Alexithymia, Asperger's syndrome and criminal behaviour: a review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the empirical literature informing the nature of the relationship between criminal behaviour and both Alexithymia and Asperger's syndrome (AS). Design/methodology/approach – The relevant literature was identified through database searches and via citations in primary sources. Findings – Alexithymia and AS are relatively similar constructs with some overlap in their defining characteristics including utilitarian thinking and deficiencies in empathy. Alexithymia is significantly more prevalent in offender populations than controls and, in particular, has a complex relationship with psychopathy. The research concerning AS has mainly focused on offense type and reasons for offending. In terms of offences, homicide rates were in keeping with general base rates, however, sexual offences were under-represented and arson was over-represented. Practical implications – In terms of reasons for offending, criminal behaviour is best described as a consequence of the classical characteristics of AS. It is suggested that despite their similarities the relationship of the two disorders with criminal behaviour may well be different. This suggestion has implications for the design of services intended to reduce the risk of offending in these two groups. Originality/value – The review draws together a diverse range of literature around a rather neglected topic in criminological psychology. It will be of value to researchers in suggesting where new knowledge is needed, particularly with regard to disentangling the risk factors for offending for the two conditions, and to practitioners within the criminal justice system in pointing towards areas for intervention to reduce risk. </jats:sec

General implementation of all possible positive-operator-value measurements of single photon polarization states

Positive Operator Value Measures (POVMs) are the most general class of quantum measurements. We propose a setup in which all possible POVMs of a single photon polarization state (corresponding to all possible sets of two-dimensional Kraus operators) can be implemented easily using linear optics elements. This method makes it possible to experimentally realize any projective orthogonal, projective non-orthogonal or non-projective sets of any number of POVM operators. Furthermore our implementation only requires vacuum ancillas, and is deterministic rather than probabilistic. Thus it realizes every POVM with the correct set of output states. We give the settings required to implement two different well-known non-orthogonal projective POVMs.Comment: 5 pages, newer version with minor addition

Continuous sedation until death: The everyday moral reasoning of physicians, nurses and family caregivers in the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium

Copyright © 2014 Raus et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Background - Continuous sedation is increasingly used as a way to relieve symptoms at the end of life. Current research indicates that some physicians, nurses, and relatives involved in this practice experience emotional and/or moral distress. This study aims to provide insight into what may influence how professional and/or family carers cope with such distress. Methods - This study is an international qualitative interview study involving interviews with physicians, nurses, and relatives of deceased patients in the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium (the UNBIASED study) about a case of continuous sedation at the end of life they were recently involved in. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed by staying close to the data using open coding. Next, codes were combined into larger themes and categories of codes resulting in a four point scheme that captured all of the data. Finally, our findings were compared with others and explored in relation to theories in ethics and sociology. Results - The participants’ responses can be captured as different dimensions of ‘closeness’, i.e. the degree to which one feels connected or ‘close’ to a certain decision or event. We distinguished four types of ‘closeness’, namely emotional, physical, decisional, and causal. Using these four dimensions of ‘closeness’ it became possible to describe how physicians, nurses, and relatives experience their involvement in cases of continuous sedation until death. More specifically, it shined a light on the everyday moral reasoning employed by care providers and relatives in the context of continuous sedation, and how this affected the emotional impact of being involved in sedation, as well as the perception of their own moral responsibility. Conclusion - Findings from this study demonstrate that various factors are reported to influence the degree of closeness to continuous sedation (and thus the extent to which carers feel morally responsible), and that some of these factors help care providers and relatives to distinguish continuous sedation from euthanasia.The Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Research Foundation Flanders (BE), the Flemish Cancer Association (BE), the Research Council of Ghent University (BE), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NL) and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (NL)

Comparing verbal media for alarm handling: Speech versus textual displays

The rise of computers in command and control domains has meant that control operations can be performed via desk-based visual display terminals. This trend has also produced the potential to display information to operators in a variety of formats. Of particular interest has been the use of text-based displays for alarm presentation. There are possible limitations to the use of text for alarm presentation, not least of which is the need for a dedicated alarms display screen (or, at least, a display page). Given the capability of computers to synthesize speech, it is possible that speech-based alarms could generate the same information as text-based displays without the need for dedicated screen space. In this paper an experimental comparison of speech-based and text-based displays for presentation of alarms is reported. The findings show that speech leads to longer response times than text displays, but that it has minimal effect on the efficacy of fault handling. The results are discussed within the alarm initiated activities framework and implications for alarm system design are outlined

Microscopic mechanism for mechanical polishing of diamond (110) surfaces

Mechanically induced degradation of diamond, as occurs during polishing, is studied using total--energy pseudopotential calculations. The strong asymmetry in the rate of polishing between different directions on the diamond (110) surface is explained in terms of an atomistic mechanism for nano--groove formation. The post--polishing surface morphology and the nature of the polishing residue predicted by this mechanism are consistent with experimental evidence.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Shell-model calculations for the three-nucleon system

We use Faddeev's decomposition to solve the shell-model problem for three nucleons. The dependence on harmonic-oscillator excitations allowed in the model space, up to $32 \hbar\Omega$ in the present calculations, and on the harmonic-oscillator frequency is studied. Effective interactions derived from Nijmegen II and Reid93 potentials are used in the calculations. The binding energies obtained are close to those calculated by other methods. The structure of the Faddeev equations is discussed and a simple formula for matrix elements of the permutation operators in a harmonic-oscillator basis is given. The Pauli principle is properly treated in the calculations.Comment: 11 pages. REVTEX. 6 PostScript figure