New Technique Can Identify Gender From a Fingerprint

I posted because criminal justice reform is part of the current political dialog.

More from here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/science/new-technique-can-identify-gender-from-a-fingerprint.html?contentCollection=weekendreads



“Fingerprints have really been treated as pictures for more than a hundred years,” said Jan Halamek, a forensic scientist at the State University of New York at Albany and one of the study’s authors. “The only major improvements in recent years have been due to software and databases that make it faster to match fingerprints.”

Mr. Halamek and his colleagues tested fingerprints on a doorknob, a laminate desktop, a composite bench top and a computer screen. Regardless of the surface type, they found it was possible to tell whether the fingerprint belonged to a woman by testing levels of residual amino acids.
Continue reading the main story
Related in Opinion

Op-Ed Contributor: Fix the Flaws in Forensic ScienceAPRIL 21, 2015

The report was published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. The study involved only a few fingerprints, however, and a larger sample is required to ensure the results are statistically significant, Dr. Halamek said.

France seeks U.S.-Russia unity in coalition against Islamic State

Source: Los Angeles Times

President Obama publicly vowed to "redouble" U.S. efforts against Islamic State hours after the terrorist masscres in Paris, but officials offered few details as to what he meant.

That could change when French President Francois Hollande visits the White House on Tuesday as part of a trip to create what Hollande called a "grand and single coalition" that links the United States, France and Russia against the militants.

Obama said this week he would support military cooperation with Moscow if it focuses on defeating Islamic State, and not on propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad. He said he personally gave that message to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Turkey.

For his part, Putin sent Russian bombers and cruise missiles to pound Raqqa, the militants' self-declared capital in Syria, after authorities in Moscow confirmed that a bomb had destroyed a Russian passenger jet over Egypt last month, killing 224 people.


Whether the confluence of interests and events will help Obama and Putin forge a tactical alliance, despite their deep divide over Ukraine and other issues, is unknown.

The French seem to be groping for a course that would increase pressure on Islamic State, while stopping short of the major military escalation that Obama has firmly ruled out.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-obama-isis-20151121-story.html

U.S. Proposes Obamacare Changes to Ease Shopping, Lower Bills

Source: Bloomberg.com


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/u-s-proposes-obamacare-changes-to-ease-shopping-lower-bills


The U.S. proposed new Obamacare rules Friday that it says will make it easier for people to shop for health insurance, protect them from some out-of-pocket costs, and help states run the marketplaces where plans are sold.

The changes would apply to insurance plans sold on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces for 2017, the law’s fourth year of coverage. Consumers will buy those policies starting on Nov. 1, 2016. The rules are still in proposal form and will have to be finalized after a period of public comment.

The proposal “seeks to improve the consumer experience, both when individuals shop for health insurance and when they use it,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees many aspects of the law, said Friday in a statement.

One proposal would cut down on what the government called “surprise bills” when a patient goes to an in-network hospital and gets care from a provider who isn’t in their insurance plan. That can result in paying higher, out-of-network rates that don’t count toward the maximum amount patients are supposed to have to spend out of pocket. The proposal would count some of those services toward the patient’s out-of-pocket maximums.

“The question for exchanges over time is how they would evolve,” said Elizabeth Carpenter, a vice president at Avalere Health. “What we’re seeing in this rule is a move toward additional consumerization and transparency.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/u-s-proposes-obamacare-changes-to-ease-shopping-lower-bills

From zerohedge.com: Paris Attacks: Another False Flag? Sifting Through The Evidence

I am only surprised that that wasn't part of the dialog right away, some of us are so skeptical of everything and this one was immediately elevated partisan political status in an election year.

Edit: I think this is very speculative.


Paris Attacks: Another False Flag? Sifting Through The Evidence

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-20/paris-attacks-another-false-flag-sifting-through-evidence


What do the globalists do when they want to create, reignite and keep their war on terror fought indefinitely? They simply carry out a series of false flag attacks using Muslim terrorist stooges as their hired guns to do their damage. That’s what 9/11 was all about in the US, 7/7 in UK, the 3/11 train attack in Spain, the Hebdo Paris attack last January, and now this latest Paris encore reenactment part two.

In any unsolved crime the first question asked is who benefits by motive with an actual means to execute the crime?

In all of these tragic false flag events the global elite benefits in multiple ways. And it most definitely has the means by issuing marching orders to its owned and operated national governments, its favorite being the militaristic, brutal American Empire.

