A problematic issue in the Walton-Marshall method for some neutral delay systems

International audienceThis paper considers delay systems with characteristic equation being a quasi-polynomial with one delay and polynomials of degree one. It is shown that for a subclass of systems which have a chain of poles clustering the imaginary axis by the left, the procedure of Walton and Marshall fails: we prove the existence, for an infinitesimally small delay, of a positive real pole at infinity. This real pole is then proved to be the unique pole of the system in the closed right half-plane for all values of the delay. Some numerical examples illustrate the results

Variables that Influence the Quantity of In-home Services for Children

There are many reasons in-home services are being implemented and having success with young children. Part of this success may be due to the practitioners’ access to the family and home environment. Previous studies have addressed the quality of these services; however, few studies examine how the quantity of services is dispersed and/or how quantity of services is related to various characteristics of, or surrounding, the child. This dissertation attempts to examine factors that may influence the amount of time practitioners are willing to spend in homes when children have comparable concerns or delays. Parental qualities, environmental conditions, and other provider perceptions are examined. It was hypothesized that these various parent and environmental factors make practitioners less likely to give adequate amounts of services to some children in their homes. A survey was mailed to 607 early intervention in-home service practitioners from various professions asking how certain factors influence the amount of time they were willing to spend with the families. An inconvenience factor and perception factor emerged from the variables. The amount of no-shows, inability to make phone contact, longer travel times, parental lack of cooperation, and parental mental health were the most frequent factors practitioners used to decrease the quantity of their services in the home, followed by parental low intelligence and lack of agreement about the course of therapy. Other variables were also noted to decrease time spent with families. Various characteristics of the provider emerged that showed who was more likely to discriminate when determining quantity of services. Training implications are addressed

Courting Abolition

This Review of Courting Death offers a different take on two of Professor Carol Steiker and Professor Jordan Steiker\u27s major themes: (1) the tension between effecting meaningful reform and legitimatizing legal façades, and (2) the future of the American death penalty. The Review argues several points, one being that the Model Penal Code may have had a larger pre-Furman impact than the Steikers acknowledge. In addition, the Review expands on some key contributors to the death penalty’s decline that may have been obscured by the all-encompassing nature of the Steikers’ regulation argument — for example, the emergence of unforeseeable exogenous variables (similar to the introduction of DNA evidence into criminal trials in the 1980s), as well as pressure points that exist largely outside of the constitutional regulatory framework, such as lethal injection litigation. Despite these influences, the Review finds the Steikers’ prediction — that, when abolition seems right, it will come by way of a “Furman II” Supreme Court decision — to readily comport with the death penalty’s trajectory over the last fifty years

Beyond the shadows of utility: evolutionary consumer theory and the rise of modern tourism

A generic feature of advanced economic development is the rapid emergence of what Konrad Lorenz dubbed the ‘Pleasure Economy’ – the rising percentage of household income spent on leisure consumption (Lorenz 1970). To explain such long run shifts in consumption, it is necessary to do away with the shadow that modern utility theory casts on the nature of consumer tastes and to investigate how these have indeed evolved in the face of a continuously expanding and increasingly heterogeneous set of consumption opportunities. Starting with the basic conjecture that the expansion of consumption is shaped by a set of biologically evolved behavioral predispositions which are inherent in the consumer’s genetic endowment (Witt 2001), we examine the historical emergence of certain types of tourism to show how the interplay between these ‘wants’ and the act of recreational travel may account for the explosive growth of modern tourism activity

