Convergence between the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale and diagnostic interview for the assessment of alcohol craving.

IntroductionThe Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS) is one of the most widely used instruments to measure craving for alcohol. Recent research has suggested that scores on the PACS can be used as a "stand in" for the diagnostic criterion of alcohol craving with a proposed cutoff of >20 on the PACS indicating a "positive" alcohol craving symptom. The present study examined the convergence between the PACS and face-to-face diagnostic interview for the assessment of alcohol craving.MethodA sample of non-treatment seeking heavy drinkers (N = 338) enrolled in experimental studies of AUD completed the PACS as well as a face-to-face diagnostic interview for AUD, which included the craving item from the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism (SSAGA).ResultsUsing the PACS cut-off score of >20, 12.9% (N = 43) of the sample met criteria for alcohol craving compared to 21% (N = 74) of the sample meeting criteria based on the diagnostic interview. Using the PACS cutoff of >20, sensitivity (i.e., true positive rate) was 41% and specificity (i.e., true negative rate) was 95%. Exploratory analyses suggested that a cut-off score of ≥15 achieved the optimal balance of sensitivity (67%) and specificity (81%) in our sample.ConclusionsAdvancing the assessment of alcohol craving and the conversion from DSM-IV to DSM-5 diagnostic criteria represents an important research direction. The present study recommends that a PACS score cut off of ≥15 should be used as an indicator of clinically significant alcohol craving in community samples of non-treatment seekers

Restorative Justice from Prosecutors’ Perspective

Restorative justice processes have been promoted as an alternative to criminal adjudication for many years outside the United States and, in recent years, in the United States as well. In the United States, restorative justice processes are used in some jurisdictions in cases involving juvenile offenders or low-level, nonviolent offenses by adults, but they have rarely been used in cases of adult felony offenders charged with serious violent crimes. Whether restorative justice processes will be used more broadly depends largely on whether prosecutors become receptive to their use. A handful of newly elected “progressive prosecutors” have expressed interest in applying restorative justice processes in these and other kinds of felony cases involving adult defendants. But conventional prosecutors generally remain uninterested in or hostile to restorative justice, even though most accept problem-solving courts and other alternatives to prosecution and incarceration. This Article explores why mainstream U.S. prosecutors are disposed against restorative justice and suggests how their concerns might best be addressed by restorative justice proponents

Victims’ Rights from a Restorative Perspective

The criminal adjudicatory process is meant in part to help crime victims heal. But for some crime victims, the process is re-victimizing. For decades, efforts have been made to make the criminal process fairer and more humane for victims. For example, state and federal laws are now designed to keep victims informed, allow them to be heard at sentencing, and afford them monetary restitution. But these efforts, while important, have not persuaded crime victims to trust criminal process. For example, sexual assaults remain grossly under-reported and under-prosecuted. Less than 1 percent of sexual assault crimes result in a felony conviction. Even the few victims who do receive their promised retributive outcome are not necessarily healed by the process. Reform efforts seem to presuppose that victims of crime – or victims of particular crimes such as sexual assault – are essentially the same and have essentially the same need, namely, a need for the offender to be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison to serve the longest sentence the law allows. However, sexual assault victims are a diverse group – racially, ethnically, socio-economically, and with respect to sexual identity – and they suffer varied harms because sexual assault encompasses a wide realm of misconduct and victim-offender relationships or lack thereof. Even when victims suffer similar harms and come from similar backgrounds, they often have distinct, though sometimes overlapping, needs and objectives. Some have no desire to participate in the criminal adjudication process at all. Some will be re-traumatized by a successful criminal prosecution, even with the implementation of procedural reforms promoted by the victims’ rights movement and others. Proceeding from the premise that victims are a diverse group with differing needs, we focus on victims who might prefer, and be better served by, a non-adversarial process that is centered on their needs, namely, restorative justice. However much improved, adversarial adjudication directed at convicting and incarcerating offenders risks re-traumatizing victims rather than promoting healing. It denies victims any significant control over the process, including control over their own narratives. We explore the value of restorative justice processes as an alternative that, in many criminal cases, may be preferable from victims’ perspective. We acknowledge that restorative justice processes are rarely employed in sexual assault cases in the United States and that prosecutors may have reasons, independent of victims’ perceived interests, for preferring the adversary process, a criminal conviction and imprisonment. Further, some victims’ advocates regard restorative justice as particularly inappropriate in the context of sexual assaults. Nonetheless, we suggest that when victims voluntarily choose to engage in a restorative justice process, it may be healing, because it gives victims agency in seeking a reckoning that fits with their particular needs and offers possibilities for addressing and repairing the harm that a criminal prosecution cannot

