459 research outputs found
Legal Constraints on the Indeterminate Control of 'Dangerous' Sex Offenders in the Community: The French Perspective
France literally âdiscoveredâ sexual abuse following neighbour Belgiumâs Dutroux case in the late 1990s. Since then, sex offenders have been the focus of politicians, media and law-makersâ attention. Further law reforms have aimed at imposing mandatory supervision and treatment, and in rare cases, preventive detention. The legal framework for mandatory supervision and detention is rather complex, ranging from a mixed sentence (custodial and mandatory supervision and treatment upon release or as a stand-alone sentence) to so-called âsafety measuresâ, which supposedly do not aim at punishing an offence, but at protecting society. The difference between the concepts of sentences and safety measures is nevertheless rather blurry. In practice, how- ever, courts have used safety measures quite sparingly and have preferred mandatory supervision as attached to a sentence, notably because it is compatible with cardinal legal principles. Procedural constraints have also contributed to this limited use. Moreover, the type of supervision and treatment that can thus be imposed is virtually identical to that of ordinary probation. It is, however, noteworthy that a higher number of offenders with mental health issues who are deemed âdangerousâ are placed in special psychiatric units, something that has not drawn much attention on the part of human rights lawyers
Localized excited charge carriers generate ultrafast inhomogeneous strain in the multiferroic BiFeO
We apply ultrafast X-ray diffraction with femtosecond temporal resolution to
monitor the lattice dynamics in a thin film of multiferroic BiFeO after
above-bandgap photoexcitation. The sound-velocity limited evolution of the
observed lattice strains indicates a quasi-instantaneous photoinduced stress
which decays on a nanosecond time scale. This stress exhibits an inhomogeneous
spatial profile evidenced by the broadening of the Bragg peak. These new data
require substantial modification of existing models of photogenerated stresses
in BiFeO: the relevant excited charge carriers must remain localized to be
consistent with the data
Glueballs, symmetry breaking and axionic strings in non-supersymmetric deformations of the Klebanov-Strassler background
We obtain an analytic solution for an axionic non-supersymmetric deformation
of the warped deformed conifold. This allows us to study D-strings in the
infrared limit of non-supersymmetric deformations of the Klebanov-Strassler
background. They are interpreted as axionic strings in the dual field theory.
Following the arguments of [hep-th/0405282], the axion is a massless
pseudo-scalar glueball which is present in the supergravity fluctuation
spectrum and it is interpreted as the Goldstone boson of the spontaneously
broken U(1) baryon number symmetry, being the gauge theory on the baryonic
branch. Besides, we briefly discuss about the Pando Zayas-Tseytlin solution
where the SU(2) \times SU(2) global symmetry is spontaneously broken. This
background has been conjectured to be on the mesonic branch of the gauge
theory.Comment: 30 pages; V2: minor corrections; V3: section 3 corrected and
misprints corrected to match version published in JHE
Criticality, Scaling and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in External Magnetic Field
We consider a D7-brane probe of in the presence of pure
gauge -field. The dual gauge theory is flavored Yang-Mills theory in
external magnetic field. We explore the dependence of the fermionic condensate
on the bare quark mass and study the discrete self-similar behavior of
the theory near the origin of the parametric space. We calculate the critical
exponents of the bare quark mass and the fermionic condensate. A study of the
meson spectrum supports the expectation based on thermodynamic considerations
that at zero bare quark mass the stable phase of the theory is a chiral
symmetry breaking one. Our study reveals the self-similar structure of the
spectrum near the critical phase of the theory, characterized by zero fermionic
condensate and we calculate the corresponding critical exponent of the meson
spectrum.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures. Accepted in JHEP. Updated to mach the published
version. One figure added, some definitions improve
Gauge gravity duality for d-wave superconductors: prospects and challenges
We write down an action for a charged, massive spin two field in a fixed
Einstein background. Despite some technical problems, we argue that in an
effective field theory framework and in the context of the AdS/CFT
