.1088/2752-5309/ac8ac2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT • THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE ISOPEN ACCESS What explains spatial variations of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy?: A social-ecological-technological systems approach

Lithuanians developed a takeaway food package that does not contain a single gram of plastic

Kaunas University of Technology researchers together with business and citizens created a takeaway food box, which solves all these issues and is entirely plastic-free.

Business Announcement

KAUNAS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: AELITA ZEBULIONE, A JUNIOR RESEARCHER AT KTU FOOD INSTITUTE view more 

CREDIT: KTU

Takeaway food became an integral part of our lives. However, despite the convenience of such a service, frequent users have to face its drawbacks: the contents of the food can accidentally leak, the meal cools down, and the package does not always suit the size of the portion. Kaunas University of Technology researchers together with business and citizens created a takeaway food box, which solves all these issues and is entirely plastic-free.

“Kaunas citizens, with the help of professionals in their field and guided by scientists, are starting a real revolution in the world of takeaway food. Everyone can create innovations,” says Aelita Zabulionė, a junior researcher at the Food Institute of Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania.

During the laboratory session organised by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Food community (EIT FOOD), ordinary citizens tried to discover the shortcomings of the currently used takeaway food packaging.

In the workshop, they were working together with packaging experts from the “Spaudos departamentas” and the representatives of a restaurant “Daugirdas” located in Kaunas, Lithuania.

During this session, the idea was born – to co-create solutions that would eliminate the shortcomings of ordinary takeaway packaging.

Citizens contributed to the creative process

The start of the project was a three-course dinner attended by a group of 16 people, whose ages ranged from 22 to 60 years. During the dinner, people evaluated the packaging of their food and shared their insights.

The plastic packaging used during the dinner perfectly reflected the typical shortcomings of takeaway food boxes. First of all, it was hard to adapt the package to a certain size. Secondly, the parts of the meal were not separated well enough from each other. Lastly, it was not clear how to dispose of the used package – wash it, recycle it, or throw it away with household waste.

During the dinner, the participants shared their experience that even after the simplest business lunch, an impressive pile of packaging remains in the office that later would end up in landfills for hundreds of years. Therefore, the most essential part of the project was the search for sustainable packaging materials.

The main complaint of the participants was the wrong temperature of the meal. Considering several food delivery companies operating in the city that use different transportation equipment, it was decided that it is almost impossible to expect to receive steaming hot food.

Therefore, participants of the project indicated the need to create a package in which food, prepared in a slow, nutrient-saving way, could be easily heated at home, without a need to transfer it from the package. For this, cardboard is the most suitable material.

CAPTION

Kaunas citizens, researchers and businesses created an innovative takeaway food box during a joint workshop.

CREDIT

KTU

Food in cardboard boxes can be heated in the oven

Cardboard can be recycled up to 6 times and after a certain processing method is applied, it is possible to compose a cardboard package that can withstand heating in the oven.

This type of cardboard is covered with a special non-flammable material, which takes up less than 10 per cent of the weight. Moreover, the designed packages have specially adapted inserts – tabs which allow you to easily adjust the box size and separate the necessary components of food.

The boxes designed during the workshop come in three sizes, allowing for more economical and sustainable use of resources and making the packaging adaptable for different meals. To preserve the aesthetic appearance of the food during transportation, a special sleeve has been created – it holds the boxes in place, preventing them from rolling and moving around. The sleeve weighs less than a regular paper bag.

Per consumer request, clear instructions are printed on the packages which contain information on how they must be recycled, how long and at what temperature they can be heated.

“There is also a special supportive frame that prevents the lid from buckling and ruining the wonderful view of a restaurant’s masterpiece – after all, we also eat with our eyes”, emphasizes KTU researcher Zabulionė.

This innovation benefits not only the consumer but also the restaurant. The cardboard is perfectly suited for various types of printing – the restaurant logo or other important information can be displayed on the boxes.

Furthermore, the packages have been designed in such a way that when they are empty, they easily fit into each other and save storage space. After using the package, it can be sent for recycling or composted.

“Soon these boxes, created by Lithuanian consumers and businesses, will be one of the package options when ordering food at home,” Zabulionė is convinced.