The elite’s agenda to polarize and destabilize the world politically and militarily manifests through the US foreign policy of regime change, nonstop war through divide and conquer methodology (i.e., Shiites vs. Sunnis, Euro-nationals vs. foreign migrants, Christians vs. Muslims, light skins vs. dark skins) and economic austerity through unpayable high interest from predatory IMF bank loans to debtor nations from both the developing and developed world. Through global theft and destruction, the ruling elite reigns supreme in absolute power.

There is more at the link, I haven't read beyond this.

ECONOMIST: 'Jobs market is literally on fire in most states in the union'

Source: Business Insider

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its monthly estimates of unemployment rates in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, and things are looking pretty good.

The bureau noted that unemployment rates fell in 32 states and Washington, DC, went up in just three states, and stayed the same as September in 15 states. Unemployment in every state and DC was below 7%, indicating increasingly healthy labor markets across the nation.

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi's chief financial economist, Chris Rupkey, circulated an email after the report with the title "Jobs market is literally on fire in most states in the union." The email maintains that optimistic tone and suggests that the geographically broad strength of the labor market could spur the Fed to tighten monetary policy at its December meeting:

This regional breakdown is just the latest evidence that the economy has reached full employment. Coast to coast from sea to shining sea, the labor market has fully healed. At full employment the Fed can be confident that inflation will eventually move up to their 2% target ... Once again, another day, another report from Washington showing us the economy is better than many think. The state-by-state employment trend is just the evidence the Fed needs to assure them that it is time to lift rates.

Here's the map showing the unemployment rates in each state and DC:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/october-2015-state-unemployment-rates-map-2015-11

Question submitted by Todays_Illusion

A very revealing article about the libertarian take over of the Democratic

Party, called "New Democratic Party. The article is from Business Insider.

"The Republican party is not the only party experiencing a grassroots political coup. A new breed of capitalism-loving and urbanized liberals is demanding an entirely new role for the federal government.

"With heavy support from Silicon Valley, these new tech Democrats want the government to embrace economic disruption, with unlimited high-skilled immigrant visas, expansive trade deals, and performance-based funding that encourages charter schools to abandon teacher unions and adopt the management model of a modern startup.

“The replacement of working-class whites with upscale professionals has turned the Democratic coalition into an alliance with a built-in class division," wrote Columbia Journalism Professor and NYT Columnist, Thomas B. Edsall, on the migration of professionals from the Republican party to the Democrats. "While constituting a minority, the relatively upscale wing clearly dominates party policy and provides the majority of the activists who run campaigns, serve as delegates to the convention and have become the core of the party’s donor base.”

More here with charts and more details.

http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-overhauling-democratic-party-2015-11

The origins of this takeover occurred along with the introduction of that word Progressive instead of liberal for Democratic, also that awful "New Democrat, Third way and left libertarian. These people are not liberal and Hillary has embraced them, they do have all the money and power now.

Polling and the 2016 Presidential Elections

This panel discussion posted on c-span.org features an AEI Panel about polling and the 2016 elections I have posted additional links to articles talking about negative aspects of polling and suggesting that polling not be used in election reporting.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?400380-1/discussion-2016-presidential-election

Deep in this discussion that focuses on polling is a mention that Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio will be the final Republican candidates, something the polls currently counter, showing as they do Trump and Carson leading.

That was certainly interesting.

The Panel is actually an American Enterprise Institute, aei.org panel.

Here is a link to another discussion on polling from the same organization

https://www.aei.org/publication/imagining-a-world-without-polls/

This article is now being featured by many conservative publishers

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426669/imagining-world-without-polls

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-imagining-a-world-without-polls-20151106-story.html

and other published articles about the negative effects of polling on the elections

https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/11/how-pollsters-are-killing-the-conversation


It is all looking like an effort to minimize polling and that seems to be an extension of much less exit polling beginning with the 2012 Presidential election.

I am seeing it as more message control and limiting information available to voters. I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts on polling and is it good or bad for elections.

Warning: The last time I posted the aei.org links they were shortly after made unavailable by that organization, and I had to search that site to find them again.

I have been a DU user since 2013 and until sometime in September all my old comments were available

Now they only go back to October 6 of this year. How can I see my old comments, I wanted to look up one from around August/September of this year. They are gone.

At that time I was removed as a user with no warning or explanation and for a few days after I was reinstated I first had no history, then it was there then it was gone again.

How can I get my history back?

Administrators: I first posted this to the help forum, because I am certain that you are busy and this is personal to me and trivial to the site overall. However if possible I would love to have my comment history back.

I have been a DU user since 2013 and until sometime in September all my old comments were available

Now they only go back to October 6 of this year. How can I see my old comments, I wanted to look up one from around August/September of this year. They are gone.

At that time I was removed as a user with no warning or explanation and for a few days after I was reinstated I first had no history, then it was there then it was gone again.

How can I get my history back?