Patterns of criminal achievement in sexual offending : unravelling the “successful” sex offender

Purpose: The current study examines significant variations in criminal achievement across sex offenders. To examine the “successful” sex offender, the study proposes a concept of achievement in sexual offending defined as the ability to maximize the payoffs of a crime opportunity while minimizing the costs. Methods: The study is based on a sample of convicted adult male sex offenders using retrospective longitudinal data. Results: The study findings show a wide variation in criminal achievement, a variation that is not correlated with the severity of sentences meted out or the actuarial risk scores obtained by these offenders. Those offenders who specialize in sex crimes were shown to be the most productive and least detected offenders. Two types of successful offenders emerge, the first relying on his conventional background in targeting a victim that can be repeatedly abused for a long period without detection. The second is a younger offender that is successful in the sense of being able to complete aggressions on multiple victims. Conclusions: Results suggest that the successful sex offender is not “detected” once he enters the criminal justice system, nor is he handled in a way that may deter him from sexually reoffending in the future

Summary of the 2018 CKM Working Group on Semileptonic and Leptonic b-Hadron Decays

A summary of WG II of the CKM 2018 conference on semileptonic and leptonic b-hadron decays is presented. This includes discussions on the CKM matrix element magitudes |Vub| and |Vcb|, lepton universality tests such as R(D∗) and leptonic decays. As is usual for semileptonic and leptonic decays, much discussion is devoted towards the interplay between theoretical QCD calculations and the experimental measurements

Interpretation of Natural Language Rules in Conversational Machine Reading

Most work in machine reading focuses on question answering problems where the answer is directly expressed in the text to read. However, many real-world question answering problems require the reading of text not because it contains the literal answer, but because it contains a recipe to derive an answer together with the reader's background knowledge. One example is the task of interpreting regulations to answer "Can I...?" or "Do I have to...?" questions such as "I am working in Canada. Do I have to carry on paying UK National Insurance?" after reading a UK government website about this topic. This task requires both the interpretation of rules and the application of background knowledge. It is further complicated due to the fact that, in practice, most questions are underspecified, and a human assistant will regularly have to ask clarification questions such as "How long have you been working abroad?" when the answer cannot be directly derived from the question and text. In this paper, we formalise this task and develop a crowd-sourcing strategy to collect 32k task instances based on real-world rules and crowd-generated questions and scenarios. We analyse the challenges of this task and assess its difficulty by evaluating the performance of rule-based and machine-learning baselines. We observe promising results when no background knowledge is necessary, and substantial room for improvement whenever background knowledge is needed.Comment: EMNLP 201

La participation des citoyens aux choix énergétiques

The authors comment on the capacity of the law to resolve problems concerning public participation in energy questions. Problems of clarity of language and consensus about objects arise in most public debates about energy. Although a particular public participation exercise may be intended to treat issues related to one policy level, questions invariably arise concerning other policy levels, be they strategic or operational. Ideally, the timing of public debate should be determined in function of the ends such debates are expected to serve, but this is difficult because of the diverse functions to be served by participation. As well, the exercise is less clear because of problems of access to and manipulation of information. Nevertheless, impartial decision-making is still perceived as leading to the best results, although the inherent limits of public participation are recognized. In the final analysis, the problems posed by public participation are not ones the law, which is contentious in orientation, can remedy

Analytical modelling of stable isotope fractionation of volatile organic compounds in the unsaturated zone

Analytical models were developed that simulate stable isotope ratios of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) near a point source contamination in the unsaturated zone. The models describe diffusive transport of VOCs, biodegradation and source ageing. The mass transport is governed by Fick's law for diffusion, and the equation for reactive transport of VOCs in the soil gas phase was solved for different source geometries and for different boundary conditions. Model results were compared to experimental data from a one-dimensional laboratory column and a radial-symmetric field experiment, and the comparison yielded a satisfying agreement. The model results clearly illustrate the significant isotope fractionation by gas-phase diffusion under transient state conditions. This leads to an initial depletion of heavy isotopes with increasing distance from the source. The isotope evolution of the source is governed by the combined effects of isotope fractionation due to vaporization, diffusion and biodegradation. The net effect can lead to an enrichment or depletion of the heavy isotope in the remaining organic phase depending on the compound and element considered. Finally, the isotope evolution of molecules migrating away from the source and undergoing degradation is governed by a combined degradation and diffusion isotope effect. This suggests that in the unsaturated zone, the interpretation of biodegradation based on isotope data must always be based on a model combining gas-phase diffusion and degradation.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

The metabolic signature associated with the Western dietary pattern : a cross-sectional study

Background: Metabolic profiles have been shown to be associated to obesity status and insulin sensitivity. Dietary intakes influence metabolic pathways and therefore, different dietary patterns may relate to modifications in metabolic signatures. The objective was to verify associations between dietary patterns and metabolic profiles composed of amino acids (AAs) and acylcarnitines (ACs). Methods: 210 participants were recruited in the greater Quebec City area between September 2009 and December 2011. Dietary patterns had been previously derived using principal component analysis (PCA). The Prudent dietary pattern was characterised by higher intakes of vegetables, fruits, whole grain products, non-hydrogenated fat and lower intakes of refined grain products, whereas the Western dietary pattern was associated with higher intakes of refined grain products, desserts, sweets and processed meats. Targeted metabolites were quantified in 37 participants with the Biocrates Absolute IDQ p150 (Biocrates Life Sciences AG, Austria) mass spectrometry method (including 14 amino acids and 41 acylcarnitines). Results: PCA analysis with metabolites including AAs and ACs revealed two main components explaining the most variance in overall data (13.8%). PC1 was composed mostly of medium- to long-chain ACs (C16:2, C14:2, C14:2-OH, C16, C14:1-OH, C14:1, C10:2, C5-DC/C6-OH, C12, C18:2, C10, C4:1-DC/C6, C8:1 and C2) whereas PC2 included certain AAs and short-chain ACs (xLeu, Met, Arg, Phe, Pro, Orn, His, C0, C3, C4 and C5). The Western dietary pattern correlated negatively with PC1 and positively with PC2 (r = −0.34, p = 0.05 and r = 0.38, p = 0.03, respectively), independently of age, sex and BMI. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the Western dietary pattern is associated with a specific metabolite signature characterized by increased levels of AAs including branched-chain AAs (BCAAs) and short-chain ACs