Can paraphrasing increase the amount and accuracy of reports from child eyewitnesses?

Young children’s descriptions of sexual abuse are often sparse thus creating the need for techniques that elicit lengthier accounts. ‘Paraphrasing’, or repeating information children have just disclosed, is a technique sometimes used by forensic interviewers to clarify or elicit information. (e.g., if a child stated “He touched me”, an interviewer could respond “He touched you?”). However, the effects of paraphrasing have yet to be scientifically assessed. The impact of different paraphrasing styles on young children’s reports was investigated. Overall, paraphrasing per se did not improve the length, richness, or accuracy of reports when compared to open-ended prompts such as “tell me more,” but some styles of paraphrasing were more beneficial than others. The results provide clear recommendations for investigative interviewers about how to use paraphrasing appropriately, and which practices can compromise the quality of children’s reports

New Asymptotic Expanstion Method for the Wheeler-DeWitt Equation

A new asymptotic expansion method is developed to separate the Wheeler-DeWitt equation into the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a matter field and the Einstein-Hamilton-Jacobi equation for the gravitational field including the quantum back-reaction of the matter field. In particular, the nonadiabatic basis of the generalized invariant for the matter field Hamiltonian separates the Wheeler-DeWitt equation completely in the asymptotic limit of $m_p^2$ approaching infinity. The higher order quantum corrections of the gravity to the matter field are found. The new asymptotic expansion method is valid throughout all regions of superspace compared with other expansion methods with a certain limited region of validity. We apply the new asymptotic expansion method to the minimal FRW universe.Comment: 24 pages of Latex file, revte

Feynman's Decoherence

Gell-Mann's quarks are coherent particles confined within a hadron at rest, but Feynman's partons are incoherent particles which constitute a hadron moving with a velocity close to that of light. It is widely believed that the quark model and the parton model are two different manifestations of the same covariant entity. If this is the case, the question arises whether the Lorentz boost destroys coherence. It is pointed out that this is not the case, and it is possible to resolve this puzzle without inventing new physics. It is shown that this decoherence is due to the measurement processes which are less than complete.Comment: RevTex 15 pages including 6 figs, presented at the 9th Int'l Conference on Quantum Optics (Raubichi, Belarus, May 2002), to be published in the proceeding

Finite-size scaling theory for explosive percolation transitions

The finite-size scaling (FSS) theory for continuous phase transitions has been useful in determining the critical behavior from the size dependent behaviors of thermodynamic quantities. When the phase transition is discontinuous, however, FSS approach has not been well established yet. Here, we develop a FSS theory for the explosive percolation transition arising in the Erd\H{o}s and R\'enyi model under the Achlioptas process. A scaling function is derived based on the observed fact that the derivative of the curve of the order parameter at the critical point $t_c$ diverges with system size in a power-law manner, which is different from the conventional one based on the divergence of the correlation length at $t_c$. We show that the susceptibility is also described in the same scaling form. Numerical simulation data for different system sizes are well collapsed on the respective scaling functions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Quantum Description for the Decay of NSNS Brane-Antibrane Systems

The stringy description for the instabilities in the $RR$ charged $D_{p}-\bar{D}_{p}$ pairs is now well understood in terms of the open string tachyon condensation. The quantum interpretation presumably via the stringy description for the instabilities in the $NSNS$-charged $F1-\bar{F1}$ and $NS5-\bar{NS5}$ pairs in IIA/IIB theories, however, has not been established yet. This would be partly because of the absence (for the $F1-\bar{F1}$ case) or our relatively poor understanding (for the $NS5-\bar{NS5}$ case) of their worldvolume (gauge theory) dynamics. In the present work, using the well-known quantum description for instabilities in the $RR$-charged $D_{p}-\bar{D}_{p}$ systems and in the M-theory brane-antibrane systems and invoking appropriate string dualities, the stringy nature of the instabilities in the $NSNS$-charged $F1-\bar{F1}$ and $NS5-\bar{NS5}$ systems has been uncovered. For the annihilations to string vacua, the quantum, stringy interpretations are simple extensions of Sen's conjecture for those in $RR$-charged brane-antibrane systems.Comment: 22 pages, 4 eps figures, Latex, comments and references adde

Input frequency requirements for identification through Liapunov methods

A theorem is derived which specifies a sufficient number of input frequencies to guarantee identification of an unknown noise free linear plant. Since all of the referenced work relates to sufficient conditions for nulling of the parameter error vector, it is to be expected that various conditions on the system to be identified will have been imposed. It was found that some of these conditions appear to be necessary while others do not. The main contribution is to provide a theorem which considers the effect of unknown parameters in the state equation upon the frequency requirements

Quantum Dynamics for de Sitter Radiation

We revisit the Hamiltonian formalism for a massive scalar field and study the particle production in a de Sitter space. In the invariant-operator picture the time-dependent annihilation and creation operators are constructed in terms of a complex solution to the classical equation of motion for the field and the Gaussian wave function for each Fourier mode is found which is an exact solution to the Schr\"odinger equation. The in-out formalism is reformulated by the annihilation and creation operators and the Gaussian wave functions. The de Sitter radiation from the in-out formalism differs from the Gibbons-Hawking radiation in the planar coordinates, and we discuss the discrepancy of the particle production by the two methodComment: LaTex 12 pages, no figure; CosPA2011, Peking Univ., Oct. 28-31, 2011; references added; to be published in International Journal of Modern Physics: Conference Serie