Neuroprediction and A.I. in Forensic Psychiatry and Criminal Justice: A Neurolaw Perspective

Advances in the use of neuroimaging in combination with A.I., and specifically the use of machine learning techniques, have led to the development of brain-reading technologies which, in the nearby future, could have many applications, such as lie detection, neuromarketing or brain-computer interfaces. Some of these could, in principle, also be used in forensic psychiatry. The application of these methods in forensic psychiatry could, for instance, be helpful to increase the accuracy of risk assessment and to identify possible interventions. This technique could be referred to as ‘A.I. neuroprediction,’ and involves identifying potential neurocognitive markers for the prediction of recidivism. However, the future implications of this technique and the role of neuroscience and A.I. in violence risk assessment remain to be established. In this paper, we review and analyze the literature concerning the use of brain-reading A.I. for neuroprediction of violence and rearrest to identify possibilities and challenges in the future use of these techniques in the fields of forensic psychiatry and criminal justice, considering legal implications and ethical issues. The analysis suggests that additional research is required on A.I. neuroprediction techniques, and there is still a great need to understand how they can be implemented in risk assessment in the field of forensic psychiatry. Besides the alluring potential of A.I. neuroprediction, we argue that its use in criminal justice and forensic psychiatry should be subjected to thorough harms/benefits analyses not only when these technologies will be fully available, but also while they are being researched and developed

Prunus serotina unleashed: invader dominance after 70 years of forest development

Propagule pressure and disturbance have both been found to facilitate invasion. Therefore, knowledge on the history of introduction and disturbance is vital for understanding an invasion process, and research should focus on areas in which the invasive species has not been deliberately introduced or managed to study unconfounded colonization patterns. Comparing the outcome of such spontaneous colonization processes for different ecosystems might provide a useful framework for setting management priorities for invasive species that enter new, uninvaded areas. We focused on the 70-year spontaneous spread of the invasive tree species Prunus serotina in a pine forest in the Netherlands. To reconstruct the invasion pattern, we combined historical maps, tree ring analysis, spatially explicit tree inventory data, seed density data, and regeneration data for both native and non-native species. Prunus serotina was the only species that showed successful regeneration: the species was present throughout the forest in the tree, shrub, and herb layer. Native species were not able to outgrow the seedling stage. Our data demonstrate that P. serotina is a gap-dependent species with high seed production that builds up a seedling bank. We also compared the results of this study with a similar study on P. serotina colonization in a deciduous forest in Belgium, where P. serotina invasion was not successful. The sharp contrast between the outcomes of the two invasion processes shows the importance of studying an invasive species and the recipient ecosystem jointly and made us raise the hypothesis that herbivore pressure may facilitate P. serotina invasio

Extended molecules and geometric scattering resonances in optical lattices

We develop a theory describing neutral atoms scattering at low energies in an optical lattice. We show that for a repulsive interaction, as the microscopic scattering length increases, the effective scattering amplitude approaches a limiting value which depends only on the lattice parameters. In the case of attractive interaction a geometric resonance occurs before reaching this limit. Close to the resonance, the effective interaction becomes repulsive and supports a weakly bound state, which can extend over several lattice sites.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, RevTe

Phonon spectrum and dynamical stability of a quantum degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture

We calculate the phonon excitation spectrum in a zero-temperature boson-fermion mixture. We show how the sound velocity changes due to the boson-fermion interaction and we determine the dynamical stability regime of a homogeneous mixture. We identify a resonant phonon-exchange interaction between the fermions as the physical mechanism leading to the instability.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Collective Modes in a Dilute Bose-Fermi Mixture

We here study the collective excitations of a dilute spin-polarized Bose-Fermi mixture at zero temperature, considering in particular the features arising from the interaction between the two species. We show that a propagating zero-sound mode is possible for the fermions even when they do not interact among themselves.Comment: latex, 6 eps figure

Boson induced s-wave pairing in dilute boson-fermion mixtures

We show that in dilute boson-fermion mixtures with fermions in two internal states, even when the bare fermion-fermion interaction is repulsive, the exchange of density fluctuations of the Bose condensate may lead to an effective fermion-fermion attraction, and thus to a Cooper instability in the s-wave channel. We give an analytical method to derive the associated $T_c$ in the limit where the phonon branch of the Bogoliubov excitation spectrum of the bosons is important. We find a $T_c$ of the same order as for a pure Fermi gas with bare attraction.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

The Kohn mode for trapped Bose gases within the dielectric formalism

The presence of undamped harmonic center of mass oscillations of a weakly interacting Bose gas in a harmonic trap is demonstrated within the dielectric formalism for a previously introduced finite temperature approximation including exchange. The consistency of the approximation with the Kohn theorem is thereby demonstrated. The Kohn modes are found explicitly, generalizing an earlier zero-temperature result found in the literature. It is shown how the Kohn mode disappears from the single-particle spectrum, while remaining in the density oscillation spectrum, when the temperature increases from below to above the condensation temperature.Comment: 6 pages revte

Dynamics of genetic rescue in inbred <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> populations

Genetic rescue has been proposed as a management strategy to improve the fitness of genetically eroded populations by alleviating inbreeding depression. We studied the dynamics of genetic rescue in inbred populations of Drosophila. Using balancer chromosomes, we show that the force of heterosis that accompanies genetic rescue is large and allows even a recessive lethal to increase substantially in frequency in the rescued populations, particularly at stress temperatures. This indicates that deleterious alleles present in the immigrants can increase significantly in frequency in the recipient population when they are in linkage disequilibrium with genes responsible for the heterosis. In a second experiment we rescued eight inbred Drosophila populations with immigrants from two other inbred populations and observe: (i) there is a significant increase in viability both 5 and 10 generations after the rescue event, showing that the increase in fitness is not transient but persists long-term. (ii) The lower the fitness of the recipient population the larger the fitness increase. (iii) The increase in fitness depends significantly on the origin of the rescuers. The immigrants used were fixed for a conditional lethal that was mildly deleterious at 25A degrees C but lethal at 29A degrees C. By comparing fitness at 25A degrees C (the temperature during the rescue experiment) and 29A degrees C, we show that the lethal allele reached significant frequencies in most rescued populations, which upon renewed inbreeding became fixed in part of the inbred lines. In conclusion, in addition to the fitness increase genetic rescue can easily result in a substantial increase in the frequency of mildly deleterious alleles carried by the immigrants. This can endanger the rescued population greatly when it undergoes recurrent inbreeding. However, using a sufficient number of immigrants and to accompany the rescue event with the right demographic measures will overcome this problem. As such, genetic rescue still is a viable option to manage genetically eroded populations

Initial Stages of Bose-Einstein Condensation

We present the quantum theory for the nucleation of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute atomic Bose gas. This quantum theory comfirms the results of the semiclassical treatment, but has the important advantage that both the kinetic and coherent stages of the nucleation process can now be described in a unified way by a single Fokker-Planck equation.Comment: Four pages of ReVTeX and no figure