correspondence, this action can be used to study the properties of a superfluid
phase transition with a d-wave order parameter in a dual strongly interacting
field theory. We investigate the phase diagram and the charge conductivity of
the superfluid phase. We also explain how possible couplings between the spin
two field and bulk fermions affect the fermion spectral function.Comment: 42 pages, 6 figure
The DNA methylome of cervical cells can predict the presence of ovarian cancer
The vast majority of epithelial ovarian cancer arises from tissues that are embryologically derived from the MĂŒllerian Duct. Here, we demonstrate that a DNA methylation signature in easy-to-access MĂŒllerian Duct-derived cervical cells from women with and without ovarian cancer (i.e. referred to as the Womenâs risk IDentification for Ovarian Cancer index or WID-OC-index) is capable of identifying women with an ovarian cancer in the absence of tumour DNA with an AUC of 0.76 and women with an endometrial cancer with an AUC of 0.81. This and the observation that the cervical cell WID-OC-index mimics the epigenetic program of those cells at risk of becoming cancerous in BRCA1/2 germline mutation carriers (i.e. mammary epithelium, fallopian tube fimbriae, prostate) further suggest that the epigenetic misprogramming of cervical cells is an indicator for cancer predisposition. This concept has the potential to advance the field of risk-stratified cancer screening and prevention
Emergent Quantum Near-Criticality from Baryonic Black Branes
We find new black 3-brane solutions describing the "conifold gauge theory" at
nonzero temperature and baryonic chemical potential. Of particular interest is
the low-temperature limit where we find a new kind of weakly curved
near-horizon geometry; it is a warped product AdS_2 x R^3 x T^{1,1} with warp
factors that are powers of the logarithm of the AdS radius. Thus, our solution
encodes a new type of emergent quantum near-criticality. We carry out some
stability checks for our solutions. We also set up a consistent ansatz for
baryonic black 2-branes of M-theory that are asymptotic to AdS_4 x Q^{1,1,1}.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures; v2 discussion of entropy revised, minor changes;
v3 note added, minor improvements, version published in JHE
Stability of the non-extremal enhancon solution I: perturbation equations
We consider the stability of the two branches of non-extremal enhancon
solutions. We argue that one would expect a transition between the two branches
at some value of the non-extremality, which should manifest itself in some
instability. We study small perturbations of these solutions, constructing a
sufficiently general ansatz for linearised perturbations of the non-extremal
solutions, and show that the linearised equations are consistent. We show that
the simplest kind of perturbation does not lead to any instability. We reduce
the problem of studying the more general spherically symmetric perturbation to
solving a set of three coupled second-order differential equations.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure, references added, typos fixed, version to appear
in PR
Desistance from crime and probation supervision: Comparing experiences of English and French probationers
This research compares how English and French desisters experience and perceive probation supervision. In this qualitative study, desisters of both countries were interviewed to collect narratives of change within the context of punishment in the community. The aim of this research was to explore and compare the role of probation in desistance processes, in different national, socio-economic, and criminal justice settings. The findings demonstrate similarities in perceptions of probation officers as people with resources. Differences emerged in the types of resources engaged with and the perceived punitiveness of mandatory supervision
New Supergravity Backgrounds Dual to N=1 SQCD-like Theories with N_f=2N_c
We present new supergravity backgrounds generated by N_c D5-branes, wrapping
the S^2 of the resolved conifold, in the presence of N_f = 2 N_c smeared flavor
D5-branes. The smearing allows us to take their backreaction on the geometry
into account. We discuss the consistency, stability, and supersymmetry of these
types of setups. We find near horizon geometries that we expect to be
supergravity duals of SQCD-like theories with N_f= 2N_c. From these backgrounds
we numerically extract rectangular Wilson loops and beta functions of the dual
field theory for the regime where our approximations are valid.Comment: 22+24 pages, 17 figures, Figure 12 replace
- âŠ