Journals at Carleton University
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Was That Use of Force Reasonable? The Public Doesn’t Know
No full textThere is a gap between what community members believe is reasonable use of force and what the law defines as reasonable. This divide has led to significant consequences for police departments across the country and society as a whole.
In the current study, community members’ assessments of force reasonableness aligned with the legal standard on use of force only about half of the time, partly because legally irrelevant factors influenced their assessments.
To reduce the divide between community and legal standards on use of force, police leaders can provide community education, revise departmental policy, and/or deliver de-escalation training
Inroads for Russian Influence in the Media Landscapes of Neighboring States
No full text“Inroads for Russian Influence in the Media Landscapes of Neighboring States" is a timely look at the proliferation of Russian war narratives in the context of the current war in Ukraine. It functions primarily as a tool to provide crucial background research for the Russian Media Observation and Reporting (RuMOR) project, based out of the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. Looking at the domestic media landscapes of four of Russia\u27s neighboring states, it seeks to understand what present weaknesses create room for Russian media influence to take root
Revitalizing ENGL 2302 in Response to ChatGPT and Pandemic-Era Disruptions
No full textIn the summer of 2023, we set out to refresh ENGL 2302: Literatures and Cultures 1500-1700 in response to two forces disrupting the teaching and learning experience: AI Chatbots, and students’ performance struggles in test environments. In response to the first, we developed a multi-stage Final Project that asked students, working in groups, to assess the utility of ChatGPT for literary studies. Students used ChatGPT to generate a response to an essay prompt, critiqued its output, wrote a revised version, and then reflected on the experience of using ChatGPT. To support this initiative, we created a series of instructions, templates, and rubrics. For the second issue, we developed a suite of resources to prepare students for tests/exams, including two new formative activities:
The Sight Passage Analyses (group assignments)
The Test/Exam Preparation Modules (H5P lessons that introduce students to the style of the test questions, give them opportunities to practice answering them, and provide them with study tips for each question type)
While it is difficult to establish causality, when we compared student performance in the previous cohort to the cohort that experienced the above interventions, we observed some promising results, including:
Improved test/exam scores (a 10% increase in students earning As, Bs, and Cs on Test 1; a 24% increase on Test 2; and a 16% increase on the Exam)
Improved final grade scores (a 24% increase in students earning an A- or better, and an 8% reduction in students earning an F
Reconfiguration of colorings in triangulations of the sphere
No full textIn 1973, Fisk proved that any -coloring of a -colorable triangulation of the -sphere can be obtained from any -coloring by a sequence of Kempe changes. On the other hand, in the case where we are only allowed to recolor a single vertex in each step, which is a special case of a Kempe change, there exists a -colorable triangulation and its -coloring that cannot be obtained from any -coloring.In this paper, we present a linear-time checkable characterization of a -coloring of a -colorable triangulation of the -sphere that can be obtained from some -coloring by a sequence of recoloring operations at single vertices. In addition, we develop a quadratic-time algorithm to find such a recoloring sequence if it exists; our proof implies that we can always obtain a quadratic length recoloring sequence. We also present a linear-time checkable criterion for a -colorable triangulation of the -sphere that all -colorings are connected to each other by such a sequence. Moreover, we consider a high-dimensional setting. As a natural generalization of our first result, we obtain a polynomial-time checkable characterization of a -coloring of a -colorable triangulation of the -sphere that can be obtained from a -coloring by a sequence of recoloring operations at single vertices and the corresponding algorithmic result. Furthermore, we show that the problem of deciding whether, for given two -colorings of a -colorable triangulation of the -sphere, one can be obtained from the other by such a sequence is PSPACE-complete for any fixed . Our results above can be rephrased as new results on the computational problems named -Recoloring and Connectedness of -Coloring Reconfiguration Graph, which are fundamental problems in the field of combinatorial reconfiguration
Potential Antidepressive Effects of R-ketamine in Patients with Treatment Resistance Depression