Legal knowledge-based systems: new directions in system design

This thesis examines and critiques the concept of 'legal knowledge-based’ systems. Work on legal knowledge-based systems is dominated by work in 'artificial intelligence and law’. It seeks to automate the application of law and to automate the solution of legal problems. Automation however, has proved elusive. In contrast to such automation, this thesis proposes the creation of legal knowledge-based systems based on the concept of augmentation of legal work. Focusing on systems that augment legal work opens new possibilities for system creation and use. To inform how systems might augment legal work, this thesis examines philosophy, psychology and legal theory for information they provide on how processes of legal reasoning operate. It is argued that, in contrast to conceptions of law adopted in artificial intelligence and law, 'sensemaking' provides a useful perspective with which to create systems. It is argued that visualisation, and particularly diagrams, are an important and under considered element of reasoning and that producing systems that support diagramming of processes of legal reasoning would provide useful support for legal work. This thesis reviews techniques for diagramming aspects of sensemaking. In particular this thesis examines standard methods for diagramming arguments and methods for diagramming reasoning. These techniques are applied in the diagramming of legal judgments. A review is conducted of systems that have been constructed to support the construction of diagrams of argument and reasoning. Drawing upon these examinations, this thesis highlights the necessity of appropriate representations for supporting reasoning. The literature examining diagramming for reasoning support provides little discussion of appropriate representations. This thesis examines theories of representation for insight they can provide into the design of appropriate representations. It is concluded that while the theories of representation that are examined do not determine what amounts to a good representation, guidelines for the design and choice of representations can be distilled. These guidelines cannot map the class of legal knowledge-based systems that augment legal sensemaking, they can however, be used to explore this class and to inform construction of systems

Later life sex and Rubin’s ‘Charmed Circle'

Gayle Rubin’s now classic concept of the ‘charmed circle’ has been much used by scholars of sexuality to discuss the ways in which some types of sex are privileged over others. In this paper, I apply the concept of the charmed circle to a new topic– later life – in order both to add to theory about later life sex and to add an older-age lens to thinking about sex hierarchies. Traditional discursive resources around older people’s sexual activities, which treat older people’s sex as inherently beyond the charmed circle, now coexist with new imperatives for older people to remain sexually active as part of a wider project of ‘successful’ or ‘active’ ageing. Drawing on the now-substantial academic literature about later life sex, I discuss some of the ways in which redrawing the charmed circle to include some older people’s sex may paradoxically entail the use of technologies beyond the charmed circle of ‘good, normal, natural, blessed’ sex. Sex in later life also generates some noteworthy inversions in which types of sex are privileged and which treated as less desirable, in relation to marriage and procreation. Ageing may, furthermore, make available new possibilities to redefine what constitutes ‘good’ sex and to refuse compulsory sexuality altogether, without encountering stigma

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Specifying and Targeting Cognitive-Affective Dysfunctions in Antisocial Individuals

Antisocial behavior includes a wide range of behaviors that violate social norms, from criminal acts to substance misuse. The adverse consequences of antisocial behavior produce a great physical and emotional burden on perpetrators, victims, and family members. This burden is not addressed adequately, with incarceration being the most common intervention for antisocial behavior. When individuals who chronically engage in antisocial behavior are offered therapeutic treatments, the majority neither complete nor benefit from them. One reason existing treatments do not fully address antisocial behavior is because they do not consider or target cognitive-affective dysfunctions driving such behavior, and mechanistic research, to date, does not adequately characterize these cognitive-affective dysfunctions. The present dissertation consists of three studies that refine accounts of cognitive-affective dysfunctions contributing to antisocial behavior and demonstrate how targeting identified dysfunctions can improve cognition and behavior in chronically antisocial individuals. More specifically, Study 1 examines how reward features impact perception, executive functioning, and risk-based decision-making in antisocial individuals. Study 2 examines how reward information is integrated during effort-based decision-making in antisocial individuals, and how negative affect impacts this integration. Finally, Study 3 tests a novel cognitive remediation training package designed to address cognitive-affective dysfunctions in antisocial individuals. Across the three studies in this dissertation, findings highlight that cognitive-affective dysfunctions related to antisocial behavior reflect difficulty integrating information in specific affectively charged circumstances, and call for a less pessimistic view about treatment for antisocial behavior, and the burden it produces, when these dysfunctions are considered