Victims’ Rights from a Restorative Perspective

The criminal adjudicatory process is meant in part to help crime victims heal. But for some crime victims, the process is re-victimizing. For decades, efforts have been made to make the criminal process fairer and more humane for victims. For example, state and federal laws are now designed to keep victims informed, allow them to be heard at sentencing, and afford them monetary restitution. But these efforts, while important, have not persuaded crime victims to trust criminal process. For example, sexual assaults remain grossly under-reported and under-prosecuted. Less than 1 percent of sexual assault crimes result in a felony conviction. Even the few victims who do receive their promised retributive outcome are not necessarily healed by the process. Reform efforts seem to presuppose that victims of crime – or victims of particular crimes such as sexual assault – are essentially the same and have essentially the same need, namely, a need for the offender to be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison to serve the longest sentence the law allows. However, sexual assault victims are a diverse group – racially, ethnically, socio-economically, and with respect to sexual identity – and they suffer varied harms because sexual assault encompasses a wide realm of misconduct and victim-offender relationships or lack thereof. Even when victims suffer similar harms and come from similar backgrounds, they often have distinct, though sometimes overlapping, needs and objectives. Some have no desire to participate in the criminal adjudication process at all. Some will be re-traumatized by a successful criminal prosecution, even with the implementation of procedural reforms promoted by the victims’ rights movement and others. Proceeding from the premise that victims are a diverse group with differing needs, we focus on victims who might prefer, and be better served by, a non-adversarial process that is centered on their needs, namely, restorative justice. However much improved, adversarial adjudication directed at convicting and incarcerating offenders risks re-traumatizing victims rather than promoting healing. It denies victims any significant control over the process, including control over their own narratives. We explore the value of restorative justice processes as an alternative that, in many criminal cases, may be preferable from victims’ perspective. We acknowledge that restorative justice processes are rarely employed in sexual assault cases in the United States and that prosecutors may have reasons, independent of victims’ perceived interests, for preferring the adversary process, a criminal conviction and imprisonment. Further, some victims’ advocates regard restorative justice as particularly inappropriate in the context of sexual assaults. Nonetheless, we suggest that when victims voluntarily choose to engage in a restorative justice process, it may be healing, because it gives victims agency in seeking a reckoning that fits with their particular needs and offers possibilities for addressing and repairing the harm that a criminal prosecution cannot

Mapping cellular processes in the mesenchyme during palatal development in the absence of Tbx1 reveals complex proliferation changes and perturbed cell packing and polarity

The 22q11 deletion syndromes represent a spectrum of overlapping conditions including cardiac defects and craniofacial malformations. Amongst the craniofacial anomalies that are seen, cleft of the secondary palate is a common feature. Haploinsufficiency of TBX1 is believed to be a major contributor toward many of the developmental structural anomalies that occur in these syndromes, and targeted deletion of Tbx1 in the mouse reproduces many of these malformations, including cleft palate. However, the cellular basis of this defect is only poorly understood. Here, palatal development in the absence of Tbx1 has been analysed, focusing on cellular properties within the whole mesenchymal volume of the palatal shelves. Novel image analyses and data presentation tools were applied to quantify cell proliferation rates, including regions of elevated as well as reduced proliferation, and cell packing in the mesenchyme. Also, cell orientations (nucleus–Golgi axis) were mapped as a potential marker of directional cell movement. Proliferation differed only subtly between wild‐type and mutant until embryonic day (E)15.5 when proliferation in the mutant was significantly lower. Tbx1 (−/−) palatal shelves had slightly different cell packing than wild‐type, somewhat lower before elevation and higher at E15.5 when the wild‐type palate has elevated and fused. Cell orientation is biased towards the shelf distal edge in the mid‐palate of wild‐type embryos but is essentially random in the Tbx1 (−/−) mutant shelves, suggesting that polarised processes such as directed cell rearrangement might be causal for the cleft phenotype. The implications of these findings in the context of further understanding Tbx1 function during palatogenesis and of these methods for the more general analysis of genotype–phenotype functional relationships are discussed

Expectations and experiences of a dance programme for autistic children: A qualitative study of parents, teachers and therapists

This study explores the expectations of dance therapists/practitioners and parents and teachers of autistic children engaging in a developmental dance programme. Information gathered will support development of an evaluation tool aligned with the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) Core Sets for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A qualitative study included a convenience cohort of teachers (n = 6), parents (n = 2) of children with ASD and therapists (n = 3). Three role specific focus groups were undertaken considering potential benefits and challenges of the programme. Content and thematic analysis was undertaken using NVivo12. Findings reflected four positive themes relating to behaviour, skills, social interaction and environmental supports. Therapists, teachers and parents focused differently on stereotypical and restricted behaviours, environmental supports and habits and routines respectively. These themes also emerged as challenges (to implement/achieve); with parents identifying more emotional and behavioural restrictions. A fourth challenge theme of transferability of skills emerged from teachers and therapists. Items mapped against 28 ICF Core Sets (across the lifespan) and six to ICF categories, with creativity and imagination mismatched. Findings highlight need for a specific outcome measure for dance and/or movement programmes for autistic individuals that captures meaningful functions across ICF domains for differing stakeholders

Stabilizing the Complex Structure in Heterotic Calabi-Yau Vacua

In this paper, we show that the presence of gauge fields in heterotic Calabi-Yau compacitifications causes the stabilisation of some, or all, of the complex structure moduli of the Calabi-Yau manifold while maintaining a Minkowski vacuum. Certain deformations of the Calabi-Yau complex structure, with all other moduli held fixed, can lead to the gauge bundle becoming non-holomorphic and, hence, non-supersymmetric. This leads to an F-term potential which stabilizes the corresponding complex structure moduli. We use 10- and 4-dimensional field theory arguments as well as a derivation based purely on algebraic geometry to show that this picture is indeed correct. An explicit example is presented in which a large subset of complex structure moduli is fixed. We demonstrate that this type of theory can serve as the hidden sector in heterotic vacua and can co-exist with realistic particle physics.Comment: 17 pages, Late

Heterotic Compactification, An Algorithmic Approach

We approach string phenomenology from the perspective of computational algebraic geometry, by providing new and efficient techniques for proving stability and calculating particle spectra in heterotic compactifications. This is done in the context of complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds in a single projective space where we classify positive monad bundles. Using a combination of analytic methods and computer algebra we prove stability for all such bundles and compute the complete particle spectrum, including gauge singlets. In particular, we find that the number of anti-generations vanishes for all our bundles and that the spectrum is manifestly moduli-dependent.Comment: 36 pages, Late

Stability Walls in Heterotic Theories

We study the sub-structure of the heterotic Kahler moduli space due to the presence of non-Abelian internal gauge fields from the perspective of the four-dimensional effective theory. Internal gauge fields can be supersymmetric in some regions of the Kahler moduli space but break supersymmetry in others. In the context of the four-dimensional theory, we investigate what happens when the Kahler moduli are changed from the supersymmetric to the non-supersymmetric region. Our results provide a low-energy description of supersymmetry breaking by internal gauge fields as well as a physical picture for the mathematical notion of bundle stability. Specifically, we find that at the transition between the two regions an additional anomalous U(1) symmetry appears under which some of the states in the low-energy theory acquire charges. We compute the associated D-term contribution to the four-dimensional potential which contains a Kahler-moduli dependent Fayet-Iliopoulos term and contributions from the charged states. We show that this D-term correctly reproduces the expected physics. Several mathematical conclusions concerning vector bundle stability are drawn from our arguments. We also discuss possible physical applications of our results to heterotic model building and moduli stabilization.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figure