No full textKetamine has a long history as an anesthetic but has recently demonstrated antidepressant effects at sub-anesthetic doses (Matveychuk et al., 2020). For individuals with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), typical antidepressants are frequently ineffective, whereas ketamine’s unique mechanisms have demonstrated promising results in reducing depressive symptoms where other treatments have failed (Voineskos et al., 2020; Matveychuk et al., 2020). Pre-clinical investigation of the ketamine enantiomers, R- and S-ketamine, revealed that R-ketamine may be more effective than S-ketamine due to its rapid-acting, long-lasting antidepressant-like effects with fewer psychotomimetic side effects and abuse liability (Chang et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2015; Bonaventura et al., 2021; Koncz et al., 2023). However, early clinical trials assessing R-ketamine to treat TRD have not yet produced significant antidepressant effects despite promising safety and tolerability profiles (Leal et al., 2023). This review compares the antidepressant efficacy, abuse liability, and safety profiles of ketamine enantiomers, focusing on the antidepressant success of R-ketamine in pre-clinical and clinical trials for TRD. Although R-ketamine did present promising results for treating TRD in pre-clinical trials, it did not demonstrate consistent significant antidepressant effects in clinical trials, making it difficult to conclude its effects in treating depression
The Role of Inflammation in Psychiatric Disorders: Unraveling the Connection and Exploring Anti-inflammatory Treatments
No full textThe interplay between the brain and the immune system is crucial in maintaining psychological health. The disruptions in this bidirectional communication can contribute to chronic neuroinflammation. This paper reviews the literature on the crucial role of neuroinflammation in psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and anxiety. It highlights the association between proinflammatory cytokines and psychiatric disorders, advocating for anti-inflammatory treatments, including COX-2 inhibitors and hydroxytyrosol. This review explores the impact of early-life immune activation on psychiatric outcomes and identifies cytokines such as IFN-γ, IL-1β, and TNF-α as key contributors to the progression of depression. Furthermore, early exposure to inflammatory conditions has been linked to an increased risk of developing disorders like schizophrenia, emphasizing the long-term mental health implications of childhood trauma and early life stress (Nettis et al., 2019). The analysis underscores the importance of addressing early-life immune dysregulation and the development of integrated interventions that combine traditional therapies with anti-inflammatory treatments. Therefore, this paper asserts a fundamental relationship between neuroinflammatory factors and the development of psychiatric illnesses, proposing that exploring this relationship could revolutionize the treatment methods for these conditions
The Ever-Changing “Shape” of Evil: The Halloween Franchise as a Mirror of Suburban American Anxiety
No full textThe Halloween franchise has been a box-office dynamo for nearly half a century. Its iconic villain, Michael Myers, has achieved a level of pop culture notoriety so great that even people who have never seen any of the thirteen Halloween films will recognize his blank, masked visage and infamous blue jumpsuit. This article analyzes the evolution of the figure of Michael Myers across the filmography of three “auteur” filmmakers who have worked with(in) the Halloween franchise: John Carpenter, Rob Zombie, and David Gordon Green. By closely examining the development of the franchise across the works of these filmmakers, one can observe how the character of Michael Myers (or “The Shape” as the films’ credits usually refer to him) is intimately tied to the middle-class American anxieties of each film’s respective period. And this occurs even as these anxieties are frequently confused and sometimes even contradictory, resulting in a film franchise that is, strangely, often as ideologically reactionary as it is progressive in its treatment of the horror genre
Does Artificial Intelligence Speed Up Police Report Writing Times? No.
No full textThe study described in the source article represents the first experimental evaluation of AIassisted police report writing, even as agencies are already adopting these unproven tools.
AI-assisted report writing did not significantly reduce police report writing times, contrary to marketing claims.
There may be other potential benefits from using AI tools such as improved report quality, consistency, and supervisor efficiency, but those will require further exploration.
Agencies considering adoption of AI tools in policing should exercise caution due to limited efficiency gains and potential unintended consequences
