Detecting Malingering With the Mmpi and the Pst.

The purpose of this study was to refine methods of detecting malingering of psychosis by forensic patients. The most effective measures of malingering to date were the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) F and F-K Indices. The literature, based on simulation research, was deficient in confirmatory work with true forensic malingerers. Further, the Projective Simulation Test (PST) had shown promise with simulators, but had not been used with malingerers. In this study, 50 prisoners volunteered from Hunt Correctional Institute, St. Gabriel, Louisiana, and were randomly assigned within reading groups to serve in Standard Instruction and Simulator groups, and 50 volunteers from Feliciana Forensic Facility, Jackson, Louisiana, were designated the Malingerer and Schizophrenic groups. Simulators were given instructions to respond as an insane person would, while the other three groups were given standard instructions. The MMPI is the best overall method of detecting malingering. The Malingerer group earned scores elevated beyond the published cuts of the F Scale and the F-K Index on the MMPI. Optimal cut scores of F 22 and F-K 10 were determined for this sample. Concurrent validity was not established for the PST with the MMPI. A combination of weighted measures discriminated Malingerers from Schizophrenics better than any single scale did, and the most powerful independent variables in the linear equation were MMPI F-K Index, IQ and PST X+%, in that order. A comparison of the performance of Malingerers on the various scales with that of the analog group showed Malingerers and Simulators are similar but not identical groups

On archives

Toshie Awaya, ed. 2005. Creating an Archive Today. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. 158 pages, ISBN 4 925243 09

A grammar of the Thangmi language with an ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture

This dissertation describes Thangmi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in eastern Nepal, primarily in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok, as well as in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. The grammar focuses on the Dolakha (Eastern) dialect of the language, although contrastive examples and specific features of the Sindhupalcok (Western) dialect are also discussed. While the Thangmi ethnic group number around 40,000, speakers of the language do not amount to more than 20,000. In terms of genetic affiliation, Thangmi appears to be closely related to Newar and Baram, which together form the ‘Newaric’ linguistic grouping. Thangmi is also related to the so-called ‘complex pronominalised’ Kiranti languages, which together with Newaric form the Mahakiranti group within Tibeto-Burman. The Thangmi refer to themselves as Thangmi, while shamans who are the sole religious practitioners in the community call themselves Thani. In Nepali the Thangmi community and their language continue to be referred to as Thami. This 862-page book contains a grammatical analysis of the Thangmi language, forty-five analysed texts with interlinear morpheme glosses and translations, a trilingual Thangmi-English-Nepali lexicon, a graphic representation of Thangmi kinship terminology and a comprehensive bibliography. The linguistic description is based on fieldwork conducted between 1997 and 2004 on a series of trips to Nepal and India. The grammar of Thangmi, which makes up the first third of the book, is divided into seven chapters. Chapter One deals with the changing historical classifications of Thangmi within the Tibeto-Burman language family, and particular attention is paid to lexical correspondences with Newar. Chapter Two offers an introduction to Thangmi culture and society, and addresses earlier research and scholarship on the Thangmi and their language. Thangmi toponyms, ethnonyms, clan names, kinship terms, mythology and history are all discussed in this chapter. Chapter Three deals with the Thangmi sound system and phonology, while Chapter Four addresses morphophonology. The fifth chapter focuses on nominal morphology, word classes and derivation. Thangmi nominals are characterised by a large number of postpositions. There is no grammatical gender in Thangmi and adjectives do not agree with the nominals they modify. A particularly interesting feature of Thangmi is the complexity of the verbal agreement system which is the subject of Chapters Six and Seven. Chapter Six offers a detailed morphological analysis of Thangmi simplex forms which are intransitive, transitive or reflexive verbal strings showing agreement with one or more actants and containing a tense morpheme. Complex verbal forms, including periphrastic constructions, imperative forms and other modals make up Chapter Seven. Gerunds along with the two intransitive verbs which correspond to the English verb ‘to be’ are also discussed in this final chapter. In common with other Tibeto-Burman languages, with the exception of Chinese and Karen, Thangmi exhibits SOV word order.LEI Universiteit LeidenFinancial support for fieldwork provided by NWO. Financial support for printing costs provided by LUCL.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Could humans recognize odor by phonon assisted tunneling?

Our sense of smell relies on sensitive, selective atomic-scale processes that are initiated when a scent molecule meets specific receptors in the nose. However, the physical mechanisms of detection are not clear. While odorant shape and size are important, experiment indicates these are insufficient. One novel proposal suggests inelastic electron tunneling from a donor to an acceptor mediated by the odorant actuates a receptor, and provides critical discrimination. We test the physical viability of this mechanism using a simple but general model. Using values of key parameters in line with those for other biomolecular systems, we find the proposed mechanism is consistent both with the underlying physics and with observed features of smell, provided the receptor has certain general properties. This mechanism suggests a distinct paradigm for selective molecular interactions at receptors (the swipe card model): recognition and actuation involve size and shape, but also exploit other processes.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

TRIS I: Absolute Measurements of the Sky Brightness Temperature at 0.6, 0.82 and 2.5 GHz

At frequencies close to 1 GHz the sky diffuse radiation is a superposition of radiation of Galactic origin, the 3 K Relic or Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, and the signal produced by unresolved extragalactic sources. Because of their different origin and space distribution the relative importance of the three components varies with frequency and depends on the direction of observation. With the aim of disentangling the components we built TRIS, a system of three radiometers, and studied the temperature of the sky at $\nu =0.6$, $\nu = 0.82$ and $\nu = 2.5$ GHz using geometrically scaled antennas with identical beams (HPBW = $18^{\circ} \times 23^{\circ}$). Observations included drift scans along a circle at constant declination $\delta=+42^{\circ}$ which provided the dependence of the sky signal on the Right Ascension, and absolute measurement of the sky temperature at selected points along the same scan circle. TRIS was installed at Campo Imperatore (lat. = $42^{\circ}~26'$ N, long.= $13^{\circ}~33'$, elevation = 2000 m a.s.l.) in Central Italy, close to the Gran Sasso Laboratory.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa