Damages for Mental Suffering in Discrimination Cases

This article explores the legal basis for an award of damages for mental suffering caused by unlawful racial discrimination. It necessarily includes religious and nationality discrimination,since these three areas are intertwined in the law. For the most part, the legal principles are applicable alike to all three forms of discrimination. Mental suffering is treated as an element of compensatory damages on the theory that the purpose of such an award is to compensate the claimant for his loss and not necessarily to penalize the discriminator. Punishment enters the analysis only to the extent that the prevailing legal rules governing damage awards for mental suffering are different in cases involving intentional conduct from those applicable to negligence

Damages for Mental Suffering in Discrimination Cases

This article explores the legal basis for an award of damages for mental suffering caused by unlawful racial discrimination. It necessarily includes religious and nationality discrimination,since these three areas are intertwined in the law. For the most part, the legal principles are applicable alike to all three forms of discrimination. Mental suffering is treated as an element of compensatory damages on the theory that the purpose of such an award is to compensate the claimant for his loss and not necessarily to penalize the discriminator. Punishment enters the analysis only to the extent that the prevailing legal rules governing damage awards for mental suffering are different in cases involving intentional conduct from those applicable to negligence

Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction, Stress-Related Appraisals, and Dancers’ Cortisol and Anxiety Responses \ud

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) posits basic psychological need satisfaction (BPNS) as essential for optimal functioning and health. Grounded in this framework, the current study examined the role of BPNS in dancers’ cognitive appraisals and hormonal and emotional responses to performance stress. Dancers reported their degree of BPNS 1 month before a solo performance. Threat and challenge appraisals of the solo were recorded 2 hr before the performance. Salivary cortisol and anxiety were measured 15 min before, and 15, 30, 45, and 60 min postperformance. Higher BPNS was associated with lower cortisol responses and anxiety intensity. Challenge appraisals mediated the association between BPNS and cortisol. Threat appraisals mediated the BPNS–anxiety intensity relationship. These findings point to the potential importance of performers’ BPNS for optimal emotional and hormonal homeostasis in performance conditions.\ud \u

Ocean sound channel ray path perturbations from internal-wave shear and strain

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118 (2005): 2899-2903, doi:10.1121/1.2062127.The relative importance of internal-wave strain and internal-wave shear on perturbation of acoustic ray trajectories in the ocean is analyzed. Previous estimates based on the Garrett-Munk internal-wave spectral model are updated using data from recent field studies of internal waves. Estimates of the ratio of the rms shear effect to the rms strain effect based on data from the upper kilometer of ocean are as high as 0.25–0.4, exceeding the estimates of 0.08–0.17 stemming from the model. Increased strength of three phenomena that have shear to strain ratios higher than the internal-wave average can cause this effect. These are near-inertial waves, internal tides, and vortical modes.This work was funded by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research

Dynamic quantum clustering: a method for visual exploration of structures in data

A given set of data-points in some feature space may be associated with a Schrodinger equation whose potential is determined by the data. This is known to lead to good clustering solutions. Here we extend this approach into a full-fledged dynamical scheme using a time-dependent Schrodinger equation. Moreover, we approximate this Hamiltonian formalism by a truncated calculation within a set of Gaussian wave functions (coherent states) centered around the original points. This allows for analytic evaluation of the time evolution of all such states, opening up the possibility of exploration of relationships among data-points through observation of varying dynamical-distances among points and convergence of points into clusters. This formalism may be further supplemented by preprocessing, such as dimensional reduction through singular value decomposition or feature filtering.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure